Trump impeachment: House impeaches president in historic vote along party lines
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Eric Garcia
Washington Bureau Chief
The House has voted to impeach Donald Trump, making him the third president in American history to receive such a censure.
After roughly eight hours of debate, the House of Representatives gathered to vote and ultimately charged him with abusing the power of his office by attempting to extort a political favour from Ukraine. The House then voted on a second article of impeachment, approving formal charges that Mr Trump had obstructed Congress during the subsequent congressional investigation into his conduct.
The Senate will now take up the approved impeachment articles in the new year.
Defiant as ever, Mr Trump walked onstage at a rally in Michigan just as the House began voting — and was bragging about his Space Force and mocking stock market jitters as the first article of impeachement was approved. Before it became official, as the vote crept towards approving the first article of impeachment, Mr Trump was interrupted by a protester, who he suggested was treated too well by security forces — and that they should have been tougher on her.
Before the vote and rally, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius described a letter sent by Mr Trump to House speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday as “the most unpresidential presidential document ever written” on MSNBC’s Morning Joe after rallies backing the impeachment process were held in cities across the country on Tuesday evening.
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Rep. Hoyer’s motion to table Rep. McCarthy’s resolution was agreed to.
Impeachment isn't the only game in town this week, with Congress facing down a very worrisome federal budget deadline as well.
The House on Tuesday approved a $1.4 trillion package that would avert a shutdown, which would fund the government through September (potentially setting up a shutdown showdown just months before the 2020 election).
The whole thing marks a rare bipartisan moment in Congress, though it is unclear how the president feels about any of it. It will go to the Senate for approval (where it seems likely to be passed, given its inclusion of some GOP priorities on defense spending). But, who knows if Trump will blow the whole thing up by the end of the week.
Please participate in our poll, and read this story from the depths of Trump's Twitter feed last time around:
House Rules Committee Chair Jim McGovern, D-Mass, is attempting to begin debate on House Resolution 767, which provides rules for debate on the House’s articles of impeachment against President Trump.
House Republican Whip Steve Scalise, R-La, is attempting to raise a point of order against calling it up, but the presiding officer, Colorado Democrat Diana Degette, ruled against it.
The House will be debating this rule for roughly an hour.
Congressman Jim McGovern has said that Trump hurt national security, during his opening today.
"These aren’t opinions, these are uncontested facts. The evidence is as clear as it is overwhelmingly."
Ok, in all seriousness, let's get down to the real important stuff —namely, how many times will Donald Trump tweet today?
He's really been amping things up lately, with the impeachment efforts tightening up around him. On a recent, crisp December day, he broke his record with over 100 tweets and retweets in a day. Here's *that* story:
In some very off the radar news, at least when considering the big ticket items like the federal budget and impeachment:
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