House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confirmed a dear colleague letter to Democrats that the House will send the article of impeachment of Donald Trump to the Senate on Monday, a "momentous and solemn day, as the House sadly transmits the Article of Impeachment."
"Our Constitution and country are well-served by our outstanding impeachment managers – lead manager Rep. Jamie Raskin and Reps. Diana DeGette, David Cicilline, Joaquin Castro, Eric Swalwell, Ted Lieu, Stacey Plaskett, Madeleine Dean, and Joe Neguse," she wrote. She also low-key slammed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who had tried to dictate the timing of the impeachment by telling Pelosi to wait until the last half of February to start the process. "The House has been respectful of the Senate’s constitutional power over the trial and always attentive to the fairness of the process," she wrote. "When the Article of Impeachment is transmitted to the Senate, the former President will have had nearly two weeks since we passed the Article."
Pelosi also informed her colleagues about security at the Capitol, informing them that "General Russel Honoré is preparing his assessment of the security of the campus, and we expect to have updates soon." She also reminded them that when they return, they'll vote on a rule change to impose fines on any member trying to bypass the metal detectors to get to the House chamber. The issue escalated this week when Rep. Andy Harris, a Maryland Republican, tried to bring a concealed gun onto the House floor, which is a violation of House rules. A number of Republicans have blown off the detectors and disrespected Capitol Police trying to enforce the new protocols.
"It is sad that this step is necessary," Pelosi wrote of the fines, "but the disrespectful and dangerous refusal of some Republican Members to adhere to basic safety precautions for our Congressional Community—including our Capitol Police—is unacceptable." Any House member will face a $5,000 fine if they refuse to cooperate with the screening. If they do it again, they'll pay a $10,000 fine. That money will be withheld from their paychecks—they can't use campaign funds or their expense accounts to pay them. The precedent for this new rule is the mask rule passed last week, which fines members not wearing masks on the floor—$500 on a first offense and $2,500 for a second offense.
Pelosi ends her missive on a hopeful note. "I am confident that, strengthened by the new Biden-Harris Administration and Senate Democratic Majority, we can restore healing, unity and optimism to our nation, so that—as Joe Biden quotes Seamus Heaney—'The longed for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history can rhyme.'"
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Friday morning that the impeachment of Donald Trump in the Senate is imminent. "I have spoken to Speaker Pelosi who informed me that the articles will be delivered to the Senate on Monday," and promised "It will be a full trial, it will be a fair trial." That's a rebuff to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who attempted to dictate the schedule to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Schumer in a proposal released late Thursday. McConnell argued that Trump needed time to plan a defense and that "At this time of strong political passions, Senate Republicans believe it is absolutely imperative that we do not allow a half-baked process to short-circuit the due process that former President Trump deserves or damage the Senate or the presidency."
A reminder: Trump sent a mob to the Capitol to hunt leadership, including former Vice President Mike Pence, down and kill them. Which is what the House impeachment managers intend to keep at the forefront. A Democratic source told Washington Post's Greg Sargent that their presentation will include "a lot of video of the assault on the Capitol … to dramatize the former president’s incitement role in a way that even GOP senators cannot avoid grappling with." Maybe that will keep them awake during the proceeding.
Campaign Action"If they‘re going to vote against it, they're going to vote against it knowing what actually happened," the aide told Sargent. "A lot of senators" were "very upset angry about what happened,” the aide continued, saying the managers' goal is to "remind them of why." Among those needing the reminder is Trump's caddy, Sen. Lindsey Graham. Remember Graham on January 6, in the aftermath of the attack when the Senate reconvened. He said the effort to challenge the Electoral College vote was "the most offensive concept in the world." He said that he and Trump had been on "a hell of a journey. I hate it to end this way. Oh, my god, I hate it." He said Trump's attempt to challenge the result in Congress was "not going to do any good." That's Graham, essentially admitting that Trump set the insurrection in motion.
Here's what Graham said just two weeks later. "For the party to move forward, we got to move the party with Donald Trump." So much for the end of the journey. "There’s no way to be a successful Republican Party without having President Trump working with all of us and all of us working with him. […] [W]e got a decent chance of coming back in 2022. But we can't do it without the President." He's not alone. There'a a whole cadre of Republicans senators who are actually threatening McConnell's leadership if he votes to convict Trump.
They're not going to be able to hide from what Trump did, the House Democrats will make sure of that. "The president of the United States committed an act of incitement of insurrection," Pelosi reminded everyone Thursday. "Just because he's now gone—thank God—you don't say to a president, 'Do whatever you want in the last months of your administration. You're going to get a get-out-of-jail card free' because people think you should make nice, nice, and forget that people died here on Jan. 6."
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) became visibly uncomfortable in an interview on Thursday as she twice refused to say if the Senate should hold an impeachment trial for Donald Trump.
“There’s a Constitutional process that’s underway and you know that is something that the Senate is gonna determine,” Cheney said while appearing on Fox News.
“I think that … again we all need to take a step back and recognize that the fragility of our system, the security, the survival of our republic depends upon making decisions — that have to do with things like the attack that we saw on Jan. 6 — that are separate from the party that can never be partisan … ” she added.
The House voted to impeach Trump for a second time last week, and Cheney was one of ten Republicans who voted in favor of his impeachment, saying that she believes he “lit the flame” of the Capitol riot.
Related: House Republicans Call For Cheney’s Removal From GOP Conference Chair After Impeachment Vote
Fox News host Bill Hemmer pointed out that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) “still has the article. If she so chose she could probably keep it. Would you support that now?”
“They’re going to have to decide what the next steps are here. Of course the Senate will have to decide how they’re going to run the trial,” Cheney said, adding that former Vice President Mike Pence deserves “tremendous praise and our gratitude for standing firm for his Constitutional oath, for doing what he knew was right.”
The third highest ranking Republican in the House then said that it was time to “come together as a party now to move forward” and that the GOP caucus must focus its energies on “fighting against the kind of policies” now being advanced by President Joe Biden and a Democratic-controlled Congress. Cheney concluded by calling for a “positive agenda of hope and opportunity.”
Related: If Republicans Put America First, They’ll Remove Liz Cheney, Not Donald Trump
This comes as calls are growing for Cheney to resign from her leadership position in the House, but she was defiant when she was questioned about this.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “We’re going to have these discussions inside the conference. We have differences of opinion about a whole range of issues including about this one.”
This piece was written by James Samson on January 21, 2021. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.
Read more at LifeZette:
Carlson Insists Troops Being Used for Optics
Liz Cheney Voting To Impeach Trump Backfires On Her As She’s Censured By Wyoming Republicans
Shep Smith Blasts Former Fox News Colleagues For Spreading ‘Disinformation’ – ‘I Don’t Know How Some People Sleep At Night’
The post Liz Cheney Squirms As She Twice Refuses To Say If Senate Should Hold Impeachment Trial For Trump appeared first on The Political Insider.
The minority leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, is getting threats from his conference over what they perceive to be his abandonment of their one true leader, Donald Trump. Though only one is dumb enough to do so publicly, rather than anonymously.
"'No, no, no,' Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican and Trump ally, told CNN when asked if he could support McConnell if he voted to convict Trump, calling such a vote a 'dangerous precedent' and adding: 'I don't even think we should be having a trial.'" (You knew it was him, didn't you.) Another, asked the same question, told CNN "If he does, I don't know if he can stay as leader." This is after McConnell's remarks Tuesday on the floor, when he said "The mob was fed lies. […] They were provoked by the President and other powerful people. And they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like. But we pressed on."
Campaign ActionAccording to Sen. Mitt Romney, McConnell told Republicans to "vote your conscience." The Utah Republican said that McConnell "has not in any way tried to pressure folks to go one way or another." That's not enough for Johnson and the more circumspect Republicans who aren't showing their hands right now. They want him to fight the upcoming trial and protect their leader. So the old days of the Republican civil war between Trump and McConnell are back. Which is fun.
The part that isn't fun is that these Republicans are still downplaying the insurrectionist attack of January 6, when the lives of their colleagues—and former Vice President Mike Pence!—were very much threatened. Republican Rep. John Katko, the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee and one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach, has hinted at just how dangerous the situation was without revealing any classified information he's received in intelligence briefings.
"I've had a lot of classified briefings on it, and it's deeply troubling," Katko said in an interview with local press this week. "I was left with a profound sense that it was much worse than people realized." Bad enough that he is behind the effort to create a 9/11 type commission that has subpoena power to investigate. "There are a lot of unanswered questions here, from possible security lapses to who was involved and when they were involved," Katko said. "We need to have a full stem to stern look back on this to see what happened, how it happened, the sequence of events, who contributed to it, and how we make sure it never happens again." McConnell would have also been getting these briefings, and so would Johnson, who is the outgoing chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
McConnell is smart enough to recognize the threat to the Republican Party—including losing lots and lots of funding from big donors who don't want to be associated with the rabble that tried to overthrow Congress—posed by the insurrection and its aftermath. There will be an aftermath because there will be a commission that investigates it. There will also be more arrests and more court proceedings that uncover what happened behind the scenes. Johnson hasn’t caught up with that eventuality yet.
On his way out the door, right before it hit him in his ass, twice-impeached madman Donald Trump said, “Have a good life. We will see you soon.” What might’ve been a throwaway line from a person incapable of surrendering the limelight received added context when The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had discussed starting a new “Patriot Party” with his aides—a five-alarm fire that has Republicans panicking and Democrats licking their chops. In fact, it might be a major factor as Senate Republicans struggle with how to handle the impeachment trial.
And yet I wouldn’t bet on it ever happening.
First things first: Let’s stipulate that Trump never does anything for anyone except himself, and maybe Ivanka. While several Republicans would love to bask in its light—the Paul Gosars and Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the right-wing MAGA/Q fever swamp—Trump’s entire reason for building this party would be for the benefit of the TRUMP brand, and nothing else. And how could it not? There is no such thing as a Trump ideology (beyond “owning the libs”). There isn’t a cause that motivates him, a higher calling or purpose. He clearly didn’t even like the job of president! He barely showed up to work, didn’t read briefing papers, watched television all day, and said the dumbest shit ever said by a president … and that includes eight years of George W. Bush!
All Trump cared about was the title, being the Big Man with his airplane and taxpayer-funded Big House and his precious bully pulpit, which he used to, well, bully people. For example, at a reelection rally in Ohio, Trump wasn’t making a case based on how he had improved people’s lives, or a policy vision for a second term (a question he was repeatedly asked during the campaign and he could never answer). Nay, he could only focus on the perks of being president. “[Air Force One has] more televisions than any plane in history! They’ve got televisions in closets, in bathroom, on the floor, on the ceiling.”
So what would being a member of the Patriot Party entail beyond the further aggrandizing and enrichment of Trump himself?
Forget any broader strategy of pressuring Republicans, again, on policy grounds. Trump is too stupid to formulate any real strategy, and too aloof to care about any outcome beyond “they better kiss my ring” and “send me more money to save America.” That last part may actually loom large. Trump saw the $200 million that he raised for his big “fight the steal” lie, and he wants more. His real estate empire is on the verge of collapse, with banks refusing to do further business with him. Mainstream television isn’t going to give him another show to bail him out financially. The MAGA rubes are his last chance. And sure, campaign finance law prohibits candidates from enriching themselves from campaign contributions, but since when has Trump cared about the law? He’d do what he wants and dare a toothless Federal Elections Commission (FEC) to do something about it. And if the FEC did act on it, he’d tie it up in the courts for years.
Remember, Trump is a guy who couldn’t manage to get a platform for his own Republican Party convention—are we really going to pretend that his Patriot Party would have one?
So what would the actual impact of this party have on elections? If smartly set up (ha ha), it might function as the Working Families Party, which endorses in primaries and supports candidates who back its agenda. Or maybe like the Democratic Socialists—again, focusing heavily on primaries, mostly on friendly territory, trying to push Republicans closer to Trump. There could be a “Patriots caucus” in the House that would push Q conspiracies, Putin’s agenda, and whatever other inanities whip up its white supremacist base.
At the presidential level, imagine Trump going on his own (or, hilariously, whoever emerged from the Patriot Party primary process—Don Jr. or Ivanka), splitting off critical votes from the mainstream Republican Party. If Republicans lost even 10% off their toppling (or flip it around: Trump got the bulk of base Republican support, 90% of it), this is what the electoral map would look like with a split right:
Furthermore, Alaska and South Carolina would be competitive. And you can believe that the right-on-right rhetorical violence would be fierce in such a contest. The fireworks from a Ben Sasse vs. Donald Trump matchup could even render the Democrats an afterthought, with Joe Biden waltzing easily to reelection. It wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to us.
Which is why it is in Senate Republican (and minority, ha ha) Leader Mitch McConnell’s interest to nip this shit in the bud. His best way to do it? Conviction. He takes away Trump’s ability to run again, and he removes 98% of the any impetus Trump might have for this party. Will Republicans have to deal with pissed-off MAGA assholes for several years? Of course, but it should be pretty clear at this point that Republicans need some time in the wilderness to rethink who they are if they are going be competitive at the national level.
The demographic trends that flipped Arizona and Georgia this time aren’t ebbing. Republican Texas is next, and South Carolina and Mississippi three to four presidential cycles behind. Kansas doesn’t have the racial and ethnic diversity of other transforming states, but it has higher-than-average education levels and is also moving in the Democrats’ direction. All of those states would more than offset any Republican gains in the rust belt and Minnesota.
Just flipping Texas and North Carolina alone keeps a Republican Party wholly dependent on white non-college evangelical voters so far from a presidential majority that it is doomed to eternal minority status. Republicans need college-educated whites (both urban and suburban), and they need to do better with growth demographics (Asian, Black, Latino, and Muslim). Trump Republicanism isn’t going to get that done.
What’s worse, the GOP advantage in the Senate will erode over time. Arizona and Georgia both went from two Republican senators to two Democratic ones seemingly overnight (though it took a decade of hard organizing to make it happen, of course). Texas came close to flipping a seat, and Democrats will hold those seats before long.
Susan Collins won’t be around forever in Maine. That seat will eventually be Democratic. South Carolina and Mississippi will be more competitive in the next two decades. Statehood for Washington, D.C. and maybe Puerto Rico would further erase their built-in advantages. And again, if Republicans retreated to a white evangelical base, they could still hold an easy 30-40 Senate seats, representing a fraction of the U.S. population, but that’s not going to get them a majority.
On the other hand, if Republicans excise the Trump cancer, wander in the wilderness for one to two presidential cycles, and start winning back college whites while eating away at Democratic dominance with voters of color, then you have a national party once again.
By all indications, that’s where McConnell’s head seems to be. He’s done playing with Trump and his cult: “The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people." It doesn’t hurt that conservative mega-donors and corporate PACs are refusing to donate to Republicans until they clean house of the insurrectionists.
So for conservatives suddenly in danger of losing control of their party to American fascists, that might not be a bad course of action. They had a good run, got themselves an ill-gained 6-3 Supreme Court majority, some nice tax cuts, a few wars, and lots of environmental degradation and higher global temperatures. None of that would’ve been possible with a truly democratic America, one in which the Senate actually reflected people, not cow country, and one in which presidents got popularly elected by a majority of the American people, not just a handful of battleground states.
And sure, it led to an actual insurrection and occupation of the U.S. Capitol by American Nazis, but all in all, I’m sure they’d do it all over again. It’s just that the bill has come due, and they now have to pay the price.
Then again, they can roll the die some more. They can gamble that a deplatformed Trump won’t have anywhere near the juice to maintain his level of influence. They can gamble that they can still keep control of the Trump-only hidden deplorable crowd, that it was just a few “bad apples” and antifa infiltrators who caused the Capitol insurrection. They can guess (with good reason) that Trump is incapable of managing anything well, and that his party wouldn’t be any different. Remember, this is the guy who bankrupted a casino. This is a guy whose most successful investment is the one he had nothing to do with. He’s the guy who surrounds himself with hucksters and grifters like Steve Bannon, Corey Lewandowski, and Brad Parscale.
They can try to blow kisses at Trump and hope it keeps him (and his MAGA/Q adherents) satisfied enough to keep him in the fold. This is the Sen. Lindsey Graham approach. "I hope people in our party understand the party itself. If you're wanting to erase Donald Trump from the party, you're gonna get erased," Graham said on Fox News. "Most Republicans like his policies, a lot of Republicans like his style. A lot of people are disappointed with him personally at times but appreciate the outcomes he's achieved for our country." Maybe if they stroke his ego enough, Trump will be stay happy until he loses interest and heads off to the golf course.
And is there really that much danger? Trump can’t tweet his threats, and he doesn’t have a White House press office to distribute his proclamations. He was never able to generate small-dollar donations for other candidates, including his preferred primary choices. (Not that Trump would ever direct his supporters’ dollars anywhere but into his own pocket.) And anyone betting that this party will ever get off the ground and have enough juice to seriously impact Republican politics would be taking one hell of a risk. I wouldn’t take that bet. Trump just doesn’t have a track record of success.
But for Republicans, it’s an existential question: Do they cut the Trump cancer out, wander in the wilderness for a few cycles, then rebuild in the image of today’s America (more diverse, more educated, more secular), or do they keep going down the same path that cost them the House, the Senate, the White House, and the critical support of key growth demographics (not to mention, Arizona, Georgia, and soon, Texas), while at the same time remaining beholden to the whims of an egotistical madman?
If I were them, I’d rip off the Band-Aid and start rebuilding today.
The second impeachment trial of Donald Trump in the U.S. Senate is likely to be a real trial, unlike the first time around when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans conducted a sham process, refusing to hear witnesses and refusing to consider the gravity of Trump's crimes. That's changed, now that their place of work—their essential home—has been defiled by an insurrectionist mob incited by Trump. That the impeachment hearings will go forward this time was made clear Tuesday by none other than McConnell, when he stated on the floor "The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people."
Despite McConnell's essential granting of the validity of the charges against Trump and recognition that the process will proceed, there will still be Republicans and Trump apologists who will argue that the Senate shouldn't continue because Trump is already gone—variations on the supposed "unity" theme we have been hearing since January 6 and the violent, armed, deadly insurrection Trump instigated. Some will argue that the Senate cannot try a former president for acts during his or her presidency. Most nonpartisan experts have called that idea bunk, but now we have the pretty darned definitive conclusion of the Congressional Research Service, which looks at all the scholarship and all the precedent, and concludes that it is well within the power of Congress to convict a departed official and that "even if an official is no longer in office, an impeachment conviction may still be viewed as necessary by Congress to clearly delineate the outer bounds of acceptable conduct in office for the future."
The attorneys writing at Congressional Research Service start at the beginning. "As an initial matter, a number of scholars have argued that the delegates at the Constitutional Convention appeared to accept that former officials may be impeached for conduct that occurred while in office," they write. "This understanding also tracks with certain state constitutions predating the Constitution, which allowed for impeachments of officials after they left office." That's following the precedent of British law and practice, which included the impeachment of the former governor-general of Bengal Warren Hastings, impeached two years after his resignation and while the Constitutional Convention was actually happening. The Framers were aware of this while it was happening, and in crafting the impeachment articles did depart from some British precedent—for example requiring a two-thirds rather than simple majority vote for conviction—but they didn't explicitly restrict Congress's power to convict a departed official.
There's the plain text of the Constitution, however, which doesn't really definitively say one way or the other. "The President, Vice President and all Civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment … and Conviction." Then there's the other part: "judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States [emphasis added]," which follows from removal from office. How could you disqualify an already-departed and deserving official from holding future office if you couldn't impeach them first? As one scholar argued all the way back in the 1920s, "an official's resignation following an initial impeachment by the House but before conviction in the Senate may not 'deprive the people of the full measure of the protection afforded them' through the additional remedy of disqualification."
What was in the Framer's heads isn't too hard to divine, either. They told us. CRS relates this: "President John Quincy Adams, who, during debate on the House's authority to impeach Daniel Webster for conduct that occurred while he had been Secretary of State, said in relation to his own acts as President: 'I hold myself, so long as I have the breath of life in my body, amenable to impeachment by this House for everything I did during the time I held any public office.'" There's also the precedence of the 1876 impeachment of Secretary of War William Belknap for, essentially, bribery—accepting payments in return for making an appointment. Belknap resigned hours before a House committee determined there was "unquestioned evidence of malfeasance," but the committee recommended impeachment anyway, despite his resignation. The House debated moving forward, and ultimately approved the resolution, without objection. The Senate debated and deliberated on the issue of whether he could be tried in the Senate as a former official for more than two weeks, and ultimately "determined by a vote of 37 to 29 that Secretary Belknap was 'amenable to trial by impeachment for acts done as Secretary of War, notwithstanding his resignation of said office before he was impeached.'" That vote established the representation of an impeached former official being subject to a Senate trial. A majority voted to convict, but not a two-thirds majority.
What the CRS report does not go into deeply, and what would be the larger point of a Trump conviction, is the disqualification part. That would come in a simple majority vote following a successful conviction, and would prevent Trump from ever holding "any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States." They can't get to that part—the part that matters to McConnell and plenty of other Republicans—if they don't do the first part, convict.
McConnell's condemnation of Trump on Tuesday means little more than McConnell trying to create distance between himself and the man he—almost single-handedly—allowed to remain in a position in which he could raise an insurrection against McConnell's own branch. This could have been prevented if, one year ago, McConnell and Senate Republicans had offered even one word of rebuke to contain Trump. If at any point in the last four years McConnell had done anything to curtail Trump's worst instincts. Hell, if we wound the clock back to late summer 2016 when the entire intelligence community was warning congressional leadership that Russia was intervening in the election on Trump's behalf, when McConnell refused to let that information be made public. But I digress.
Yes, Trump can still be impeached, convicted, and barred from ever holding office again. That's if Senate Republicans care more about the country, about their own institution, about the future of their own party than about their next election and whether the MAGA crowd will primary them.
The first duty for Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on Wednesday once she’s officially Vice President Harris will be to swear in Alex Padilla, the successor to her Senate seat in California. She could also be swearing in Georgia's new senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, though that's a bit uncertain, depending on when Georgia can finish up certification of the election. (The deadline is Friday, but they're moving faster.) With that, Sen. Chuck Schumer becomes majority leader and Mitch McConnell has more time to cook up plots to stymie the Biden administration and Schumer. Officially, the two have determined a power-sharing agreement based on the precedent set in the 2001 Senate, which also split 50-50.
That agreement is expected to give Schumer and committee chairs the power of setting the schedule. The committee assignments will be split evenly, but Democrats will chair and have the power to set the agenda on committees. Tied committee votes on legislation or on nominations will probably default to the Democrats and advance to the floor, where Harris would be able to break ties. This agreement is roughly what staff has worked out thus far; the leaders are set to meet Tuesday to ink the final organizing resolution that will determine all that. They also need to work out the logistics of the coming impeachment trial of Donald Trump and coordinating that with the urgent votes on President-elect Joe Biden's Cabinet nominees. One old Senate hand, Jim Manley, has heard—presumably from contacts in the leadership team—that the staff negotiations "did not go as smoothly as published reports suggested." So it could be a rather interesting meeting. On the whole, though, procedural experts are saying, "Don't panic."
Adam Jentleson, former deputy chief of staff to Harry Reid and procedure guru tweeted: "it's fine. If Dems control the floor and gavels, and ties in committees advance bills or nominations to the floor, those are the powers that come with majority control." It's inconceivable that Schumer gives that away, and it would go against the 2001 precedent. "The functional reality of the Senate will not be noticeably different under this than it'd be if Democrats had a bigger majority," Jentleson continued. The two leaders, Schumer and McConnell, will hash out the organizing resolution that determines all this. It will require 60 votes to pass and could be subject to filibuster if someone really wants to raise hell—presumably Rand Paul or Ted Cruz.
There are other outstanding questions about things like subpoena power, but those things will be determined by the committees and the power-sharing agreements worked out by them, which can also change as the committee moves along depending on how much the committee chair wants it. At Judiciary in the past couple of years, Sen. Lindsey Graham was happy to ignore committee rules or change them on the fly to shove through Trump nominees.
There will be complications because Republicans are awful, and Mitch McConnell. The even split gives the so-called moderates—Democrat Joe Manchin and Republicans Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins—outsized power. There is, however, always the threat that Democrats will get so frustrated with obstruction that even Manchin will get to the point of nuking the last vestiges of the filibuster. Both Schumer and McConnell are going to be counting on 100% loyalty among their members, and they're going to be counting on 100% attendance to succeed with their agendas, and neither can probably expect it. But as it stands now, the arrangement shaping up between the leaders is standard and not yet anything to get worked up over.
The House has just impeached Donald Trump for the second time following a violent insurrection by his supporters that endangered the lives of Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress. Trump got into the White House to begin with despite losing the popular vote in 2016, but went on to pack the federal courts with lifetime judges, including appointing one in three Supreme Court justices. The recent Republican Senate majority, which refused to rein in Trump’s abuses after his first impeachment, was elected with 20 million fewer votes than the Democratic minority.
You don’t have to look far or hard for evidence of the flaws in U.S. democracy. But in thinking about how to fix it, it’s helpful to have a framework for understanding what’s going on here—the roots of the problems and how deep they go. Political scientist Douglas Amy offers a start on that with Second Rate Democracy, a website laying out 17 ways the U.S. lags behind other major western countries on democracy.
In the introduction, Amy notes that:
- Besides Denmark, no other advanced democracy follows the U.S. example and appoints Supreme Court justices for life – all now have mandatory term limits or age limits for justices.
- None use an Electoral College that allows a minority of voters to choose its chief executive.
- Most use different voting systems that make gerrymandering impossible and create more representative multi-party legislatures.
- None have anything like our misrepresentative Senate that gives the 40 million voters in the 22 smallest states forty-four seats, while giving 40 million Californians two seats.
- Nearly all have rejected our conflict-prone separation-of-powers model of government and have chosen instead a more cooperative parliamentary system that avoids the legislative gridlock that plagues our government.
- And all rely much more on public money, not private money from rich organizations and individuals, to fund their election campaigns.
Amy offers a framework for assessing the health of democracies, from majority rule and fair representation to the rule of law, political equality, and public participation. To fix the problem, we need to understand the problem. This is one resource for doing so.