donald-trump

Ivanka Trump’s White House summit on paid family leave marks a significant turning point in her quest to get Republicans on board her pet issue. 

Soon after Donald Trump arrived at the White House in 2017, some skeptics comforted themselves knowing that the first daughter and adviser to the president would be there to sand down some of her father’s rougher edges. But so far, Ivanka has been one of the quieter voices in an administration driven by hard-liners such as immigration specialist Stephen Miller.

House Democrats spoke for months about how investigations had established crimes that President Donald Trump committed, but on Tuesday they did not specifically include those allegations in articles of impeachment under the constitutional standard of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

The two articles of impeachment Democrats filed — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — stayed away from detailing where Trump might have broken the law with his dealings with Ukraine or interactions with the special counsel probe into Russian interference with the 2016 election.

Democrat Sherrod Brown was first elected to the House in 1992 and just won a third Senate term in 2018. Perhaps aware of the history that surrounds him and his own place in it, he has a new book out, “Desk 88.”

That is where he sits in the Senate, and the book is a series of portraits of the senators who sat there before, a list that includes Hugo Black, Robert F. Kennedy and George McGovern.

Judiciary Democrats spent roughly seven months investigating a litany of allegations that President Donald Trump abused his power, but the charges laid out in the articles of impeachment unveiled Tuesday don’t reflect any of that work.

The result is the latest sign that the panel with sole jurisdiction over drafting articles of impeachment has been marginalized as its probe became overshadowed by allegations that Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate his domestic political rivals, withholding a White House meeting and congressionally appropriated security assistance as leverage.

As President Donald Trump live-tweeted his reaction to House Democrats’ impeachment articles, his spokeswoman vowed he would “continue to work on behalf of this country.” Hours later, that business included huddling privately with Vladimir Putin’s top diplomat in the Oval Office.

Trump essentially thumbed his nose at Democrats as they continued linking his July 25 telephone conversation with Ukraine’s president to an alleged affinity for Russia’s as he hosted Sergey Lavrov, Putin’s minister of foreign affairs. If Lavrov steps foot in the Oval Office, it’s a safe bet there is a controversy nearby.

While there were a number of them in Monday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump, points of order do not take up the opposing party’s time in House Judiciary committee proceedings, according to Communications Director Shadawn Reddick-Smith, and there are several rules in place to ensure that. 

House Democrats will bring two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, one saying he abused the power of his office and another that he obstructed Congress in its investigation of his conduct.

The Judiciary Committee plans to begin consideration of the articles, which are official charges against the president, on Thursday, and the full House is expected to vote next week. Opening statements at the Judiciary Committee will begin Wednesday night.

House Republicans are raising issue with the lack of an impeachment hearing with minority witnesses, as GOP members of the Judiciary Committee have repeatedly requested.

“We will avail ourselves of every parliamentary tool available to us in committees and the House floor in order to highlight your inaction,” they wrote in a letter Tuesday.