17th July, 2019
The US House of Representatives on Wednesday voted 332-95 to kill the first articles of impeachment brought forward against President Donald Trump under the new Democratic majority.
The defeat of the move signalling a deep divide among Democrats on whether to go forward with an effort to unseat President Trump, reports thehill.com
A majority of Democrats along with the chamber’s Republicans voted to table the measure sponsored by Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), but 95 Democrats voted to send it to the Judiciary Committee in order to keep it alive.
It’s the first time the Democratic House has been confronted with a vote on impeachment, and comes a week before special counsel Robert Mueller is set to testify before two committees on Capitol Hill.
Green, whose previous impeachment votes have accused Trump of inflaming racial tensions, offered the measure immediately after the House on Tuesday voted to condemn Trump over tweets targeting four minority Democratic congresswomen.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has sought to quash talk of impeachment, and her side won the vote on Wednesday. But it also made clear a large number of Democrats want to take action against Trump even before hearing from Mueller.
Green argued that the House should go farther and move to impeach Trump for a pattern of inflaming racial tensions in America.
He forced a vote on his articles of impeachment by filing them as a “privileged” resolution, triggering a process that requires House floor action within two legislative days.
“Today’s vote is to determine whether or not we will punish the president. The effort yesterday was wonderful. I supported it. But it does not punish the president,” Green said in a House floor speech.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) moved to table Green’s resolution, rather than Democratic leaders formally offering the motion themselves to cast the effort aside.