The US House of Representatives has presented its article of impeachment against Donald Trump to the Senate, a step that formally sets in motion the Senate trial against the former United States president, which is expected to start next month.
The article charged Trump with “incitement of insurrection” in relation to the deadly storming on January 6 of the US Capitol building in Washington, DC by a mob of his supporters.
The House impeached Trump on January 13 on the same charge – making him the first President in US history to be impeached twice and also the first to face a trial after his term in office.
If found guilty by the Senate, which is now controlled by the Democrats, a subsequent vote could bar Trump from running for public office again in the future and he could lose access to other benefits – such as his pension and his travel allowance.
However, it would require a number of Republicans to vote with the Democrats as a two-thirds majority is required to convict the former president.
Representative Jamie Raskin, a constitutional scholar and one of the House managers who will be acting as prosecutors in the Senate trial against Trump, read the article of impeachment out loud to the Senate.
“President Trump repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the presidential election results were the product of widespread fraud, and should not be accepted by the American people, or certified by state or federal officials.”
Jamie Raskin
Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate has confirmed Janet Yellen as the country’s 78th Treasury secretary and the first woman to hold the job, putting her in charge of overseeing an economy that has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
The Senate approved Ms Yellen in an 84-15 vote making her only the second American to have been both Federal Reserve chair and Treasury secretary. The 74 year old made history in 2014 when she became the first woman to chair the Federal Reserve.
The first task on Ms Yellen’s agenda is to gain approval for a $1.9 billion coronavirus relief package proposed by President Joe Biden.
“Neither the President-elect, nor I, propose this relief package without an appreciation for the country’s debt burden. But right now, with interest rates at historic lows, the smartest thing we can do is act big,” she told the Senate Finance Committee at her confirmation hearing last week. Without prompt action, Ms Yellen warned during that hearing, the US faced the threat of a “longer, more painful recession.”
The coronavirus relief package is expected to provide $1,400 to individuals earning below $75,000 per year, aid for small businesses and among other things, support for vaccine production.
President Joe Biden has suggested the US could soon be vaccinating an average of 1.5 million Americans a day.
The US has offered one million doses per day over the last week, but the President stated that; “I think we may be able to get that to…1.5 million a day, rather than one million a day.”
He added that he expects widespread availability of the vaccines for Americans by spring, with the US “well on our way to herd immunity” necessary to end the pandemic by summer.
Despite this, he warned the nation was going to be “in this for a while”, and could see between “600,000 and 660,000 deaths before we begin to turn the corner in a major way”.
Already, more than 420,000 Americans have died with coronavirus.
