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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSteyer pressures Congress to impeach
Billionaire activist Tom Steyer praised Republican Justin Amash’s call for impeachment, and said of President Trump, 'He wants to be a king. He will not submit to oversight.'
https://www.msnbc.com/kasie-dc/watch/tom-steyer-pressures-congress-to-impeach-as-more-democrats-call-for-hearings-60374597907
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struggle4progress
(118,280 posts)WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and U.S. lawmakers are away from Washington, but questions about possible impeachment of the president continue to swirl as the White House thwarts multiple investigations led by House Democrats after the conclusion of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. While the House could impeach, Trump is virtually assured of remaining in office as there is almost zero chance the Republican-led Senate would convict him.
Democrats are using their House majority to investigate Trump and his administration on everything from the treatment of migrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border to the president’s foreign business dealings and tax returns. Democrats also want the Justice Department to release the full, unredacted Mueller report. The White House is blocking them at almost every turn, causing tempers to boil over.
“The Trump administration has taken obstruction of Congress to new heights,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler, Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
His words were echoed by Judiciary Committee member Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, also a Democrat ...
https://www.voanews.com/a/impeachment-questions-still-swirling-in-washington/4933306.html
struggle4progress
(118,280 posts)By James Downie
May 26 at 5:26 PM
With parts of the House Democratic caucus pushing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to begin impeachment hearings, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday to address the issue ...
Host Chuck Todd kicked off the interview by asking whether Jeffries agreed with Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) that the president had “engaged in impeachable conduct.” Jeffries replied, “I certainly think there’s reason to believe that there was obstruction of justice.” “If that’s the case,” Todd said, “then why aren’t you ready to start impeachment hearings?” ...
... during the Watergate scandal, public support for impeachment consistently trailed events. Before the televised Watergate hearings began in May 1973, fewer than one-third of Americans thought the break-in a serious scandal, even though the burglars’ ties to the White House and the Nixon campaign had already been extensively reported. After the hearings, 53 percent thought the scandal serious, and 71 percent thought Nixon at least somewhat culpable. Yet even then, it wasn’t until the month Nixon resigned that a majority of the public supported his removal from office ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/05/26/why-are-democratic-leaders-still-foot-dragging-impeachment-hearings/?utm_term=.80abcc941838
struggle4progress
(118,280 posts)By EMILY GOODIN, U.S. POLITICAL REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 16:05 EDT, 26 May 2019 | UPDATED: 17:18 EDT, 26 May 2019
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, one of the first Democrats in Congress to call for President Donald Trump to be impeached, said Sunday that more Democrats are 'moving toward' a consensus on such proceedings against the president.
'It is moving towards that. It's going to demand that. It already is,' she said on NBC's 'Meet the Press.'
'We can't be able to do our jobs if we don't hold him accountable,' she said ...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7072905/Anti-Trump-lawmaker-Rashida-Tlaib-says-fellow-House-Democrats-moving-impeachment.html
struggle4progress
(118,280 posts)By Dan Balz
May 27, 2019 — 4.48am
House Democrats, under the leadership of Democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are slowly marching themselves toward the opening of an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. What seemed out of the question earlier in the year now seems, if not inevitable, increasingly difficult to resist.
Pelosi will not say anything like that at this point. She will continue to try to communicate to both sides of her divided party, nodding to hard-liners by suggesting that Trump's actions constitute potentially impeachable offences while bowing to vulnerable members in swing districts by speaking cautiously about impeachment itself.
"We're not at that place," Pelosi said at a Thursday news conference, when the question of impeachment came up.
That caution came after she noted that the investigations currently underway in the House could lead to "a place that is unavoidable in terms of impeachment". She also asserted that the White house "is just crying out" for impeachment ...
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/for-pelosi-the-biggest-test-awaits-impeach-or-not-impeach-20190527-p51reg.html
struggle4progress
(118,280 posts)BY JASON LEMON ON 5/26/19 AT 1:54 PM EDT
... Tlaib, a freshman progressive from Michigan, appeared for an interview on NBC News’ Meet the Press to discuss her efforts to push Democrats in Congress to move forward with impeachment proceedings. She argued that the Trump administration was violating the Constitution by trying to hinder congressional investigations.
“This is not about the 2020 election, it’s about doing what's right now for our country," Tlaib said ...
Earlier this year, Tlaib introduced a bill that called on Congress to begin investigating the president’s impeachable offenses. She also infamously said in January that “we’re going to go in and impeach the mothef---er,” referring to Trump.
Although Tlaib was criticized for the remark, she doubled-down on the statement at the time. “I will always speak truth to power,” she wrote on Twitter. "This is not just about Donald Trump. This is about all of us. In the face of this constitutional crisis, we must rise" ...
https://www.newsweek.com/impeaching-trump-doing-whats-right-rashida-tlaib-1436421
SHRED
(28,136 posts)IMHO
UniteFightBack
(8,231 posts)commercials about the Repugnant ones????
struggle4progress
(118,280 posts)struggle4progress
(118,280 posts)JOY ANN REID, MSNBC: It sounds like what you're saying is that the American public has to take the burden of reigning in a president who is out of control and that Congress is going to, A, wait for public sentiment to lead Congress, rather than Congress leading the public, and that, B, we're just going to wait and let the electorate handle Donald Trump.
First of all, what message does that send to the public, because the public elected you guys to lead, to be bluht. And second of all what message does it send to the next president, who says if this guy didn't get impeached and he committed what 7-800 former attorneys say is obstruction of justice, couldn't the next president just throw the emoluments clause in the garbage, commit obstruction of justice, investigate his political enemies, essentially Congress would be saying it's fine.
REP. RO KHANNA: Two things, first of all, I do believe this president has committed grave misconduct and I agree with you and I do think Congress is leading. Not leading would be saying we're just going to do infrastructure. I saw one of your guests make that point. That's not the case. Every day we're having four committees aggressively investigate, we are talking about the extraordinary obstruction, we're educating folks ...
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/05/26/joy_ann_reid_if_congress_wont_impeach_trump_what_precedents_are_set_for_future_presidents.html
struggle4progress
(118,280 posts)South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) poked fun at Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as she finds herself caught in a growing impeachment impasse with her own party.
Joining host Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday,” Graham joked that Pelosi was “riding a bucking wild bronco called the Democratic Caucus” as she pushes back on the increasing calls for impeachment from members of her party and pointed out that “70 percent” of Democrats “want Trump impeached” ...
https://ijr.com/lindsey-graham-pokes-fun-pelosi-impeachment-political-suicide/
struggle4progress
(118,280 posts)... Fewer than one-third of the 23 Democrats vying for the nomination are issuing calls to start the impeachment process, citing evidence in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report they believe shows Trump obstructed justice ...
The candidates’ reluctance, even as more congressional Democrats start pushing their leaders in the direction, underscores the risky politics of investigating the president for “high crimes and misdemeanours.” Impeachment matters deeply to the party’s base but remains unpopular with most Americans.
White House hopefuls may win praise from liberal activists by pressing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for an impeachment inquiry, but those who fall short of insisting are unlikely to take heat from early-state primary voters more focused on other issues.
“People talk about it and people have opinions about it, but health care is much more salient to them,” Sue Dvorsky, a former head of the Iowa Democratic Party, said in an interview. “I just don’t see Democratic activists here all worked up about impeachment. They trust Pelosi” ...
https://globalnews.ca/news/5318112/democratic-candidates-impeachment/
struggle4progress
(118,280 posts)Once upon a time, a president of the United States branded his political opponents traitors, pardoned his friends, ignored the will of Congress, inflamed racial tensions, and coarsened political discourse. His opponents deemed him vain, vulgar, incompetent, erratic and a danger to democracy. An influential member of the U.S. House of Representatives declared, “If we could succeed in an impeachment, it would be a blessing probably, but it is perfectly evident that with the Senate constituted as it is, we cannot affect an impeachment.” And yet, he warned, impractical politicians “are determined to push the insane scheme of making the attempt and setting the country in a ferment.”
This president, of course, was Andrew Johnson ...
... The president’s political instincts were terrible ... His penchant for martyrdom, a tendency to listen “only to news that justified what he already thought,” and a refusal to reach out to moderates .. allowed him to conclude that he was “deeply unappreciated, wholly persecuted and denied the respect he rightfully deserved” ...
The impeachment of Johnson .. “had not succeeded but it had worked.” It demonstrated that the president can — and should — be held accountable for his actions, and reduced him to a shadow (who “did not cast a long shadow”); that a system of checks and balances could work, “without waging war, even right after one” ...
https://www.post-gazette.com/ae/books/2019/05/26/Impeachers-Trial-Andrew-Johnson-Dream-Just-Nation-review/stories/201905260013
struggle4progress
(118,280 posts)Not long ago, David Rothkopf of USA Today, fired off a list of irregularities ...
Lying to or misleading the American people on average 10 times a day. Celebrating Nazis as very fine people. Upwards of 20 allegations of sexual harassment. A massive, decades-long record of income tax fraud.
Hypocrisy. Vulgarity. Deceit.
This is our President. This is the heir to Washington and Lincoln.”
https://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2019/05/impeachment.html
struggle4progress
(118,280 posts)... The act of following the law should not be dependent upon the outcome.
The Constitution tells us that the House has the power of impeachment. During prior administrations in which impeachment was an issue, a committee was created to summon witnesses and to subpoena documents and other items (for example, tapes.) The committee then proposed specific articles of impeachment for the entire House. If a majority of the House voted to approve, (which it likely would today) the charges were sent to the Senate.
However, the Constitution requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate to remove the president, which would be unlikely to obtain in the current administration, given that the Senate is now Republican controlled. Democrats seem wary of this potential for impeachment failure. In 1998, after the House impeached Bill Clinton, a Democrat, his popularity actually increased. In the Senate, even some Republicans voted against convicting Clinton of the charges. Afterward, Democrats won seats in the midterms and Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich left Congress.
If impeachment isn’t likely to happen because of the make-up of the Senate, why bother going to all of the effort to do the work in the first place? Because the point of following the Constitution is not to obtain a particular outcome. Whether impeachment is likely to succeed in removing Trump from office is not the issue ...
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/445600-america-has-no-time-to-wait-for-impeachment
struggle4progress
(118,280 posts)... So far, only eight Democrats in the U.S. House have signed on to a resolution to open an impeachment inquiry. However, at least a dozen more have publicly said they’re interested in at least studying impeachment, and that number is growing each week.
In perhaps the most interesting development to date, Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan this month became the first Republican in federal office to publicly say the president “has engaged in impeachable conduct.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report identified multiple instances where Trump obstructed justice, and anyone who is not president would have been indicted under such evidence, Amash wrote in a series of Twitter posts. He also said Trump-appointed Attorney General William Barr intentionally misled the public about the report ...
The three Iowa Republicans .. remain Trump loyalists ...
The three Iowa Democrats .. are vocal Trump critics, but none have yet called for his ouster ...
https://www.thegazette.com/subject/opinion/staff-columnist/trump-impeachment-loebsack-finkenauer-grassley-ernst-iowa-justin-amash-20190526
struggle4progress
(118,280 posts)... It’s not just Democrats in safe seats in New York and California who want impeachment.
So does President Trump.
It would help solidify his base and expand it once more to include Republicans who aren’t solid Trumpsters but are unenthusiastic about voting for a Democrat.
Since Trump would win acquittal in the Senate, he could campaign on being found “innocent.” No conviction. No collusion. Just a victim of Democrats seeking to overturn his 2016 presidential win ...
https://www.southbendtribune.com/news/opinion/colwell-no-chance-that-trump-will-be-impeached/article_71b2697d-469b-5a28-af50-29cceb01c822.html
struggle4progress
(118,280 posts)... The first prominent Republican to break through that wall and call for Trump’s impeachment was House Freedom Caucus co-founder Rep. Justin Amash, who last weekend said in a series of tweets that Trump had “engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment.”
Amash’s defiance in the eyes of the pro-Trump GOP brought him a new primary challenger, the severance of his financial backing, a rabid Trump tweet (of course), and a weak counterargument by Sen. Mitt Romney, of all people.
This week, however, another high-profile Republican—former Missouri Rep. Tom Coleman—spoke out about Trump’s alleged crimes, calling for both the president and Vice President Mike Pence to be impeached.
Coleman, who served in Congress for nearly two decades before becoming a lobbyist and university professor, published a scathing Op-Ed on Thursday in The Kansas City Star that called Trump’s presidency “illegitimate,” based on findings by Special Counsel Robert Mueller that the Trump campaign had urged a foreign adversary to defraud U.S. voters. ...
https://splinternews.com/former-gop-congressman-calls-for-impeachment-of-trump-a-1835028389
struggle4progress
(118,280 posts)... This week, Nadler said he urged Pelosi to consider an impeachment inquiry just after Capitol Hill’s Memorial Day recess, but the house speaker voiced apprehension to the move ...
“I’m constantly evolving and thinking on this, and frankly I’ve been going back and forth too because its a very tight question,” said Nadler. “Yeah I urged the speaker to speed things up and to consider an impeachment inquiry. Part of the rational for that, which was that if you’re in court seeking to enforce subpoenas. You have better odds in court if you can say this is part of your impeachment inquiry rather than general oversight” ...
https://www.oann.com/rep-nadler-urging-speaker-pelosi-to-speed-up-impeachment-inquiry/
struggle4progress
(118,280 posts)If the Jewish delegation in the House of Representatives were to vote on opening impeachment proceedings today, President Donald Trump would probably be safe.
A tally by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency shows that only five of the 25 Jewish House Democrats support launching an impeachment inquiry at this point. Nine are on the record against impeachment (at least for now) and eight appear to be on the fence. Three — one veteran Congress member and two freshmen — have somehow managed to keep mum.
It’s safe to say that the two Jewish Republicans — Lee Zeldin of New York and David Kustoff of Tennessee — do not support impeachment. Zeldin called the Mueller report into Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign and how it intersected with the Trump campaign a “witch hunt.” Kustoff said Democrats “can finally move on” following the report’s release.
Across the entire House Democratic caucus, and among some presidential candidates, there’s a chorus of progressives calling for impeachment. They say the Mueller report, which probed 10 episodes of possible obstruction of justice by the president without reaching a judgment, plus the administration’s defiance of subpoenas make impeachment the best way to investigate alleged misdeeds by the administration ...
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/here-s-where-every-jewish-congress-member-stands-on-impeaching-donald-trump-1.7283776
struggle4progress
(118,280 posts)... Trump has lied, given succor to our enemies, spilled state secrets and obstructed justice in plain sight.
If you cannot impeach this president for that now, what president can you impeach for anything, ever? Short of first-degree murder, what crime could some future president commit without being able to defend herself by pointing back to 2019, when Trump did worse and Congress only shrugged?
What’s on the line here, then, is bigger than Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi or even the 2020 election. What’s on the line here is the very rule of law, the DNA of America. ...
https://www.columbian.com/news/2019/may/27/pitts-madam-speaker-its-time-to-impeach/
struggle4progress
(118,280 posts)... "Unless we want to have no process whatsoever, which cannot be the case for impeachment, we are going to have to go court, get the subpoenas enforced, get the evidence, get the facts for it and then we will see where we are. I think this just muddies the issue and damages us in many ways as premature," Lofgren warned ...
... Cummings expressed confidence that Democrats would find success in the courts, citing two favorable rulings in recent days upholding their requests for documents. “I think the courts are saying that we are going to uphold the rule of law,” Cummings told reporters, adding that he’s urging colleagues when they speak to constituents to refer to those rulings. “We've now got two opinions” ...
“It's clear to anybody who's paying attention, we are in the majority because of two great members like Jason and Elissa and so many others who did not run in on impeachment, did not run on collusion, did not run on obstruction of justice, but ran on making life better for everyday Americans,” Jeffries said at his weekly press conference as swing-district freshman Reps. Jason Crow (Colo.) and Elissa Slotkin (Mich.) stood beside him ...
“I think that has a precedent that troubles me, because I don't think we need to go to a court and say, well, we're going to launch an impeachment investigation that justifies this inquiry,” Connolly told PBS Newshour. Yet Connolly acknowledged that the investigations “may yet lead to an impeachment inquiry because of the facts we uncover. I think we're very close there now. And I think the president is making it a lot harder for those of us who are trying not to cross that line just yet” ...
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/445513-seven-key-allies-for-pelosi-on-impeachment
