Liz Cheney’s dilemmaMy colleague Catie Edmondson, who covers Congress, wrote at the moment about Consultant Liz Cheney, the No. three Republican an
Liz Cheney’s dilemma
My colleague Catie Edmondson, who covers Congress, wrote at the moment about Consultant Liz Cheney, the No. three Republican and certainly one of 10 in her get together to vote to question the president. A gaggle of Mr. Trump’s most strident allies within the Home is now calling on her to resign from her management put up.
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Solutions 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. Right here’s what we all know.
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- How does the impeachment course of work? Members of the Home think about whether or not to question the president — the equal of an indictment in a felony case — and members of the Senate think about whether or not to take away him, holding a trial through which senators act because the jury. The take a look at, as set by the Structure, is whether or not the president has dedicated “treason, bribery, or different excessive crimes and misdemeanors.” The Home vote required solely a easy majority of lawmakers to agree that the president has, actually, 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 when the Senate had been to convict him, the Structure permits a subsequent vote to bar an official from holding “any workplace of honor, belief or revenue below the USA.” That vote would require solely a easy majority of senators. There isn’t any precedent, nonetheless, for disqualifying a president from future workplace, and the problem may find yourself earlier than the Supreme Courtroom.
- Can the Senate maintain a trial after Biden turns into president? The Senate may maintain a trial for Mr. Trump even after he has left workplace, although there isn’t any precedent for it. Democrats who management the Home can select when to ship their article of impeachment to the Senate, at which level that chamber must instantly transfer to start the trial. However even when the Home instantly transmitted the cost to the opposite facet of the Capitol, an settlement between Republican and Democratic leaders within the Senate could 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 comply with such an settlement. On condition that timetable, the trial in all probability is not going to begin till after Mr. Biden is president.
Ms. Cheney has brushed apart calls to step down, saying she was “not going anyplace” and calling her break with Mr. Trump “a vote of conscience.” She issued a scathing assertion the day earlier than the impeachment vote through which she mentioned, “There has by no means been a higher betrayal by a president of the USA of his workplace and his oath to the Structure.”
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 worth 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 Home is the place you discover Trump’s most vocal defenders, and their competition is that they should cling on with Trump and his model,” she mentioned. “These are the lawmakers who at the moment are calling on Liz Cheney to resign from her management put up. In the midst of the convention you will have an entire lot of lawmakers who’re uncertain which method to flip.”
Catie described the fault traces within the Home 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. Among the 10 Republicans who voted to question had been veterans who had “carved out a bipartisan, centrist model of 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 some time they had been capable of cohabitate in concord, though there have been at all times these tensions. Their stance was that Trump may defy political gravity and be a robust enemy, they usually didn’t need to query the technique of whole adherence,” Catie mentioned of the dueling teams. “After the riot, it turned a query of choosing a lane, and there are numerous lawmakers who don’t know what to select as a result of they don’t know what essentially the most politically protected lane to be in is.”
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