The 2016 Democratic nominee says she wasn’t surprised that the Senate voted to acquit President Trump in his impeachment trial — but was nonetheless disappointed more Republicans didn’t vote to remove him from office.

Senator Rick Scott (R., Fla.) on Thursday announced he would introduce a constitutional amendment to raise the House voting threshold to approve articles of impeachment to three-fifths of the chamber, instead of a simple majority."An act as divisive as impeachment must have bipartisan backing and overwhelming support," Scott said in a statement. "It should be harder — much harder — for either political party to take the process our Founders created as a last resort against a tyrannical leader and use it instead as a tool for the tyranny of the political majority."Scott's proposal comes a day after President Trump was acquitted on two articles of impeachment in a Senate trial. The House vote to approve the articles fell almost completely along party lines, with one Democrat voting against, while Mitt Romney (R., Utah) was the only senator to break ranks with his party and vote to convict the president."The Democrats used the impeachment process as a tool to hurt President Trump, regardless of the outcome of the Senate trial," Scott commented. "It's a dangerous precedent and the process has to change."Trump has repeatedly referred to the impeachment process as a "witch hunt" and "hoax." The president is scheduled to discuss the impeachment acquittal in public remarks Thursday afternoon."I think he's also going to talk about just how horribly he was treated and, you know, that maybe people should pay for that," White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham told Fox News in advance of the remarks.

President Trump's latest border crackdown will end up hurting the New Yorkers who love him best.Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf announced Wednesday that New Yorkers would no longer be allowed to apply for or renew their trusted traveler programs in retaliation for the state's newly enacted sanctuary policies. This move will go beyond just sidelining travelers trying to get in and out of New York's airports — it'll hurt travel and daily commuting for New Yorkers who never supported those policies in the first place.New York state recently enacted the Green Light Law, which lets undocumented people receive drivers licenses in the state. The law also blocks federal agents from accessing state Department of Motor Vehicles databases, which Wolf said Wednesday would make it impossible to properly vet New Yorkers looking to apply for NEXUS, SENTRI, Global Entry.Global Entry is used around the world, but upstate New York has more NEXUS crossing points than any other state. The program lets approved NEXUS holders use reserved travel lanes to speed up U.S.–Canada border crossings, and even has a whole dedicated bridge in Niagara Falls, New York.All of those crossings would become relatively useless if the renewal ban survives. And all of them largely service New York's 21st and 27th congressional districts — two areas of an increasingly liberal state are still firmly in Republican hands — as well as Erie County, whose Democratic clerk Mickey Kearns has challenged the Green Light law since it passed.More stories from theweek.com The real State of the Union Iowa caucuses: Buttigieg, Sanders nearly tied in state delegates How history will view Trump's impeachment

Hillary Clinton said that after Donald Trump's acquittal, voters have to 'take responsibility' and 'follow Mitt Romney's lead' in November.

Surrounded by his cheering allies at the White House, Donald Trump celebrated his acquittal in his impeachment trial after after appearing at the National Prayer Breakfast brandishing aloft newspaper front pages announcing Wednesday's landmark decision.The president also used the occasion to attack House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Utah senator Mitt Romney, the lone Republican to vote "guilty" with Democrats after excoriating the president in the blistering Senate speech.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) cited his faith as he voted to convict President Trump, and Fox & Friends is outraged.Romney on Wednesday became the first senator in history to vote to remove a president of his own party, and in announcing his decision to do so, Romney said, "As a senator juror, I swore an oath before God to exercise impartial justice. I am profoundly religious. My faith is at the heart of who I am." Similarly, he told The Atlantic that "I have gone through a process of very thorough analysis and searching, and I have prayed through this process," though he noted that "I don't pretend that God told me what to do."This type of talk really, really upset Fox News' Brian Kilmeade, who on Thursday's Fox & Friends tore into Romney."For him to bring religion into this -- it has nothing to do with religion," Kilmeade said. "'My faith makes me do this?' Are you kidding?" ... I mean, that is unbelievable for him to bring religion into this."Kilmeade, who suggested Romney was being "totally insincere" and had already made up his mind about impeachment long ago, insisted the situation has "nothing to do with faith," an idea that actually didn't seem to go over very well on the show. "Well, I think a lot of people are guided by their faith," Steve Doocy noted.Shortly after, Trump voiced a similar objection, saying at the National Prayer Breakfast in an apparent swipe at Romney, "I don't like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong." > Brian Kilmeade lambasts Mitt Romney for invoking his faith in voting to convict Trump: "'My faith makes me do this'? Are you kidding? What about your faith and this case meld together? That is unbelievable for him to bring religion into this. 'His faith.'" pic.twitter.com/UIb16Txw8T> > -- Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) February 6, 2020More stories from theweek.com Trump opens National Prayer Breakfast by waving around a stack of 'acquitted' newspaper headlines How history will view Trump's impeachment Trump is already attacking Mitt Romney, ignoring aides urging him to let it go

At the National Prayer Breakfast, President Trump attacked Democrats and Sen. Mitt Romney for voting to remove him from office during his impeachment trial.

Donald Trump has lashed out at Nancy Pelosi as he came face to face with her for the first time since his impeachment acquittal, accusing her of religious hypocrisy as they attended a National Prayer Breakfast.In his signature brash fashion, Mr Trump started by going after Ms Pelosi, saying Democrats had put his family and himself through a "terrible ordeal by some very dishonest and corrupt people."

The hollowness of the president’s acquittal after impeachment may be exposed as leaks and investigations soldier onThe Senate trial of Donald Trump has arrived at its preordained conclusion. The president has begun a victory lap to celebrate impunity and settle scores with a long list of enemies headed by Mitt Romney, while the Democrats return to their ill-starred primaries. But there are good reasons to believe that Ukraine, the reluctant focus of the impeachment battle, will continue to haunt US politics for some time to come.Trump’s factotum, Rudy Giuliani, called on Wednesday for a redoubling of efforts to mine the country for damaging information about Joe Biden and his son, Hunter – the original sin that first launched impeachment saga. Giuliani was joined by two Republican senators, Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson, who sought to demonstrate their fealty by calling for Hunter Biden, who landed a job on a Ukrainian energy firm during the Obama administration, to be investigated for using government-funded travel for business reasons.On the other side of the barricades, Jerry Nadler, the Democratic chair of the House judiciary committee, said he expects to continue the investigation of Trump’s actions towards Ukraine, irrespective of the Senate’s acquittal, and would likely issue a subpoena for John Bolton, who became the dog that didn’t bark at Trump’s trial. Through selected leaks of his forthcoming memoir, the former national security adviser made clear he could provide damaging eye-witness testimony on Trump’s efforts to extort political favours from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, by blocking military assistance and a White House invitation. The Republican majority in the Senate voted not to hear what he had to say, even though he offered to testify in response to a subpoena.It is unclear how Bolton would respond to a House subpoena now the impeachment trial is over. He vowed to resist a summons from the Democrat-run chamber before, and Adam Schiff, the lead House prosecutor told MSNBC on Wednesday night that his team approached Bolton’s lawyer after the Senate voted against witnesses to ask if he would submit an affidavit under oath, and he refused. It does look increasingly as though the most famous mustache in geopolitics will try to hold on to his secrets until his memoir is published.> Bolton has a very sharp memory and he could deploy some embarrassing anecdotes, if he’s pushed far enough> > Mark GroombridgeMark Groombridge, who worked alongside Bolton for 15 years inside and outside government, said he now sees Bolton in a new light and predicts Bolton will take the most lucrative path.“I never knew him to be materialistic prior to this, and I’ve always thought his primary goal was to get his policy views out there,” Groombridge said. “But he had a chance to do that, to present the Senate with information, and he chose not to do so. There is only one logical conclusion … he’s trying to sell books.”Bolton’s White House successor, Robert O’Brien, said on Wednesday that the memoir was still being reviewed for classified content and that he would be contacted in the next few days. If the White House tries to tie up the potentially explosive book with red tape, Bolton could be expected to fight his way through the courts. Groombridge argued such delaying tactics would not work for long.“I’m highly skeptical that Bolton would be stupid enough to include anything classified on an operational level,” he said, adding that any attempt to muzzle Bolton could backfire badly on the Trump camp.“Revenge will not be his primary revenge, but he is human, and he will defend himself. Let’s be clear,” the former adviser said. “Bolton has a very sharp memory and … he could deploy some embarrassing anecdotes, if he’s pushed far enough. And quite frankly I can’t say I would blame him.”These are just some of the Ukrainian shoes still to drop. There is a whole cupboard more of them waiting to crash down.The White House has managed to keep secret a slew of emails between officials last spring and summer – the period when military aid to Ukraine was being held up and Zelenskiy was being lent on. But they are beginning to leak out. CNN reported on Wednesday that emails from Pentagon officials showed they were trying rush Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine last July and were completely stunned when they were blocked out of the blue by Trump.The Centre for Public Integrity is, meanwhile, planning to challenge the White House lawyer’s claim of presidential privilege in court on Friday next week, arguing: “The public is entitled to know in detail how the government was struggling to carry out a presidential order that many officials and experts felt violated the law.”Meanwhile, Washington has yet to hear a full account from Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, Giuliani’s Soviet-born associates from Florida, who were accomplices in a plot to get rid of the US ambassador to Kyiv, Marie Yovanovitch, who was proving an obstacle to Giuliani’s political objectives. They are facing charges for campaign finance violation and potentially further charges. Parnas has already shown he will not be thrown under a bus alone, and has told some of his story to the press. There are signs Fruman might follow suit, now Trump has distanced himself from the duo with whom he once sat down for convivial dinners and posed for a multitude of thumbs-up photos.“I think Fruman and Parnas have the sense right now that they are going to be the scapegoats and Rudy is going to be protected, because Rudy is in a much stronger position to do huge damage to Trump,” said Scott Horton, a US lawyer who has worked extensively in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. “And I think their response is going to be to say: Oh, no, no, we can do terrible damage to Trump.”If the House of Representatives pursues Parnas and Fruman, the trail is likely to lead to another character in the affair, who has thus far stayed mostly in the wings, Dmitry Firtash. Firtash is a Ukrainian energy tycoon with close ties to the Kremlin who is fighting extradition to the US on bribery and racketeering charges. He has said Parnas and Fruman approached him last summer to ask for assistance in finding compromising material on the Bidens, raising further questions on the role of Russian money in financing the dirt collection effort against Biden.The intricacy of the web of connections poses a serious problem for the Democrats, however. The further they descend into hard-to-pronounce Russian and Ukrainian rabbit holes, the greater the risk of appearing to be obsessives and sore losers. Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, was reluctant to pursue impeachment in the first place and would now prefer to pivot to bread-and-butter campaign issues. But she may not be able to stop the drip-feed of new revelations and the instinct among other Democrats to expose the hollowness of Trump’s acquittal.

In the last two days we've seen starkly different approaches to politics and leadership from the Republican Party's last two presidential nominees. The catch: the one acting presidential is not the man who occupies the White House. Instead, what we should want — and in fact demand — from our president is the behavior modeled by Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) in deciding to vote to convict President Trump, and not the style that animated Trump's State of the Union Address.On Tuesday, Trump delivered the most partisan, divisive, red-meat filled State of the Union address in recent memory. At the beginning, as he listed off the achievements of his administration, he made sure to do it by contrasting with the Obama administration. He also ripped Democratic-run states like California. Not surprisingly given Trump's track record, the speech included outright lies — like his claim that "we will always protect patients with pre-existing conditions — that is a guarantee," even as his administration sues to have the Affordable Care Act ruled unconstitutional, which would eliminate the legal protection for Americans with pre-existing conditions.The speech also hit on a full panoply of hot button cultural issues, from gun rights to abortion to even school prayer, a topic that the last Republican President George W. Bush, does not appear to have mentioned in any of his eight State of the Union addresses. And Trump's speech included a dystopian segment on immigration and so-called sanctuary cities that included a graphic description of a "gruesome spree of deadly violence" purportedly carried out by an undocumented immigrant (an "illegal alien" in Trump's words, using the most inflammatory term possible).Maybe the capstone: awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, to controversial, conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh — a path blazer to be sure, but one considered to be a force for spreading bigotry, hatred, and division by most liberals, with ample evidence to support their contention.Yes, the speech included soaring lines touting the state of affairs like the invocation that, "America's future is blazing bright," or the claim that "our economy is the best it has ever been." And true, Trump also devoted time to touting gains in African-American communities — thanks to "Opportunity Zones"— and to things like combatting opioid addiction, criminal justice reform, fixing America's broken infrastructure, and tackling prescription drug prices that had appeal far beyond his conservative base.But the tone of the speech was harsh, and included far more barbs than the usual address, regardless of which party controlled the White House. While every president gets digs in at opponents and criticizes initiatives they dislike, Trump has used far more inflammatory language and frames that seemed designed to inflame and "trigger the libs." While it would have made for a perfectly fine campaign speech, one that might've hit all of the right notes for building the sort of coalition that Trump will need for re-election, it felt like a missed opportunity to rise above our deep divisions, and try to bring Americans together.The State of the Union, with all its pomp and pageantry, offers a unique opportunity to do so — and Trump missed it.Contrast that to the actions of Romney, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012. Knowing that all of his Republican colleagues would vote to acquit Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, and knowing therefore that regardless of how he voted, Trump would be acquitted, Romney chose the most politically painful path.While other Republicans like Lamar Alexander, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins all claimed that Trump's behavior was wrong or inappropriate, they asserted that it didn't rise to the high bar for removal from office. The president and his most ardent Senate supporters even continue to insist that he did nothing wrong.Yet, there was Romney, in "the most difficult decision" of his life, voting to convict Trump on one article of impeachment because, "really, corrupting an election process in a democratic republic is about as abusive and egregious an act against the Constitution—and one's oath—that I can imagine. It's what autocrats do." Nonetheless, he voted to acquit on the second article, ensuring that he'd please no one. In short, Romney put country and facts over party and self-interest.The reaction was swift, with the president's son, Donald Jr., calling for him to be expelled from the Republican Party, and other voices, like talk radio host Buck Sexton, saying that Romney cared so much about conservatism that he was "willing to backstab the most effective defender of [a list of conservative priorities] and hand the lunatic democrat-socialists a win." Another conservative pundit, Todd Starnes, was even harsher, charging, "Mitt Romney is a chicken-hearted coward who lacks the decency or the man-parts to stand with this president."As angry as Republican officials and conservatives were with him, it is Romney who Americans should be thankful for today. We desperately need leaders who inspire confidence even from those who disagree with them, and whose willingness to put our national needs and the integrity of our political system ahead of their own best interests or the interests of their parties restores faith in our institutions.In many ways, this is Trump's greatest flaw — among many — as president. After triumphing over both the Republican and Democratic establishments in the 2016 election, Trump had a unique freedom to blaze a new political path. He could have partnered with Democrats on issues where he agreed like prescription drugs and infrastructure, and Republicans on issues where he favored their positions like immigration, climate change, and taxes. He could have forged an appeal to Americans across ideological lines, and freed elected officials from demands that they conform to orthodoxy.Instead, his instinct is to always play to his base, while never letting a slight go. Even at moments when protocol and history call for presidents to salve a wound or bring Americans together, Trump takes pot shots at his enemies and sows discord.This is toxic. It fuels polarization, gridlock, and deep cynicism among Americans. As we enter a presidential primary and then general election, we need a leader who can heal wounds, find common ground, and develop innovative solutions to the problems plaguing Americans of all races, creeds and ethnicities.We need someone more like Mitt Romney than Donald Trump.More stories from theweek.com How Trump's New York trusted traveler ban will punish the most conservative parts of the state How history will view Trump's impeachment Fox News' Brian Kilmeade is really mad that Romney would 'bring religion' into his impeachment decision