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The Guardian - US
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Maanvi Singh in San Francisco (now), Joan E Greve in Washington (earlier) and Adam Gabbatt in New York (earlier)

Impeachment trial: Democrats cry hypocrisy as Republicans say 'we've seen this before' – as it happened

Live coverage of Donald Trump’s impeachment trial continues on Friday’s blog:

Summary

Over the course of today, House Democrats detailed evidence supporting their first article of impeachment against Donald Trump.

Catch up on The Guardian’s coverage:

  • Read today’s key takeaways
  • Review what the Democrats said, and what the Republicans were up to behind the scenes.

We are all — to paraphrase Senator Lisa Murkowski — ‘pooped puppies’. We’ll be back tomorrow with more live coverage of the impeachment trial.

Congress makes new appeal for court to quickly decide on Don McGahn subpoena

In an ongoing case over whether or former White House attorney Don McGahn should be compelled to testify before House investigators, the House of Representatives’ top lawyer has made a new appeal to enforce their subpoena.

During the trial, Trump’s lawyers faulted House investigators for not trying harder to enforce subpoenas for key witness testimonies and documents during the impeachment inquiry and argued it was too late to bring in new witnesses and evidence.

That position contradicts the administration’s earlier argument that the courts should stay away from subpoena disputes between Congress and the White House, the House’s general counsel argued in a letter submitted tonight.

Updated

Worn out senators are heading home for the night.

Lisa Murkowski, a Republican senator of Alaska, reportedly has plans to unwind and recuperate.

“I’m going to go home, maybe have a glass of wine, maybe even take a bath!” she told reporters.

Updated

Trial adjourns for the night

Everyone will return tomorrow at 1pm ET, when impeachment managers will present evidence in support of the second article of impeachment against Donald Trump: obstruction of Congress.

Read the Guardian’s analysis of the Democrats’ arguments:

Updated

In an emotional closing statement, Schiff concluded: “If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost. If right doesn’t matter, we’re lost.”

Directly appealing to Republican senators who may believe that Donald Trump behaved inappropriately, but aren’t willing to remove him from office, Schiff said: “If you find him guilty, you must find that he must be removed.”

Updated

Adam Schiff, the lead impeachment manager, is now presenting a closing summary. Responding to Donald Trump’s calls to “read the transcript” of the 25 July call with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Schiff is reviewing the memo of the phone call, and point out the bits that look suspicious.

First on that list: The fact that Trump asked Zelenskiy to “call Rudy” the president’s personal lawyer. Trump also encouraged the Ukrainian president to speak with the attorney general, William Barr.

“I think there’s no one who comes up more in this call record than Rudy Guiliani, which tells us something,” Schiff said.

Later, he added: “Donald Trump chose Rudy Giuliani over his own intelligence agencies... that makes him dangerous to us, to our country.”

Updated

A few more scenes from the trial chamber:

Senators and 2020 Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar reportedly shared a laugh.

Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican of North Carolina, sought a new vantage point.

Emphasizing that nearly $400m in congressionally-appropriated military aid to Ukraine was held up for no good reason, the impeachment manager Zoe Lofgren, with the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, sitting nearby, pointed out: “Even Senator McConnell has said ‘I was not given an explanation’ for the hold.”

The evidence is clear that Donald Trump “knowingly, willfully violated the law when he withheld the aid to Ukraine”, Lofgren said. “It shows the great lengths the president was willing to go to in order to pressure Ukraine to do his dirty work.”

Updated

Lindsey Graham said he’ll resist pressure to call the Bidens as witnesses

Sen. Graham speaks to reporters outside the Senate chamber during a dinner break.
Sen. Graham speaks to reporters outside the Senate chamber during a dinner break. Photograph: Erin Scott/Reuters

Speaking with reporters during an earlier dinner break, Republican senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said he’s not interested in calling the Bidens as witnesses in the impeachment trial, despite calls to do so from his colleagues in the senate and other conservative lawmakers and allies.

“I’m not going to give into that pressure,” he said.

Once again, impeachment managers are using Donald Trump’s own words against him. Making the case that Trump was knowingly, intentionally withholding Ukraine aid, Zoe Lofgren referenced a TV appearance the president made.

On 19 June, the day that White House officials contacted the Office of Management and Budget about holding up Ukraine aid, Lofgren said, Trump was on Fox News.

“We know what was on the president’s mind about Ukraine that day because president Trump gave a phone interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News,” she said. “During the interview, he mentioned the so-called Crowdstrike conspiracy theory that blames Ukraine rather than Russia for election interference.”

Trump brought up the same conspiracy theory in his infamous 25 July phone call with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Updated

One senator makes a meta-allusion to Groundhog Day:

Republicans are passing the hours with fidget spinner toys.

Senator Richard Burr, a Republican of North Carolina, passed out the toys to his Republican colleagues during the lunch break today.

Although impeachment trial rules require senators to sit quietly through the entire trial, lawmakers have been routinely wandering away from their seats for phone calls, snack breaks and even TV appearances.

Yesterday, Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, was seen filling out a crossword puzzle during the trial.

Updated

Report: Senator Lamar Alexander may be a swing vote to watch

The 79-year-old Tennessee Republican could be a deciding vote on whether or not to call witnesses or subpoena evidence, Politico reports:

Three GOP senators have expressed some level of support for calling witnesses, and if they joined all Democrats, it would result in a 50-50 tie and likely be defeated. Unless Chief Justice John Roberts shocked Washington by wading in with a tie-break, Democrats need one more Republican to break ranks and upend GOP plans for a swift Trump acquittal.

That’s got both parties eagerly eyeing Alexander. He’s a retiring defender of the Senate as an institution who’s occasionally bucked his party, but he also counts Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as a longtime ally. He’s more hesitant to criticize Trump than some other Republicans, but has also said it was “inappropriate” for Trump to ask foreign governments to investigate his political opponents.

Updated

“What keeps us free from tyranny is the sacred principle that in this great country no one is above the law,” Hakeem Jeffries told senators.

The impeachment manager Sylvia Garcia, who took over from Jeffries, is continuing to make the case that there was a quid pro quo. Both members of Congress have repeatedly translated the Latin phrase into the English “this for that”.

Garcia is playing clip after clip of the various administration officials who testified in the impeachment inquiry, pointing out how each of them backed the Democrats’ allegation that Trump asked for investigations into his political rivals in exchange for military aid.

Updated

The Senate trial has resumed. Leader Mitch McConnell has indicated that after speaking with the House managers, he expects them to continue presenting arguments until roughly 10.30pm ET.

Impeachment manager Hakeem Jeffries is presenting evidence to support the allegation that there was a “quid pro quo” in Ukraine.

Updated

Democratic senators accuse Republicans of hypocrisy

While Senate Republicans are eating Carmine’s Italian food, Democrats are eating barbecue for dinner.

As Republicans complain that the House managers were repeating themselves too much, Democrats are hitting back by accusing Republicans of hypocrisy.

“You know what? [Republicans] spent all of Tuesday fighting back all of our efforts to present new evidence and new documents,” said Mazie Hirono, a Democratic senator from Hawaii. “As though the things that have already been presented isn’t damning enough of the president.”

Hirono added that Republicans: “don’t want to hear that this president that they’re so busy supporting did these things”.

“And as I put it, the truth hurts,” she said.

Speaking with CNN, Elizabeth Warren echoed: “I think the Republicans have worked themselves into this corner of nothing new but we’re not going to call any witnesses or get new evidence. Like I say, you can’t have it both ways.”

“If you want to hear what happened, call the witnesses and bring in the documents,” she said.

Some of the repetition is “vitally important” said Senator Bob Casey, a Democrat from Pennsylvania. “I have a different view on that than some.”

Reiterating and carefully laying out the case against Donald Trump is the best strategy Democrats have to convince their Republican colleagues of their “very compelling case,” he added. “The more we kind of recite the details of the better.”

Updated

Donald Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow said Democrats have “kind of opened the door” to Trump’s defense raising more questions about the Bidens and Burisma.

Would his team push to subpoena either Joe or Hunter Biden?

“We’re not talking about witnesses right now,” he told reporters.

Republican senators complain: 'We've seen this before'

The Senate trial is paused for a 30-minute dinner break. Speaking to reporters outside the chamber, Republican senators continued to complain about a lack of “new” information — despite voting down every effort by Democrats to bring in new testimony and documents.

“We’ve seen this before,” said Mike Braun, a Republican senator from Indiana. “I think that they believe that by repackaging it and remarketing it, we’ll find something different. And I haven’t seen it.”

“It seems like Groundhog’s Day in the Senate,” echoed John Barrasso, a Republican senator from Wyoming. “It’s the same thing day after day after day.

Senator Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina, described the Democrats’ argument as: “Rinse it, recycle it and repeat it”.

“It’s the same stories, same videos all over again,” said James Lankford, a Republican from Oklahoma. “Apparently we’re going to hear it all over again tomorrow.”

Other Republican senators took issue with the Democrats’ argument that the Trump administration weighed his own political career over national policy.

Commenting “as a veteran and as someone who has a special interest in Ukraine,” Senator Joni Ernst, a Republican from Iowa, Ernst said she was more concerned with how the Obama administration responded to Russian aggression in Ukraine. “They sent blankets,” Ernst said. “This president has done more.”

Ernst also accused House managers of being hypocritical by “lecturing” senators on Trump’s hold on Ukraine aid when they voted against the last defense bill, which included aid to Ukraine. She held up a paper with hand-written notes on how they voted.

Asked why Trump held up aid, Ernst said it was to give other countries the opportunity to contribute more.

Updated

The impeachment manager Hakeem Jeffries kicked off his portion of the presentation with an extended baseball metaphor.

Jeffries recounted a conversation with a fellow New Yorker colleague, who wanted to talk to him about the “latest outrage”: the fact that someone voted against cherished Yankees Derek Jeter on his Hall of Fame ballot.

Perhaps not everyone in the room could agree on the necessity of subpoenaing Mick Mulvaney or John Bolton, but “Perhaps we can all agree to subpoena the baseball Hall of Fame,” Jeffries said, “to figure out who out of 397 individuals, one person voted against Derek Jeter”.

Referencing 1990s pop culture is very on-brand for Jeffries, who has also quoted the Notorious BIG’s 1994 hit Juicy during Tuesday’s impeachment proceedings.

“What’s more American than baseball and apple pie?” Jeffries added. “Perhaps the one thing that falls into that category is the sanctity and continuity of the constitution.”

Updated

Donald Trump announced a campaign rally in New Hampshire, the day before the primaries. He’s also planning to hold a rally in Des Moines the day before the Iowa caucus.

In promoting the rally, the president unexpectedly endorsed a PBS correspondent he had previously yelled at and called “untruthful” for asking him a question.

Updated

Among the evidence Demings presented was a clip of Rudy Giuliani promoting false Ukraine theories on various Fox News programs.

In laying out a timeline of events leading to the removal of Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and a scheme to pressure Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe Biden, Demings walked senators between Giuliani’s appearances on Fox and goings-on inside the White House.

After playing a clip of Giuliani telling a Fox News anchor that he wouldn’t visit Ukraine because the administration was full of enemies of the president, Demings pivoted: “It appears Giuliani’s statement influenced President Trump’s view of Ukraine.”

Shortly after Giuliani’s appearance, Trump echoed to his advisers that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, had “bad people around him”.

Updated

Representative Val Demings of Florida has now taken the floor, presenting voicemails and text messages between Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Lev Parnas, as well as phone records showing that Giuliani was in touch with the White House.

Investigators don’t have a record of what was said in conversations between Guiliani and Trump, because the White House has refused to comply with subpoenas. “Of course the White House has refused, as you already know, to cooperate in any more,” Demings said.

But Demings said the records House Democrats were able to access, including new evidence acquired from Parnas, detail what appears to be a coordinated effort to remove Marie Yovanovitch, the former US ambassador to Ukraine, from her post.

Updated

Evening summary

That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • The House impeachment managers continue to present their opening arguments, focusing on the first article of impeachment, abuse of power. The managers have argued that Trump’s actions meet the constitutional standard for impeachment and merit his removal from office.
  • The managers have played old clips of the president’s allies to accuse them of flip-flopping on impeachment since Bill Clinton’s 1999 trial.
  • The White House announced the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his election opponent, Benny Gantz, would travel to Washington Tuesday to discuss a potential peace plan.
  • The Trump administration is ending temporary visas for women who come to the United States to give birth, a practice known as “birth tourism”.
  • Trump claimed Democrats represented the greater threat to social security, just a day after the president said he would consider cuts to entitlement programs.

Maanvi will have more updates and analysis from the impeachment trial, so stay tuned.

Updated

Lead impeachment manager Adam Schiff has finished speaking for now and has ceded the floor to fellow House Democrat Zoe Lofgren.

The California congresswoman started her presentation by outlining Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and the 2016 investigation.

Lofgren pointed to a letter Giuliani sent to the Ukrainian president-elect to demonstrate how the president’s personal lawyer acted with Trump’s “knowledge and consent.”

Lead impeachment manager Adam Schiff has been presenting 10 points that he says prove Trump was acting in his own self-interest when he inquired about Ukraine investigating Joe Biden and the 2016 election.

“There is no evidence that Trump cared one whit about anti-corruption efforts at all,” Schiff said.

The House intelligence committee chairman said Trump’s actions made clear that he was only inrerested in Ukrainian corruption as far as it could benefit his own reelection prospects.

Updated

Trump attacks Democrats on entitlements after he suggested potential cuts

After suggesting in a CNBC interview that his administration would consider cuts to entitlement programs like Social Security, Trump sent out a tweet claiming Democrats posed the greatest threat to retirees’ benefits.

Asked yesterday about whether he would consider entitlement cuts, Trump said, “At the right time, we will take a look at that. You know, that’s actually the easiest of all things, if you look.”

Social security has also become a key issue in the Democratic presidential primary, as Bernie Sanders attacks Joe Biden for past comments he has made indicating an openness to changing requirements for entitlement programs.

Leaving the White House to attend the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting at Trump National Doral in Florida, the president ignored shouted questions from reporters.

Trump usually revels in engaging in “chopper talk” as he departs the White House, but these free-wheeling question and answer sessions have somewhat subsided in recent months.

Schiff: Trump has made Putin 'a religious man'

Lead impeachment manager Adam Schiff criticized Trump for peddling the baseless claim that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 US election.

Schiff cited a comment that Russian President Vladimir Putin made in November to underscore the danger of Trump’s claims. “Thank God nobody is accusing us anymore of interfering in the U.S. elections,” Putin said at the time. “Now they’re accusing Ukraine.”

“You gotta give Donald Trump credit for this: he has made a religious man out of Vladimir Putin,” Schiff darkly joked.

Lead impeachment manager Adam Schiff cast doubt upon the idea that Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, pushed for investigations in Ukraine without Trump’s consent.

“Rudy Giuliani is not some Svengali here, who has the president under his control,” Schiff said. “You can say a lot of things about President Trump, but he is not led by the nose by Rudy Giuliani.”

The Senate impeachment trial has resumed after a brief recess, and lead impeachment manager Adam Schiff has taken the floor.

Shortly before the break, Sylvia Garcia showed head-to-head polling between Joe Biden and Trump to argue the president had a political motive in pushing Ukraine to investigate the former vice president.

But Schiff took a moment to offer the disclaimer that the impeachment managers’ inclusion of the polling was not meant to be taken as any kind of endorsement in the Democratic presidential primary.

Impeachment manager Sylvia Garcia has stepped off the Senate floor, and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has called for a 15-minute recess in the proceedings.

The impeachment managers have presented for about two hours today, so the Democratic team should have nearly 15 hours left to present its case over the next two days.

Impeachment manager Sylvia Garcia just played a clip of FBI director Christopher Wray saying he has seen “no information” indicating Ukraine interfered in the 2016 US election.

Some of Trump’s allies have pushed the baselss claim that Ukraine meddled in the election to justify the president’s alleged interest in preventing corruption in Kyiv.

“We have no information that indicates that Ukraine interfered with the 2016 presidential election,” Wray told ABC News last month.

“As far as the [2020] election itself goes, we think Russia represents the most significant threat,” he added.

As impeachment manager Sylvia Garcia delivers a defense of Joe Biden’s conduct toward Ukraine, it appears some Senate Republicans -- including Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Joni Ernst of Iowa -- are openly laughing.

Impeachment manager preemptively defends Biden's actions

Impeachment manager Sylvia Garcia has interestingly spent a significant portion of her presentation defending Joe Biden’s actions toward Ukraine, as Trump continues to falsely insist that the former vice president participated in corruption.

Garcia emphasized that multiple US and Ukrainian officials have cleared Biden and his son, Hunter, of wrongdoing. Those assurances prove Trump was only pushing for an investigation of the Bidens for “his own political benefit,” Garcia said.

This line of argument is likely meant to preempt claims from Trump’s legal team that the president was encouraging the Biden investigation to sniff out actual corruption.

Updated

While impeachment manager Jerry Nadler was playing a 1999 clip of Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator and close Trump ally was not actually sitting in the trial room.

One congressional reporter speculated that Graham may have been absent because senators were given copies of Nadler’s presentation.

In the 1999 clip, Graham argued a president does not have to commit a crime to meet the constitutional standard for impeachment.

“What’s a high crime?” Graham said as Bill Clinton faced removal from office. “How about if an important person hurts somebody of low means? It’s not very scholarly. But I think it’s the truth. I think that’s what they meant by high crimes. Doesn’t even have to be a crime.”

Jerry Nadler has concluded speaking for now and ceded the Senate floor to his fellow impeachment manager, Sylvia Garcia.

Nadler concluded his presentation by detailing the constitutional standards for impeachment and arguing Trump’s actions meet those requirements.

“The constitution is not a suicide pact,” Nadler said. “It does not leave us stuck with presidents who abuse their power in unforeseen ways that threaten our security and democracy.

Nadler added that impeachment “exists to address threats to the political system.” “The president’s abuse of power, his betrayal of the national interests and his corruption of our elections plainly qualify as great and dangerous offenses,” he said.

Israeli leaders to visit White House Tuesday to discuss peace proposal

The White House has announced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s election rival, will visit Washington on Tuesday to discuss a peace plan.

The meeting was first announced by vice president Mike Pence, who is visiting Israel today to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Pence said the US and Israeli leaders would discuss “regional issues, as well as the prospect of peace here in the Holy Land,” according to a pool report.

Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, has overseen the crafting of the administration’s peace plan, and its details remain under wraps.

But Palestinian officials have already expressed skepticism about the deal, predicting that the proposal will be heavily weighted in Israel’s favor.

Updated

Impeachment manager Jerry Nadler is making a point to use the past words of Trump’s allies against them as he makes the case for the president’s removal from office.

Nadler just played this 1999 clip of then-congressman Lindsey Graham, who served as an impeachment manager during Bill Clinton’s trial.

“What’s a high crime?” Graham said at the time. “How about if an important person hurts somebody of low means? It’s not very scholarly. But I think it’s the truth. I think that’s what they meant by high crimes. Doesn’t even have to be a crime.”

The strategy is interesting coming from Nadler, considering his words about the Clinton impeachment have been similarly used against him.

Republicans have often cited this 1998 quote from Nadler about impeachment to accuse him of hypocrisy: “It is in fact a peaceful procedure for protecting the nation from despots, by providing a constitutional means for removing a president who misuses presidential power to make himself a tyrant or otherwise to undermine our constitutional form of government. To impeach a president, it must be that serious.”

To make the case for Trump’s removal from office, impeachment manager Jerry Nadler quoted Alan Dershowitz, who recently joined the president’s legal team.

As Bill Clinton faced removal from office in 1998, Dershowitz said of the constitutional standard for impeachment, “It certainly doesn’t have to be a crime. If you have somebody who completely corrupts the office of president and who abuses trust and who poses great danger to our liberty, you don’t need a technical crime.”

As one of Trump’s lawyers, Dershowitz has changed his tune, claiming presidents can only be impeached for “criminal-like conduct,” as former Supreme Court justice Benjamin Curtis once said.

To address the inconsistency, Dershowitz retracted his 1998 comment in a four-part Twitter thread on Tuesday.

“To the extent there are inconsistencies between my current position and what I said 22 years ago, I am correct today,” Dershowitz wrote. “During the Clinton impeachment, the issue was not whether a technical crime was required, because he was charged with perjury. ...

“To the extent therefore that my 1998 off-the-cuff interview statement suggested the opposite, I retract it.”

Impeachment manager Jerry Nadler is now running through the history of impeachment, starting with Andrew Johnson.

Johnson, who took office after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, was the first president to be impeached but was narrowly acquitted by the Senate.

Johnson’s impeachment ostensibly centered on his violation of the Tenure of Office Act, a law that was later ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

But Johnson’s impeachment was actually the culmination of the president’s bitter feud with Republican lawmakers, who accused Johnson of trying to nullify the Union’s victory in the Civil War by being lenient toward former Confederate leaders and opposing the expansion of political rights for former slaves.

Trump criticizes Democrats for ruling out witness swap

As the impeachment managers began their second day of opening arguments, Trump criticized Democrats for rejecting a potential witness swap in the Senate trial.

Reports emerged earlier this week that Senate Democrats were considering trying to secure the trial testimony of administration officials like John Bolton, the former national security adviser, by offering testimony from Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

But Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said yesterday that a potential witness swap was “off the table.”

Nadler says Trump's conduct 'puts even President Nixon to shame'

Impeachment manager Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the House judiciary committee, is beginning his team’s second day of opening arguments.

The New York Democrat said the allegations against Trump “rank among the most serious charges ever brought against the president.”

“This conduct is not America first. It is Donald Trump first,” Nadler added. “It puts even President Nixon to shame.”

At the start of today’s proceedings, Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts noted that the House impeachment managers have nearly 17 hours left to make their opening arguments.

The managers and Trump’s legal team will each be allowed 24 hours total, spread over three days, to make their opening arguments.

Similar to yesterday, lead impeachment manager Adam Schiff began today’s proceedings by thanking Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts for overseeing the proceedings.

The House intelligence committee chairman then thanked the senators for their “long and considerable attention” over the past two days. Schiff remarked upon the uniqueness of a room full of senators “sitting silently for hours, or even minutes for that matter.”

Schiff said the senators’ behavior was likely improved by the chamber’s sergeant-at-arms reminding them every day that they are not allowed to speak “under pain of imprisonment.” “It’s our hope...you don’t choose imprisonment,” Schiff said.

Schiff’s comments are likely a bit tongue in cheek, considering senators from both parties were criticized yesterday for repeatedly walking out of the trial room and talking to each other as the impeachment managers presented their opening arguments.

Senate impeachment trial resumes

Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts has assumed his post, and the Senate impeachment trial will now resume.

The Senate chaplain, Barry Black, began the proceedings by asking senators to remember that “listening is often more than hearing.”

Many senators from both parties were criticized yesterday for repeatedly walking out of the trial room or speaking while the impeachment managers were presenting.

The Senate is minutes away from resuming the impeachment trial, and reporters on Capitol Hill are grabbing senators for questions as they walk into the chamber.

Elizabeth Warren, one of four Democratic presidential candidates who are required to be on Capitol Hill today as the Iowa caucuses loom, said she can only do “my best” when asked how the trial was affecting her campaign.

The House impeachment managers have arrived at the Capitol to begin their second day of opening arguments in the Senate trial.

Lead impeachment manager Adam Schiff has said today’s arguments will focus on the first article of impeachment, abuse of power, as his team asserts why Trump’s actions necessitate his removal from office.

Afternoon summary

The House impeachment managers are scheduled to pick up their opening arguments in about a half an hour.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • Lead impeachment manager Adam Schiff and his team are expected to spend the second day of their opening arguments detailing Trump’s alleged abuse of power and explaining why his actions necessitate his removal from office.
  • Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer praised the impeachment managers’ performance yesterday and said Trump’s lawyers were “tending toward conspiracy theory.”
  • The Trump administration announced it will no longer issue temporary visas to women coming to the US to give birth, a practice known as “birth tourism.”

The blog will have more updates and analysis once the trial resumes, so stay tuned.

White House confirms crackdown on 'birth tourism'

The White House has confirmed that it intends to stop issuing temporary visas to pregnant women traveling to the US to give birth, a practice known as “birth tourism.”

Children who are born in the US are automatically granted American citizenship, a right guaranteed by the 14th amendment of the constitution.

Trump has previously threatened to end birthright citizenship with an executive order, criticizing the constitutional protection as “ridiculous.”

The anti-Trump conservative group Defending Democracy Together is out with a new ad entitled, “It’s time for President Pence.”

Timed with Trump’s impeachment trial, the ad makes the case that Pence would be a better commander-in-chief if the president were removed from office. “At least it’s an improvement,” the ad’s narrator says.

The group has also launched a website, PresidentPence.com, which describes the former Midwestern governor as “a bland, boring, completely typical, ordinary conservative Republican from Indiana.” The website adds, “And if the Senate does its duty, they’ll make him the next president of the United States.”

After the ad’s release, the hashtag #PresidentPence quickly began trending on Twitter, as users debated whether the vice president’s hypothetical promotion would actually be beneficial.

Democrats to present their case for Trump's alleged abuse of power

The House impeachment managers spent more than seven hours yesterday laying out their case that the president tried to pressure a foreign ally to investigate his political rival.

When the impeachment trial resumes in about an hour and a half, Adam Schiff and his team are expected to make the argument for why those actions necessitate Trump’s removal from office.

Politico reports:

[Schiff] indicated that his team will seek to apply the facts of the case to the constitutional framework for impeachment — including an argument for why Trump’s alleged misconduct meets the threshold for ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ as outlined in the Constitution.

Thursday’s presentation will focus specifically on the first article of impeachment against Trump, centering on his alleged abuses of the powers of the presidency. Schiff and his team are likely to delve into the second article — obstruction of Congress — on Friday.

Trump’s Senate allies are already pushing back against the forthcoming arguments from Schiff’s team, insisting Trump’s actions do not meet the constiutional standard for impeachment.

“I mean, this is the nuclear option under our constitution: to remove a duly elected president by the vote of the House and the Senate,” senator John Cornyn said yesterday. “This is something we should not do unless that constitutional standard is met, and I’m struggling to see how that is even close.”

Schumer says Trump's lawyers are 'tending toward conspiracy theories'

Turning his attention to impeachment, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer praised the performance of the House impeachment managers yesterday as they began presenting their opening arguments.

The Democratic senator said Adam Schiff and his team were “setting the bar very high” for Trump’s legal team. “Schiff had such power in his speech that he almost forced [Republicans] to listen,” Schumer said.

Schumer also criticized the arguments so far from the president’s lawyers, who he described as “unprepared, confused and tending toward conspiracy theories.”

Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer interstingly kicked off his press conference by touching on a story other than impeachment.

The New York Democrat highlighted Trump’s comments at the World Economic Forum in Davos, suggesting his administration is weighing cuts to entitlement programs like Social Security.

“At the right time, we will take a look at that,” Trump told CNBC. “You know, that’s actually the easiest of all things, if you look.”

Schumer said Americans should be alarmed that Trump is promsing to cut beenfits for retirees “from a Swiss ski resort.”

Trump administration targets 'birth tourism'

As the president faces the threat of potential removal from office, the Trump administration is simultaneously continuing its crackdown on immigration, now targeting pregnant women who travel to the United States to give birth.

The AP reports:

Applicants will be denied tourist visas if they are determined by consular officers to be coming to the U.S. primarily to give birth, according to the rules in the Federal Register. It is a bigger hurdle to overcome, proving they are traveling to the U.S. because they have a medical need and not just because they want to give birth here. Those with medical needs will be treated like other foreigners coming to the U.S. for medical treatment and must prove they have the money to pay for it — including transportation and living expenses.

The practice of traveling to the U.S. to give birth is fundamentally legal, although there are scattered cases of authorities arresting operators of birth tourism agencies for visa fraud or tax evasion. And women are often honest about their intentions when applying for visas and even show signed contracts with doctors and hospitals.

Children who are born in America are automatically granted US citizenship, a right guaranteed by the 14th amendment of the constitution.

But Trump has previously expressed his desire to end birthright citizenship, saying as recently as August that his administration was looking “very seriously” at the matter.

In 2018, the president threatened to sign an executive order terminiating the constitutional protection. “We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years with all of those benefits,” he said at the time. “It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. And it has to end.”

In a bit of non-impeachment news, the office of Mike Pence is pushing back against claims that the vice president was snubbed by Prince Charles as the pair commemorated the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in Israel.

A video appeared to show Prince Charles shaking hands with a number of dignitaries attending the event before skipping over Pence.

But Pence’s press secretary was quick to contradict that reading of the footage, noting the two leaders met before and after the vice president delivered a speech at the event.

This is Joanie Greve in Washington, taking over for Adam Gabbatt to cover another day in the historic impeachment trial of Donald Trump.

A member of the president’s legal team tried to brush off a question about his colleague’s false claim that House Republicans were denied access to the secure area of the Capitol where closed-door interviews were held during the impeachment inquiry.

In reality, every Republican member of the House committees that led the impeachment inquiry were allowed access to the interviews.

It is also false to suggest the president’s legal term is “not interested in wading in the procedural weeds.” Trump’s lawyers have focused much of their case so far on the president’s accusation that Democrats’ mishandling of the impeachment has delegitimized the proceedings.

The Intercept has an interesting story about how Pete Buttigieg skipped a series of police oversight meetings in South Bend... to instead attend fundraisers across the country.

“Amid widespread criticism of policing in South Bend, Indiana, following the June 2019 shooting of Eric Logan, a 54-year-old black resident, then-Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s administration established a series of public meeting with the Board of Public Safety, the disciplinary body overseeing the police department,” the Intercept writes.

Eight meetings were scheduled over four months. Buttigieg wasn’t obliged to attend, but: “activists in the city say his absence was glaring”.

The community advisory group meetings took place on August 8, 15, 20, 27; September 5, 12, 19; and November 7. For all but one of those dates, Buttigieg was at fundraisers, campaign events, and speeches around the country, including the September Democratic debate in Houston. He spoke at several of those events about the issue of race and how his administration had addressed related concerns in South Bend.

Buttigieg’s campaign said the mayor had taken “a series of actions to help the South Bend community begin to heal — including supporting the creation of community action groups that were organized by the Board of Public Safety”.

Pete Buttigieg.
Pete Buttigieg. Photograph: Gene J Puskar/AP

Updated

Donald Trump is knocking out some tweets, and has offered his take on the Democratic primary race:

Trump seems uncommonly obsessed with Bloomberg, a billionaire who did not inherit his wealth from his father.

Impeachment trial enters third day

Good morning and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of US politics.

•The historic impeachment trial of Donald Trump enters its third day today, with Democrats continuing to build their case that Trump’s Ukraine conduct placed the very republic of the US at risk. Democrats will continue to present their case that Trump abused his power in withholding aid to the Ukraine, then obstructed Congress.

•The Senate will convene at about 1pm to continue to hear from Democratic prosecutors, who have used roughly eight hours of their allotted 24. Senators from both parties remained entrenched on Wednesday, with Republicans sniffing at Democrats’ damning account of Trump’s actions and insisting they had heard no evidence of wrongdoing.

•Among voters, meanwhile, there are signs of an underwhelming response to the supposed drama of impeachment. The Guardian’s Richard Luscombe spent time traversing the I-4 in Florida – the “swing state within a swing state”. Unfortunately for Democrats, Luscombe found “attitudes ranging mostly from indifference to moderate engagement”.

•As some Democratic presidential candidates are forced to remain in Washington – Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are senators, and serve as the impeachment jury – other hopefuls are campaigning ahead of the Iowa caucuses. Andrew Yang is holding five events in Iowa today, while Tulsi Gabbard and Deval Patrick are in New Hampshire.

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