House impeaches Trump for the second time

For the first time in U.S. history, members of Congress voted to impeach a sitting president for a second time. By a vote of 232-197, with 10 Republicans aligning with the Democratic majority, the House on Wednesday charged President Donald Trump with “incitement of insurrection.” His critics blame him for inflaming a crowd of his supporters, some of whom marched to the U.S. Capitol and invaded it on Jan. 6 as Congress met to certify the results of the presidential election. Five people died during the riot.

What happens next? The Senate is expected to hold a trial, though it wouldn’t begin before Tuesday, the day before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration. Trump would have already left his position by the end of the trial, but the Senate could vote on whether to disqualify him from holding federal office again. Trump told reporters on Tuesday that the effort to impeach him again is causing “tremendous anger” and “tremendous danger” to the country. Cut off from virtually all social media platforms, including YouTube, Trump released a statement from the White House on Wednesday calling for “NO violence, NO lawbreaking and NO vandalism of any kind. … That is not what I stand for, and it is not what America stands for.”

Dig deeper: Read Harvest Prude’s first-hand account of the Capitol riots.