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Speaker of the Firm Nancy Pelosi leaves the floor after the shut of a vote on a resolution formalizing the impeachment inquiry on October 31, 2019.

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The Firm of Representatives' large impeachment vote, explained

The sleeping accommodation only voted to corroborate procedures related to the impeachment inquiry into President Trump.

Past Updated October 31, 2019, eleven:32am EDT

The House of Representatives approved its first resolution related to their impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump in a Thursday morning vote.

This vote was non, of class, about whether Trump should be impeached. If that happens, information technology will come up farther down the route. Instead, the resolution earlier the Firm was a set of procedures proposed past Democratic leaders for how the impeachment research volition role going forward. You tin read its text here.

The resolution passed past a vote of 232 to 196, nigh entirely along party lines. Two Democrats — Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN) and Jeff Van Drew (D-NJ) — dissented from their party to vote no. Former Republican Rep. Justin Amash (I-MI), who left the party earlier this year, joined Democrats to vote yes. All current Republicans voted no.

The US House of Representatives votes on a resolution formalizing the impeachment inquiry of President Trump, on Oct 31, 2019.

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This vote can exist read as a sign that Democrats are ready to move to a new phase of the inquiry: They're winding down the airtight-door depositions they've held in recent weeks and moving instead to hearings that will take place in public.

The resolution likewise makes clear who will take the lead in this stage: Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the chair of the House Intelligence Committee and an ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Information technology tasks Schiff's committee with holding these public hearings and eventually writing a report. That report will be handed off to the House Judiciary Committee, which would draft articles of impeachment. But nosotros're still a ways off from that.

Thursday's vote is intriguing politically for two reasons. First, this is a vote that Pelosi has spent all year trying to stave off thanks to fear of putting vulnerable House Democrats from Trump-friendly districts in a tough spot.

Second, and relatedly, Republicans accept spent weeks making the lack of this vote a fundamental talking indicate in their criticisms of Democrats' impeachment inquiry. In fact, Business firm rules do not require a vote to showtime such an inquiry, nor does the Constitution, as Vox's Ella Nilsen explained. Only at present that Democrats have decided to concur i anyhow, Trump's defenders will take to find some other procedure complaint to gripe about.

Why Pelosi has changed course and agreed to concord this vote isn't entirely clear, since it really isn't necessary for her to hold one. She could think Democrats now have the upper hand politically, with polls showing support for the impeachment process. She could want to take 1 of Republicans' main talking points off the table. Or she could simply call back it's the correct fourth dimension to move the inquiry to a new phase.

Whatever her reasoning, it has cued upwardly a major moment in political history: Today will be the day lawmakers have their first recorded vote on what will likely be the road to President Trump'southward impeachment.

What House Democrats' impeachment procedures resolution actually does

Democrats' resolution is non a resolution to start an impeachment enquiry; the political party'due south position is that they've been conducting one for some time already. Instead, the resolution is framed as ane "directing certain committees to keep their ongoing investigations" as function of an "existing House of Representative inquiry into whether sufficient grounds exist" for the impeachment of President Trump. That is: The enquiry already existed and will keep.

The resolution does, withal, lay out some specifics about how things will work going forwards.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi gavels the shut of a vote on a resolution formalizing the impeachment research on October 31, 2019.

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Start, it says that open up hearings will be held and, interestingly, the committee that will hold those hearings is the House Intelligence Commission, chaired by Schiff. That makes sense, considering the whistleblower complaint made its way to Schiff in the first place (his committee oversees the intelligence community). And it'due south Schiff's committee that has been holding closed-door depositions of Trump assistants officials for the by month (though members of two other committees, Foreign Relations and Oversight, accept likewise been invited to take role).

Notwithstanding, the move raised some eyebrows, because traditionally, the Judiciary Committee has taken the atomic number 82 in impeachment. The gossip in Washington is that Pelosi has not been happy with how that committee, led by Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), has handled its public hearings this year. The resolution does point a role for the Judiciary Committee eventually, though, equally we'll run across in a minute.

House Judiciary Commission Chair Jerry Nadler (D-NY), right, walks to meet with Speaker Pelosi to discuss impeachment proceedings, on September 24, 2019.

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Second, the resolution gives some details on how those hearings volition exist conducted. The interesting part here is that Schiff (and the intelligence committee's ranking member Devin Nunes) will each get to question witnesses at the beginning for longer than the traditional five minutes — up to 90 minutes in total. They tin can also designate staff members to do this questioning. This is non typically how congressional hearings are conducted but it would allow witnesses to be questioned for lengthier periods by skilled attorneys (rather than bloviating politicians).

Third, the resolution says that Nunes tin can ask for his own witnesses to be invited or subpoenaed to show, but there's a catch. Nunes must requite "a detailed written justification of the relevance" of each witness'due south testimony and either Schiff or a bulk vote on the committee would accept to approve information technology. This is an effort to prevent Republicans from playing political games by enervating that irrelevant witnesses appear.

Finally, the resolution makes articulate how this stage of the impeachment enquiry will cease: After Schiff has held public hearings, he will write a report laying out his findings and recommendations. That'southward when the handoff to Nadler'southward Judiciary Commission will occur. The Judiciary Committee will review the report and draft impeachment manufactures if they deem that necessary (which they most surely volition).

How nosotros got hither

Democrats in the House of Representatives have been divided over whether to impeach Trump since their majority was sworn in in Jan — and those divisions accept only recently subsided equally the Ukraine scandal broke.

Activists and voters in the party have been demanding Trump's impeachment for some time now for a variety of reasons: from bigotry to financial corruption to his full general conduct in function. But at the beginning of this year, party leaders like Speaker Pelosi were wary of this pressure, for political reasons. Their hard-won majority depended on many members representing districts that had voted for Trump.

On March four, 2019, Nadler announced that his Judiciary Committee would investigate "alleged obstacle of justice, public abuse, and other abuses of power by President Trump, his associates, and members of his Administration." And for the months afterward, this was the Business firm's main probe into the Mueller report'due south findings and potential impeachment.

Information technology was mostly expected that, if Democrats decided they did want to seriously explore impeaching Trump, they would take the stride of "opening a formal impeachment research." That is not something that is required past Business firm rules — the Judiciary Committee can depict up and vote on impeachment articles whenever they want — but it is something the House did in advance of the impeachment efforts aimed at Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.

But they did not do this, and Nadler and other Judiciary Committee Democrats spent a few bad-mannered months trying to bespeak to their base of operations voters that they were serious nigh impeachment even though they continued to avert the phrase "impeachment inquiry." (Some attempted to argue that they had started such an inquiry months ago.) The reason for these contortions seemed to be that Democratic leaders remained opposed to a formal inquiry.

It took a new scandal to shake things upward. News of a whistleblower complaint alleging that Trump had pressured Ukraine's president to investigate the Biden family broke in September, and that led Pelosi to terminate the ambiguity. The speaker announced on September 24 that "the House of Representatives is moving forrad with an official impeachment inquiry."

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, pinnacle center, joins with members of the Republican conclave during the October 31 vote.

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Nevertheless, Pelosi showed no inclination to concur a vote of the full House over this. It wasn't practically necessary, and it would be virtually uncomfortable for those Democratic members in Trump-supporting districts. Information technology took over a month for her to finally decide that information technology was indeed time to move forward and get the full House on record voting on this for the first time.

What happens side by side

Summing up, now that this resolution has been approved by the House, this is how the impeachment inquiry will proceed going forward:

• Schiff'due south Intelligence Committee volition concord public hearings and eventually write a report.
• Nadler'south Judiciary Committee volition so review that report and likely draft and vote on articles of impeachment for Trump.
• Any articles of impeachment improved by the Judiciary Committee would and then go earlier the full House for the bodily vote on whether Trump would be impeached.
• If Trump is impeached past the House then the Senate would hold a trial to decide whether to remove him from office.

Information technology isn't clear how long each of these phases will last. Democrats had at one point hoped to hold their final votes on whether to impeach Trump before Thanksgiving, simply that timeline has slipped. For now, they still appear to exist aiming to wrap things upwardly in the Firm earlier the terminate of the year.

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Source: https://www.vox.com/2019/10/31/20940176/impeachment-house-vote-resolution-procedures

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