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Liz Cheney’s dilemma
My colleague Catie Edmondson, who covers Congress, wrote in the present day about Representative Liz Cheney, the No. 3 Republican and considered one of 10 in her social gathering to vote to question the president. A bunch of Mr. Trump’s most strident allies within the House is now calling on her to resign from her management put up.
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Answers to your questions concerning the impeachment course of:
The present impeachment proceedings are testing the bounds of the method, elevating questions by no means contemplated earlier than. Here’s what we all know.
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- How does the impeachment course of work? Members of the House think about whether or not to question the president — the equal of an indictment in a legal case — and members of the Senate think about whether or not to take away him, holding a trial wherein senators act because the jury. The check, as set by the Constitution, is whether or not the president has dedicated “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” The House vote required solely a easy majority of lawmakers to agree that the president has, in actual fact, dedicated excessive crimes and misdemeanors; the Senate vote requires a two-thirds majority.
- Does impeaching Trump disqualify him from holding workplace once more? Conviction in an impeachment trial doesn’t routinely disqualify Mr. Trump from future public workplace. But if the Senate have been to convict him, the Constitution permits a subsequent vote to bar an official from holding “any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States.” That vote would require solely a easy majority of senators. There isn’t any precedent, nevertheless, for disqualifying a president from future workplace, and the difficulty might find yourself earlier than the Supreme Court.
- Can the Senate maintain a trial after Biden turns into president? The Senate might maintain a trial for Mr. Trump even after he has left workplace, although there isn’t a precedent for it. Democrats who management the House can select when to ship their article of impeachment to the Senate, at which level that chamber must instantly transfer to start the trial. But even when the House instantly transmitted the cost to the opposite facet of the Capitol, an settlement between Republican and Democratic leaders within the Senate can be wanted to take it up earlier than Jan. 19, a day earlier than Mr. Biden is inaugurated. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican chief, mentioned on Wednesday that he wouldn’t conform to such an settlement. Given that timetable, the trial most likely won’t begin till after Mr. Biden is president.
Ms. Cheney has brushed apart calls to step down, saying she was “not going anywhere” and calling her break with Mr. Trump “a vote of conscience.” She issued a scathing assertion the day earlier than the impeachment vote wherein she mentioned, “There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”
Catie wrote that Republicans are scrambling to find out the political penalties of breaking with Mr. Trump after 4 years of fealty, and whether or not they would pay a steeper political value for breaking with the president — or for failing to. A sure vote on Wednesday had little short-term political upside for Republicans, Catie informed me.
“The House is where you find Trump’s most vocal defenders, and their contention is that they need to hang on with Trump and his brand,” she mentioned. “These are the lawmakers who are now calling on Liz Cheney to resign from her leadership post. In the middle of the conference you have a whole lot of lawmakers who are unsure which way to turn.”
Catie described the fault strains within the House Republican caucus as extra distinct than these amongst Senate Republicans, pitting institution conservatives versus MAGA conservatives who see most political points as up-or-down referendums on Mr. Trump. That contest turned clearer this week. Some of the ten Republicans who voted to question have been veterans who had “carved out a bipartisan, centrist brand in their districts, like Fred Upton and John Katko,” Catie mentioned. Others, just like the freshman conservatives Peter Meijer and Anthony Gonzalez, used the impeachment vote to make some extent early of their careers.
“For a while they were able to cohabitate in harmony, even though there were always these tensions. Their stance was that Trump could defy political gravity and be a powerful enemy, and they didn’t have to question the strategy of total adherence,” Catie mentioned of the dueling teams. “After the riot, it became a question of picking a lane, and there are a lot of lawmakers who don’t know what to pick because they don’t know what the most politically safe lane to be in is.”
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