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Trump Impeachment Trial: House Delivers Article To Senate : NPR - 0 views

  • At about 7 p.m. ET Monday, the House delivered to the Senate an article of impeachment against former President Donald Trump, a move that will trigger preparations for a historic trial.
  • The trial itself will begin on Feb. 9, giving the nine House impeachment managers and Trump's defense team two weeks to file briefs and finalize their legal preparations.
  • "There are three essential items on our plate: the trial of President Trump now that the House has impeached him; bold, strong COVID relief; and approving the president's Cabinet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters on Sunday.
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  • "Ten was a historically high number. That was a bipartisan impeachment," she said on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday. "Take a look at the words of [Wyoming Rep.] Liz Cheney, who said [Trump] assembled the mob, he incited the mob, and he lit the flame.
  • "But most of all, at the end of the day, what we need is for people to put country over person, in other words, over Donald Trump and also country over party, Republican or Democrat."
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With Democrats in control, Supreme Court reform proposals reclaim center stage - SCOTUS... - 0 views

  • Joe Biden promised, if elected, to create a bipartisan commission to study court reform proposals
  • But who would sit on the commission? And would it have any teeth?
  • With Democrats now in control, some liberals are clamoring for quick action on Supreme Court reform, and some Republicans are proposing a constitutional amendment that would lock in the number of justices at nine.
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  • “Democrats and progressives are … uncomfortable with the acquisition and use of power.” In contrast, Holder pointed to then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s refusal to consider Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court in a presidential election year, and his subsequent push to confirm Barrett in the run-up to the next presidential election.
  • Those actions have created “a crisis of legitimacy” on the Supreme Court, Holder said. “Republican conduct deserves a response – a measured response.”
  • Kang championed court packing as both the remedy to and the natural conclusion of Senate Republicans’ justification for the Garland/Barrett saga: that “nothing in the Constitution prohibited it.”
  • Epps focused on term limits, in particular 18-year terms with regular vacancies every two years, as a solution to the trend he finds most troubling: the growing push by both parties to appoint “ideologues” to the court.
  • Twenty states, she said, have introduced legislation to expand their state courts of last resort – two of which were successful, Georgia and Arizona, both Republican controlled.
  • “At present, the biggest obstacle” to court reform legislation “is the persistence of the Senate filibuster,” Reynolds said, which can uphold Senate business until the other side marshals 60 votes to end it.
  • He urged the president, who has already pledged to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court, to prioritize both demographic and professional diversity on the commission. “Quite confident, unfortunately” that future Supreme Court decisions will incite progressive anger, Kang said the true job of Biden’s commission will be to “adequately set the table” for Congress to react.
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Roberts will not preside over impeachment trial - SCOTUSblog - 0 views

  • When the Senate’s impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump begins next month, one familiar face from Trump’s first impeachment won’t be there: Chief Justice John Roberts.
  • the Constitution requires the chief justice to preside over an impeachment trial for the president. But Trump, who was impeached on Jan. 13 for his role in inciting the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol that left five people dead, including a Capitol police officer, is no longer the president.
  • president pro tempore “has historically presided over Senate impeachment trials of non-presidents.” Leahy pledged to adhere to his “constitutional and sworn obligations to administer the trial with fairness.”
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DHS Warns Of 'Heightened Threat Environment' From Domestic Violent Extremists : Biden T... - 1 views

  • The Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin on Wednesday warning of a continued threat from domestic violent extremists.
  • "a heightened threat environment across the United States, which DHS believes will persist in the weeks following the successful Presidential Inauguration."
  • "Information suggests that some ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence," the bulletin said.
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  • Homeland Security and the FBI issued no such bulletin in advance of the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, D.C., despite chatter online that suggested violence could occur that day. The bulletin posted on Wednesday said some extremists may be "emboldened" by the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
  • It also said that some violent extremists are driven by "long-standing racial and ethnic tension," including opposition to immigration, citing the 2019 shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, where a gunman killed 23 people.
  • "The domestic terrorism attack on our Capitol earlier this month shined a light on a threat that has been right in front of our faces for years. I am glad to see that DHS fully recognizes the threat posed by violent, right-wing extremists, and is taking efforts to communicate that threat to the American people," he said in a statement posted on Twitter.
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A wild day that defined the Republican Party - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • Rep. Liz Cheney survived to fight another battle but on a raucous and defining day, the appeasement of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene by House Republicans sent their party lurching further down the road to extremism.
  • The moral crisis in the GOP after Donald Trump's exit from Washington was epitomized by a showdown that saw Cheney, a lifelong ideological conservative, forced to fight off a challenge to her leadership post after she voted to impeach a President who sparked a violent coup attempt.
  • Greene, a belligerent conspiracy theorist who thinks the GOP's problem is that it lost the presidential election too gracefully
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  • The struggle for the future direction of the party exploded in a manic meeting of the House Republican Conference that ended when Cheney prevailed comfortably in a secret ballot
  • Greene had earlier learned that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy would not strip her committee assignments
  • Cheney, who, until the Trump insurrection, was a reliable vote for the President save on some foreign policy issues, made a powerful statement by winning in a 145 to 61 vote to keep her leadership post
  • The fact that Cheney has faced more criticism from her colleagues than Greene in recent days reflects how the GOP's traditional values are under siege and the vast power that extremists and conspiracy theories welcomed into the party by Trump are accumulating.
  • For weeks, and especially following the insurrection incited by Trump on January 6, the Republican Party has been locked in a prolonged duel between those swearing loyalty to their leader in exile
  • Scared of repudiating Trump's base, the House GOP is racing at top speed towards its extremist fringe to validate millions of Americans living in an alternative reality even if Cheney's survival suggests that privately many GOP members don't believe the election was stolen.
  • Wednesday's turmoil also underscored how McCarthy has capitulated to the extreme forces within his caucus and in the country.
  • Her victory was a sign that in private at least, there are some in the House Republican Party who are willing to stand up to extremism
  • But Cheney still faces the very real prospect of a primary challenge in her fervently pro-Trump state of Wyoming
  • Greene said in the meeting that her past social media posts did not represent who she was. But her sense of being impervious to the customs of her fast-shifting party shone through a defiant interview with the Washington Examiner that published as Wednesday's meeting went on.
  • The Democratic-led House is however expected to act where McCarthy failed in a floor vote on Thursday.
  • In many ways, Wednesday's meeting accelerated the direction the party has been heading at least since many parts of its traditional base became disillusioned with the establishment following years of war and the 2008 financial crisis.
  • This will all have profound consequences for the country. There have always been wide, and proper, ideological differences between Democrats and Republicans. They are, if anything, widening.
  • . One of America's great parties, by elevating unhinged radicals such as Greene, and by threatening those like Cheney who accept the truth of Biden's win last year, is implicitly rejecting the sacred values of the American political system itself and its essential underpinning of objective truth and fact.
  • "Kevin McCarthy and all these leaders, the leadership, and everyone is proving that they are all talk and not about action, and they're just all about doing business as usual in Washington," Greene said.
  • The spectacle of the leader being led around by a congresswoman who has been in Washington for four weeks either showed great political weakness or cynical calculation. He will leave it to House Democrats to rebuke Greene
  • his failure to deal with the Greene issue himself means that many of his members -- especially those from more vulnerable districts -- now face a choice between voting in the full House to punish a Trump supporter or to open themselves to accusations they are endorsing her crazed rhetoric.
  • "The voters decided that she can come and serve," McCarthy said after the meeting, adding that Greene had denounced her own social media activity.In her comments to the Examiner, in which she again alluded to lies that Trump won the election and insulted Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, Greene showed she has no incentive to reform her behavior.
  • "Now, we have Joe Biden in the White House and Nancy Pelosi at 80 million years old as speaker, and we've got a Senate that we don't control anymore, with, you know, Mr. Big Turtle in charge up there just, just losing gracefully, losing gracefully," Greene said
  • Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger might argue that all is not lost for the GOP and that the reckoning will take many months, as memories fade of the Trump presidency.
  • But many of those state Republican officials who stood firm in the face of the ex-President's attempt to overturn election results are facing the similar kind of assaults and likely primary challenges as Cheney and the other nine House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump.
  • And Republican senators, such as McConnell, who called Greene a "cancer," and others who condemned her remarks would insist that they are standing up for the institutional values of the party
  • the vast majority of GOP senators are expected to vote to acquit Trump in his Senate impeachment trial
  • heir motivation is the same as those who are appeasing Greene -- a desire to avoid antagonizing the party base and to avoid primary challenges in order to retain their hold on power.
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Liz Cheney: House Republicans vote to keep her in leadership after impeachment vote def... - 0 views

  • House Republicans voted Wednesday night that Rep. Liz Cheney should keep her post in House GOP leadership after she defended her support for impeachment
  • The secret ballot vote took place after some Republicans argued that Cheney should be removed from leadership following her support for impeaching then-President Donald Trump for inciting an insurrection at the Capitol. In the end, however, Cheney prevailed by a wide margin. The vote was 145 to keep her in her position as House Republican Conference chair, and 61 to remove her,
  • The outcome leaves the House GOP leadership structure intact and averts a major upheaval within the Republican conference,
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  • Cheney defended her vote to impeach. "I won't apologize for the vote," she told the House Republican conference, a source with knowledge of the process told CNN.
  • Cheney told CNN on Wednesday evening that she does not regret her impeachment vote. "Absolutely not," she said when asked.
  • House Republicans are at a major crossroads as tensions simmer over Cheney and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, and the conference faces pressure to chart a path forward in the aftermath of the Trump presidency.
  • She also told members that she wanted a vote to be called on her leadership status, which was interpreted by some in the room as an act of confidence in her standing with a broader cross-section of Republicans, the majority of which did not air their grievances toward her.
  • Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who had also voted in favor of impeachment, voiced criticism of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, during the meeting.
  • Cheney issued a scathing statement ahead of the House impeachment vote condemning Trump's conduct, saying that he "summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,"
  • Cheney also fielded several contentious questions and comments from Trump loyalists, a person in the room said, including Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, who bluntly said she "aided and comforted the enemy."
  • Shortly before the meeting began, McCarthy released a statement, in which he condemned Greene's comments, but did not include any new repercussions for Greene and spent more time criticizing Democrats than the Georgia congresswoman's past comments that have created the backlash.
  • "The House should do what the House chooses to do," freshman Sen. Cynthia Lummis told reporters, refusing to offer any support to fellow Wyoming Republican Cheney.
  • John Barrasso, the other Wyoming GOP senator, backs Cheney.
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Opinion: The fight over Marjorie Taylor Greene poses a threat to the entire country - CNN - 0 views

  • he civil war raging inside the GOP may look like a problem for the Republican Party, but it is much more. It is a flashing red light for the entire country, warning America that if it continues on this path, it will become a country without guardrails against extremist ideologies.
  • The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, and there's no prohibition against believing crazy ideas.
  • It's no wonder the venerable former Republican Sen. John Danforth said the GOP has become a "grotesque caricature" of what it used to be.
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  • that was before House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy declined to punish the execrable Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, other than a statement condemning her views. The QAnon follower's embrace of baseless conspiracy theories, along with violent, racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic statements are repulsive not just to many Americans, but to decent people around the world.
  • McCarthy presided over a meeting weighing the fate of Greene and of Rep. Liz Cheney, who committed the grave sin of condemning former President Donald Trump for inciting a mob to attack the Capitol in an assault on American democracy so stunning that even McCarthy briefly found his spine and criticized Trump.
  • Cheney survived a vote to remove her from leadership by a vote of 145- 61. And Greene, after apologizing to her colleagues in the closed-door party meeting Wednesday night, was not penalized, but met with a standing ovation.
  • Greene offered what largely amounted to a non-apology, expressing regret for some of her past comments. Hours later, in a dramatic Congressional session, 219 House Democrats, along with 11 Republicans, did what McCarthy should have and stripped Greene of her committee assignments.
  • By embracing Greene, Republicans are moving the Overton window, the range of views that are considered politically acceptable. Unfortunately, that has an impact on the entire country, however much the Democrats try to correct for the moral failings of Republicans.
  • After the closed-door meeting on Wednesday, McCarthy justified his inaction on Greene by saying, "This Republican Party's a very big tent, everyone's invited in."
  • But the tent is becoming increasingly comfortable for racists, anti-Semites, conspiracy theorists and reality deniers.
  • It's the party of the twice impeached Trump, a man who Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham described in 2015 as "a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot," who "doesn't represent my party."
  • Graham, as we know, did a 180 on Trump. He, too, found integrity too politically risky, and debased himself by embracing Trump.
  • It was the tolerance of Trump's rhetoric -- which was previously considered beyond the pale -- that paved the road to Greene's election and the attack on the Capitol last month.
  • Just two years ago, Republicans stripped Rep. Steve King from all committee assignments. King, who had made countless racist statements, had asked in an interview with the New York Times, "White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization -- how did that language become offensive."
  • "That is not the party of Lincoln," he declared, "and it's definitely not American."
  • The party has changed.
  • Like many elected Republicans, Greene rejected the incontrovertible fact that President Joe Biden won the election. But she goes much further. She repeatedly showed support on social media for assassinating prominent Democrats, shared an image of herself holding a gun alongside other congresswomen with a caption that mentioned going "on the offense against these socialists" and claimed the 2018 California wildfires were deliberately set by a Jewish financier using a space laser.
  • When Greene was still a candidate running for Congress, the Republican Party initially distanced itself from her.
  • Rep. Steve Scalise, the House Republicans' number two, went even further, calling her statements "disgusting," and added they "don't reflect the values of equality and decency that make our country great."
  • But then Trump threw his arms around his fervent admirer, calling her "a real WINNER," and a "future Republican star."
  • On Wednesday, McCarthy defended Greene and said, "I think it would be helpful if you could hear exactly what she told all of us -- denouncing Q-on, I don't know if I say it right," McCarthy disingenuously claimed, "I don't even know what it is.
  • Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, of all people, seems to be an outlier among Republican leadership in condemning Greene. "Loony lies and conspiracy theories are a cancer for the Republican Party and our country. Somebody who's suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.'s airplane is not living in reality."
  • The GOP welcomed into the fold an extremist, during a time when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered an urgent examination of extremism in US military ranks; during a time when Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says the threat of domestic terrorism is "persistent."
  • The new domestic terrorist threat comes from the extremist fringes that espouse the same ideas that McCarthy seemed to welcome into the GOP's "very big tent."
  • Extremists and their supporters are winning battles in the Republican civil war, and the entire country is paying a price.
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China Poses 'Existential' Threat to Human Rights: Report | Time - 0 views

  • hina poses an “existential threat” to the international human rights system, according to a new report released today by Human Rights Watch (HRW) after the organization’s executive director was denied entry to Hong Kong at the weekend. “It’s not simply a suppression at home, but it’s attacks on virtually any body, company, government, international institution that tries to uphold human rights or hold Beijing to account,” HRW’s executive director Kenneth Roth told TIME ahead of the report’s release.
  • Roth said he had been in Hong Kong to release a report on gender discrimination in the Chinese job market less than two years ago. He said he believes this year was different because the Chinese government “made the preposterous claim that Human Rights Watch is inciting the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests.”
  • China’s detention of a million members of the Uighur ethnic minority group in Xinjiang province, and an “unprecedented regime of mass surveillance” designed to suppress criticism are among the human rights violations described in the mainland, while the report also Beijing’s intensifying attempts to undermine international human rights standards and institutions on a global scale.
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  • The effective barring of Roth from entering Hong Kong is not an isolated incident, happening days after a U.S. photographer covering the pro-democracy protests was also banned from entering the financial hub.
  • “I think it’s worth stressing that what happened to me pales in comparison to what is happening to the pro-democracy protesters on the streets of Hong Kong. They’re the ones who are facing tear gas, beatings and arrest, and I just had another 16 hour flight [back to New York],” Roth says. “But what it does reflect is a real worsening of the human rights situation in Hong Kong.”
  • At a press briefing on Monday after the incident involving Roth, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said that “allowing or not allowing someone’s entry is China’s sovereign right,” adding that foreign NGOs were supporting “Hong Kong independence separatist activities.”
  • “The justification they put forward was laughable, and insulting to the people of Hong Kong,” says Roth. “They don’t need me to tell them to take to the streets — they are looking to defend their own human rights, their own political freedoms and their own rule of law.”
  • Roth says Beijing’s explanation for barring him shows how fearful the authorities are of demonstrations in the city, and is an attempt to persuade those in the mainland not to emulate the pro-democracy protests. “They simply cannot admit to people on the mainland that hundreds of thousands Chinese citizens would take to the street in opposition to the increasingly dictatorial rule that is coming from Beijing.”
  • The Chinese government has attempted to deter, track and deport journalists and foreign investigators from reporting on forced indoctrination and detention of at least a million Uighur Muslims in internment camps in China’s western province of Xinjiang, highlighted in Roth’s lead essay in the HRW report.
  • On Monday, Chinese state media reported that the semi-autonomous region of Tibet would introduce forthcoming regulations to “strengthen ethnic unity;” echoing language used in regulations introduced in Xinjiang four years ago.
  • Beyond the worrying crackdown within China’s own borders, HRW’s report highlights Beijing’s efforts to deter the international community from scrutinizing its human rights abuses, taking “full advantage of the corporate quest for profit to extend its censorship to critics abroad.”
  • And at the individual level, the export of censorship is reaching dissidents and even universities in Australia, Canada, the U.K. and the U.S.; the report notes that students from China who wanted to join campus debates felt unable to do so for fear of being monitored or reported to Chinese authorities.
  • The export of the Chinese censorship system also permeates governments and international institutions, and has “transformed into an active assault on the international human rights system,”
  • China has also consistently worked with Russia at the U.N. Security Council to block efforts to investigate human rights abuses in Syria, Myanmar and Venezuela. “China worries that even enforcement of human rights standards someplace else will have a boomerang effect that will come back to haunt it,” says Roth.
  • Aside from China, the report also looks at several other concerning situations around around the world, including civilians at risk from indiscriminate bombing in Idlib province in Syria, the desperate humanitarian crisis resulting from Saudi-led coalition’s actions in Yemen, the refugee crisis emerging from Maduro’s grip on power in Venezuela, and Myanmar’s denial of the genocide of the Rohingya at the International Court of Justice. And while Roth is encouraged by a growing international response to China’s actions in Xinjiang, particularly from Muslim majority nations, there remains much more to be done. From a U.S. perspective, the report notes that strong rhetoric from officials condemning human rights violations in China is “often undercut by Trump’s praise of Xi Jinping and other friendly autocrats,” as well as the Trump-administration’s own policies in violation of human rights, including forced separation at the U.S.-Mexican border.
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Biden Denounces Storming of Capitol as a 'Dark Moment' in Nation's History - The New Yo... - 0 views

  • President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. denounced the storming of the Capitol on Wednesday as the violent expression of President Trump’s refusal to accept his defeat, calling it “an assault on the citadel of liberty” and saying the president had stoked the mob with his brazen and false claims that the 2020 election had been stolen.
  • “a dark moment” in the nation’s history,
  • “It’s disorder. It’s chaos. It borders on sedition and it must end now.”
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  • The day had started as one of triumph for Mr. Biden and his party, with Democrats coming off elections the day before that sealed control of the Senate by picking up two seats in Georgia and Congress scheduled to clear away the last formal Republican objections to his victory by certifying the Electoral College outcome.
  • Filling out his cabinet, Mr. Biden chose Judge Merrick B. Garland, whose Supreme Court nomination Republicans blocked in 2016, to be attorney general, placing the task of repairing a beleaguered Justice Department in the hands of a centrist judge.
  • The assault on the Capitol by pro-Trump demonstrators devolved into a physical confrontation that halted the process of certifying the Electoral College outcome
  • It’s not protest. It’s insurrection.
  • Other interest groups quickly seized on the Georgia results to ratchet up the pressure on Mr. Biden to make good on his campaign promises.
  • “The work of the moment and the work of the next four years must be the restoration of democracy, of decency, honor, respect, the rule of law,” he said, adding later: “We must step up
  • Mr. Biden’s advisers are deep into the process of developing policy proposals to deliver to Congress in the coming weeks, starting with another stimulus package
  • Shortly after, Mr. Trump posted on Twitter a one-minute video in which he empathized with the rioters because “we had an election that was stolen from us,” but then urged them to “go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order.”
  • The Democratic victories in Georgia put Mr. Biden’s party in control at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue and reduced the risk of total partisan gridlock in Congress, at least for two years.
  • “With Schumer in control of the calendar, he’s got the opportunity to do some really substantial things.”
  • The Biden team is also drafting proposals to implement the president-elect’s “Build Back Better” campaign agenda, including new government spending on clean energy, infrastructure, health care and education, financed by tax increases on the rich and corporations.
  • Mr. Biden’s allies in the Senate expressed optimism that, armed with committee chairmanships and control of the legislative calendar, they could advance the president-elect’s policy goals.
  • “We need to fix a lot of the damage Trump’s done, and then there’s pent-up demand for a whole lot of things — what do we do about climate and about racial inequality, about wealth inequality, about structural racism,” said Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who is set to be the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee.
  • Mr. Biden has also proposed the most ambitious climate agenda of any president in history, including $2 trillion in spending on green initiatives. A majority in the Senate gives Mr. Biden options to make some of that happen.
  • But Mr. Biden’s agenda will be constrained by the Democrats’ narrow advantages in the House and in the Senate, where moderate Democrats such as Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona will wield vast power over which plans can pass.
  • Before the outbreak of violence on Capitol Hill, Mr. Biden signaled on Wednesday morning that despite the shift of Senate control to Democrats, he would still attempt to build legislative coalitions with Republicans on his top priorities
  • A high-profile business lobbying group that has long supported many Republicans, the National Association of Manufacturers, denounced Mr. Trump on Wednesday for inciting the violence and suggested it was time for his administration to invoke a constitutional provision to remove him
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Calls grow in Congress for Trump to be removed by impeachment or the 25th amendment - C... - 0 views

  • A growing number of lawmakers -- including from Democratic leadership -- are calling for President Donald Trump to be removed from office either through impeachment or the 25th Amendment to the Constitution after a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday.
  • Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer put out a statement Thursday denouncing the "insurrection" at the Capitol "incited by the President," and saying, "This President should not hold office one day longer."
  • "I join the Senate Democratic leader in calling on the Vice President to remove this President by immediately invoking the 25th Amendment," Pelosi said.
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  • Invoking the 25th Amendment would require Vice President Mike Pence and a majority of the Cabinet to vote to remove Trump from office due to his inability to "discharge the powers and duties of his office" -- an unprecedented step.
  • "The most immediate way to ensure the President is prevented from causing further harm in coming days is to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove him from office. As history watches, I urge Vice President Pence and the President's cabinet to put country before party and act," she said in a statement.
  • House Oversight Committee chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, on Thursday backed removing Trump from office either through the 25th Amendment or impeachment.
  • "Invoking the 25th Amendment is the quickest way to do this, and expedience must be our goal," she said, adding, "If the Vice President and Cabinet fail to act, we have a duty to pursue impeachment."
  • All four members of the progressive "squad" of Democratic lawmakers -- Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley -- have also spoken out in support of impeachment in the wake of the violent siege of the Capitol.
  • With Biden's inauguration date fast approaching on January 20, it is highly unlikely that there would be adequate time or political will in Congress for any kind of impeachment effort.
  • In order to remove a President from office through impeachment, the Senate must vote to convict after an impeachment trial. That did not happen in the GOP-controlled Senate where Trump was ultimately acquitted.
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Melania Trump Makes Herself The Victim In Statement On Capitol Attack | HuffPost - 0 views

  • “I find it shameful that surrounding these tragic events there has been salacious gossip, unwarranted personal attacks, and false misleading accusations on me ― from people who are looking to be relevant and have an agenda. This time is solely about healing our country and its citizens. It should not be used for personal gain.”
  • “It was an assault on human life and our great democracy,” Wolkoff wrote of the riot. “Unfortunately, our president and first lady have little, if any, regard for either.”
  • The first lady did not address her husband’s role in inciting the mob that attacked the Capitol. She tried to play peacemaker in her statement, however.“Our Nation must heal in a civil manner,” she said. “Make no mistake about it, I absolutely condemn the violence that has occurred on our Nation’s Capitol. Violence is never acceptable.”
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  • “I implore people to stop the violence, never make assumptions based on the color of a person’s skin or use differing political ideologies as a basis for aggression and viciousness,” she added. ” “We must listen to one another, focus on what unites us, and rise above what divides us.”
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How Trump and allies egged on violent scenes - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • After President Trump began raising objections to his 2020 election loss nearly two months ago, his allies repeatedly assured it was harmless. “If He Loses, Trump Will Concede Gracefully,” was the title of an op-ed from former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. An anonymous senior administration official later assured The Washington Post there was little “downside for humoring him for this little bit of time.”
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As Trump Reels, Fox News Has a Message for Viewers: Stick With Us - The New York Times - 0 views

  • By Thursday, amid a flurry of White House resignations and a rising chorus of Republicans declaring that it was time for Mr. Trump to go, there were cracks in the firmament. “To put up a Trump flag and take down the American flag is not patriotic — it was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen,” Brian Kilmeade said on “Fox & Friends.” The false rumors about antifa involvement were dialed back, and hosts criticized the Washington violence.
  • Still, no Fox News prime-time star has yet blamed Mr. Trump for his role in inciting the riot at the Capitol. And rather than reckon with years of backing Mr. Trump and giving comfort to his supporters, the network’s commentators have simply swiveled, finding new ways to take on old targets.
  • In the Fox News universe, Mr. Biden is now a socialist prepared to upend the American way of life. And many hosts have drawn a direct equivalence between the storming of the Capitol by an anti-democratic mob and the Black Lives Matters protests over the summer in support of racial justice.
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  • if Mr. Murdoch ever feels the need to distance himself more formally from Mr. Trump, he has other platforms on which to do so. In November, another Murdoch organ, The New York Post, proclaimed Mr. Biden’s victory in a cheery front page. After this week’s Capitol riots, the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal made a case for Mr. Trump to resign.
  • Starting a new network requires approval from cable distributors like Charter Communications and Comcast (which Mr. Trump has gleefully denounced as “Concast”), corporations that could face intense public pressure not to associate with Mr. Trump after his presidency.
  • Mr. Klein pointed out that Comcast and other cable distributors carry Newsmax and One America News “despite the fictions they’ve been perpetrating.” He added, regretfully, that the violent events at the Capitol could even function as a launchpad for a niche media outlet catering to an audience eager to hear more from Mr. Trump.
  • “He might have thought of it,” Mr. Klein said, “as his greatest kickoff event.”
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Beyond Impeachment, a Push for Ethics Laws That Do Not Depend on Shame - The New York T... - 0 views

  • they are also pressing ahead with a parallel effort to try to ensure that Mr. Trump’s four-year record of violating democratic and constitutional norms cannot be repeated.
  • Mr. Trump’s term has revealed enormous gaps between the ideals of American democracy and the reality. Even before he incited a mob to attack the Capitol and the legislative branch of government, he ignored watchdog rulings and constitutional safeguards, pressed to overturn the outcome of an election, and pardoned those who covered for him, all while funneling taxpayer dollars to his family business.
  • “We have to reconstruct some norms that have been damaged, but the idea is to strike a balance so that reform is effective without undermining a strong presidency,” he said.
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  • Protecting Our Democracy Act and H.R. 1, will be the main vehicles to address the sweep of questionable practices in the Trump era, which culminated in the president’s efforts to reverse the election outcome and provoke a riot to thwart the final electoral vote for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.
  • “The mechanism that preserved that system was the fear of paying a political price,” said Susan Hennessey, an author of the book “Unmaking the Presidency: Donald Trump’s War on the World’s Most Powerful Office.” “Now we know that if there’s not a credible fear of that, we’re likely to see future presidents attempting to violate these rules or push the boundaries more and more.”
  • Right now, the office relies on a president’s desire to avoid scandal and impropriety, and the Senate’s reluctance to schedule confirmation hearings for nominees who have not filed the proper paperwork and committed to divestiture.
  • “The law is totally on my side, meaning the president can’t have a conflict of interest,” he said soon after he won election.
  • The bill would also expand legal protections for whistle-blowers to cover a president’s political appointees, and shield all whistle-blowers from retaliatory investigations, measures included after Mr. Trump’s efforts to identify an anonymous government whistle-blower who exposed the president’s attempt to enlist Ukraine in digging up dirt on Mr. Biden.
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Opinion | Impeachment Would Defend Congress Against Trump - The New York Times - 0 views

  • If Congress declines to impeach and convict the president for his actions on Wednesday, its failure to act will weaken the basic structure of the Constitution.
  • The key issue is this: One of the three branches of the federal government has just incited an armed attack against another branch
  • Beyond the threat to a peaceful transition, the incident was a fundamental violation of the separation of powers.
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  • Prompted by the chief executive, supporters laid siege to, invaded, and occupied the Capitol building, deploying weapons and subjecting members of both chambers of Congress to intimidation and violence in an effort to produce a particular decision by force.
  • We have all been taught about “checks and balances” in school. The Constitutional strategy for limiting power requires that officeholders defend the institutions they occupy against what the framers called “encroachments” by the other branches. Usually encroachments are understood metaphorically, and there is time to allow the branches to work out their differences in the back and forth of political negotiation and occasional court battles. The president’s attempted encroachment on the constitutional rights of Congress this past Wednesday was anything but metaphorical
  • The president aimed to reverse the decision that Congress was making on a question that the Constitution expressly reserved for the legislature.
  • At Wednesday’s rally, Mr. Trump gave some prepared remarks on the so-called evidence of election fraud, but he worried aloud that the crowd would be bored by those details. The more powerful thread running through his speech was an argument that constitutional constraints were forms of weakness, that Vice President Mike Pence and Congress should not be allowed to certify the election, and that it was time to take the gloves off and fight.
  • If the cabinet and vice president decided to remove the president temporarily from his duties through the 25th Amendment, they would protect us against some immediate dangers, but their action would do nothing to stand up for the integrity of Congress as a coequal branch of government. In fact, it would reinforce the notion that true power is concentrated only in the executive branch. Impeachment and conviction offer the only constitutionally appropriate response to the president’s encroachment on the legislative branch.
  • When James Madison described the checks and balances in Federalist No. 51, he wrote that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition” and that “the interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.” This means that members of Congress should feel that their personal interests and ambitions are intertwined with the power of the institution they occupy.
  • Members who said they wanted to satisfy popular sentiment questioning the election results by channeling it through a congressional commission should see that the president’s actions have made a mockery of their procedural efforts. Their place in history depends on whether they counteract the president’s ambition and resist the humiliation of Congress in the way the constitutional framers assumed any self-respecting legislator would.
  • Not so long ago, the Republican Party described itself as “the party of Lincoln” and flaunted its commitment to constitutionalism. Now, the question is whether enough Republican senators will do what is necessary to help the country step away from what Lincoln called the “mobocratic spirit,” which he identified as the greatest threat to our political institutions.
  • If Congress does not utilize the constitutional means of defending itself and deterring future attacks, this moment will come to be regarded by historians as a decisive capitulation, not just to President Trump, but to a dangerous new mode of presidential action. The precedent that a president can stir up mobs to intimidate the other branches will be set, and even if it recedes into the background for a while, eventually that precedent will be followed.
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Who Died in the Capitol Building Attack? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • These five people from disparate backgrounds and different corners of the country now share one fate: Their lives all ended last week as a mob incited by Mr. Trump stormed the Capitol.
  • After serving in the Air National Guard and dreaming of becoming a police officer, Brian D. Sicknick joined the Capitol Police force in 2008. He died the day after he was overpowered and beaten by rioters from the mob at the Capitol.
  • Ashli Babbitt, 35, an Air Force veteran from Southern California, was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer as she clambered through a broken window leading to the Speaker’s Lobby inside the Capitol.
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  • Kevin D. Greeson, 55, of Athens, Ala., was standing in a throng of fellow Trump loyalists on the west side of the Capitol when he suffered a heart attack and fell to the sidewalk. He was talking on the phone with his wife at the time.
  • Rosanne Boyland, 34, of Kennesaw, Ga., posted fervently in support of President Trump on social media, followed the baseless conspiracy theories of QAnon and latched onto Mr. Trump’s false claims that he had won the election, family members told The Associated Press.
  • How she died remained unclear on Monday
  • Mr. Philips died of a stroke in Washington, those who accompanied him to the Capitol told the newspaper. The exact circumstances of his death were still unclear, and his family could not be reached for comment.
  • A police officer was beaten, a rioter was shot, and three others died during the rampage.
  • One had dreamed of becoming a police officer and was injured in a clash with rioters. One was an Air Force veteran and a fervent supporter of President Trump who was shot by the police. Three others were Trump loyalists — including one who sold kangaroos dressed like the president — who suffered what the authorities called “medical emergencies.”
  • Law enforcement officials said he had been “physically engaging with protesters” and was struck in the head with a fire extinguisher.
  • Her last moments, captured from multiple angles on video, show Ms. Babbitt, a Trump flag knotted around her neck, being hoisted to the window as others in the mob shout. Moments later, a shot rings out and Ms. Babbitt falls back, blood pouring from her mouth
  • Mr. Greeson had high blood pressure and she had not wanted him to travel to Washington. But she said Mr. Greeson believed the election had been stolen and saw the Jan. 6 rally as “a monumental event.”
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Police Officer Who Responded to Capitol Riot Dies Off Duty - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The Capitol Police union said that Officer Howard Liebengood, a 15-year veteran of the force, “was among the officers who responded to the rioting at the U.S. Capitol” on Wednesday, when insurrectionists incited by President Trump attacked the seat of American government.
  • In a statement on Sunday, the Capitol Police said only that Officer Liebengood’s death took place “off duty,” but did not provide the cause or answer further questions.
  • Lawmakers have demanded investigations and accountability based on arguably the most significant security failure in decades. The chief of the Capitol Police, as well as the sergeants-at-arms of both the House and the Senate, have been fired or resigned.
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Impeach and remove Trump - 0 views

  • To put it simply, Trump hasn't just abused his power by his administration refusing the requisite National Guard members, but he also incited violence with the specific intent to terrorize our government from allowing the democratically elected president to take power. So impeach him the moment, god willing, we bring the Capitol and its occupants to safety. And remove him from office. An enemy of the people cannot be allowed to become the commander in chief once more.
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CEO arrested for breaching the US Capitol during Trump-fueled insurrection - CNN - 0 views

shared by anonymous on 11 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • The CEO of a Chicago company said he was arrested after breaching the US Capitol during Wednesday's Trump-fueled insurrection in Washington, DC.
  • Brad Rukstales, CEO of the marketing technology firm Cogensia, apologized for what he called a "moment of extremely poor judgment."
  • Cogensia, based in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg, sought to distance itself from its CEO, whom the company said has been placed on leave of absence.
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  • Five people died as a result of Wednesday's insurrection, including a US Capitol Police officer. A federal murder investigation has been opened into the officer's death. House Democrats plan to introduce articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump as early as Monday for "incitement of insurrection,"
  • The Cogensia CEO said that following the rally in Washington, he "followed hundreds of others through an open set of doors to the Capitol building to see what was taking place inside."
  • A number of other people present at Wednesday's unrest have faced consequences from their employers. Navistar, a direct marketing company in Maryland, fired an employee who was photographed wearing his company ID badge inside the US Capitol building.
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