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The Constitution Dictates That Impeachment Must Not Be Partisan

Barely two decades since the impeachment of Bill Clinton, the people of the United States again are confronting the possibility that their president, now Donald Trump, could be impeached, meaning charged by the House of Representatives with offenses that, if proved in a Senate trial, would remove him from office.

Not surprisingly, politics have pervaded the debate.

Many, perhaps most, assume that impeachment of a president should be, or inevitably will devolve into a political melee. The few historic examples that exist show political motivations – to varying degrees – in the impeachment proceedings against Presidents Johnson, Nixon and Clinton.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told The Washington Post in March that “impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path.”

Most Democratic leaders don’t want impeachment, at least at this point, fearing a political backlash in 2020 if they pursue impeachment. Some believe that if impeached in the House and tried and acquitted by the Senate, Trump’s political popularity will skyrocket like Bill Clinton’s did after his impeachment in 1998.

Nonetheless, impeachment supporters in the House now number, according to The New York Times, “roughly two dozen.” House and Senate Democratic leaders are facing increased calls by a growing number of colleagues to begin formal impeachment proceedings against President Trump.

To date, only one Republican has joined the chorus, Michigan Rep. Justin Amash.

Other Republicans – supporters of President Trump – accuse Democrats of using impeachment to overturn the 2016 presidential election.

Politics now characterize the serious issue of whether Trump has obstructed justice and committed other offenses worthy of his removal from office.

As a scholar of law, I believe that under our Constitution, impeachment – or the decision not to impeach – must not be based on partisan considerations.

Rooted in the Constitution

Some advocates of impeachment have recognized the correct basis to decide whether Congress should investigate and impeach President Trump.

Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania announced in a May 21 press release, “We took an oath to uphold our constitution and the President’s efforts to cover up his acts, and those of his campaign and administration, threaten the foundation of our democracy.”

Similarly, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a Democratic candidate for president, urged that based on their oaths to safeguard the Constitution, the House of Representatives has an affirmative duty to begin a full impeachment investigation.

Leaving aside whether the present record supports an impeachment inquiry against Trump, I believe Warren and Scanlon are right that the decisions whether to impeach and possibly remove any president from office should be rooted in the Constitution itself.

Corrupting the office

The Constitution gives the House of Representatives sole power to impeach, meaning to formally charge that the president (or other federal “Officer”) has committed offenses worthy of immediate removal from office.

The Senate conducts the impeachment trial. A conviction requires a super-majority of no less than two-thirds of all senators.

The Framers decided that power as drastic as removing a sitting president should belong to Congress, the branch of government most closely associated with the will of the people.

Rather than leaving impeachment to the Supreme Court or other small, unelected body, impeachment becomes the tool of the national will – not a political will, but rather the national will to respect the Constitution’s neutral legal requirements.

Of course, as the Framers well knew, by its very nature Congress would be, and indeed is, politically partisan. Voters elect members of Congress to enact laws based on those voters’ policy preferences. Inevitably, laws favored by the “majority” may frustrate or even hinder voters whose candidates lost.

Such is the normal “give and take” of democracy.

However, the Constitution clarifies that regarding impeachment, Congress cannot conduct business as usual. Like declaring war, impeachment is one of the rare matters where politics should be utterly inappropriate.

The Constitution’s Article II, Section 4 commands that a president may be removed from office only for “Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

Accordingly, Congress must base its decisions whether to impeach and to remove a president from office on a factual, politically neutral record demonstrating whether the president actually has committed, in the Constitution’s language, “Crimes.”

This plain text tells us that impeachment is not a device by which a disgruntled Congress may negate the voters’ political choice, even if Congress honestly believes a duly elected president’s policies are unsound, reckless or dangerous. Rather, Congress must approach the matter whether a president has committed constitutional “Crimes” as if it were jurors in a courtroom.

Commentators, then, rightly have denounced the seemingly political nature of Clinton’s impeachment and, roughly 130 years earlier, the impeachment of Andrew Johnson.

Offenses against the government

Importantly, history shows that the Constitution’s term “other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” is not limited to actual criminal conduct.

Noted scholars Ronald Rotunda and John Nowak explain that the Framers wisely intended the phrase “or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” to include undermining the Constitution and similar, “great offenses against the federal government (like abuse of power) even if they are not necessarily crimes.”

For instance, Alexander Hamilton asserted that, while likely to be criminal acts, impeachable wrongdoings “are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men … from the abuse or violation of some public trust.”

James Madison urged that impeachment is appropriate for “loss of capacity, or corruption … [that] might be fatal to the republic.”

And founding father Benjamin Franklin agreed that impeachment is “the best way … for the regular punishment of the Executive when his misconduct should deserve it, and for his honorable acquittal when he should be unjustly accused.”

Thus, out of respect for the democratic process, a president cannot be impeached to promote Congress’ political agenda. Nor should lawmakers avoid impeachment because of perceived political cost.

Rather, given its remarkable gravity, a president should be impeached for conduct that – if committed by any president regardless of political or party affiliations – so taints or corrupts the presidency, he or she must be removed to preserve the integrity of American government.

Thus, the standard for impeachment must be politically neutral. Otherwise, impeachment becomes an illegitimate device to overturn elections.

Peter Brandon Bayer, Associate Professor of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The Constitution Dictates That Impeachment Must Not Be Partisan

Trump-Pence Admin Announces Plan to Eliminate LGBTQ Non-Discrimination Protections in Healthcare

HRC responded to the Trump-Pence administration’s latest attempt to undermine the rights and welfare of LGBTQ people and their families. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is proposing a major change to the administrative rule interpreting Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to remove explicit protections for LGBTQ people in healthcare programs and activities by excluding protections from discrimination based on sex stereotyping and gender identity.

“The Trump-Pence administration’s latest attack threatens to undermine crucial non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people provided for under the Affordable Care Act,” said HRC Government Affairs Director David Stacy. “The administration puts LGBTQ people at greater risk of being denied necessary and appropriate health care solely based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Everyone deserves access to medically necessary care and should never be turned away because of who they are or who they love.”

The Department of Health and Human Services is slated to publish the proposed revision of the implementing regulation for Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Friday, May 24, in the Federal Register. The public will have 60 days from then to comment on the proposal. Section 1557 of the ACA prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability in certain health programs or activities. This landmark provision is the first of its kind to include protections from discrimination on the basis of sex in the context of healthcare. The definition of “sex” has been consistently interpreted by numerous federal courts and agencies — including HHS — to include discrimination on the basis of sex stereotyping and gender identity. The Office of Civil Rights at HHS began successfully accepting complaints and enforcing the ACA to protect LGBTQ people since 2012. HHS published a final rule implementing the ACA’s civil rights protections to include discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sex stereotyping in 2016. More than 13,000 HRC members and supporters weighed in on this proposed rule in 2015.  As a result of litigation HHS has not been processing claims related to gender identity, sex stereotyping, or pregnancy termination discrimination since 2016.

Fear of discrimination causes many LGBTQ people to avoid seeking healthcare, and when they do enter care, studies indicate that LGBTQ people are not consistently treated with the respect that all patients deserve. Studies show that 56% of LGB people and 70% of transgender and gender non-conforming people reported experiencing discrimination by healthcare providers — including refusal of care, harsh language and physical roughness because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. According to a report, 23% of transgender respondents did not see a doctor when they needed to because of fear of being mistreated as a transgender person and a startling 55% of transgender respondents who sought coverage for transition-related surgery were denied. Delay and avoidance of care due to fear of discrimination compounds the significant health disparities experienced by LGBTQ people.

hrc.org/blog/trumppence-admin-announces-plan-to-eliminate-lgbtq-non-discrimination-prot?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

A Look at Taiwan’s First Same-Sex Marriage Celebrations

www.advocate.com/photography/2019/5/24/look-taiwans-first-same-sex-marriage-celebrations

Theresa May Resigns as British Prime Minister Over Brexit Revolt: WATCH

Her voice cracking, British Prime Minister Theresa May announced she is stepping down on June 7 after Brexit fails: ‘Speaking in Downing Street, May said it had been “the honour of my life” to serve as Britain’s second female prime minister. Her voice breaking, she said she would leave “with no ill will, but with enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love.’

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Theresa May Resigns as British Prime Minister Over Brexit Revolt: WATCH