On January 6, “Republican tempers were running so hot against Trump that forcing them to choose sides in the Senate that week could easily have resulted in his impeachment, conviction, and disqualification from any future run for the White House,” The Intercept reported, based on the forthcoming book “Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump.”
It would have been a massive break if it happened. GOP lawmakers in the House and Senate had generally grinned and beared it through the four years Trump had been in the White House, even when he said or did things that went against their stated beliefs. But the up-close violence of the insurrection changed things, according to the book written by two reporters from The Washington Post and Politico. Had the House gone through with impeaching Trump that very evening, a vote to convict may have won the two-thirds majority in the Senate needed to succeed, removing Trump from office and barring him from running again.
Reality was much more tepid. The Democrat-controlled House did vote to impeach Trump a week after January 6, and a month later, when he had already left the White House, the Republican-held Senate took a vote on whether to convict him. While 57 senators, including seven Republicans and all Democrats, voted to do so, that was 10 votes short of the supermajority needed, meaning Trump escaped punishment for the insurrection – at least for now.
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Here’s what else happened today:
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Ginni Thomas spoke to the January 6 committee, but two of its members say the wife of conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas doesn’t appear to be involved in a wider plot to overturn the 2020 election.
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You might think Joe Manchin would enjoy all the power the 50-50 split in the Senate gives him, as a pivotal Democratic vote. You would be wrong, apparently.
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The White House hit back against Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions, describing it as illegal and announcing new sanctions.
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Nancy Pelosi nixed an effort to impeach Donald Trump the evening after the January 6 insurrection, according to a new book that suggests a more immediate effort could have resulted in his conviction by the requisite two-thirds of the Republican-held Senate.
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Barack Obama worried about the justice department under Trump, but was convinced the country could make it four years with him in the White House, according to a meeting transcript obtained by Bloomberg.
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With hours remaining before the government would have shut down, the House of Representatives this afternoon approved a short-term spending bill that will keep it open through December 16.
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The measure was approved with 230 votes in favor and 201 against. All Democrats voted for it, along with 10 Republicans. The Senate passed the bill yesterday and it now heads to Joe Biden’s desk, where his signature is expected.
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Beyond just keeping the government open, the spending measure allocates another $12 billion or so in aid to Ukraine, as well as additional money for disaster relief in a swath of US states. Had Congress not reached an agreement, the federal government would have run out of money on Saturday.
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Ginni Thomas’s testimony before the January 6 committee was hotly anticipated amid a cascade of reports in recent months showing her efforts to pressure officials nationwide to take conspiracy theories about the outcome of the 2020 election seriously.
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As alarming as those reports were, considering they came from the wife of a sitting supreme court justice, Politico reports that committee members aren’t convinced she had much to do with the violence that unfolded at the Capitol or the legal effort to stop Joe Biden’s win. Bennie Thompson, the committee’s Democratic chair, said Thomas’s views were “typical” of those who believe, baselessly, that Biden had stolen the vote nearly two years ago.
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Jamie Raskin, another Democratic committee member, replied “I can’t say,” when asked if Thomas had given the panel any new leads. “She absolutely has a First Amendment right to take whatever positions she wants, and that means she can take as deranged a position she wants about the 2020 election,” he added.
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President Joe Biden has had a busy one, bouncing from the supreme court, where he attended the investiture of new justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, then back to the White House, where he celebrated the Jewish new year Rosh Hashanah and is set to give an update about the damage done by Hurricane Ian. While it was a day for ceremony at the supreme court, a new poll reaffirmed that the court’s rightward shift has taken a toll on public trust.
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Here’s what else happened today:
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You might think Joe Manchin would enjoy all the power the 50-50 split in the Senate gives him, as a pivotal Democratic vote. You would be wrong, apparently.
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The White House hit back against Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions, describing it as illegal and announcing new sanctions.
-
Nancy Pelosi nixed an effort to impeach Donald Trump the evening after the January 6 insurrection, according to a new book that suggests a more immediate effort could have resulted in his conviction by two-thirds of the Republican-held Senate.
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