Tag: U.S. Constitution

Why is Pelosi suddenly talking about the 25th Amendment?

Speaker backs Raskin bill to set up nonpartisan commission to determine a president’s fitness, says it’s not about Trump

Why would Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveil legislation less than one month before Election Day to establish a commission under the 25th Amendment to determine the president’s fitness for holding office?

That’s the question many in Washington are asking Friday after Pelosi held a news conference with Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, a constitutional scholar and member of the House Democratic leadership team, to back his bill setting up a Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of the Office.

Democrats say they’re simply setting up a process authorized by the Constitution that should’ve been codified long ago but is especially needed now because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Republicans think Pelosi is continuing the effort she started with impeachment to try to oust President Donald Trump. And others suggest Pelosi is signaling that Trump, who tested positive for COVID-19 last week, is unfit to hold office. Continue reading.

Democrats unveil bill creating panel to gauge president’s ‘capacity’

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House Democrats on Friday unveiled legislation creating a panel to gauge a president’s capacity to perform the job — and potentially remove the commander in chief from office in cases of decided debility.

The commission would be permanent, applying to future administrations, but it’s a clear shot at President Trump, whose treatments for the coronavirus have raised questions about their effects on his mental acuity.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a sharp critic of the president, has fueled those questions in the the days since Trump returned to the White House after three nights in the hospital, floating the idea that Trump’s drug regimen — which includes a steroid linked to mood swings — might be affecting his decisionmaking. Continue reading.

Conservative writer slams GOP senator for spreading ‘legal disinformation’ about the First Amendment

AlterNet logoWhile many argue that social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter need to do a better job of policing content posted by President Donald Trump and his allies, Trump supporters have a very different view. They claim that those outlets are discriminating against Republicans and violating the First Amendment protections. Far-right Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia made such claims during a recent appearance on Fox News — and a well-known conservative journalist, David A. French, is schooling her on what the First Amendment actually does.

Loeffler told Fox News: “It’s very clear that there needs to be strong action, and that’s what I’m taking. I’m taking strong action to protect the 1st Amendment — the freedom of speech for all Americans regardless of their political party. I’ve signed onto legislation to look at the limits on immunity from litigation that currently protects big tech. You know, if you look at what’s happened, it’s all happened against conservative speech — and we need to take a close look at that…. Right now, conservative speech is really under fire by big tech.”

Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri has introduced a bill that would amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 and allow lawsuits against platforms like Twitter and Facebook on the grounds that they are censoring political speech. Loeffler voiced her support for the legislation: Continue reading.

McConnell state bankruptcy remarks raise constitutional questions

The Hill logoMunicipal finance experts say that it may be unconstitutional for Congress to allow states to declare bankruptcy, and that even if it is constitutional, it would be a bad idea.

Experts on state and local government finances say that Congress may not have the right to grant states the ability to file for bankruptcy under the Constitution. They also argued that bankruptcy wouldn’t be particularly helpful in addressing states’ coronavirus-related challenges.

“Bankruptcy is just not a viable solution to the issues state and local governments are facing,” said Michael Decker, senior vice president for federal policy at the Bond Dealers of America. Continue reading.

Republicans come out against Iran language they previously supported

Many House members who supported amendments on War Powers now opposed

In July, 27 Republicans voted for an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act to effectively prohibit the president from using military force against Iran without congressional approval. As the House readies to vote on a similar measure Thursday, few, if any, Republicans are likely to support it.

U.S. tension with Iran has escalated since July, resulting in recent attacks from both sides. President Donald Trump’s decision to kill Iran’s top general Qassem Soleimani has drawn praise from Republicans who believe the administration line about the Quds Force commander and criticism from Democrats who say the intelligence does not support that claim.

The War Powers resolution the House will vote on Thursday directing the president to terminate the use of military force in or against Iran unless Congress authorizes it or such force is needed to defend Americans does not name Trump. But the measure is a referendum on his decisions on Iran, and Republicans don’t want to support Democrats’ latest effort to reprimand the president. Continue reading.

House passes measure seeking to limit Trump on Iran

The Hill logoThe House on Thursday approved a measure aimed at restricting President Trump’s ability to go to war with Iran, a day after a number of lawmakers expressed frustration at the briefing where the administration provided its arguments for a drone strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. 

In a largely party-line vote of 224-194, the House passed a war powers resolution that would direct the president to end military hostilities with Iran unless Congress specifically authorizes it or the United States faces an “imminent armed attack.”

The measure would not need Trump’s signature because it’s what’s known as a “concurrent resolution.” But that has also left Democrats open to criticism that the resolution is just a messaging bill since concurrent resolutions are typically nonbinding, though their use to force the end of military hostilities under the War Powers Act is untested in court. Continue reading.

Exactly what Alexander Hamilton ‘darkly envisioned’: Constitutional law professor explains how Trump is sabotaging the presidency from within

AlterNet logoCritics of President Donald Trump have often used the word “unpresidential” when describing his over-the-top antics . But legal scholar/author Laurence H. Tribe, in a November 18 article for Newsweek, stresses that with impeachment hearings underway, it is becoming more and more obvious that Trump is way beyond “unpresidential” — he has become the “anti-president” that Founding Father Alexander Hamilton warned about in the 1780s and 1790s.

“More than unpresidential, Trump represents the perfect exemplar of what Alexander Hamilton darkly envisioned when he described the danger that a demagogue might one day assume the presidency and require removal through the awesome power of impeachment,” explains the 78-year-old Tribe, who teaches constitutional law at Harvard University. “Such a demagogue, Hamilton prophesied, would be ‘a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper…. despotic in his ordinary demeanor.’”

Hamilton, Tribe adds, feared the emergence of a charlatan who would “take every opportunity” to bring the federal government “under suspicion” and “throw things into confusion” — and Trump, according to Tribe, fits that description perfectly.

View the complete November 19 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

‘Case closed’: Robert Reich explains why the Constitution’s framers would have found Trump impeachable

AlterNet logoTrump has asked a foreign power to dig up dirt on a major political rival. This is an impeachable offense.

Come back in time with me. In late May 1787, when 55 delegates gathered in Philadelphia to begin debate over a new Constitution, everyone knew the first person to be president would be the man who presided over that gathering: George Washington. As Benjamin Franklin put it, “The first man put at the helm will be a good one,” but “Nobody knows what sort may come afterwards.”

Initially, some of the delegates didn’t want to include impeachment in the Constitution, arguing that if a president was bad he’d be voted out at the next election. But what if the president was so bad that the country couldn’t wait until the next election? Which is why Franklin half-joked that anyone who wished to be president should support an impeachment clause because the alternative was assassination.

View the complete November 5 article by Robert Reich on the AlterNet website here.

How the impeachment process works

The Hill logoHouse Democrats are charging ahead with their impeachment inquiry into abuse-of-power allegations against President Trump, creating the very real possibility that impeachment articles could be drafted — and voted upon — before year’s end.

Behind Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Democrats have latched on to the recent revelation, brought to light by an anonymous whistleblower complaint, that Trump had threatened to withhold U.S. military aid to Ukraine unless the country’s leaders investigated corruption allegations against former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

The notion that Trump had pressed a foreign leader to investigate a chief political rival amid his high-stakes reelection campaign sparked an uproar within the Democratic Caucus, prompting new calls for impeachment across the party’s ideological spectrum and leading Pelosi last week to endorse a formal impeachment inquiry focused on the Ukraine episode.

View the complete October 3 article by Mike Lillis on The Hill website here.

The Founders Would Have Impeached Trump for His Ukraine-Related Misconduct

Center for American Progress logoFrom the very first days of our nation, the founders were intent on ensuring that foreign entities did not influence America’s democratic system. They knew that foreign involvement in U.S. elections or policymaking posed an enormous threat to our sovereignty and that a president who would invite foreign interference for his own political benefit would be subject to impeachment. They would have been horrified at President Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure the Ukrainian government to help dig up dirt on a potential political rival.

The founders tackled many important issues during our nation’s formative years, but one of the paramount concerns during their debates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention was their intense concern about foreign interference in American politics. Their concern was animated by the corrupting effects that foreign governments or foreign persons could have on elected officials, including the president. Continue reading “The Founders Would Have Impeached Trump for His Ukraine-Related Misconduct”