Last Week In Congress: How Cascadia’s U.S. lawmakers voted on Donald Trump’s removal

Good morn­ing! Here’s how Cascadia’s U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives vot­ed on remov­ing Don­ald Trump dur­ing the leg­isla­tive week end­ing Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 15th, 2021.

In the United States House of Representatives

IMPEACHING DONALD TRUMP FOR THE SECOND TIME: Vot­ing 232 for and 197 against, the House on Jan­u­ary 13th adopt­ed an arti­cle of impeach­ment (House Res­o­lu­tion 24) charg­ing Pres­i­dent Trump with “incite­ment of insur­rec­tion” for his role in prompt­ing a dead­ly assault on the Capi­tol on Jan­u­ary 6th by a vio­lent mob of his sup­port­ers. A Sen­ate tri­al on the arti­cle will be held after Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden takes office Jan­u­ary 20th.

The vote fol­lowed the House­’s impeach­ment of Trump in Decem­ber 2019 over his deal­ings with Ukraine, mak­ing him the only pres­i­dent to be impeached twice.

The arti­cle includ­ed word­ing from Sec­tion 3 of the post-Civ­il War 14th Amend­ment, which bars from future gov­ern­ment office any fed­er­al or state offi­cial who has “engaged in insur­rec­tion or rebel­lion” against the Unit­ed States or giv­en “aid or com­fort to the enemies.…”

All 222 Democ­rats in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives sup­port­ed the arti­cle and 197 of the 207 Repub­li­cans who vot­ed were opposed to it. The ten Repub­li­cans vot­ing for impeach­ment were Reps. David Val­adao of Cal­i­for­nia, Adam Kinzinger of Illi­nois, John Katko of New York, Peter Mei­jer and Fred Upton of Michi­gan, Antho­ny Gon­za­lez of Ohio, Tom Rice of South Car­oli­na, Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler and Dan New­house of Wash­ing­ton and Liz Cheney of Wyoming.

Dan New­house, R‑Washington, said: “There is no excuse for Pres­i­dent Trump’s actions. The pres­i­dent took an oath to defend the Con­sti­tu­tion against all ene­mies, for­eign and domes­tic. Last week, there was a domes­tic threat at the door of the Capi­tol, and he did noth­ing to stop it.”

Dan Bish­op, R‑North Car­oli­na, said the arti­cle dis­miss­es the pres­i­den­t’s right to free speech. “Con­gress can dis­ap­prove, revile, con­demn, even cen­sure, but you can­not, con­sis­tent with the rule of law, pun­ish that which the Con­sti­tu­tion’s 1st Amend­ment declares pro­tect­ed. If you do it, the vio­la­tors of duty to this Constitution…will be those who vote for this arti­cle of impeachment.”

A yes vote was to impeach the president.

	Vot­ing Nay (2): Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Russ Fulcher and Mike Simpson
	Vot­ing Aye (4): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzanne Bonam­i­ci, Earl Blu­me­nauer, Peter DeFazio, and Kurt Schrader Vot­ing Nay (1): Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Cliff Bentz
	Vot­ing Aye (9): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzan Del­Bene, Rick Larsen, Derek Kilmer, Prami­la Jaya­pal, Kim Schri­er, Adam Smith, and Mar­i­lyn Strick­land; Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler and Dan Newhouse Vot­ing Nay (1): Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers

Cas­ca­dia total: 13 aye votes, 4 nay votes

REMOVING PRESIDENT TRUMP BY 25TH AMENDMENT: Vot­ing 223 for and 205 against, the House on Jan­u­ary 12th passed a non-bind­ing res­o­lu­tion (House Res­o­lu­tion 21) call­ing on Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence to invoke 25th Amend­ment pro­ceed­ings to remove Pres­i­dent Trump from office.

Pence had already announced he would not do so.

Under Sec­tion 4 of the amend­ment, if the vice pres­i­dent and a major­i­ty of Cab­i­net mem­bers declare in writ­ing to the pres­i­dent pro tem­pore of the Sen­ate and speak­er of the House that the pres­i­dent “is unable to dis­charge the pow­ers and duties of his office,” the vice pres­i­dent imme­di­ate­ly becomes act­ing pres­i­dent with full exec­u­tive duties and powers.

Mary Gay Scan­lon, D‑Pennsylvania, said:

“Any oth­er pres­i­dent with an ounce of char­ac­ter would have resigned after see­ing the bloody con­se­quences [at the Capitol].”

“Any oth­er admin­is­tra­tion would have invoked the 25th Amend­ment long ago. I don’t care if the pres­i­dent incites a riot against Con­gress on his first day or the last day of his or her pres­i­den­cy, such an act is a crime against our gov­ern­ment much less against the peo­ple who are par­a­lyzed or killed in the attack. If a pres­i­dent can refuse to acknowl­edge [this] to Amer­i­can vot­ers, then incite a coup to stay in pow­er with­out pun­ish­ment, then our democ­ra­cy is lost.”

Tom McClin­tock, R‑California, said:

“The 25th Amend­ment specif­i­cal­ly address­es the inca­pac­i­ty of the pres­i­dent to dis­charge the duties of his office. It was nev­er intend­ed as a polit­i­cal weapon when Con­gress does­n’t like the way he dis­charges those duties… Every act we take builds a prece­dent for future acts. Once Con­gress asserts this new role as arm­chair psy­chi­a­trists and a new pow­er to equate intem­per­ate speech with func­tion­al dis­abil­i­ty, the most impor­tant pil­lars of our gov­ern­ment — sta­bil­i­ty, the rule of law and the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers — will frac­ture. It won’t affect this pres­i­dent, but it will stop future pres­i­dents from this day forward.”

A yes vote was to use the 25th Amend­ment to remove the president.

	Vot­ing Nay (2): Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Russ Fulcher and Mike Simpson
	Vot­ing Aye (4): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzanne Bonam­i­ci, Earl Blu­me­nauer, Peter DeFazio, and Kurt Schrader Vot­ing Nay (1): Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Cliff Bentz
	Vot­ing Aye (7): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzan Del­Bene, Rick Larsen, Derek Kilmer, Prami­la Jaya­pal, Kim Schri­er, Adam Smith, and Mar­i­lyn Strickland Vot­ing Nay (3): Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler, Dan New­house, and Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers

Cas­ca­dia total: 11 aye votes, 6 nay votes

Key votes ahead

The Sen­ate will debate the new admin­is­tra­tion’s nation­al secu­ri­ty nom­i­nees in the week of Jan­u­ary 18th, while the House sched­ule was to be announced.

Edi­tor’s Note: The infor­ma­tion in NPI’s week­ly How Cas­ca­di­a’s U.S. law­mak­ers vot­ed fea­ture is pro­vid­ed by Votera­ma in Con­gress, a ser­vice of Civic Impulse, LLC. All rights are reserved. Repro­duc­tion of this post is not per­mit­ted, not even with attri­bu­tion. Use the per­ma­nent link to this post to share it… thanks!

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