Senate Republicans are preparing to acquit President Donald Trump — and convict the American political system.
Trump was never really on trial in the Senate. Not in the sense of a true trial, where the objective is to understand the truth. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made that clear from the outset. “Everything I do during this, I’m coordinating with White House counsel,” he said. “There’ll be no difference between the president’s position and our position as to how to handle this.”
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Rather, it was America’s political system that faced the true trial. And the truth was revealed.
Alexander is retiring this year. He’s a member of the Republican old guard, an elected official who remembers the Senate before it was broken by polarization, who yearns for the way things used to be.
It was the combination of institutional memory and the freedom offered by retirement that made Alexander such a closely watched vote. That is, itself, an unsettling fact: that retirement was necessary to even imagine the independence necessary for a typical Republican to break with party.
Pause to note the strangeness of the situation: Why should a vote to simply hear John Bolton’s testimony be understood as a break with the Republican Party? Viewed from another, more principled, angle, to vote to hear Bolton should have been understood as loyalty to party. Bolton had proven himself to his fellow Republicans through years and years of service. He’s been a far more loyal soldier in the Republican trenches than Trump.
But even that wasn’t enough.
It is worth parsing Alexander’s reasoning for voting against witnesses closely. In a long series of tweets, he laid out his argument. It rests on two main points.
First, Alexander says:
I worked with other senators to make sure that we have the right to ask for more documents and witnesses, but there is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the U.S. Constitution’s high bar for an impeachable offense.1/15
In other words, we don’t need to know what Bolton knows because we already know enough, and what we know is that Trump is guilty, and what he is guilty of is not impeachable.
The problem here is obvious: This is an argument for voting against conviction, not for voting against witnesses. We do not truly know what Bolton knows until we hear from him. So why not hear from him? What is Alexander doing this week that is so important he can’t spend a few days hearing firsthand testimony?
This tees up Alexander’s deeper argument:
The framers believed that there should never, ever be a partisan impeachment. That is why the Constitution requires a 2/3 vote of the Senate for conviction. Yet not one House Republican voted for these articles. 12/15
I want to say this as clearly as I can: This is not an argument against impeaching Donald Trump, or calling witnesses. This is an argument that nullifies the legitimacy of the impeachment power so long as the president’s party can maintain discipline.
The founders didn’t believe there would be a partisan impeachment because they believed America would resist political parties altogether. But the founders weren’t naive. They understood that American society would see factions, and those factions would engage in politics. In Federalist 65, Alexander Hamilton writes that impeachment “will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused.”
“In many cases it will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or on the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.”
In joining his Republican colleagues to vote against witnesses, to say nothing of conviction, how is it possible to avoid the conclusion that Alexander is regulating the process through the comparative strength of parties, rather than real demonstrations of innocence or guilt?
His argument sets up a closed loop of partisan tautology: No Republican can or should vote for impeachment because no Republican is voting for impeachment.
Bipartisanship isn’t a condition external to Alexander’s decisions. It is a condition that will be decided by Alexander’s decisions. He is making impeachment more partisan on the grounds that others made it more partisan before him.
Alexander goes on to say:
If this shallow, hurried and wholly partisan impeachment were to succeed, it would rip the country apart, pouring gasoline on the fire of cultural divisions that already exist. 13/15
As a kicker, this is darkly perfect. Alexander is voting for a shallower, more hurried impeachment trial partly on the grounds that the process has been … shallow and hurried.
At times, impeachment has felt like an experiment in which we keep layering on more absurd conditions to see what the Republican Party will accept.
What if Trump releases a call record in which he said Biden’s name repeatedly, directly to Ukraine’s president?
Not enough? Okay, What if we also have him tell Ukraine and China to investigate Biden on TV?
How about if we have a series of Republican foreign policy appointees testify to the House that he did it?
Still nothing? Wild.
Okay, how about this: We get John Bolton, hero of the American right, scourge of liberals, to say that he will testify, under oath, that he personally heard Trump say the aid was contingent on Ukraine going after the Bidens, and that he heard Trump say it earlier than anyone has yet known.
I mean, surely?
And still, nothing. Worse than nothing. As Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) put it, in response, Senate Republicans effectively voted to put cotton in their ears, so they wouldn’t have to hear what Bolton said.
What this reveals is that, in 2020, loyalty to Trump is what defines a Republican. It is also what defines a conservative, as CPAC, the leading conservative conference, made clear after Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) voted to hear Bolton’s testimony:
Richard Nixon wasn’t impeached over Watergate. He resigned. And the reason he resigned is that two Republican senators, Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott, alongside John Rhodes, the leader of the House Republicans, told him his party wasn’t going to stand by him.
Buried in this story is a fundamental reality about our political system: There is nothing automatic in our system of constitutional accountability. Nixon’s misdeeds did not automatically trigger impeachment, and it was not even the technical impeachment process that removed him from office. Our system is driven by what political parties choose to do.
So let me ask a question: Does anyone honestly and truly believe that if Watergate happened today, with this Republican Senate, that Nixon would’ve been forced to resign? Even Fox News doesn’t think so. Recall what Geraldo Rivera told Sean Hannity:
If you look at charts of party polarization in Congress, the Nixon impeachment comes near a low point in party polarization. American politics was not split between two parties that were internally united but divided against each other. It was split between two parties internally divided and so able to work with each other.
In my book,Why We’re Polarized, I tell the story of how that changed. But for our purposes here, the point is it did change, and we are now at a historic high point in party polarization.
That our system worked to stop Nixon is part of our national mythology. It is part of the story of American politics as successfully self-correcting. But if that story is no longer true, then what does that mean for American politics?
Impeachment is built atop the belief that Congress would be offended, as an institution, if the president were abusing power to amass power. It has no answer for a president abusing power in a way that amasses power not just for himself, but for his congressional allies. It has no answer for a political system in which a congressional majority recognizes it may lose power, even lose the majority, if they hold a president accountable, and so refuse to do anything of the sort.
Because make no mistake. Trump is not the last threat our system will face, and he is not the worst. He is clumsy and distractible. His moral compass is sufficiently broken that he cannot tell the difference between corruption and competition, and so he blurts out his schemes, believing them “perfect.” And yet the centrifugal pull he exerts on his party let his lawyer argue, in the well of the Senate, that so long as Trump believes that his reelection is in America’s interest, nothing he does to secure it can be impeachable:
That moment should have been a wake-up call to Senate Republicans. To hear the president’s handpicked lawyer make a case for functional despotism, a case that it is clear the president himself believes, should have shocked them into realizing what it is they were permitting.
But the fact that it did not shock them does not mean it cannot shock us.
The Constitution’s framers did their job, in their time. They designed a system of government that worked to call the country, with all our flaws and all our potential for greatness, into being. But they did not design a system of government that is working in our time. That is our job.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.
Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.
She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.
Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.
Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.
The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.
Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.
“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.
“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”
The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.
In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.
“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”
In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.
“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”
Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.
Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”
In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.
In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.
“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”
Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.
“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”
The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.
“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.
“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
