A third very important point:

It very well could not be a lie. People in a rush confronted with a locked door; a door they believe to not supposed to be locked… are freaking dumb. He could easily have been flustered for running late and in a moment of panic hit the fire alarm. (There’s a reason many places remove fire pulls. They almost never get pulled in a real emergency. Without some kind of prior alarm going off. The vast majority it’s a false alarm. Either a prank, a prick or a dumbass.)

It was, IMO, incredibly dumb to use the same form factor for emergency egress pull stations as emergency fire alarm stations.

For those who don’t know, doors whose lock fail-to-secured need to have a way to let people out. For electronic doors- anything with a reader or whatever- there’ll be a pull station of the same basic design.

The only difference is the text that’s something lane “emergency door release” and it being blue or green with white text instead of red with white text.

Personally they should have gone with a big red button type; it’s different, but it’s still obvious and easy to use. Well maybe not red button, you understand,

Then why did he lie and say it was unintentional and he didn't know it would cause an alarm? If he'd just admitted it and given his reasons I could've respected that.

"But I want to be very clear, this was not me, in any way, trying to delay any vote. It was the exact opposite -- I was trying urgently to get to a vote, which I ultimately did and joined my colleagues in a bipartisan effort to keep our government open," he added."

Legislators are immune from prosecution of any crime less than a felony while they're in session, so pulling the fire alarm doesn't matter anyway. No one can touch this dude for this, the worst they can do is make angry noises on TV.

Technically speaking, if this was indeed an attempt to delay or stop a vote on the bill, it could be a felony. Obstruction of an official proceeding -- the same charge many Jan 6 defendants got.

Why? Cause he wanted to read the bill before voting on it. Republicans forced it through and overrode the minimum amount of time to read it. Sure, 72 hours would be problematic, but they didn't even want to give them a handful of hours.

In the end, he voted yes. Some guy also had to talk for 52 minutes straight to try and give them time to read the bill to ensure nothing bad was snuck in.

He did it because the Republicans were trying to rush a vote without giving anyone enough time to actually read what was being voted on.

Yeah, whether or not he should be expelled from Congress isn't for me to say, but he should face serious repercussions for this. Pulling a fire alarm without a genuine emergency is often illegal, at the very least. Doing it to potentially disrupt the function of Congress is even more serious.

I have a handful of guesses why a democrat would do it, but, at the end of the day, they just help me understand and empathize with him as a human, not excuse his behavior.

you can always just vote no on bills

It's really not that simple. That would be a Republican wet dream to be able to market the Dems that shut down the government with a no vote on spending bill.

A government shutdown would disrupt a lot more than the fire alarm. That's the consequence of Dems voting no on a bill they didn't read.

Santos was (is?) on their team, they think... once they figure out who he is.

This is what-about-ism. Sure, Santos should be investigated, but this guy as well, EVEN IF SANTOS IS NOT.

They'll probably want to lock Biden up over it

It's idiotic to read a bill before signing it?

If pulling the alarm is illegal then why shouldn't he be arrested?

If he did do it on purpose to disrupt the vote then why shouldn't he be expelled or punished?

It's an incredibly stupid thing to do and definitely sets the Dems back a bit.

who cares none of us have to go along with it. Dude did nothing wrong, this is what happens when you don't let reps read the bill

I think he should lose committee spots or something, actual consequences not something like a censure vote.

We do not want a pattern of fake fire alarms established in that building.