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      Trump impeachment risks bogging down early days of Biden presidency

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      The prospect of Donald Trump facing a bitter impeachment trial in the US Senate threatens to cast a shadow over the earliest days of Joe Biden’s presidency, as Washington on Thursday headed into a militarized virtual lockdown ahead of next week’s inauguration.With warnings of more violent protests being planned following the pro-Trump mob’s deadly attack on the US Capitol last week, some Republican members of Congress who voted for the unprecedented second impeachment of the president fear they are in personal danger.Peter Meijer, a Michigan Republican who voted along with the Democratic majority in the House on Wednesday to impeach Trump, on the charge of incitement of insurrection – after he encouraged the riot in a futile attempt to overturn his election defeat by force – said some of his colleagues were hiring armed escorts and acquiring body armor out of fear for their safety.“When it comes to my family’s safety, that’s something that we’ve been planning for, preparing for, taking appropriate measures,” Meijer told MSNBC.“Our expectation is that somebody may try to kill us,” he said.“Our expectation is that somebody may try to kill us.” — Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI), who voted to impeach Trump, says he and other lawmakers believe their lives are in danger following yesterday’s impeachment.He also says they are altering their routines and buying body armor. pic.twitter.com/stOO00OKYD— The Recount (@therecount) January 14, 2021
      There is no schedule yet for when the House may present the article of impeachment – essentially the charge against Trump – to the Senate for trial.Trump was acquitted at his first impeachment trial in the Senate early last year after being charged with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, stemming from his request that Ukraine investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter ahead of the 2020 election.The Senate resumes full session on the eve of the inauguration events on 20 January to install Biden as the 46th US president and Kamala Harris as his vice-president.A swift impeachment trial would entangle Biden’s urgent efforts to have his cabinet choices confirmed by the Senate and fire up his agenda to tackle the raging coronavirus pandemic as well as the related economic crisis and vaccination chaos.There is no real prospect of Trump being ousted before Biden takes office next Wednesday, after the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, rejected Democratic calls for a quick trial in the Republican-led chamber, saying there was no way to finish it before Trump leaves office.Biden, meanwhile, has urged Senate leaders to avoid an all-consuming trial during his first days in the White House so that they can focus on the crises facing his incoming administration.“I hope that the Senate leadership will find a way to deal with their constitutional responsibilities on impeachment while also working on the other urgent business of this nation,” Biden said in a statement on Wednesday night.Biden’s inauguration events have already been scaled back due to security concerns and the risks of spreading infection during the Covid-19 pandemic.The west front of the Capitol building, where the swearing-in occurs and which was overrun by marauding rioters invading the US Congress last week, is now fortified by fencing, barriers and thousands of national guard troops. Soldiers have been sleeping sprawled in the marble corridors of the complex.Trump himself is increasingly isolated at the White House and “in self-pity mode”, according to several reports.Under the US constitution, a two-thirds majority is needed in the Senate to convict Trump, before or after he leaves office, meaning at least 17 Republicans in the 100-member chamber would have to join the Democrats.McConnell’s vote would be crucial. At Trump’s first impeachment, no House Republicans voted in favor of charging him and all Republicans in the Senate voted to acquit him except for Utah’s Mitt Romney.If McConnell signaled to his caucus that he would vote to convict Trump this time, that could give other senators the cover they needed to follow suit if they believed privately that Trump deserved it but feared a backlash from voters.On Wednesday, McConnell released a note to Republican senators in which he did not deny that he backed the impeachment push, the New York Times reported. The leader said that he had “not made a final decision on how I will vote, and I intend to listen to the legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate”.McConnell and some other senior Republicans may see conviction as a way to prevent Trump being a liability to the party in the future, and therefore an opportunity.If Trump is already out of office by the time of the trial, historical precedent suggests the Senate could disqualify him from holding office in the future with only a simple majority vote.But the legal details and what would happen, including if Trump attempted to pardon himself in his last days in the White House, are far from resolved.The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, set to become majority leader when Biden takes office, said that no matter the timing, “there will be an impeachment trial in the United States Senate, there will be a vote on convicting the president for high crimes and misdemeanors, and if the president is convicted, there will be a vote on barring him from running again.”The Florida Republican senator Marco Rubio has warned, meanwhile, that the impeachment process risks making Trump a martyr to his diehard supporters.Rubio told NBC he thought Trump bore some responsibility for the attack on the Capitol, which happened on the day both chambers of Congress were meeting in order to certify Joe Biden’s victory, but that putting Trump on trial could make things worse.“It’s like pouring gasoline on fire,” he said, noting that some who were displeased with Trump “after seeing what happened last week, sort of reckoning with the last four years – now all of a sudden they’re circling the wagons and it threatens to make him a martyr.”No US president has ever been removed from office via impeachment. Three – Trump in 2019, Bill Clinton in 1998 and Andrew Johnson in 1868 – were impeached by the House but acquitted by the Senate. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 rather than face impeachment. More

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      Airbnb to cancel all Washington DC reservations during inauguration week

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      Airbnb will block and cancel all reservations in the Washington DC area during the week of the presidential inauguration.The decision, announced by the San Francisco-based short-term rental site on Wednesday, comes amid concerns over renewed violence during the 20 January event following the attack on the US Capitol last week.Airbnb initially announced it would review reservations in the area ahead of the inauguration and bar any guests associated with hate groups or violent activity, but later decided to widen its action.The company declined to say how many reservations were cancelled. .Guests who lost their reservations will be refunded in full and hosts will be reimbursed the money they would have earned. Reservations at HotelTonight, a service owned by Airbnb that handles last-minute deals at top-rated hotels, will also be cancelled.“We are continuing our work to ensure hate group members are not part of the Airbnb community,” Airbnb said in a corporate blogpost.Following the riot on 6 January, Airbnb investigated whether people involved had accounts on the platform, after learning their names through media reports and law enforcement sources. It found numerous individuals associated with known hate groups and banned them from the service.Airbnb has had a policy of removing guests who are confirmed to be members of hate groups since 2017, when it blocked guests who were headed to a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.Airbnb’s measures come as tech companies face increased scrutiny for their roles in enabling violence such as the Capitol event.In the past week, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and YouTube have suspended Donald Trump from posting on their platforms. Twitter removed more than 70,000 accounts related to QAnon, a conspiracy theory that motivated some of those who stormed the Capitol. Facebook has suspended most uses of the phrase or hashtag “Stop the Steal”, used by those campaigning to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.Many companies – including Airbnb – are also committing not to give political donations to the Republicans who voted against certifying the results of the election last week. Others taking that stand include Marriott, AT&T, and Walmart.Airbnb’s political action committee donated $866,519 to candidates and political parties in the 2020 election cycle, according to Open Secrets, which monitors campaign finance donations. Joe Biden was the biggest recipient of Airbnb donations.The Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      The Guardian view on democracy in America: the threat is real | Editorial

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      The inauguration of Joe Biden as US president on 20 January has become a touchstone moment in the history of American democracy. Following the outrage of last week’s storming of Congress by Donald Trump supporters, at least 10,000 members of the national guard will be deployed in Washington by this weekend. Reports have detailed FBI warnings of possible armed protests in the capital and across the United States in the days ahead. The area around the Washington Monument, close to where Mr Trump urged supporters to “fight” for his right to stay in office, has been closed to the public. The mood is fearful, febrile and somewhat surreal. In the words of one newspaper headline: “Is this America?”Since the foundation of the federal republic, the peaceful transition of power has been fundamental to America’s understanding of itself. In US democracy’s choreography, the presidential inauguration is designed as a moment of civic celebration that transcends partisan differences. That Mr Trump chose to mobilise an insurgency against the handover gives the measure of his narcissism, hubris and deranged will to power. Last week’s riot was not a one-off piece of performance theatre that got out of hand. The pitch for an assault on democracy had been rolled for months. In the autumn, speaking more like a mobster than a president, Mr Trump told the neo-fascist Proud Boys movement to “stand by”, and warned that the Democratic party would try to “steal” the election. Last week’s violent mayhem, which led to five deaths, was the culmination of a strategy to intimidate and discredit the democratic institutions of the country he leads.Democrat members of the House of Representatives are therefore right to launch impeachment proceedings for a second time against a rogue president. As the charge sheet states, Mr Trump incited “violence against the government of the United States”. Assuming Wednesday’s vote to impeach is passed in the Democrat-controlled House, the next stage will take place in the Senate, currently in recess until after Mr Biden’s inauguration. A two-thirds supermajority would be required to convict, but it seems improbable that a sufficient number of Republicans will do the right thing. Another shaming moment looms for a party that has abased itself at Mr Trump’s feet in the pursuit of power and lost its soul in the process.But even if legal process were to deliver Mr Trump his just deserts, the crisis of America’s growing polarisation – of which the president is a symptom as well as a cause – would remain. Tribalism has become a disabling virus in the US body politic, cracking the public square in two. Social media, belatedly under new scrutiny, is used by citizens to sustain alternate, conflicting realities: three in four Republican voters continue to believe that there was widespread voter fraud in November, despite the rulings of close to 100 judges to the contrary. As faith in the neutrality of public institutions declines, studies have shown a disturbing rise in the number of Americans – on both left and right – who believe that political violence is sometimes justified.Against this dismal backdrop, the theme of Mr Biden’s inauguration speech will be “America united”. It seems likely that it will be delivered in the shadow of impeachment proceedings against his predecessor, and a mass military presence. This is a script that should belong to a bingeworthy drama on Netflix during lockdown. Instead, it is America’s dystopian reality. The new president’s healing message will be the right one. Making it heard will be the defining challenge of his long political career. More

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      Fears over Biden inauguration security mount after US Capitol attack

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      Among the most shocking images to emerge from Wednesday’s attack on the US Capitol were members of the pro-Trump mob wielding baseball bats and bearing “Keep America Great” banners rampaging over the inaugural platform on the West Front of the building where four years ago Donald Trump took his oath of office.
      The sight of rioters running amok amid clouds of teargas on the very spot where their cherished leader swore to “preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States” was not just symbolically chilling. It underlined the massive security challenge now facing the US government as it hurtles towards the next inauguration – that of Joe Biden – just days away.
      As with any inauguration in modern times, Biden’s ascendancy to the presidency on 20 January has been declared a “national security special event”. That awards it the highest level of security preparation, with all the phenomenal firepower that federal agencies led by the Secret Service and FBI can muster.
      In the wake of the attack on the Capitol, that already elevated security level is now being ramped up significantly. The risk of the incoming president and vice-president, three former presidents, the nine members of the US supreme court, and most members of Congress – all of whom are expected to attend the inauguration – being exposed to a repeat attack by the Trump-incited mob is beyond contemplation. More