The focus of the political world today will be on the impeachment hearing in the House, which is expected to both start and commence today, and by every indication Pelosi has the votes to impeach Trump.

I noted last night that the vote to have the House urge Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment was a partisan one. It turns out that is not quite true, as one Republican congressman voted in favor of the motion: Kinzinger from IL-16, who as I noted previously has been openly critical of Trump in recent days. Many pundits feel like the timing of the release of Pence’s letter to Pelosi saying he wouldn’t invoke the 25th Amendment, coming as it did in advance of the vote, was designed to give Republicans cover to vote against the motion on the grounds that the motion was already known to be pointless given Pence’s stated position.

As I alluded to last night, I have sympathy here for Pence’s point of view. There are two constitutional mechanisms for having somebody else assume the powers of the Presidency in mid-term. One, the 25th Amendment, is designed for use by the Executive branch in situations where the President is incapable of performing the duties of the job. The other, impeachment, is designed for use by the Legislative branch in situations where the President has committed wrong-doing. From a precedential standpoint, impeachment clearly seems like the more appropriate of the two mechanisms to address Trump’s recent actions. It’s not like he’s incapable of performing the job – at least, not any more incapable than he ever was…

Having said that, the fundamental tension here is one of timing. If the House convicts today, it would be difficult under any circumstances to have a full-blown Senate impeachment trial before January 20th, and McConnell has already indicated that parliamentary considerations would prevent the trial from starting until the 20th. That has motivated the potential for using the 25th Amendment to resolve the timing problems associated with using impeachment, even though impeachment is the more appropriate mechanism absent practicality concerns.

To this point the general consensus has been that a post-inauguration Senate trial of an impeachment action that occurred in the House while Trump was in office is allowable, with the implication that a conviction could bar Trump from running for President in 2024. However this morning the Washington Post has an op-ed from Michael Luttig saying, no, that’s not the right way to read the Constitution.

Luttig, you might recall, was a serious candidate for the two Supreme Court seats that opened up in the summer of 2005, ultimately filled by Roberts and Alito. The next year, with his Supreme Court dreams apparently destined to go unfulfilled, he left the 4th Circuit to become chief legal counsel at Boeing, retiring from that post when he turned 65 in 2019. Luttig believes there is sufficient doubt about whether the Senate has the authority to convict someone who is no longer in office that, were Trump to be convicted by the Senate after January 20th, ultimately the Supreme Court would need to resolve the matter as a so-called case of first impression – a matter that has never before been litigated.

The House just passed the resolution urging Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment, on a the vote of 223-205 along partisan lines. The vote was essentially symbolic, as earlier in the evening Pence had released a letter to Pelosi saying he would not invoke the 25th Amendment. In his letter Pence makes the rather compelling argument that the 25th Amendment “is not a means of punishment or usurpation.”

And so we move tomorrow to the next stage, an impeachment vote. At this point at least 4 House Republicans have gone on record as saying they will vote for impeachment, and it seems likely there will be rather more than that.

Trump made his first public remarks in days today, and in characteristic fashion he asserted that his pre-riot rally speech on January 6th was “totally appropriate” and that this second impeachment, like the first one, was a “witch hunt” and “hoax.”

We’re still awaiting tonight’s House vote on the resolution asking Pence to immediately invoke the 25th Amendment, with the implied threat being that if Pence doesn’t do it then tomorrow the House will vote to impeach Trump. Remarkable, really, that on January 13th there could be an impeachment vote regarding conduct that happened on January 6th.

However there has been a lot of interesting reporting this afternoon:

• House Minority Leader McCarthy has supposedly indicated to his caucus that they GOP leadership will not “whip” tomorrow’s impeachment vote, allowing Republicans to vote their conscience.
• The #3 Republican in the House, Rep. Cheney, has just stated that she will vote in favor of impeachment.
• The current headline on the New York Times is “McConnell Said To Believe That Trump Committed Impeachable Offenses,” with reporting that McConnell “is pleased that Democrats are moving to impeach him, believing that it will make it easier to purge him from the party.”

Today, as the House reconvened, an attempt was made to use unanimous consent to pass a resolution calling upon Pence to immediately invoke the 25th Amendment. As expected, a Republican congressman intervened to withhold consent. The full House is expected to vote on the resolution tomorrow night, and it is expected to pass.

Assuming Trump remains in office the day after tomorrow, the House is expected to vote on an article of impeachment that evening, and once again it is expected to pass. As such, in about 48 hours’ time Trump will have become either the second President to resign from office, or (far more likely) the first President to become impeached by the House twice. There is a sense that some House Republicans are likely to support this impeachment, unlike the first impeachment for which the House vote attracted no Republican votes.

What happens after that remains unclear. Biden has reportedly asked Senate parliamentarians for clarity on whether the Senate might be able to pursue an impeachment trial in parallel with other business like confirming his Cabinet, instead of the trial necessarily crowding out all other Senate business.

Some have started to suggest that another potential course of action against Trump involves Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, a now-obscure clause originally intended to prevent Confederate rebels from serving in Congress after the end of the war. One legal scholar has suggested that an argument can be made that Trump has already ceased to be President under the terms of that amendment by virtue of the events of January 6th, which could serve as future legal grounds to disregard, say, any Presidential pardons issued after that date. A more mainstream view is that Congress could vote to indicate that it believes Trump’s actions violated this amendments, and then the issue would be thrown to the courts.

Today another Cabinet member resigned, namely acting DHS Secretary Wolf, although he did not cite the events of last week as an influence on his decision to resign several days early.

And Trump suffered two indignities in the past twenty-four hours that one imagines are close to his heart. First, the PGA of America announced that they were pulling the 2022 PGA Championship from the Trump-branded golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey. Second, today NFL coach Bill Belichick announced that he was turning down the opportunity to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Trump, after the honor had already been publicized. Keep in mind that in 2015 Belichick was named “most hated coach in the NFL” by Sports Illustrated. When Bill Belichick thinks you’re bad for his brand…

A relatively quiet weekend. With Trump having been banned from Twitter and most other social media platforms, the nation hasn’t heard from him all weekend. That hasn’t happened in, well, what feels like forever.

It is expected that tomorrow the House will start the ball rolling on a 2nd impeachment of Trump, although the outcome remains murky. Given that Senate rules in all likelihood preclude an impeachment trial from commencing before the inauguration, there have been suggestions that even if the House votes to impeach Trump in the next 10 days, the House may intentionally delay the transmittal to the Senate of the articles of impeachment. That would allow Biden and Senator Schumer to focus the proverbial “first 100 days” of the new administration on substantive matters, and then later pivot to the more symbolic task of holding an impeachment trial.

A number of companies, including a former employer of mine, have announced that their PACs will no longer make campaign contributions to those officials who voted against certifying the election results. That’s a start at the long task of turning the “sedition caucus” into political pariahs.

Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State who received three electoral college votes from faithless electors in 2016 (albeit all from electors pledged to Clinton rather than Trump, confusingly), announced that after last week he no longer considers himself a Republican.

One of my favorite albums as a teenager in the mid-80s was REO Speedwagon’s Wheels Are Turnin’. It’s best remembered today for the #1 hit “Can’t Fight This Feeling,” although personally I preferred the lesser hit singles “One Lonely Night” and “I Do’Wanna Know”. The album ends with the title track, whose opening stanza goes:

I’ve been sittin’ back quietly

Watchin’ as my spirit fades

As all of my attempts to do rightly

Get treated like some kind of terrorist raids

And then later the bridge, going into the chorus, goes:

When you’re cut down to the bone

You bleed but it heels

You’re hurt but still you must carry on

‘Cuz the wheels are turnin’…

I feel like that’s where we are right now.

My wife commented to me tonight that she actually felt more traumatic about events yesterday, the day after the insurrection, than she did the day of — because yesterday it seemed like all of these terrible things had happened and yet nothing was happening swiftly in reaction to it. But today, it seems like the wheels are turnin’ again.

Late yesterday Education Secretary DeVos announced that she would resign, effective today. There was criticism of her from the left today, to the effect that resigning from the Cabinet was an act of cowardice, relative to the alternative of remaining on the Cabinet and fighting to invoke the 25th Amendment. In response, there is reporting today that DeVos resigned after concluding that Pence was unwilling to pursue action under the 25th Amendment. Pence himself is maintaining radio silence on the subject.

Instead, momentum is building towards impeachment. Pelosi said in a letter today that if Trump does not resign immediately, the House will commence impeachment proceedings, reportedly on Monday. A draft article of impeachment has been released, where the sole article is “incitement of insurrection,” focusing on the events of January 6th but also bringing up the January 2nd call between Trump and Raffensperger (which in and of itself arguably represents grounds for impeachment) as relevant context.

Tonight the Washington Post has a story about a McConnell memo regarding how the Senate might respond to a new House impeachment action, and it’s fascinating. Apparently under Senate rules, it would require unanimous consent in order for the Senate to take up any “new business” next week, and one imagines there is at least one Republican Senator who could be convinced to object to starting an impeachment trial next week. As such, McConnell envisions that the earliest an impeachment trial could commence is an hour after Biden’s inauguration.

On the one hand, that means that the impeachment path would not lead to the eviction of a sitting President, which would mean Trump would remain in office for another 12 days, could still exercise his pardon power during that time, etc. Which could suggest impeachment is pointless.

Except, on some level the more important reasons to impeach Trump are: first, setting the precedent that this type of behavior is unacceptable; and second, making Trump ineligible to run for President in the future. And this is where delaying the trial until Trump is out of office might actually increase the likelihood that the necessary two-thirds majority of the Senate to convict could be obtained. One imagines there is a subset of Republican Senators who are concerned about the optics among their constituents of forcibly removing Trump from office, but might be willing to take symbolic action against Trump after his term was completed, particularly if doing so helped clear the Republican primary field for 2024…

Earlier today Senator Murkowski became the first Republican Senator to say that Trump should resign. Her interview also suggested that she is less than fully committed to remaining part of the Republican party.

Another productive piece of news today is that Twitter finally gave a permanent ban to Trump’s account. Also, Perdue finally conceded to Ossoff, about two days after media organizations had called the election.

Loeffler finally conceded to Warnock a couple of hours ago. At this point Warnock’s margin is over 79K votes, or 50.9-49.1%. Ossoff’s margin is now over 41K votes, or 50.5-49.5%. Assuming both races remain outside the recount threshold, Georgia is supposed to certify the special election results no later than January 22nd, or two days after the inauguration. As such, Biden may face a Republican-controlled Senate for the first day or two of his administration, not that that should matter much.

There has been lots of continued talk this afternoon about 25th Amendment action and/or impeachment, with Speaker Pelosi echoing Senator Schumer’s views from this morning. There is some reporting to the effect that Pence is not inclined to pursue a 25th Amendment course of action. Very recently the Wall Street Journal’s op-ed board published a surprisingly rational editorial, “Donald Trump’s Final Days,” calling on Trump to resign. The editorial also posits that “this week has probably finished [Trump] as a serious political figure” and “it is best for everyone, himself included, if he goes away quietly.”

Trump did release a video statement this afternoon, which included him acknowledging that “a new administration will be inaugurated on January 20th.” So, that’s something, I suppose.

Transportation Secretary Chao, who is of course Majority Leader McConnell’s wife, has announced that she will resign from the Cabinet on Monday in light of yesterday’s events.

My initial reaction was that her resignation was bad news, as it seemed to reduce the likelihood of successful 25th Amendment action by the Cabinet; but now that I see she isn’t actually resigning until Monday, it still leaves time for her to participate in a putsch. Right now there are only 12 confirmed Cabinet members (including Chao) and 3 acting Cabinet members, and there is some controversy over whether acting Cabinet members would get to vote.

Speaking of acting Cabinet members: After Acting DHS Secretary Wolf (who is abroad right now) called for Trump to condemn yesterday’s violence, Trump responded by announcing that he has withdrawn Wolf’s nomination to become permanent DHS Secretary. Which is purely symbolic, since the Senate had no intention of acting on that nomination before Biden takes over, but certainly is spiteful. The official White House position is that the withdrawal of the nomination is unrelated to Wolf’s comments; but, as the 46th (or will it be 47th?) President would say, “C’mon man!”

I suppose by this point I’m not blogging about the “election” per se, but about the potential for “regime change” in a more generalized sense… But it still seems connected enough to the election to continue with the “Election 2020” moniker.

A few minutes ago Senator Schumer, who I suppose we could call the Majority Leader-in-waiting after yesterday, said “this President should not hold office one day longer,” saying that Pence should invoke the 25th Amendment and, failing that, Congress should re-convene to impeach Trump.

At least one Republican Congressmen, Adam Kinzinger from the Illinois 16th (a ‘downstate’ district but whose scope includes Rockford and DeKalb), has also openly called this morning for invocation of the 25th Amendment.

Shortly before 4am Eastern time, Congress officially completed the counting of the electoral votes, confirming Biden’s 306-232 victory over Trump. While no Senators signed on to House Republicans’ attempts to contest states like Georgia and Michigan, Senator Hawley did go through with contesting Pennsylvania, which is what led to such a late night. There were 7 senators who voted to contest the Pennsylvania results, with Senator Scott of Florida and newly-elected Senator Lummis of Wyoming joining the “sedition caucus” while Senator Kennedy of Louisiana sat the second protest out.

Minutes later, Trump released a statement that, to coin a phrase, was a “non-concession concession”:

Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts bear me out, nevertheless there will be an orderly transition on January 20th. While this represents the end of the greatest first term in presidential history, it’s only the beginning of our fight to Make America Great Again.

Early this morning former Republican congressman turned MSNBC talk show host, Joe Scarborough, called for the immediate arrest of Trump, Guiliani, and Trump Jr. for their roles in yesterday’s D.C. rally to incite the insurrection on Capitol Hill.