House Republicans blocked a resolution on Monday morning calling on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to impeach President Donald Trump after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) brought the resolution by unanimous consent. Democrats have moved quickly for impeachment after Trump’s involvement in last week’s attempted armed coup.
The attempted coup was “widely advertised and broadly encouraged by President Donald J. Trump, who repeatedly urged his millions of followers on Twitter and other social media outlets to come to Washington on January 6 to ‘Stop the Steal,’” according to the impeachment document submitted by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland). Lawmakers cited Trump’s repeated attempts to interrupt vote counting, his plea for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find him votes in Georgia, and his encouragement of threats to Pence’s life on the day that the violent mob of Trump supporters broke into the Capitol building.
The resolution could only advance by unanimous consent, meaning that a single objection to the measure would lead to its rejection — in this case, it was opposed by Rep. Alex Mooney (R-West Virginia). Pelosi said on Sunday that, if unanimous consent was not reached, the resolution will be brought to the floor on Tuesday, and the lawmakers call on Pence to respond within 24 hours.
“As the days go by,” Pelosi’s press release reads, “the horror of the ongoing assault on our democracy perpetrated by this President is intensified and so is the immediate need for action.” House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-South Carolina) has said that the House will likely take up a vote on Tuesday or Wednesday.
The resolution has enough votes to pass, with 200 co-sponsors of the impeachment document itself and over 220 Democrats indicating their support for the proceedings.
Calling on Pence and Trump’s cabinet to invoke impeachment could ensure that the process takes place before Trump’s last 10 days in office. If the House were to impeach, the Senate may not be able to move fast enough to convict Trump before his term is over. However, the process could be done in a day if the will was there, argues Truthout’s William Rivers Pitt.
Though a swift removal would only kick Trump out of office for a handful of days, the implications could be major. Removal would not only prevent Trump from potentially doing something rash in his last days in office, but it could also prevent him from running for office again in the future, which the Senate could do with a simple majority vote.
After last week’s violent Trump-supporting mob breached the Capitol and the ensuing violence killed five people, polls have shown that a majority of Americans support impeachment, with support hovering around or above 50 percent. According to CNN, this amount of support for impeachment is unprecedented at this point in the process.
The blocking of the impeachment resolution comes after an eventful weekend for Trump and the right wing online. On Friday, Trump was permanently banned from Twitter — and a wave of bans from different internet services followed, including Instagram, Reddit, Shopify and Youtube. The far-right social media network Parler was first banned from being downloaded on phones via Google Play or Apple’s App Store, and then was pulled from the internet entirely by its web host.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy