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.