Today, Explained - A step past impeachment

Episode Date: January 12, 2021

Impeachment won’t stop the United States’ slide towards authoritarianism. Voter reform might. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. Andrew Prokop, Senior Politics Correspondent, Vox. Is the President about to get impeached again? It sure looks like it. Has that ever happened before?

Twice in one term? No, this would be an historic first for President Trump. History maker, if nothing else. But there's also this question of the 25th Amendment. What's up with that? So section four of the 25th Amendment allows the vice president and a majority of the president's cabinet to choose to take away the president administration yet. But after Trump's actions last week with the storming of the Capitol, there was a new round of discussion about it. And Democrats took the position that Pence and the cabinet should invoke the 25th Amendment now. The problem is that they are not doing so. Several Trump cabinet secretaries have resigned rather than stayed in office to the point where their 25th Amendment vote could be needed. But the bigger picture is that Mike Pence does not seem

to be on board with this, even after the chaos at the Capitol put his personal safety at risk. He doesn't want to go this far, and his consent is necessary to invoke the 25th Amendment. Okay, 25th Amendment is a bit of a pipe dream. In the meantime, there's impeachment, and the Democrats are leading the charge. So they released one article of impeachment for incitement of insurrection, and it criticizes Trump for inflaming the crowd with false claims that the election was stolen and for not respecting our democracy and the peaceful transition of power. It focuses mostly on the Capitol storming, but it also references his attempts to interfere with state certifications of election results and the recent corrupt phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger asking him to find votes for him in Georgia. So that's in there insurrection. But could we just spell it out? What evidence or justifications are Democrats giving for this charge of incitement of

insurrection? What they're focusing on is Trump's longer term campaign to dispute the election results with various lies and conspiracy theories. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it. And also his, on the very day of the insurrection, the speech that Trump gave to his crowd, urging them to fight like hell, insisting he was still the true winner, telling them to go down to the Capitol, telling him falsely that he was going to go down to the Capitol with them. We're going to walk down and I'll be there with you.

We're going to walk down. We're going to walk down. Anyone you want. But I think right here, we're going to walk down to the Capitol. And so the impeachment article goes on to say that thus incited by President Trump, members of the crowd he had addressed unlawfully breached and vandalized the Capitol, injured and killed law enforcement personnel, menaced members of Congress, the vice president and congressional personnel, and engaged in other violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious

acts. And though a lot of Republicans were willing to immediately move on and continue to validate the president's false claims about the election, this is something new and deeply dangerous in American politics, what happened last Wednesday, yes? Certainly in modern times, this really has not, there's nothing really that we can point to that's similar. A mob storming the Capitol, trying to prevent the certification and approval of the legitimate election results at the behest of the president of the United States. It's really stunning stuff. We're probably quite lucky that the bloodshed wasn't even worse. Capitol Police discovered two pipe bombs in the area around the Capitol complex. More than 50 officers were hurt in those attacks on the Capitol, several of them hospitalized.

There's newer reporting and video analysis that members of Congress were not too far from the mob. And it was a close run thing that their own security managed to spirit them away. A Capitol police officer whose quick thinking may have saved lives in the Senate last Wednesday. Officer Eugene Goodman, outnumbered dozens to one, was chased up the steps by an angry mob. You can see as he reaches. We're talking minutes. We're talking luck at one point that a group of rioters turned the wrong way rather than keep going to the Senate chamber. So, yeah, I do think that it's pretty clear that this was unprecedented and Democrats think we need to have a response to this to to protect the rule of law. But Republicans are, as is so often the

case, not so sure. I know the vote isn't until tomorrow, but are there any Republicans in the House of Representatives who have supported this impeachment measure? There have been some Republicans who have been very critical of Trump. It's not yet entirely clear whether or how many of them will vote for impeachment. There's been talk of as many as 10 out of the more than 200 House Republicans voting for impeachment, which does not sound like very much, but zero voted for it the last time Trump was impeached. So it would be a bit of an improvement. But when it comes to vote counting, the real question is in the Senate, because the House can impeach Trump with a simple majority. They don't need any Republican support.

So how are things looking in the Senate for a conviction, which we should remind people did not happen the last time? Well, first of all, it's not even clear when the Senate would hold a trial for Trump if the House impeaches him. So the impeachment will take place with seven days left in Trump's term. And then there's another complication, which is that the Georgia Senate special election results won by Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff have not yet been certified. So Republicans still control the Senate. Mitch McConnell is still the majority leader. So he still has the upper hand in deciding what to do about this until Georgia's results are certified, probably later in January, which would make the Senate 50-50. And then Democrats also need Vice President Kamala Harris to be sworn in to give them a tie-breaking vote and the official Senate majority. So the upshot is that for the near term, it's still going to be Republicans in the Senate who are deciding

how to deal with this. Do we know how much support there is for conviction in the Senate? I think under the current state of affairs, they would likely not have the votes to convict. But, you know, this was a scary event that put a lot of senators in personal jeopardy and could have spurred some of them to rethink things. And I think the other important thing we need to discuss is that removing Trump from office at this point only would shave a couple days off his term. The main thing that's on politicians' minds now is the other penalty allowed by the Constitution for someone who's convicted of an impeachment, which is to disqualify them from holding any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States in the future. So the main interpretation of this is that this would prevent Donald Trump from being president again. And if you think that Trump is a bad influence on the Republican Party,

that he's a somewhat unique threat to democracy, that he's a cancer on the party, as many Republicans have said from time to time, then that would seem to be a good solution to just take Trump out of the equation for 2024. Even some of those Senate Republicans who support him, like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, they're looking to run for president themselves, and they surely won't want Trump competing with them in 2024. And that is an interesting calculation for Republicans. Where does the public stand on this? Public opinion, polling polling the United States of America? Where where does it stand after witnessing its Capitol building ransacked by a bunch of Yahoo's last week? So large majorities in polls say they disapprove of what happened, dislike what happened. But support for actually removing Trump from office is surprisingly

tepid. Narrow majorities are in support of it. It basically looks like the impeachment polling last time, more or less. If there is a major change in Republican thinking on this matter of whether Trump should be convicted. It would have to happen at the elite level, and it would not be something that their voters are pushing on them. In fact, it would be somewhat in defiance of those voters' wishes. Here we are. In the second week of 2021, we've had an insurrection, a riot, people died, pipe bombs were planted. But still, Republicans immediately voted to object to the certification of President-elect Biden's win. And still, Republican voters don't seem that interested in convicting the president or barring him from office. And thus, ditto from Republican leadership, at least so far.

So if you're worried nothing matters, you've got good reason. But here's a twist. Our next guest argues that impeachment isn't enough to prevent the country's slip and slide to authoritarianism. He says the real fix is voter reform. That's in a minute on Today Explained. Thank you. by Wirecutter. AuraFrames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an AuraFrame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos.

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Rick Hasson, you specialize in election law at UC Irvine, but you also just wrote a piece for Slate in which you argue that impeachment isn't enough. How come? Well, the problem is that even with Trump gone from the White House, Trumpism and the threat of authoritarianism will continue. That's why it's important that even after Trump has left office, that he'd be disqualified from running again, that he not be able to put back together a coalition that is not willing to fight fairly in elections. That's why we need to have other efforts that will promote moderate Republicans and make both parties in the business of trying to increase their tents,

make their parties as appealing to voters as possible, as opposed to trying to rely upon voter suppression as a means of staying in power. And that's why we need fundamental voting reforms, because we can't trust that the kinds of things that happened this past election won't be repeated again. Which fundamental voting reforms would you want to see? So one thing that is important to do, I think, is to play what David Pozen called constitutional anti-hardball. The idea is that we need to use all of the available tools possible that Democrats have to try to create fairer conditions for our elections. So it might take something kind of hardball move like killing the filibuster for voting reform

so that it only takes a majority of senators rather than 60 senators to get something through the Senate. We've talked about getting rid of the filibuster on the show before, but here you're talking about getting rid of one specific aspect of the filibuster or one part of the filibuster for a specific thing? So you may remember that before the Republicans took back control, when Democrats still had control of the Senate, they eliminated the filibuster for judicial appointments aside from the Supreme Court. Republicans took back control, when Democrats still had control of the Senate, they eliminated the filibuster for judicial appointments aside from the Supreme Court. And when the Republicans took over during the Trump era, they eliminated the filibuster for Supreme Court appointments. I'm suggesting a further exception to the filibuster rules,

which would apply to election and voting legislation. And how many votes would it take to do that? So it would take 51 votes under the so-called nuclear option, which is what's been used before. That is, the president of the Senate, in this case the vice president, would simply declare that it takes 51 votes to make this kind of change, and a majority would vote for it. Now, it's not going to be easy because there are Democrats like Joe Manchin who've expressed

concern about eliminating the filibuster. I think my proposal has a better chance of success because it wouldn't fully eliminate the filibuster. It would just eliminate the filibuster to make voting changes. Okay, your argument is that impeachment is necessary as well as some conviction that ensures President Trump can't run again, but that's not enough to stop the United States from sliding towards authoritarianism. For that, we'd need serious voting reforms,

and for serious voting reforms, Democrats need to play hardball, get rid of the filibuster for matters concerning voter reform. If they did that, along with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, what would you propose they accomplish? Which reforms? Well, at the top of my list are things like admitting Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico

estates, assuming that the residents would want such a thing. That would change the balance of power in the Senate. I believe at least the residents of Washington, D.C. are highly in favor of such a thing. Yes, I think that's true. I think it's a bigger question as to Puerto Rico. I would also restore parts of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court killed off in the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder case,

as well as put in expanded voting rights protections, such as requiring every state in congressional elections to offer some form of early voting, either in-person or absentee voting, or both. I would also favor changes that would be geared towards improving the position of moderates among Republicans so that that wing of the party would be more successful in being able to hold power without the Trumpist wing

being able to primary those members. One way to do that would be to have redistricting reform, reform which would be aimed at, for example, requiring the use of nonpartisan or bipartisan commissions to draw congressional district lines. That's well within Congress's power to do. So I'm guessing if a Republican legislator of a certain ideology would hear these reforms to voting that you're proposing, he or she might just say, wait, you're just trying to give Democrats more seats in the Senate. Well, I think part of it is giving Democrats

more seats in the Senate because the Senate is an institution that is very seriously weighted towards Republicans. You have a small minority of members of the United States that are overrepresented in a system that gives the same representation to senators, to Wyoming, which has well under a million residents, and California, which has over 30 million residents. The idea is that the Senate is a non-democratic, small d, non-democratic institution. And things that could be done to make it more reflective of the one-person, one-vote ideal that is applied everywhere in our government, aside from in the Senate and in the Electoral College, would be a good thing.

But this is not just about helping Democrats. It's also about helping moderate Republicans and creating a more responsible two-party system where both parties fairly compete for votes, not by trying to shrink the electorate, as the Trumpist Republicans have been trying to do, but instead to create a situation where both parties are trying to compete for more voters. Just to continue playing devil's advocate here,

wouldn't some argue that the Senate has always been an anti-small-D democratic institution, and that was the intent of its design? Well, whether that was the intent or not, it doesn't serve our purposes today. And today, given the threat that we face from authoritarian forces in the United States, I think recalibrating the power of the Senate is something that is part of the answer to the question of how we assure that we continue to be a democracy that reflects the will of the people. Do you think there's a sort of an exigency to do this soon before people forget what happened last week, before the trauma of this insurrection fades away? I think there's an urgency not only because of people's memories fading about how serious the Capitol assault was, but also because Democrats, who are going to be the driving force behind these changes, may not be able to maintain their control on the Senate and the House and the presidency

for the same times. This is the time to make change. Would that change come at the expense of President-elect Joe Biden's ambitions for his first 100 days? If Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is saying, okay, real quick though, let's fundamentally change the Senate and make other voting reforms. Might that stall, let's say, the political will for really serious stimulus spending or really serious environmental spending or massive reform on healthcare, something like that. It's a very tough time to be advocating for change when there needs to be so much change elsewhere

and when the COVID health and economic crisis has to be dealt with and climate change has to be dealt with. But this is a very narrow window that's available. And I think democracy has to be near the top of the list. Is anyone out there making the argument that, you know, up to this point, there's been this sort of forgive and forget tendency that's accompanied the peaceful transfer of power in American politics? You know, President Obama didn't go after President Bush for what a lot of people

around the world were calling war crimes in Iraq. Since this peaceful transfer of power hasn't been all that peaceful this time around, is it time to sort of ditch the forgive and forget tendency in American politics? I think forgive and forget can be a very useful thing to do, and I don't know that it was necessarily wrong in earlier transitions of power. This one is qualitatively different. We've not had a president like Trump who's actively sought to overturn the results of the election through the courts, through legislative action, through trying to get election officials to manufacture votes, to trying to get election officials to manufacture votes, to trying to get his supporters to physically block the acceptance of Joe Biden's votes in

Congress. And so this is not the time to forgive or forget. This is the time for concerted action to restore American democracy. Professor, thank you so much. Thank you. Rick Hassan, he's the author of a book titled Election Meltdown, Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy. I'm Sean Ramos-Firm. This is Today Explained. The team includes Muj Zaydi,

Halima Shah, Will Reed, Amina Alsadi, and Noam Hassenfeld. Afim Shapiro is our engineer. Golda Arthur is our supervising producer. Facts, checked by Cecilia Lay. Music by Breakmaster Cylinder and sometimes Noam. Liz Kelley Nelson is Vox's editorial director of podcasts. And Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Thank you.