What happened today
-
The House voted 232-196 to endorse the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry into President Trump. The resolution sets out rules for the investigation, which will soon go public with hearings and the publication of documents.
-
Only two Democrats broke with their party to vote against the measure, a sign of how unified the caucus is on impeachment — and how much confidence it has in the evidence of Mr. Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. “This is not any cause for any glee or comfort,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. “What is at stake in all of this is nothing less than our democracy.”
-
Republicans, who for weeks had called for a vote, unanimously opposed the resolution, accusing it of attempting to undo the 2016 election. “Democrats are trying to impeach the president because they are scared they cannot defeat him at the ballot box,” Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, said. “Why do you not trust the people?”
-
In closed-door testimony today, a National Security Council aide corroborated a key fact when he confirmed that Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, said that a package of military assistance for Ukraine would not be released until the country committed to investigating the Bidens.
[Sign up to get the Impeachment Briefing in your email inbox every weeknight.]
What today’s vote means
I asked Julie Davis, our congressional editor, about the history this resolution made — and what it says about the next phase of the investigation.
Julie, in the most basic sense, why was the vote meaningful?
It was only the third time in modern history the House has had a roll-call vote on an impeachment inquiry. But this was different than the previous two since it wasn’t to authorize the inquiry. It was to set rules for an ongoing one.
How did we get to today?
It wasn’t that long ago that Democrats were questioning the politics and utility of a vote like this, given the large probability that Senate Republicans will acquit Mr. Trump if the House impeaches him. And Republicans recognized that was the case, and felt quite confident that the political will behind something like this was not there. But that’s not the case today, if you look at the polls, which show majorities of Americans favoring the inquiry.
What did today’s vote tell us about where Republicans stand?
They’re still in a place politically where they’re completely unwilling to break with Mr. Trump. It doesn’t seem at the moment like there’s any substantive development that could shake that. But today’s resolution made it clear that public hearings will be much different than the private interviews that have been happening for weeks.
What’s something that we’re not paying enough attention to in what will be the public part of the inquiry?
Those of us covering this have been obsessed with public hearings and what a spectacle they’ll be. But one thing we’ve glossed over in today’s resolution is that transcripts of these private depositions will become public. When you get that volume of black and white evidence for the whole public to see, that hasn’t been spun, it’s going to be really compelling.
How we covered the last two impeachments
We looked into the archives to see how The Times covered similar votes in the last two presidential impeachments. Here was how we described the House approving a resolution in the Nixon impeachment investigation, in 1974:
“The House thus formally ratified the impeachment inquiry begun by the committee last October and empowered the panel to subpoena anyone, including the President, with evidence pertinent to the investigation,” The Times wrote. “ … The vote followed an hour of debate in which no one rose to defend Mr. Nixon, but Democrats and Republicans quarreled over the best method to guarantee that the inquiry, would not become partisan.”
And here was how The Times described the House approving a resolution in the Clinton impeachment investigation, in 1998:
“After a civil if sometimes harshly phrased debate that lasted more than three hours, the House of Representatives voted largely along party lines this afternoon to begin a full-scale, open-ended inquiry,” The Times wrote. “ … the founding fathers, the Constitution and the long shadow of precedent were cited by both sides as the debate unfolded.”
Right after the House voted today, I asked my colleague Carl Hulse, who covered the Clinton impeachment, what his first thought was about this vote compared to the one he covered in 1998. Here’s what he told me:
“The vote today underscored the deep and new kind of polarization in Washington. Back then, 31 Democrats broke with the president, and Bill Clinton was happy about that! He thought it’d be more. Now, no one broke. That’s how much things have changed. If 31 people broke with Mr. Trump, we’d be proclaiming him dead. It would feel like a political apocalypse. Today, it was a rock solid party line.”
What else we’re reading
-
Polarization has consequences, and straight party-line votes can undermine public confidence in the proceedings, Carl wrote today. “It shows the bases are controlling both parties,” Representative Peter King, a New York Republican, told him.
-
Two conservative Democrats became the party’s only defectors in the House’s impeachment vote. They warned that the process was “hopelessly partisan.”
-
Politico reports that Mr. Trump is using his considerable fund-raising muscle to reward Republicans who support him in the impeachment inquiry, emailing supporters with a call for money that would be distributed between friendly senators who face tough re-election fights in 2020.
-
My colleague Catie Edmondson tweeted this picture of a box sent to a Democratic congresswoman from a swing district, with the message, “Get Packing!” It was apparently sent by the campaign committee for House Republicans, but its appearance was suspicious enough that Capitol Police came to investigate.
The Impeachment Briefing is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every weeknight.
"Time" - Google News
November 01, 2019 at 02:14AM
https://ift.tt/2PFpPHj
Democrats’ Rules Approved for Impeachment Inquiry: Live Updates - The New York Times
"Time" - Google News
https://ift.tt/31mEvwW
No comments:
Post a Comment