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LOS ANGELES — Two months after his historic ouster as House speaker, Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy announced Wednesday that he is resigning from his congressional seat in California.

His announcement capped a stunning end for the one-time deli owner from Bakersfield, who ascended through state and national politics to become second in line to the presidency before a contingent of hard-right conservatives engineered his removal in October.

McCarthy is the only speaker in history to be voted out of the job.

“No matter the odds, or personal cost, we did the right thing," McCarthy wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, announcing his decision.

“It is in this spirit that I have decided to depart the House at the end of this year to serve America in new ways,” he wrote.

His toppling from the chamber’s top post was fueled by grievances from his party’s hard-right flank, including over his decision to work with Democrats to keep the federal government open rather than risk a shutdown.

McCarthy, 58, arrived in the House in January 2007 after a stint in the California Assembly, where he served as minority leader. In Congress, he maneuvered through his party’s hierarchy — serving as majority whip and Republican leader along the way — before being elected speaker in January 2023.

The dayslong floor fight that preceded his elevation to the House’s top job foreshadowed a stormy tenure, at a time when former President Donald Trump remained the de facto leader of the party and deep divisions within the GOP raised serious questions about the party’s ability to govern.

It took a record 15 votes over four days for McCarthy to line up the support he needed to win the post he had long coveted, finally prevailing on a 216-212 vote with Democrats backing leader Hakeem Jeffries and six Republican holdouts voting present. Not since the Civil War era has a speaker’s vote dragged through so many rounds of counting.

McCarthy emerged from the fight weakened, especially considering Republicans held only a fragile margin in the chamber after a predicted “red wave” failed to materialize in the 2022 elections.

Once installed as speaker, his well-known savvy for fundraising and political glad-handing appeared ill-suited for corralling his party’s disputatious hard-right faction. And deals he cut to become speaker — including a rules change that allowed any single lawmaker to file a motion to remove him — left him vulnerable.

When he became speaker, “he faced new challenges that required a different skill set,” said Claremont McKenna College political scientist Jack Pitney, a one-time domestic policy analyst for House Republicans. And “the deals he made to become speaker made it almost impossible for him to succeed as speaker.”

McCarthy, the son of a firefighter and a homemaker, has long depicted himself as an unflagging battler. He is fond of quoting his father, who told him, “It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.”

McCarthy hails from Bakersfield, a Republican-leaning area in Central California where oil derricks blanket hillsides and country music fans pack into Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace hall. Far from the Southern California beaches and tony San Francisco restaurants, farming and oil pumping shape the economy.

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LOS ANGELES — Norman Lear, the writer, director and producer who revolutionized prime time television with such topical hits as "All in the Family" and "Maude" and propelled political and social turmoil into the once-insulated world of sitcoms, has died. He was 101.

Lear died Tuesday night in his sleep, surrounded by family at his home in Los Angeles, said Lara Bergthold, a spokesperson for his family.

A liberal activist with an eye for mainstream entertainment, Lear fashioned bold and controversial comedies that were embraced by TV sitcom viewers who long had to watch the evening news to find out what was going on in the world. His shows helped define prime time comedy in the 1970s and after, launched the careers of such young performers as Rob Reiner and Valerie Bertinelli and made Carroll O'Connor, Bea Arthur and Redd Foxx among others into middle-aged superstars.

His signature production was "All in the Family," which was immersed in the headlines of the day, while also drawing upon Lear's childhood memories of his tempestuous father. Racism, feminism, and the Vietnam War were flashpoints in the sitcom featuring blue collar conservative Archie Bunker, played by O'Connor, and liberal son-in-law Mike Stivic (Reiner). Jean Stapleton co-starred as Archie's befuddled, but good-hearted wife, Edith, and Sally Struthers played the Bunkers' daughter, Gloria, who often clashed with Archie on behalf of her husband.

At the start of the 1970s, top-rated shows still included such old-fashioned programs as "Here's Lucy," "Ironside" and "Gunsmoke," although the industry was beginning to change. CBS, Lear's primary network, would soon enact its "rural purge" and cancel such standbys as "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "Green Acres." The groundbreaking sitcom "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," about a single career woman in Minneapolis, debuted on CBS in Sept. 1970, just months before "All in the Family" started.

But ABC passed on "All in the Family" twice and CBS was initially reluctant to take on the daring series, Lear would say. When the network finally aired "All in the Family," it began with a disclaimer: "The program you are about to see is 'All in the Family.' It seeks to throw a humorous spotlight on our frailties, prejudices, and concerns. By making them a source of laughter we hope to show, in a mature fashion, just how absurd they are."

By the end of 1971, "All In the Family" was No. 1 in the ratings and Archie Bunker was a pop culture fixture, with President Richard Nixon among his fans. Some of his putdowns became catchphrases, whether calling his son-in-law "Meathead," or his wife "Dingbat." He would also snap at anyone who dared occupy his faded orange-yellow wing chair, the centerpiece of the Bunker home in the New York City borough of Queens and eventually an artifact in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

Even the show's opening segment was innovative: Instead of an off-screen theme song, Archie and Edith are seated at the piano in their living room, belting out a nostalgic number, "Those Were the Days," with Edith screeching off-key and Archie crooning such lines "Didn't need no welfare state" and "Girls were girls and men were men."

"All in the Family," based on the British sitcom, "Til Death Us Do Part," was the No. 1-rated series for an unprecedented five years in a row and earned four Emmy Awards as best comedy series, finally eclipsed by five-time winner "Frasier" in 1998.

Hits continued for Lear and then-partner Bud Yorkin, including "Maude" and "The Jeffersons," both spinoffs from "All in the Family" and both the same winning combination of one-liners and social conflict. In a 1972 two-part episode of "Maude," the title character (played by Arthur) became the first on television to have an abortion, drawing a surge of protests along with the show's high ratings. Nixon himself objected to an "All in the Family" episode about a close friend of Archie's who turns out to be gay, privately fuming to White House aides that the show "glorified" same-sex relationships.

"Controversy suggests people are thinking about something. But there'd better be laughing first and foremost or it's a dog," Lear said in a 1994 interview with The Associated Press.

Lear and Yorkin also created "Good Times," about a working class Black family in Chicago; "Sanford & Son," a showcase for Foxx as junkyard dealer Fred Sanford; and "One Day at a Time," starring Bonnie Franklin as a single mother and Bertinelli and Mackenzie Phillips as her daughters. In the 1974-75 season, Lear and Yorkin produced five of the top 10 shows. Around the same time, "All in the Family" led off one of TV's greatest evening lineups, a Saturday slate from CBS that also featured the non-Lear hits "M*A*S*H," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "The Bob Newhart Show" and "The Carol Burnett Show."

The late Paddy Chayefsky, a leading writer of television's early "golden age," once said that Lear "took television away from dopey wives and dumb fathers, from the pimps, hookers, hustlers, private eyes, junkies, cowboys and rustlers that constituted television chaos, and in their place he put the American people."

Lear's series reflected his ardent political beliefs, which his business success allowed him to express in grand fashion. In 2000, he and a partner bought a copy of the Declaration of Independence for $8.14 million and sent it on a cross-country tour.

He founded the nonprofit, liberal advocacy group People for the American Way in 1980 in response to the growing strength of conservative religious groups. In a 1992 interview with Commonweal magazine, Lear said he acted because he felt people such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were "abusing religion."

"And I started to say, This is not my America. You don't mix politics and religion this way," Lear said. He also was an active donor to Democratic candidates.

With this wry smile and impish boat hat, Lear remained a youthful presence for much of life and continued creating television well into his 90s, rebooting "One Day at a Time" for Netflix in 2017 and exploring income inequality for the documentary series "America Divided" in 2016. He was also featured in two documentaries: 2016's "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You," and HBO's 2017 look at active nonagenarians such as Lear and Rob Reiner's father, Carl Reiner, "If You're Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast."

In 1984, he was lauded as the "innovative writer who brought realism to television" when he became one of the first seven people inducted into the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame. He later received a National Medal of Arts and was honored at the Kennedy Center. In 2020, he won an Emmy as executive producer of "Live In Front of a Studio Audience: 'All In the Family' and 'Good Times'.'"

Lear managed to beat the tough TV odds to an astounding degree. At least one of his shows placed in prime-time's top 10 for 11 consecutive years (1971-82). But Lear had flops as well.

Shows including "Hot L Baltimore," "Palmerstown" and "a.k.a. Pablo," a rare Hispanic series, drew critical favor but couldn't find an audience; others, such as "All That Glitters" and "The Nancy Walker Show," earned neither. He also faced resistance from cast members, including "Good Times" stars John Amos and Esther Rolle, who often objected to the scripts as racially insensitive, and endured a mid-season walkout by Foxx, who missed eight episodes in 1973-74 because of a contract dispute.

In the 1990s, the comedy "704 Hauser," which returned to the Bunker house with a new family, and the political satire "The Powers that Be" were both short-lived.

Lear's business moves, meanwhile, were almost consistently fruitful.

Lear started T.A.T. Communications in 1974 to be "sole creative captain of his ship," his former business partner Jerry Perenchio told the Los Angeles Times in 1990. The company became a major TV producer with shows including "One Day at a Time" and the soap-opera spoof "Mary Hartman Mary Hartman," which Lear distributed himself after it was rejected by the networks.

In 1982, Lear and Perenchio bought Avco-Embassy Pictures and formed Embassy Communications as T.A.T.'s successor, becoming successfully involved in movies, home video, pay TV and cable ownership. In 1985, Lear and Perenchio sold Embassy to Coca-Cola for $485 million. They had sold their cable holdings the year before, reportedly for a hefty profit.

By 1986, Lear was on Forbes magazine's list of the 400 richest people in America, with an estimated net worth of $225 million. He didn't make the cut the next year after a $112 million divorce settlement for his second wife, Frances. They had been married 29 years and had two daughters.

He married his third wife, psychologist Lyn Davis, in 1987 and the couple had three children. (Frances Lear, who went on to found the now-defunct Lear's magazine with her settlement, died in 1996 at age 73.)

Lear was born in New Haven, Conn. on July 27, 1922, to Herman Lear, a securities broker who for a time went to prison for selling fake bonds, and Jeanette, a homemaker who helped inspire Edith Bunker. Norman Lear would remember family life as a kind of sitcom, full of quirks and grudges, "a group of people living at the ends of their nerves and the tops of their lungs," he explained during a 2004 appearance at the John F. Kennedy Presidential LIbrary in Boston.

His political activism had deep roots. In a 1984 interview with The New York Times, Lear recalled how, at age 10, he went to live with his Russian immigrant grandfather for two years. His job was to mail Shia Seicol's letters, which began "My dearest darling Mr. President," to Franklin D. Roosevelt. Sometimes a reply came.

"That my grandfather mattered made me feel every citizen mattered," he said. By age 15, Lear was sending his own messages to Congress via Western Union.

He dropped out of Emerson College 1942 to enlist in the Air Force and was awarded a Decorated Air Medal. He worked in public relations in New York after the war, then moved to California.

Lear began his writing career in the early 1950s on shows including "The Colgate Comedy Hour" and working for such comedians as Martha Raye and George Gobel. In 1959, Lear and Yorkin founded Tandem Productions, which produced films including "Come Blow Your Horn," "Start the Revolution Without Me" and "Divorce American Style." Lear also directed the satire "Cold Turkey," a 1971 release starring Dick Van Dyke about a small town that takes on a tobacco company's offer of $25 million to quit smoking for 30 days.

In his later years, Lear joined with Warren Buffett and James E. Burke to establish The Business Enterprise Trust, honoring businesses that take a long-term view of their effect on the country.

He also founded the Norman Lear Center, based at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication, which explores the relationship between entertainment, commerce and society. In 2014, he published the memoir "Even This I Get to Experience."

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SALISBURY, Md. — Three times a week, on average, a police car pulls up to a school in Wicomico County on Maryland's Eastern Shore. A student is brought out, handcuffed and placed inside for transport to a hospital emergency room for a psychiatric evaluation.

Over the past eight years, the process has been used at least 750 times on students. Some are as young as 5 years old.

The state law that allows for these removals, known as petitions for emergency evaluation, is meant to be limited to people with severe mental illness, who are endangering their own lives or safety or someone else's. It's the first step toward getting someone involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital.

But advocates say schools across the country are sending children to the emergency room for psychiatric evaluations in response to behaviors prompted by bullying or frustration over assignments. The ER trips, they say, often follow months, and sometimes years, of their needs not being met.

Black students are more frequently subjected to these removals than their peers, according to available data. Advocates point to students with disabilities also being removed at higher rates.

"Schools focus on keeping kids out rather than on keeping kids in," said Dan Stewart, managing attorney at the National Disability Rights Network. "I think that's the fundamental crux of things."

Schools in Wicomico County agreed not to misuse emergency petitions as part of a 2017 settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice. But while the number of suspensions and expulsions declined, mandated trips to the emergency room ticked up.

Last year, children were handcuffed and sent to the emergency room at least 117 times from Wicomico schools, about once per every 100 students, according to data obtained from public records requests to the Wicomico County Sheriff's Office.

At least 40% were 12 or younger. More than half were Black children, even though a little more than a third of Wicomico public school children are Black.

'TRYING TO GET HIM OUT OF SCHOOL'

In interviews, dozens of students, parents, educators, lawyers and advocates for students with disabilities in Wicomico County said a lack of resources and trained staff, combined with a punitive culture in some schools, are behind the misuse of emergency petitions.

One Wicomico mom, who asked for anonymity because she feared retaliation from the school, recalled the terror she felt when her son's school called and said they were going to have him assessed for a forced psychiatric hospitalization. When she arrived at the school, she said, her son was already in handcuffs. He was put in the back of a police car and taken to the hospital.

"He said his wrists hurt from the handcuffs," the mother said. "He was just really quiet, just sitting there, and he didn't understand why he was in the hospital."

The practice isn't just happening in Wicomico.

Recent data shows New York City schools still call police to take children in emotional distress to the emergency room despite a 2014 legal settlement in which they agreed to stop the practice.

A Kentucky school district was found to have used a psychiatric assessment on kids more than 1,000 times in a year. In Florida, thousands of school-aged children have been subjected to the Baker Act, the state's involuntary commitment statute.

In a settlement with the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights, the Stockton Unified School District in California agreed to protocols that require other interventions before referring students with disabilities for psychiatric evaluation.

In Maryland, Wicomico uses emergency petitions more often per capita than almost every other Maryland district where data is available.

Baltimore City, for example, last year had 271 emergency petitions from schools, compared with Wicomico's at least 117, according to data obtained from law enforcement agencies through public records requests. But Baltimore's student population is five times as large.

Wicomico parents describe struggling to get support for their children when they fell behind on basics like reading and math in early grades. These gaps in learning can lead to frustration and behaviors challenging for teachers to manage.

The Wicomico mother whose son was handcuffed said she fought for years with administrators to obtain accommodations for her child, who is autistic, an experience echoed by other parents. Her son, who also has ADHD, was several years behind in reading by the time he got to middle school. The mother said he was sent to the hospital after an outburst rooted in frustration, not mental illness.

She recalled school officials telling her, "'He doesn't have special needs, he just has anger issues.' They were trying to get him out of the school."

Her son had grown increasingly discouraged and agitated over an assignment he was unable to complete, she said. The situation escalated, she said, when the teacher argued with him. He knocked a laptop on his desk to the floor, and the school called for an emergency petition. After being taken to the hospital in handcuffs, he was examined and released.

"After that, he went from angry to terrified," she said. "Every time he saw the police, he would start panicking."

A spokeswoman from the Wicomico County Public Schools said emergency petitions "are used in the most extreme, emergency situations where the life and safety of the student or others are at risk."

"(Emergency petitions) are not used for disciplinary purposes and frequently do not result from a student's behaviors," Tracy Sahler said in an email. "In fact, a majority of EPs are related to when a student exhibits suicidal ideation or plans self-harm."

School officials did not respond to questions about why the rate of emergency petitions was so much higher in Wicomico than in other counties in Maryland. The Sheriff's Department declined to share records that would show the reasons for the removals.

EDUCATORS STRETCHED THIN

By law, certain classroom removals must be recorded. Suspensions, expulsions and arrests are the most commonly documented indicators of racial disparities in discipline. Schools are required by law to publicly report the data, which often triggers oversight and investigations.

But with the exceptions of Florida and New York City, most places do not routinely collect information on removals from school for psychiatric assessments.

Without that data, there is no way to hold schools accountable, said Daniel Losen, senior director for the education team at the National Center for Youth Law.

"The civil rights of children is at stake, because it's more likely it's going to be Black kids and kids with disabilities who are subjected to all kinds of biases that deny them an educational opportunity," he said.

Families who have experienced emergency petitions say educators who can communicate with their child are stretched thin, and measures that could de-escalate a situation are not always taken. The day her son was sent to the hospital, the mother recalled, the administrator who had consistently advocated for him was out of the building.

In another instance, a middle schooler said the required accommodations for his learning and behavioral disabilities included taking a walk with a trusted educator when he became agitated. The day he was involuntarily sent to the hospital, that staff member was unavailable. He began yelling and spitting when an administrator blocked him from leaving on his own. He said that by the time police arrived, he was calm and sitting in the principal's office. Still, he was handcuffed and taken to the hospital, where he was examined and released a few hours later.

Because emergency petitions happen outside the standard discipline process, missed school days are not recorded as suspensions. For students with disabilities, that has special consequences – they are not supposed to be removed from class for more than 10 days without an evaluation of whether they are receiving the support they need.

"If you use the discipline process, and you're a student with a disability, your rights kick in," said Selene Almazan, legal director for the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates.

In many places around the country, the resources needed to support students with disabilities are scarce.

On Maryland's Eastern Shore, lawyers and advocates for families said the spectrum of alternatives for students is limited by both money and geography. Those can include private, out-of-district placements and specialized classrooms for specific needs like dyslexia, for example.

In cases where children need targeted services unavailable in the local district, the district must allow them to be educated outside the school system — and pay for it.

"You're stuck between a rock and a hard place because you're like, 'This kid needs more services,' but you can't get the school to agree," said Angela Ford, clinical director at Maple Shade Youth and Family Services, which serves children with emotional and behavioral disabilities in Wicomico.

ER TRIPS INCREASED AFTER SETTLEMENT

The 2017 settlement with the Justice Department required the Wicomico district to reduce the significant racial and disability-related disparities in suspensions, placements in alternative schools and other discipline measures.

The district agreed not to use emergency petitions "where less intrusive interventions … can be implemented to address the behavioral concern" and not to use them "to discipline or punish or to address lack of compliance with directions."

But since the settlement, many parents, teachers and community leaders said the district has seemed more concerned with keeping suspension numbers down than providing support for teachers to help prevent disruptive behavior.

"If we know how to handle and deal with behaviors, then we will have less EPs," said Anthony Mann, who was an instructional aide at Wicomico County High School last year and is a Wicomico public school parent.

Tatiyana Jackson, who has a son with a disability at Wicomico Middle School, agrees teachers need more training. "I don't think they have a lot of patience or tolerance for children with differences. It's like they give up on them."

Wicomico school officials said ongoing professional development for staff includes the appropriate use of emergency petitions.

"Each school has a well-trained team that includes a social worker and school counselor, with the support of school psychologists," said Sahler. "All supports that may be beneficial to assist the student are utilized. However, the safety of the student is paramount and the determining factor is ensuring that there is no unnecessary delay in obtaining aid for the student."

But Denise Gregorius, who taught in Wicomico schools for over a decade and left in 2019, questioned the feasibility of the discipline and behavior strategies taught during professional development.

What the teachers really want, she said, is more support.

After the settlement, which had a two-and-a-half year monitoring period, the number of suspensions and expulsions in Wicomico declined markedly – for Black and white students. But the number of emergency petitions, which don't appear in state statistics, has ticked up.

Other measures of exclusionary discipline remained high, including school arrests. In 2021-22, Wicomico had 210 school-based arrests – the second highest number in the state, while they were 15th in student enrollment. More than three-quarters of the children arrested were Black and 80% were students with disabilities.

"Monitoring the numbers doesn't bring you the solution," said Losen, from the National Center for Youth Law. In many districts, "the problem is more than what they're doing with discipline."

The Department of Justice declined to comment.

BLACK PARENTS POINT TO CULTURE PROBLEM

Some Wicomico parents and educators point to an insular culture in the school district where problems are hidden rather than resolved.

They are frustrated that there is no relationship with the county's mobile crisis unit, which is often relied on in other counties to help de-escalate issues instead of calling the police.

Jermichael Mitchell, a community organizer who is an alum and parent in Wicomico County Schools, said educators often do not know how to empathize and respond to the trauma and unmet needs that may lead to children's behavior.

"A Black kid that's truly going through something, that truly needs support, is always looked at as a threat," he said. "You don't know how those kids have been taught to cry out for help. You don't know the trauma that they've been through."

Studies have found Black and Latino children who have a teacher of the same race have fewer suspensions and higher test scores, but that diversity is lacking in Wicomico County. Wicomico schools have the largest gap between the number of students of color and teachers of color in the state.

Wicomico school officials said they do not discriminate against any of their students.

A Wicomico teenager described a years-long process of becoming alienated from school, with an emergency petition as the ultimate break. He said he was bullied in middle school over a series of months until one day he snapped and hit the student who had been taunting him.

The school called the police. He told the officers not to touch him, and that he needed to calm down. Instead, the officers grabbed him and shoved him into the ground, he said. He was handcuffed and transported to the emergency room. But when he returned, he said the only thing that was different was how he felt about the adults in the building.

"I got used to not trusting people, not talking to people at school," he said. "Nothing else really changed."

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This story about emergency petitions was produced by The Associated Press and The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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WASHINGTON — House members voted again Thursday to punish one of their own, targeting Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman for triggering a fire alarm in one of the U.S. Capitol office buildings when the chamber was in session.

The Republican censure resolution passed with some Democratic votes, but most Democrats stood by Bowman in opposition of an effort they said lacked credibility and integrity. The prominent progressive now becomes the third Democratic House member to be admonished this year through the censure process, which is a punishment one step below expulsion from the House.

"It's painfully obvious to myself, my colleagues and the American people that the Republican Party is deeply unserious and unable to legislate," Bowman said Wednesday as he defended himself during floor debate. "Their censure resolution against me today continues to demonstrate their inability to govern and serve the American people."

The 214-191 vote to censure Bowman caps nearly a year of chaos and retribution in the House of Representatives. Since January, the chamber has seen the removal of a member from a committee assignment, the first ouster of a speaker in history and, just last week, the expulsion of a lawmaker for only the third time since the Civil War.

Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., who introduced the censure resolution, defended her resolution, claiming Bowman pulled the alarm in September to "cause chaos and the stop the House from doing its business" as lawmakers scrambled to pass a bill to fund the government before a shutdown deadline.

"It is reprehensible that a Member of Congress would go to such lengths to prevent House Republicans from bringing forth a vote to keep the government operating and Americans receiving their paychecks," McClain said in a statement.

Bowman pleaded guilty in October to a misdemeanor count for the incident, which took place in the Cannon House Office Building. He agreed to pay a $1,000 fine and serve three months of probation, after which the false fire alarm charge is expected to be dismissed from his record under an agreement with prosecutors.

The fire alarm prompted a building-wide evacuation when the House was in session and staffers were working in the building. The building was reopened an hour later after Capitol Police determined there was no threat.

Bowman apologized and said that at the time he was trying to get through a door that was usually open but was closed that day because it was the weekend.

Many progressive Democrats, who spoke in his defense, called the Republican effort to censure him "unserious," and questioned why the party decided to target one of the few Black men in the chamber and among the first to ever represent his district.

"This censure is just the latest in this chamber's racist history of telling Black men that they don't belong in Congress," said Rep. Ayanna Pressley. D-Mass.

The vote is the latest example of how the chamber has begun to deploy punishments like censure, long viewed as a punishment of last resort, routinely and often in strikingly partisan ways.

"Under Republican control, this chamber has become a place where trivial issues get debated passionately and important ones not at all," Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said during floor debate. "Republicans have focused more on censuring people in this Congress than passing bills that help people we represent or improving this country in any way."

While the censure of a lawmaker carries no practical effect, it amounts to severe reproach from colleagues, as lawmakers who are censured are usually asked to stand in the well of the House as the censure resolution against them is read aloud.

Bowman is now the 27th person to be censured by the chamber — and the third just this year. Last month, Republicans voted to censure Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan in an extraordinary rebuke of her rhetoric about the Israel-Hamas war.

In June, Democrat Adam Schiff of California was censured for comments he made several years ago about investigations into then-President Donald Trump's ties to Russia.

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The 10 Senate seats most likely to flip in 2024

1. West Virginia

2. Montana

3. Ohio

4. Pennsylvania

5. Arizona

6. Nevada

7. Wisconsin

8. Michigan

9. Texas

10. Florida

Analysis: Pennsylvania moves up list of contested Senate seats in 2024

HAILEY, Idaho — Paul Rytting had been director of the Risk Management Division at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for around 15 years when a 31-year-old church member told him that her father, a former bishop, had sexually abused her when she was a child.

Rytting flew from church headquarters in Salt Lake City to Hailey, Idaho, to meet with Chelsea Goodrich and her mother, Lorraine, to discuss what he said was a "tragic and horrendous" story.

By that time, Chelsea's father, John Goodrich, had made a religious confession to a bishop with the church, widely known as the Mormon church, with details of his relationship with his daughter. Following church policy, Bishop Michael Miller had called a church Helpline, established to take calls from bishops about sexual abuse, and John Goodrich was quickly excommunicated.

After the excommunication, Chelsea and Lorraine reported Chelsea's claims of abuse to Mountain Home, Idaho, police. They backed up their accusations with recordings of conversations with John Goodrich in which he admitted to climbing into bed with his daughter when he was sexually aroused, though he insisted there was no direct sexual contact. Nevertheless, Mountain Home police arrested him and charged him with a variety of sex crimes.

At their meeting with Rytting, Chelsea and her mother had one overarching question: Would the church allow Miller to testify at John Goodrich's criminal trial?

Over the next four months, during multiple conversations, Rytting told Chelsea, Lorraine and Eric Alberdi, a fellow church member acting as Chelsea's advocate, that a state law known as the clergy-penitent privilege prevented Miller from testifying without the consent of the alleged perpetrator, John Goodrich. Without Miller's testimony, prosecutors dropped their case.

Next, Rytting offered Chelsea and her mother $300,000 on the condition that they agree to not use Chelsea's story as the basis for a lawsuit against the church — and to never acknowledge the existence of this nondisclosure agreement.

Today, Goodrich, who did not respond to questions from the AP, remains a free man practicing dentistry, with access to children.

The Mormon church, in comments to the AP, said, "the abuse of a child or any other individual is inexcusable." The church also noted that Miller would not be able to testify without the permission of Goodrich, and that the confidentiality agreement with Chelsea and Lorraine did not preclude Chelsea from telling her story.

All the conversations with Rytting, Chelsea, Lorraine, and Alberdi were recorded, and provided by Alberdi to The Associated Press.

Takeaways from the AP's investigation:

THE CLERGY-PENITENT PRIVILEGE

An earlier investigation by the AP revealed that more than half the states maintain the clergy-penitent privilege, which provides a loophole for clergy who are otherwise required to report child sex abuse to police or local welfare officials. As a result, some child predators who reveal their crimes to clergy in a confessional setting and do not turn themselves in to police are allowed to remain free, able to continue abusing children while presenting a danger to others.

Although child welfare advocates have attempted to change or eliminate the privilege, the AP found that lobbying by religious institutions including the Catholic Church, the Mormon church, and the Jehovah's Witnesses have persuaded state legislators throughout the country to maintain the loophole. Indeed, the AP catalogued more than 100 attempts to amend or eliminate the privilege, all of which failed.

Nation & World

Seven years of sex abuse: How Mormon officials let it happen

• By MICHAEL REZENDES, Associated Press

NONDISCLOSURE AGREEMENTS

Nondisclosure agreements, also known as confidentiality agreements, have been used frequently by the Mormon church and other organizations, including the Catholic Church, as well as individuals, to keep sex abuse allegations secret. Twenty-one years ago, the Catholic Church approved a Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People in which it pledged to eliminate the use of confidentiality agreements to settle child sex abuse claims, except in cases where the victims requested anonymity – a recognition of the role NDAs play in the cover-up of child sexual abuse. The Mormon church does not have a similar policy.

Nation & World

Churches defend clergy loophole in child sex abuse reporting

• By JASON DEAREN and MICHAEL REZENDES Associated Press

THE HELPLINE

The earlier AP investigation found that the Helpline plays a central role in the cover-up of child sex abuse in the Mormon church, even as the church claims its purpose is to provide bishops with guidance about sexual abuse reporting requirements. Initiated in 1995, when financial claims for sexual abuse against religious institutions were on the rise, the Helpline fields calls from bishops about child sexual abuse and directs the most serious cases to attorneys with the firm of Kirton McConkie, which represents the church.

According to the church, all information about child sexual abuse passed from church members to their bishops is confidential under the clergy-penitent privilege, and all information passed from the Helpline to church attorneys is confidential under the attorney-client privilege. Meanwhile, Rytting and other church officials have said in sworn testimony that the Helpline either keeps no records or destroys all records at the end of each day.

Or does it? During his conversations with Chelsea and Lorraine, Rytting said he could find out whether John Goodrich had previously "repented" for his relationship with Chelsea by checking Helpline records, seeming to contradict his sworn testimony in another child sex abuse case against the church.

In its comments to the AP, the church declined to answer questions about the apparent contradiction.

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Rezendes reported from New York.

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