LEESBURG, Va. – House Democrats on Thursday rejected Republican criticism that they’ve been slacking in their standards of decorum.

“We will not take a lecture on decorum from a party that incited an insurrection,” Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.) said at a press conference during an annual retreat outside of Washington for House Democrats.

Several Democratic lawmakers protested during President Donald Trump’s speech at the Capitol last week and have used profanity on multiple other occasions recently, prompting House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to chide them earlier this week.

“They’re in a panic mode right now, and so you see them lashing out. You see increasing profanity,” Johnson told reporters on Tuesday. “Many of you have written about this new track they’ve taken, the new strategy where they just scream and shout and curse at everyone.”

Ten Democrats joined all Republicans last week in voting to censure Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) for disrupting Trump’s speech. Green stood and pointed his cane at the president, saying he had “no mandate” to cut Medicaid, until Johnson ordered him escorted out of the chamber.

It was the first time a lawmaker got thrown out of a presidential address and indeed the worst breach of decorum in the Capitol since a pro-Trump mob stormed the building on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to stop lawmakers from certifying Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), the No. 2 Democrat in the House, was asked Thursday if she would speak to her Republican counterparts about decorum in the House in response to the Green censure as well as Republicans describing McBride, a transgender woman, as a man.

“Their focus on our decorum or our behavior while they are burning down things for people at home just makes me livid,” Clark said. “If they want to focus on acting like children and misgendering Sarah, like what are we doing? Because they are systematically taking apart our country.”

The Trump administration has empowered billionaire Elon Musk to tear through federal agencies in search of “efficiency,” an effort that has precipitated mass layoffs, contract cancellations and chaos across the federal government. The administration has sought to eliminate the U.S. Agency for International Development as well as the Department of Education, even though both were created by laws passed by Congress.

Musk’s downsizing efforts have been Democrats’ chief complaint in a government funding battle that could lead to a government shutdown Friday if Senate Democrats refuse to vote for a stopgap funding bill.

McBride said she believed she lived “rent free” inside Republicans’ heads and said they are “obsessed” with culture wars.

“I wish that they would spend even a fraction of the time that they spend thinking about me thinking about how to lower the costs for American families. I wish they would spend a fraction of the time that they spend thinking about me figuring out how to make government actually work better rather than making it work worse in order to prove that government can’t work.”