Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog. Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com.
By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief
Pictured above are United States President Donald Trump, Ohio Congresswoman Joyce Beatty of Columbus, (wearing red)Ohio Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, whose largely Black 11th congressional district includes Cleveland, and National NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson
CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM-WASHINGTON, D.C.-Hardly a week after House Democrats, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, announced two articles of impeachment against embattled Republican President Donald Trump, the lower chamber of Congress on Wednesday formally impeached the outspoken president for obstruction of Congress and abuse of power via a Ukraine scandal that raises questions about foreign policy corruption by U.S. officials and the security of presidential elections from foreign influences.
Congressional Democrats, under the theme 'Nobody is Above the Law,' and Republicans debated Tuesday on the two articles on the House floor Wednesday for more than 10 hours, Democrats lobbying for impeachment and Republicans speaking against the measure.
Wednesday's House vote was 219-154, with 13 Democrats and 34 Republicans abstaining or not registering a vote, and was along partisan lines, Republicans, with Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell at the helm, vowing to sabotage the upcoming impeachment trial in favor of the president, who issued a rambling seven page letter in disgust to Speaker Pelosi before this evening's vote, Democrats and activists rallying for impeachment Tuesday in cities across the country, including in Cleveland.
Democrats say that under Trump, the nation's 45th president, who succeeded former president Barack Obama into office, constitution has become dangerously out of balance while the Republicans say the Democrats have lowered the bar and that the partisan-bound impeachment proceedings are frivolous, and unfair. (Editor's note: A Democrat, Obama is the country's first and only Black president)
Now that the House has spoken Trump's fate is left in the hands of the Republican-controlled Senate, the Senate trial not a criminal trial and the only possible penalty being removal from office, which is slim to none in the Senate.
Ohio's Democratic delegation members, all of them demanding impeachment, were elated, namely U.S. Sen Sherrod Brown of Cleveland, Reps Joyce Beatty, a Columbus Democrat, and Marcy Kaptur, a Toledo Democrat former presidential candidate 9th congressional district extends to Cleveland, former presidential candidate Tim Ryan, and Rep Marcia Fudge, whose largely Black 11th congressional district includes Cleveland and several of its eastern suburbs of Cuyahoga County.
Fudge and Beatty are the only two Blacks in Congress from Ohio.
"Madame Speaker I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record my remarks supporting the impeachment of President Donald Trump," Rep Beatty said when her turn came during the hours long impeachment debate on the House floor on Tuesday.
“ A mobster? A con man? A gangster in the White House? I think so,” Fudge read on the floor of congress in June about Trump, a letter she said her office received from an upset constituent relative to the arrogant president.
The letter then went through a rundown of Trump’s behavior before turning attention to his followers where the congresswoman said that if Trump is racist so are his followers.
“The President betrayed the public interest, undermined our national security, attempted to corrupt our free and fair elections, and refused to comply with constitutionally mandated congressional oversight," the congresswoman told Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com Tuesday in a statement. "These acts of betrayal cannot stand."
Democratic Rep. Val Demings of Florida, who is Black, did not hold back during her floor speech Tuesday, saying Trump was bold in calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to seek help in rigging the 2020 elections and choosing to "hold much needed military aid over our allies head until the president's demands were met."
In quoting historian and Harvard University Professor Noah Feldman, Democratic House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland said that "if we cannot impeach a president who abuses his office for personal advantage, we no longer live in a democracy, we live under a monarchy , or we live under a dictatorship."
Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California was also among the many congressional speakers, and said Democrats have done nothing but undermine the president since he took office in 2017.
He said the current Congress is responsible for the best economy this nation has ever seen, a posture the NAACP questions as pro-White as Blacks in urban cities in particular face a more than 45 percent unemployment rate.
At issue is the president's alleged efforts to manipulate Ukraine leaders into digging up dirt on former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, Biden the Democratic front-runner for president.
The president says there was no quid pro quo and that he did not tell Ukraine leaders that the U.S. would withhold some $400 million in foreign aid to Ukraine unless Hunter Biden were investigated regarding hundreds of thousands of dollars he received for work at Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings.
Data show otherwise, and the Democratically-led House of Representative disagrees.
Neither the former vice president nor his son has been accused of any criminal wrongdoing in the matter.
The House Judiciary Committee, after weeks of both public and private testimony across several House committees, and from constitutional experts, voted in support of the two impeachment articles, sending the measure for today's full congressional vote, Trump the third to be impeached and fourth president in American history to face an impeachment inquiry behind Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, one heightened by the upcoming 2020 election.
In addition to congressional Democrats and nearly half of America, the Black community is fed-up with the president too.
The NAACP wanted the president impeached as well as 85 percent of Black people, according to an NBC News- Wall Street Journal poll taken last month, the poll also showing that some 57 percent of Hispanics want the president impeached while only 41 percent of Whites favor impeachment.
In comparison, a CNN poll says that 61 percent of women want the president impeached.
“We wholeheartedly support the call by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to proceed with articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump," said Derrick Johnson, national president and CEO of the NAACP, in a statement before today's House impeachment vote.
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog. Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, and who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.
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