The House voted Tuesday afternoon to censure Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC), by a vote of 413-2, after the House Ethics Committee’s recommendation to do so following an investigation into sexual misconduct with two female staffers. Edwards, who dropped his reelection bid after the committee released its report, was censured after the…
Page A6From§Eachthe early evening edition — 1 September 2026
House responds to late-night texts and lavish gifts to aides with a censure, nothing more.
As it ran on the front
Excuse me — hold on, I had it right here. [flips pages] Here we go, I wrote this down. Says here: 'late-night texts, lavish gifts, two aides.' Two. Not one, not a handful. Two, with a number attached, in the reporting. I keep circling back to that number because numbers usually mean somebody counted, and when somebody counted, there's usually a document under the number.
So I'm looking at this vote — House censures the member, that's it, that's the whole entry — and I keep asking myself, and I don't know the answer, so don't quote me — what does a censure actually cost anybody. Because see, I got this toll plaza I go through most days, out past the Route 9 exit, and there's a light up there, and if you go through without paying, first time, the light just flashes, doesn't stop you, doesn't even slow you down, it just — it registers. That's it. Registers. And then a bill shows up in the mail three weeks later, and my wife's the one who opens the mail, and she says, 'Did you pay this?' And I say, 'It's registered, isn't it?' And she looks at me.…
…(cont) Now here's the thing about that light. It doesn't stop the car. Never has, not once in fourteen years I've been going through there. It just makes a note. And I got to thinking about that when I read this — 'House censures Republican accused of sexually harassing two aides' — and then right under it, 'Republicans turn on House GOP lawmaker accused of late-night texts, lavish gifts to female staffers.' Same guy. Same week. Turn on him, is what it says. Turn on him how, though? Turns out that's the vote itself — the censure — and that's the whole 'turning on him' the record shows. I looked. I got five different versions of this story, five different outlets, NBC's got it, NPR's got it, the Hill's got it near as I can tell twice, and every single one of them ends at the same word. Censure. Nobody's got a next paragraph.
So the light flashes, the car keeps going, the bill comes later, and half the time nobody even opens it. I'm not saying that's what happened here. I'm saying I got a toll plaza that works exactly the same way, and I've been going through it for fourteen years without once getting stopped.
Two aides, though. That number keeps bothering me. Not one — the record's specific, it says two, and lavish, and late-night, and gifts, plural. Somebody itemized this. Somebody sat down and wrote 'lavish' about actual gifts, which means somebody catalogued them, which means there's a list somewhere, and lists usually end up in a filing, and filings usually end up — well, they usually end up somewhere I can't get to, is where they usually end up.
Anyway. [closing notebook] I appreciate your time. Oh — one more thing, if you don't mind, before you head out. I read through all five of these one more time, front to back, looking for what happened after the censure. Anybody see a next paragraph in there I might've missed?
“They caught a member sending late-night texts and lavish gifts to two aides and the punishment was a censure — a strongly worded piece of paper he can frame. That's the whole accountability system in one sentence: get caught, get scolded, keep the job, keep voting.”
“Censure is a serious institutional rebuke, the House doesn't hand those out lightly — this sends a real message. Expulsion would've required a two-thirds vote and frankly that's — well, nobody even tried that, but the message was sent, the message being... okay, the message was censure.”
The receipts
Several House Republicans joined Democrats to censure Chuck Edwards after an ethics probe found he created a hostile work environment for staffers.
House lawmakers in both parties came together on Tuesday to censure Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-N.C.) over allegations of inappropriate behavior with female staffers in his office, marking the latest in a string of disciplinary actions against sitting lawmakers this Congress. The vote was 413-2, fueled by a damning Ethics Committee report…
Representative Chuck Edwards received a formal rebuke on the floor after a speech in which he apologized for his conduct but said it did not constitute harassment.
A bipartisan ethics probe found Edwards, R-N.C., showered the aides with lavish gifts, invited them to intimate dinners and trips and wrote them poetry. He denied any wrongdoing.
The censure vote drew bipartisan support, and followed an investigation by the House Ethics Committee into allegations of sexual harassment against two young female staff members.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.