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Forty-five Republican senators voted against holding an impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump over his remarks at the U.S. Capitol, saying it would be unconstitutional to impeach a former president.

All but five GOP senators sided with an effort proposed by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), sending a signal that there are not enough votes to convict Trump. Convicting a president during a Senate impeachment trial requires a two-thirds majority.

Republican Sens. Mitt Romney (Utah), Ben Sasse (Neb.), Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), and Pat Toomey (Pa.) voted with Democrats to reject Paul’s order, suggesting the five senators will vote to convict Trump. Romney was the only Republican senator to vote to convict Trump during his first impeachment trial in early 2020.

The Senate ultimately voted 55–45 to table Paul’s point of order, meaning that the impeachment trial will go forward. The House voted to impeach Trump earlier this month on the sole impeachment charge of “incitement of insurrection,” with Democrats claiming he incited violence at the U.S. Capitol earlier this month. Trump called on the protesters not to engage in violent acts and later told them to “go home in peace.”

Trump is the first president to be impeached twice, and the first president to undergo an impeachment trial after leaving office.

Ahead of the vote, Paul warned that he wanted to force his colleagues to go on the record.

“If we are going to put every politician in jail, are we going to impeach every politician who has used the words ‘fight’ figuratively in a speech? Shame,” he said. “I want this body on record. Every last person here,” Paul added. https://postalmuseum.si.edu/sites/default/files/webform/f-783291.pdf

Elaborating, Paul added: “As of noon last Wednesday, Donald Trump holds none of the positions listed in the Constitution. He is a private citizen. The presiding officer is not the chief justice, nor does he claim to be. His presence in the chef justice’s absence demonstrates that this is not a trial of the president, but a private citizen.”

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) issued the following statement after he voted to support Paul’s point of order on the constitutionality of the trial of a former president: “This is not a trial; this is political theater. You cannot remove someone from office who is already out of office. In this trial there is no current President, no Chief Justice, and no possibility someone could be removed from office because they are not in any office. In a moment when our nation needs to unite, this trial will only create even deeper divisions.”

While a number of Republican senators have faulted Trump’s speech to demonstrators as a group breached the U.S. Capitol during the Joint Session of Congress, many have said it’s problematic to impeach a president who doesn’t hold office.

Any Republican who votes to convict Trump is sure to face blowback among the GOP base—as Trump remains an enormously popular figure in the party. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and about nine other Republican House members who voted to impeach Trump have faced significant criticism and primary threats. https://postalmuseum.si.edu/sites/default/files/webform/a-593292.pdf

Pushing back against Republicans, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has stated that the trial is not unconstitutional. At least two Republicans—Romney and Murkowski—agreed with him.

“We need truth and accountability for Donald Trump’s actions. His impeachment trial will move forward in the United States Senate,” Schumer wrote on Twitter.

Several law experts—namely Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz—have argued the trial goes against the Constitution.

President Donald Trump’s advisory 1776 Commission on Monday released a public report, fulfilling its task to revisit the nation’s founding history in an effort to reunite the Americans around its founders’ principles.

Americans today are “deeply divided” about the meaning of their country, its history, and how it should be governed, according to the commission, which was created in the final year of Trump’s first term, amid an increasingly popular trend of portraying the American story as one that based on racism and oppression.

“Neither America nor any other nation has perfectly lived up to the universal truths of equality, liberty, justice and government by consent,” the report reads, following an re-examination of the principles and ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. “But no nation before America ever dared state those truths as the formal basis for its politics, and none has strived harder, or done more, to achieve them.”

The authors dedicated a large portion of the report exploring challenges to American’s founding principles. Some of these are historical, such as slavery, which is fundamentally incompatible with the idea that “all men are created equal.” Others are more contemporary, such as progressivism, which holds that the Constitution should constantly evolve to secure evolving rights; fascist and communist movements seeking a totalitarian government with no respect for individual rights; and modern identity politics in favor of a system of explicit group privilege in the name of “social justice.” https://archive.justice.org/sites/default/files/webform/a-932092.pdf

“The arguments, tactics, and names of these movements have changed, and the magnitude of the challenge has varied, yet they are all united by adherence to the same falsehood—that people do not have equal worth and equal rights,” the report states.

The report warns of the dangers of modern political movements departing America’s founding principles, noting that many of the historical movements were successful because they help up those principles, rather than breaking from them.

“Great reforms—like abolition, women’s suffrage, anti-Communism, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Pro-Life Movement—have often come forward that improve our dedication to the principles of the Declaration of Independence under the Constitution,” the authors wrote.

The report calls for a “national renewal” of education to teach the future American citizens the founding principles and the character necessary to live out those principles. A patriotic education, according to the authors, doesn’t mean ignoring the faults in the nation’s past, but rather viewing the history in a clear and wholesome manner, with reverence and love.

American colleges and universities are doing the exact opposite, the report warns, noting that they’ve become “hotbeds of anti-Americanism, libel, and censorship,” with the intention to “manipulate opinions more than educate minds.” https://archive.justice.org/sites/default/files/webform/o-029291.pdf

The authors specifically called out historian Howard Zinn and the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project for preventing students from seeing the humanity, goodness, and benevolence in America’s historical figures. Instead, they present their young readers with a distorted version of American history.

“Historical revisionism that tramples honest scholarship and historical truth, shames Americans by highlighting only the sins of their ancestors, and teaches claims of systemic racism that can only be eliminated by more discrimination, is an ideology intended to manipulate opinions more than educate minds,” the report reads.

The renewal of American unity will depend on every American willing to stand up against tyranny in their everyday life, the author said.

“Above all, we must stand up to the petty tyrants in every sphere who demand that we speak only of America’s sins while denying her greatness,” the report states. “At home, in school, at the workplace, and in the world, it is the people—and only the people—who have the power to stand up for America and defend our way of life.”

Voters in Georgia will determine control of the U.S. Senate and the fate of President-elect Joe Biden’s agenda as polls in the state closed amid record-breaking turnout and intense national interest under the specter of President Donald Trump’s push to overturn his Nov. 3 loss.

There were reports of strong in-person turnout in some counties on Tuesday after almost 3.1 million Georgians cast ballots early ahead of the election. Because of the high number of absentee ballots, there is a chance the winners will not be determined for days, or even weeks, as all the mail-in votes and others are counted.

The two Georgia Senate runoffs with Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff trying to replace Republican incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue were nationalized campaigns from the start.

Smaller counties are expected to finish counting Tuesday night and the majority should be done by Wednesday afternoon, depending on how close the margins are, said elections official Gabriel Sterling, citing a rules change that requires them to begin processing mail-in ballots one week before Election Day.

Polls were to close at 7 p.m. New York time, though the state will have some precincts in a handful of counties delay closing, most of them by minutes, Sterling said.

Fighting for party control of the Senate was huge enough. But against the backdrop of Trump’s claims of vote fraud and corruption by Georgia elections officials -- topped by his extraordinary hourlong phone call laying out fraud claims and urging officials to “find” enough votes to overturn the presidential election -- the races also became a test of Trump’s continued hold on the GOP.

The races also will determine Biden’s power to advance his agenda, as Democrats need victories in both seats to leave the Senate with a 50-50 split, enabling Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to cast tie-breaking votes. If either Republican wins, Biden faces a still-GOP-controlled Senate largely unwilling to back many of his plans to develop a federal response to controlling the coronavirus pandemic, deliver more economic stimulus, or raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy. https://www.umass.edu/studentlife/sites/default/files/webform/s-8731.pdf

Perdue, 71, a first-term Republican Senator and former corporate executive, is seeking re-election against Ossoff, 33, a documentary filmmaker who gained national attention in a 2017 special election for an Atlanta-area House seat.

And Loeffler, 50, the wealthiest member of Congress, is trying to hold on to her seat against a challenge from Warnock, 51, the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, a position once held by Martin Luther King Jr.

Loeffler and Perdue need a strong showing from in-person voting to overcome Democrats’ expected advantage in mail-in and early balloting ahead of the election. In an unusual joint statement issued about 3/12 hours before the polls closed, the two candidates called on Republican voters in Georgia to turn out. After noting that they were “encouraged by reports of high voter turnout across the state,” they pivoted to urge more Republicans to show up at polling places.

“This generational election will be decided by the votes cast in the next few hours -- no one should be sitting on the sidelines,” they wrote in the statement sent at 3:39 p.m. “Go vote!”

Voter turnout in DeKalb County, a Democratic stronghold, on Tuesday exceeded levels seen in the nov. 3 general election, a county spokeswoman said. While turnout numbers weren’t available early Tuesday evening, a strong total in the metro Atlanta county would likely benefit Warnock and Ossoff. The county supported Biden over Trump in November by a margin of 83% to about 15%.

The Senate majority was the most important issue for 60% of voters and important for 34%, while only 6% said it was a minor factor or non-factor, according to AP VoteCast, a phone and online survey of verified Georgia voters conducted over the past eight days.

The survey also showed that 43% of Georgia voters approve of Trump’s handling of the 2020 election results while 55% disapprove. Also, 46% of voters said they are very confident in the accuracy of the 2020 vote, compared with 16% who are somewhat confident, 12% not too confident and 26% not at all confident, according to AP. https://www.umass.edu/studentlife/sites/default/files/webform/f-5949.pdf

Democratic wins would mark the first time Georgia elected a senator from the party in two decades, and if Warnock defeats Loeffler, he would be state’s first African-American U.S. senator.

The races also smashed Senate-race spending records, together nearing a half-billion dollars spent since the Nov. 3 general election, on top of the $205 million spent before that, according to Rick Dent, a political consultant who tracks campaign spending.

“I don’t remember a time when control of Congress hinged on two elections in one state,” said Kerwin Swint, a political scientist at Kennesaw State University, of the high stakes.

Perdue and Loeffler, and Ossoff and Warnock, essentially ran as party tickets in their unprecedented all-or-nothing runoff, with good reason. History suggested they would be joined at the hip in the eyes of voters, anyhow.

There have been just 56 instances where both of a state’s Senate seats were on the ballot in the same election since voters began choosing their senators in 1914, said Eric Ostermeier, a research fellow at the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

The outcomes have split by party only eight times, the last time in South Carolina 54 years ago, Ostermeier said.

In almost every way, Perdue’s and Loeffler’s calculations were to stick tightly to the president, or at least not alienate Trump voters and the party’s base. The duo both called for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to resign after he dismissed Trump’s allegations of voter fraud, and both have backed the effort in the Senate to challenge the election results when Congress certifies the November election on Wednesday.

Both Republican senators describe their foes as “dangerously radical” and warned Ossoff and Warnock would hand over power in Washington to “socialists” like Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Ossoff and Warnock depicted their wealthy Republican opponents as out-of-touch multimillionaires. Loeffler’s husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, recently became a billionaire and is the chief executive officer of Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. Loeffler co-owns the Atlanta Dreams WNBA team and some players have campaigned against her.

The Democrats both accused Perdue and Loeffler of using their offices for questionable stock transactions to cash in on the Covid-19 crisis, although investigations found no wrongdoing. And during the battle in Washington over a COVID-19 relief package, both accused the senators of not wanting to help out-of-work Georgians.

Early voting data showed a possible Democratic advantage heading into Tuesday, including a larger percentage of Black voters than there were in the general election. Stacey Abrams, Georgia’s political star and former Democratic gubernatorial candidate, played a leading role in getting voters to the polls. Georgia Republicans tend, however, to vote in person on Election Day.

Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University, said some Black voters came to view Loeffler as using a “type of racially charged” language in some of her attacks on Warnock. State Representative Roger Bruce, interviewed last week at one of a several church parking-lot rallies held for Warnock, agreed that Black voters were being motivated by what some consider “big time” racial overtones in the rhetoric on the other side.

That uncertainty over the impact of the Black vote contributed to the drama on Tuesday.

Vice President Mike Pence reportedly told President Donald Trump during their weekly lunch on Tuesday that he does not have the power to overturn November's presidential election results, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

Trump has been pressuring Pence publicly to use his role on Wednesday as he presides over a joint session of Congress to certify the Electoral College votes that handed the win to Democrat Joe Biden.

The move would essentially be a last-ditch effort following multiple failed court challenges alleging voter fraud, including two that were rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court. https://bme.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/webform/a-902920.pdf

"The Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors," Trump wrote on Twitter Tuesday morning, after having told a crowd of Georgia voters Monday night he was hoping Pence would "come through" on Wednesday."

"Because if he doesn’t come through, I won’t like him quite as much," Trump added with a laugh.

U.S. states have already certified the results, and Pence's role on Wednesday as president of the Senate is to "open all the Certificates," in the presence of the House of Representatives and the Senate, the U.S. Constitution says.

Trump has suggested Pence could do more than that.

"The Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors," Trump wrote in a tweet on Tuesday, his latest unfounded suggestion that the election was marred by widespread fraud.

His tweet came after pointed and public remarks at a Senate campaign rally in Dalton, Georgia, on Monday night, in which he urged Pence to come through for him.

"If he doesn't come through, I won't like him quite as much," Trump said.

Current and former White House aides said the vice president plans to perform his ceremonial role.

Pence plans to make clear in his statements that he backs the president but will stick to the constraints of his role, a former White House official with regular contact with Pence's team told Reuters. https://bme.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/webform/o-429292.pdf

"He will be very supportive of the president, but again he'll stick to the Constitution," the former adviser said.

"It is a ceremonial role. It is opening up envelopes and reading the contents of it," he said. "That's it. This is a ceremonial ... position."

Pence's chief of staff, Marc Short, told Reuters on Monday that the vice president "will uphold the Constitution and follow the statutory law."

On Friday, a Trump-appointed judge rejected a lawsuit brought by Republican members of Congress asking Pence to reject Electoral College results, saying they had no standing for such a suit.

One Trump adviser told Reuters the president has told others he would like Pence to fight harder for him.

The vice president has sought, so far, to express his support without repeating the president's claims about the election. On Monday, during his own trip to Georgia, Pence said that Republican objections to the election would be heard, but he did not commit to taking action on them.

"I share the concerns of millions of Americans about voting irregularities. And I promise you, come this Wednesday, we'll have our day in Congress. We’ll hear the objections. We'll hear the evidence," he said.