The House scheduled the vote after Barr and Ross withheld documents that had been subpoenaed by the Oversight and Reform Committee as part of its probe into the origins of the now-scuttled citizenship question.

“I do not take this decision lightly,” Oversight chair Elijah Cummings said on the House floor before the vote. “Holding any secretary in criminal contempt of Congress is a serious and sober matter, one that I have done everything in my power to avoid. But in the case of the Attorney General and the secretary, Secretary Ross, they blatantly obstructed our ability to do congressional oversight into the real reason Secretary Ross was trying for the first time in 70 years, in 70 years to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.”

Barr and Ross sent a joint letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling it “unfortunate” that the House would go ahead with a contempt vote “regarding a citizenship question that, as you know, will not be asked on the 2020 Census questionnaire.”