WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump became the third president in history to be impeached Wednesday after a bitterly divided House formallycharged him with “high crimes and misdemeanors” over his request to Ukraine to investigate a political rival.
After a daylong debate marked by fiery recriminations, lawmakers voted largely along partylines in favor of impeachment, reshuffling American politics at a time when voters were already profoundly divided over the nation’s leadership and direction.
Democrats and Republicans disagreed sharply over the president’s actions, the ramifications of the historic vote, and each other’s motives in either defending Trump or prosecuting the case against him. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., stepped to the dais at one point to chide Republicans for what he described as choosing party over country.
“Many of my colleagues appear to have made their choice to protect the president, to enable him to be above the law, to empower this president to cheat again as long as it is in the service of their party and their power,” the House Intelligence Committee chairman said. “They have made their choice and I believe they will rue the day that they did.”
Republicans claimed Democrats were grasping for any excuse to undermine an unconventional president who unexpectedly and narrowly won election in 2016 against Hillary Clinton. They repeatedly described the process used in the run up to the vote as unfair, sidestepping the fact that the White House rebuffed invitations to take part.
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“One week before Christmas, I want you to keep this in mind,” Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., told his colleagues during the debate. “Pontius Pilate afforded more rights to Jesus than the Democrats have afforded this president.”
Will the Senate remove Trump?
The Democratic-led House approved 230-197 the first article of impeachment accusing Trump of abusing his power by asking Ukrainian officials to announce investigations that would benefit his reelection. Minutes later, the House approved a second article, voting 229-198 to charge Trump with obstructing the congressional investigation into that request.
Though the historic votes ended a hurried effort by Democrats to advance impeachment articles before the end of the year – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi launched the inquiry into Trump’s actions less than three months ago – it will kick off an exceptionally rare trial in the Senate to determine whether the president will be removed from office.
Republican leaders expect that trial to begin next month,though Pelosi was noncommittal during a press conference after the vote about when the House would send the articles to the Senate for their review.
In an emotional moment during that press conference, Pelosi raised the late Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat and former chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform who died in October.
“We did all we could, Elijah, we passed the two articles of impeachment,” Pelosi said. “The president is impeached.”
Speaking earlier on the House floor, Pelosi said the vision of the nation conceived by the Founding Fathers was “under threat” from the White House.
“He gave us no choice,” Pelosi said.
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Impeachment, which Pelosi and other Democratic leaders initially resisted, could also have consequences for the 2020 election, where a field of candidates angling to unseat Trump have sought to focus the nation’s attention on health care, immigration and education while tiptoeing around the constitutional dramas unfolding in Washington. Trump is betting impeachment will sour swing voters on Democrats for years to come.
Trump’s response: Defiance
As if to underline that point, Trump remained defiant throughout the day, accusing Democrats of “atrocious lies” and an “assault on America” in a series of tweets. The president, who did not take questions from reporters throughout the day, left the White House before the impeachment votes, departing Washington for a campaign rally in the presidential battleground state of Michigan.
Trump took the stage in Battle Creek just as the House began voting, setting up an extraordinary split screen image for cable news networks.
“It doesn’t really feel like we’re being impeached,” Trump said as the votes were being tallied during the first article of impeachment. “We did nothing wrong and we have tremendous support in the Republican Party.”
After initially sticking to rally talking points, Trump abruptly relayed one of the votes to the crowd and embarked on an extended criticism of Democrats.
“This lawless partisan impeachment is a political suicide march for the Democrat party,” he said. “Have you seen my polls in the last four weeks?”
Within the West Wing, aides went about their regular duties in a mood of grim defiance, holding meetings and calls while occasionally glancing at banks of television screens where the debate played. They had anticipated this day for weeks, some said, and have felt under siege since Trump moved into the White House in early 2017.
Others said they wanted the House to get it over with and send the impeachment case to the Republican-led Senate, where Trump is expected to be acquitted.
Senior White House aide Kellyanne Conway attended a Republican Senate luncheon to discuss impeachment and the latest polls before appearing for a pair of media interviews and an impromptu news conference with reporters, during which she criticized the impeachment articles as “spare” and “specious.”
Underscoring the discord among voters, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released hours before the House vote found the nation evenly split, with 48% of Americans saying Trump’s actions demanded impeachment and removal from office and an equal 48% saying they disagree.
At the center of the impeachment is a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump asked his counterpart to look into a conspiracy about Democratic misdeeds in the 2016 election and, separately, the son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
Defying Trump’s orders not to testify, a handful of State Department and White House officials detailed for lawmakers in televised hearings how the administration held up nearly $400 million in military aid for Ukraine as leverage to pressure Zelensky to announce those investigations.
Voters get final say
Trump and his allies said the “perfect call” was an attempt to address corruption in Kyiv, not swing an election.
In that sense, the divisions on display recalled the atmosphere from 1998, when a Republican-led House impeached President Bill Clinton for lying under oath to hide an affair with a White House intern. President Richard Nixon, by contrast, resigned in 1974 to avoid almost certain impeachment after he lost support from Republican defenders.
Past is prologue: The political ‘fire extinguisher’ of impeachment is more common
Throughout the day, Republicans argued the Founding Fathers would have condemned an impeachment playing out along partisan lines. Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., vowed Republicans would take that argument to voters in next year’s election.
“It is a matter for the voters, not this House. Not in this way,” Collins said. “The people of America see through this.”
John Fritze covers the White House. Follow him @jfritze.
Contributing: Courtney Subramanian, David Jackson, Michael Collins, Ledyard King, Maureen Groppe.
MONTEBELLO, Que. – The Bloc Québécois is ready to wheel and deal with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government in exchange for support during confidence votes now that the Liberal government’s confidence and supply agreement with the NDP has ended.
That support won’t come cheap, the Quebec-based Bloc said, and the sovereigntist party led by Yves-François Blanchet has already drawn up a list of demands.
In an interview ahead of the opening of Monday’s party caucus retreat in the Outaouais region, Bloc House Leader Alain Therrien said his party is happy to regain its balance of power.
“Our objectives remain the same, but the means to get there will be much easier,” Therrien said. “We will negotiate and seek gains for Quebec … our balance of power has improved, that’s for sure.”
He called the situation a “window of opportunity” now that the Liberals are truly a minority government after New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh tore up the confidence and supply deal between the two parties last week, leaving the Bloc with an opening.
While Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives have promised multiple confidence votes in the hope of triggering a general election, the Bloc’s strategy is not to rush to the polls and instead use their new-found standing to make what they consider to be gains for Quebec.
A Bloc strategist who was granted anonymity by The Canadian Press because he was not authorized to speak publicly stated bluntly that the NDP had officially handed the balance of power back to the Bloc. The Bloc is taking for granted that when a federal election is held in about a year or less, it will be a majority Conservative government led by Poilievre, whose party has surged in the polls for over a year and has been ahead in the rest of Canada for over a year.
Quebec won’t factor so much in that win, the source added, where the Bloc will be hoping to grab seats from the Liberals and where the Conservatives hope to gain from the Bloc.
“It’s going to happen with or without Quebec,” the source said. “They (the Conservatives) are 20 points ahead everywhere in Canada, with the exception of Quebec, and that won’t change … their (Conservative) vote is firm.”
It is not surprising that the Bloc sees excellent news in the tearing up of the agreement that allowed the Liberals to govern without listening to their demands, said University of Ottawa political scientist Geneviève Tellier.
“The Bloc only has influence if the government, no matter which one, is a minority,” she explained. “In the case of a majority government, the Bloc’s relevance becomes more difficult to justify because, like the other parties, it can oppose, it can hold the government to account, but it cannot influence the government’s policies.”
On the Bloc’s priority list is gaining royal recommendation for Bill C-319, which aims to bring pensions for seniors aged 65 to 74 to the same level as that paid to those aged 75 and over.
A bill with budgetary implications that comes from a member of Parliament, as is the case here, must necessarily obtain royal recommendation before third reading, failing which the rules provide that the Speaker of the House will end the proceedings and rule it inadmissible.
The Bloc also wants Quebec to obtain more powers in immigration matters, particularly in the area of temporary foreign workers, and recoup money it says is owed to the province.
The demands concerning seniors’ pensions and immigration powers are “easy, feasible and clear,” Therrien said.
“It’s clear that it will be on the table. I can tell you: I’m the one who will negotiate,” he added.
The Bloc also wants to see cuts to money for oil companies, more health-care funds for provinces as demanded by premiers and stemming or eliminating Ottawa’s encroachment of provincial jurisdictions.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 8, 2024.
FREDERICTON – New Brunswick‘s Liberals got a jump on the province’s coming fall election today with the official launch of their party’s campaign.
The kickoff, which took place in the Fredericton riding where Liberal Leader Susan Holt plans to run this time, came before the official start of the general election set for Oct. 21.
The Liberal platform contains promises to open at least 30 community care clinics over the next four years at a cost of $115.2 million, and roll out a $27.4 million-a-year program to offer free or low-cost food at all schools starting next September.
The governing Progressive Conservatives, led by BlaineHiggs, have so far pledged to lower the Harmonized Sales Tax from 15 per cent to 13 per cent if re-elected.
Political observers say the issues most affecting people in New Brunswick are affordability, health care, housing and education.
Recent polls suggest Higgs, whose leadership style has drawn critiques from within his caucus and whose policies on pronoun use in schools have stirred considerable controversy within the province, may face an uphill battle with voters this fall.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 8, 2024.
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will face a fretful and strained caucus in British Columbia Monday, with MPs looking for him to finally reveal his plan to address the political purgatory the party has endured for months.
Several Liberal MPs privately and publicly demanded they meet as a team after the devastating byelection loss of a longtime political stronghold in Toronto last June, but the prime minister refused to convene his caucus before the fall.
Their political fortunes did not improve over the summer, and this week the Liberals took two more significant blows: the abrupt departure of the NDP from the political pact that prevented an early election, and the resignation of the Liberals’ national campaign director.
Now, with two more byelections looming on Sept. 16 and a general election sometime in the next year, several caucus members who are still not comfortable speaking publicly told The Canadian Press they’re anxiously awaiting a game plan from the prime minister and his advisers that will help them save their seats.
The Liberals have floundered in the polls for more than a year now as Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives have capitalized on countrywide concerns about inflation, the cost of living and lack of available housing.
Though Trudeau hasn’t yet addressed all of his MPs en masse, he has spoken with them in groups throughout June and July and stopped in on several regional caucus meetings ahead of the Nanaimo retreat.
“We’re focused on delivering for Canadians,” Trudeau said at a Quebec Liberal caucus meeting Thursday.
He listed several programs in the works, including a national school food program and $10-a-day childcare, as well as national coverage for insulin and contraceptives, which the Liberals developed in partnership with the NDP.
“These are things that matter for Canadians,” he said, before he accused the NDP of focusing on politics while the Liberals are “focused on Canadians.”
Wayne Long, a Liberal MP representing a New Brunswick riding, says the problem is that Canadians appear to have tuned the prime minister out.
Long was the only Liberal member to publicly call for Trudeau’s resignation in the aftermath of the Toronto-St. Paul’s byelection loss, though several other MPs expressed the same sentiment privately at the time.
Long shared his views with the prime minister again at the Atlantic caucus retreat ahead of Monday’s meeting.
“I’m really worried the old ‘stay calm and carry on,’ which effectively is where we are, is not going to put us on a road to victory in the next election,” said Long, who does not plan to run again.
“If we’re going to mount a campaign that can beat Pierre Poilievre, in my opinion that campaign cannot be led by Justin Trudeau.”
Long fears a Trudeau campaign could lead to a Poilievre government that dismantles the prime minister’s nine-year legacy, piece by piece.
Long is one of several Liberal MPs who confirmed to The Canadian Press they do not plan to go the meeting in Nanaimo. But Mark Carney, the Bank of Canada governor whose name is routinely dropped around Ottawa as a possible successor to Trudeau as Liberal leader, will be in attendance.
He’s expected to address MPs about the economy and a plan for growth.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh’s decision to back out of the supply and confidence deal certainly complicates any calls for the prime minister to step aside and allow a new leader to face off against Pierre Poilievre in the next election, since that election could now come at any time.
“It makes a much more precarious situation, because Singh probably holds the keys to when that election could be,” said Andrew Perez, a longtime Liberal with Perez Strategies, who also called for Trudeau’s resignation earlier this summer.
“Maybe it presents an argument for the pro-Trudeau side to say that we need to stick with Trudeau, because there’s no time.”
But while some caucus members describe feeling frustrated by the political tribulation, Long insists that those who are running again aren’t yet feeling defeated.
Speaking about those in the Atlantic caucus, he said “to a person, they’re ready to fight. They’re they’re ready to go.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 8, 2024.
