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To the Editor:

Re Senate Acquits Trump in Capitol Riot; 7 Republicans Join in Vote to Convict (front page, Feb. 14):

Forty-three Republican senators put their political party and their careers ahead of the nation and voted to acquit former President Donald J. Trump in his second impeachment trial. These senators have given a green light to future presidents to say and do whatever they wish on their way out the door, including trying to overturn an election through violence.

Although the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, gave an impassioned speech after the vote decrying Mr. Trumps actions, his assertion that he couldnt vote to convict Mr. Trump because he is out of office will give a get out of jail free card to future presidents.

This vote should haunt the Republican Party for a long time, and history will not treat it kindly. Lets hope that our democratic institutions survive this disgraceful acquittal.

Edwin AndrewsMalden, Mass.

To the Editor:

If Republican senators chose to acquit former President Donald Trump because they needed to save their political careers, even though they believed he was guilty as charged, that makes me very sad. However, if they voted to acquit because they did not believe he was guilty, that totally terrifies me. God save our democracy, for these senators most certainly will not.

Janice LillyBloomington, Ind.

To the Editor:

Question for senators voting to acquit former President Donald Trump: What would Mr. Trump have to have done for you to vote to convict him?

Richard RosenthalNew York

To the Editor:

For Mitch McConnell to publicly profess Donald Trumps guilt, while hiding behind his claim of the unconstitutionality of the impeachment trial, is hypocrisy par excellence from the master of hypocrisy. Mr. McConnell himself refused to call back the Senate to receive the article of impeachment while Mr. Trump was in office, thereby creating the very impediment to conviction he cites.

Given that the House voted to impeach on Jan. 13, and this trial took five days, there would have been time for the trial to reach its conclusion before the change of administration on Jan. 20.

Anne-Marie CornerPhiladelphia

To the Editor:

As I closely followed the impeachment trial of the former president, I was horrified watching an angry mobs brutality inflicted upon the Capitol Police. I was left wondering how these 43 Republicans who voted to acquit Donald Trump can walk through the doors of the Capitol, the scene of the crime, and look into the eyes of the Capitol Police and not feel ashamed. Ashamed that they valued Mr. Trumps base and lies above the lives of their protectors.

Susan FerioliMahwah, N.J.

To the Editor:

Donald Trump has gotten away with it, again.

How many more times will this man do something nefarious and walk away as though hes done nothing wrong? He has stiffed people on their fees, groped women, interfered with elections. Worst of all, he incited a rebellion against the United States. Every time, he walks away.

It is said that Mr. Trump may face legal actions from New York and other states for various other questionable actions. Will he walk away from those, too?

Marshall H. CossmanGrand Blanc, Mich.

To the Editor:

Republicans have cast their lot and made a statement that will haunt them forever. They have shown America that for them, party is more powerful than country, and they let a tyrant get off scot-free. They have learned nothing these last few weeks. A sad, sad day for democracy.

Peter SamtonNew York

To the Editor:

Like millions of other Republican voters, Im committing to vote out every elected G.O.P. official who in any way contributed to Donald Trumps two acquittals. He remains guilty. The evidence horrifically proved it. They knew it, yet they drank more Trump Kool-Aid; thus, they empower him still. God and the watching world forgive us!

We voters will unite to end his tyranny ourselves and throw out all these unconscionable enabling bums in every election hereafter!

A.M. ReedLawrence, Kan.

To the Editor:

I think the House impeachment managers made a mistake in not calling witnesses. Their closing arguments, like their arguments over all, were brilliant. But they had them on the run and they let them go. Im angry and frustrated, but Im also very proud of the impeachment managers and their noble fight (thats right, fight) against such overwhelming odds.

Jefferson ParsonAshland, Ore.

To the Editor:

There was only one question for senators to ask themselves when voting whether to convict: Would the mob have attacked the Capitol with the Congress sitting in session but for Donald Trumps lies that the election was stolen and his direction that they march on the Capitol?

Representative Liz Cheney answered that question in a statement last month: The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of their attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the president. The president could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not.

Mr. Trumps actions in the weeks following the election and on Jan. 6 were an abuse of power unlike anything we have ever seen. It was craven cowardice for Republicans to put Mr. Trump before country.

Mary Ann LynchCape Elizabeth, Maine

To the Editor:

As the Capitol was under attack, did Donald Trump say he loved our Capitol, our senators, our police force, our democracy, our Constitution and our Republic? Or did he say he loved those who beat our police with hockey sticks and flags and fire extinguishers? And loved those who shattered our Capitol windows, doors and monuments with ladders and shields and makeshift ramming devices?

And loved those who ransacked Senate desks and offices? And loved those who pledged, in service of Mr. Trump, to kill our vice president?

Remind me again exactly whom Mr. Trump said he loved.

Erin ScottBarnegat Light, N.J.

To the Editor:

On this Presidents Day weekend, how do we explain the outcome of the impeachment trial to our children and grandchildren. They and the whole world have been watching.

Judith Van HoornEl Cerrito, Calif.

Link:
Opinion | The Disgraceful Acquittal of Donald Trump - The New York Times

A few hours into the presentation of the House managers case against Donald Trump, for inciting the mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6th, Representative Eric Swalwell, of California, played senators an extraordinary new clip of themselves on that awful day. The previously undisclosed security-camera footage was short. There was no sound. It simply showed senators running down a long corridor, to escape from the mob. This was no calm, orderly evacuation. These were members of Congress running for their lives. Swalwell said that he went back and checked to see how close the rioters had come to the senators. The answer was fifty-eight steps. We all know that awful day could have been so much worse, he said.

A few minutes later, Swalwellthe son and brother of cops, he notedplayed a series of increasingly frantic radio transmissions by members of the D.C. Metropolitan Police, as they tried and failed to contain the riot that ultimately injured dozens of officers. We lost the line. Weve lost the line, an officer shouts. All M.P.D., pull back, he screams. Pull back.

This was the horrible moment when the Capitol was breached. But it was so much more than that, tooa before-and-after moment in our democracy, when Trumps months-long campaign to undermine the legitimacy of an American election culminated in a deadly but failed attempt to stop Congress from certifying the results. Had Trump finally gone too far, even for his Republican Party to follow? Had he gone too far for the members of the U.S. Senate who were themselves targets of the mob? This weeks impeachment trial will answer those questions, and in so doing offer one last clarifying, horrifying coda to the Trump Presidency.

So, no, we are not moving on. Not yet. Joe Biden has been the President for three weeks now, but the profane spectre of Trump, his unprecedented attack on the election, and the violence that he helped unleash in furtherance of that attack remain the unfinished business of his disastrous Presidency.

The exercise of this weeks Senate impeachment trial might well be the last time that the Trump era is so evocatively re-created: the blustering President and his toxic tweets and rallies, the rampaging thugs whom he urged to march to the Capitol and fight like hell, the Republican senators forced to dodge endless shouted questions about Trump and his false claims. At the heart of it is this painful mystery: Did Trump believe the stolen-election lies that he used to call forth the mob? What did he expect would happen when he told them to walk to Congress and stop the certification of the Electoral College results that would put an end to his Presidency?

Im not sure what, exactly, to call what we have been watching this week: part trial, part documentary film, part constitutional-law seminar, part Facebook video shared by your politics-obsessed cousin. Its too soon for history, and there are still so many questions unanswered; if there is to be a full investigation of this tragedy, it hasnt happened yet. Where the House Democratic managers succeeded most brilliantly was in evoking that days feeling of violation and betrayaland in linking the violence back to Trumps cynical and premeditated provoking of an insurrection in the heart of Washington. Trump was the inciter-in-chief, not the commander-in-chief, the Democrats lead manager, Representative Jamie Raskin, of Maryland, said. He was a fire chief who set a fire in a crowded theatre and then watched it burn. Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities, Raskin said, of Trump, channelling Voltaire. This is the third Presidential impeachment trial of my lifetime. I have watched close to every minute of all three. Never have I seen anything as riveting as the dramatization of the Capitol violenceand Trumps role in itthat the House managers put on this week.

I cannot imagine how any senator can vote against removal, Adam Kinzinger, of Illinois, one of just ten House Republicans to vote for Trumps impeachment, tweeted, during the showing of the videos on Wednesday. On Thursday, many of the strongest denunciations of Trumps actions in the House managers case came from elected Republican officials and Trump Administration advisers, who were shown calling the former Presidents actions disgraceful, shameful, wrong, and one of the darkest chapters in United States history. After listening to all this, Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, one of the few Senate Republicans who categorically spoke out against Trump on that day, told reporters during one of the trial breaks, I dont see how Donald Trump could be relected to the Presidency again. That is up to her colleagues, but all too many of them have already signalled where they stand.

And that, as always in the Trump era, is what it comes back to: Trump alone never could have wreaked such mayhem on our democracy, on our Capitol. His mob is not just the thugs who attacked cops with flagpoles on January 6th; it also includes some of the elected officials inside the besieged building, the ones in suits who advanced and promoted Trumps election lies, just as they had advanced and promoted so many of his other lies for the previous four years. Of course, they are standing by him now.

After watching the managers presentation, Senator Ted Cruzthe Texas Republican whose objection to Arizonas electoral count was being debated when rioters forced the senators to fleetold reporters that, no matter how horrific the video is, the managers had proved nothing of Trumps guilt. I think the end result of this impeachment trial is crystal clear to everybody, which is that Donald Trump will be acquitted, he said. Senator Roy Blunt, of Missouri, asked if he had changed his mind, changed the subject, telling reporters that congressional Democrats had supported riots in Seattle, Portland, and other places. CNNs Manu Raju reported that, although several Republican senators were shaken by the footage, they were not inclined to waver from their votes to acquit. (Apparently shaken, but not stirred, the Democrat Doug Jones, who lost his Alabama Senate seat in November, said.) On Wednesday evening, Trumps chief Senate defender, Lindsey Graham, as if seeking to erase his brief apostasy in voting against Trumps election lie on the night of the riot, called the managers case against Trump offensive and absurd. David Schoen, Trumps combative new lawyer, liked that line so much that he used it himself. The accusations against Trump, he told reporters on Thursday, were not just unproven; they were offensive.

Next, it will be Schoens turn to present a case. Im sure he and Trumps other lawyers will dismiss all that we have seen from the managers about the events of January 6, 2021, as sensationalistic rehashing of the days violence, inflammatory, and beside the point. They will portray Trump as a paragon of First Amendment-protected free speech. They will portray Democrats as hypocrites, perfectly willing to unleash a mob when it suits them. The reason I know that they will say this is because they already have. All indicators suggest that this is just the defense that many Republican senators are looking for.

In the five weeks since the attack on the Capitol, those who unleashed and enabled the rioters had every chance to apologize, to pull back, to offer regrets and make amends. They did not. Trump did not, and neither, its sad to say, did almost any of his fellow-Republicans. Many, like Graham, have gone in the other direction. The security-camera footage from the Capitol shows us that these senators ran for their lives. But they did not, and still do not, have the will or the courage to run from Trump and from the lies with which he has enveloped them and their Party.

The unprecedented second impeachment trial of Donald Trump is not yet over, though it soon will be, and the outcome is, once again, not much in doubt. A year ago, when Trump faced his first trial, Mitt Romney was the only Senate Republican to vote for his conviction. This time, despite the trial taking place at the actual scene of the crime, Romney was joined by only five other Republicans in voting to allow the trial to proceed. Whether or not those six ultimately vote to convict, the final number of Republicans is sure to be well below the two-thirds majority required for conviction. We lost the line. We lost the line, indeed.

See the rest here:
We Lost the Line: Donald Trump Is on the Brink of Yet Another Senate Acquittal - The New Yorker

In a wide-ranging televised town hall that touched on the pandemic, economic relief, China-U.S. relations and race and policing, Biden also aimed to build public support for his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan, which is awaiting congressional action.

"Now's the time to go big," he said during a CNN prime-time broadcast, as he fielded questions from voters at the landmark Pabst Theater in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. "If we pass this bill alone, we'll create 7 million jobs this year."

With the U.S. Senate having acquitted former President Trump in his second impeachment trial on Saturday, the White House is eager to press ahead with Biden's proposals on the economy, COVID-19, climate change and racial inequality.

Biden again made clear he would prefer to turn the page on the divisive Trump era. When CNN host Anderson Cooper asked him whether he agreed with Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that Republicans who voted to acquit were cowards, the president demurred.

Watch a clip from the presidential town hall below:

"For four years, all that's been in the news is Trump," Biden said. "The next four years, I want to make sure all the news is the American people. I'm tired of talking about Trump. He's gone."

After a parent and a teacher asked how Biden planned to ensure that schools could open safely amid the pandemic, the Democratic president said he anticipated that "most" elementary and middle schools would have in-person classes five days a week by the end of his first 100 days in office.

He also said he believes teachers should be moved closer to the front of the line for inoculation.

"I think that we should be vaccinating teachers we should move them up in the hierarchy," Biden said, although he noted that states, not the federal government, have the authority to decide how to prioritize vaccinations.

RELATED: Trump lashes out at McConnell in deepening feud between top Republicans | Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani accused in lawsuit of conspiring to incite Capitol riot

Biden said he expected everyone who wanted a vaccine would be able to get one by July, when his administration will have secured enough shots to inoculate all Americans. But he also warned that the recovery from the pandemic that has killed more than 485,000 people in the United States would still take many months and urged people to wear masks, maintain social distance and wash hands for the foreseeable future.

Tuesday's visit, as well as a trip scheduled for Thursday that will take Biden to a Michigan vaccine manufacturing site, offered the president an opportunity to tout the importance of a new relief bill even as Republicans remain largely opposed to its massive price tag.

Biden wants Congress to pass the legislation in the coming weeks in order to get $1,400 stimulus checks out to Americans and bolster unemployment payments.

Some aspects of the bill, including Biden's push to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, may have a difficult time gaining enough support to pass. After a small business owner raised concerns at Tuesday's town hall, Biden suggested he might be willing to consider a more gradual phase-in.

Biden's visit to Wisconsin a state he narrowly won on his way to capturing the presidency was his first official trip since taking office on Jan. 20, though he has traveled to his home state of Delaware and to the Camp David presidential retreat.

Tuesday's travel also marked Biden's first flight on the larger version of Air Force One, the presidential plane.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Additional reporting by Jarrett Renshaw, Nandita Bose and Eric Beech; Writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Richard Pullin)

Originally posted here:
With Donald Trump's impeachment trial over, Joe Biden pushes his agenda in televised town hall - Jamestown Sun

This week, former President Donald Trump is facing his second impeachment trial, this time for his role in the failed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. And just as some of his Republican colleagues may vote against him in that trial, many of Trumps longtime real estate colleagues have now decided his behaviors in office were too egregious to warrant continued support.

Trumps lender of last resort, Deutsche Bank, is reportedly refusing to do any more business with him or his company, according to The New York Times. Brokerage giant Cushman & Wakefield announced they would no longer handle leasing agreements for Trump properties. The commercial real estate company JLL is no longer handling the sale of the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. Signature Bank, which has also financed Trump projects in the past, closed his accounts and announced they would not do business with any member of Congress who voted not to certify the Electoral College results for the 2020 election. Multiple industry political action committees have suspended donations to those members of Congress as well.

Lenders separation from Trump is a recognition that financial support enabled his anti-democratic behaviors. However, the real estate industry has been complicit in white supremacy and racial discrimination long before Trump took office. Will the repudiation of Trump lead to a wider reckoning?

Land ownership is the primary source of wealth and means to access capital in America. And for over a century, the real estate industry has implicated itself deeply in white supremacy by backing and profiting from racist practices that created and still sustain the nations unequal land and home ownership.

Redlining, racial housing covenants, predatory lending, and neighborhood-destroying highway construction have all contributed to a wealth gap in which white families have roughly10 timesthe net worth of the average Black family.This lack of wealth and ongoing discrimination has throttled Black individuals capacity to acquire, retain, and grow assets that are critical to well-being. For instance, during the last two decades, even as overall U.S. homeownership has grown, there has been a catastrophic loss of homeownership in key cities that have large shares of Black homeowners.

How is this happening in the 21st century? Its been widely documented that the formal association between neighborhood, race, and insurance risk established by the federally backed Home Owners Loan Corporation in the 1930s altered the valuation, market dynamics, and long-term viability of Black neighborhoodsmany of which consequently experienced significant change, ranging from decline to displacement, over the last three generations. This damage has been concretized into neighborhoods in ways large and small. For example, todays appraisal methods and price comparison models extend and reinforce racialized harm because they operate on a comparison basis that assumes a level playing field where there never was one.

Even with the prohibition of overt racial discrimination and oversight, the housing market is structured to disproportionately exclude Black and brown households. For example, our zoning codes and building practices are streamlined to deliver large single-family homes at the urban fringe. Thus, for decades, the very largest houses (four or more bedrooms) have grown as a share of all housing inventory, while smaller configurations have stagnated or declined. Because people of color are farmore likelythan white people to be first-time rather than repeat homebuyers, a mass of housing inventory weighted against attainable starter homes disproportionately favors households with higher concentrations of generational wealth to pay bigger down payments. Over6 millionBlack and brown millennials would be considered mortgage-ready if there were any attainable homes for sale in prime locations.

Meanwhile, todays de facto housing market segregationfinanced by anti-Black lending practicesmakes it possible to target Black and brown communities with predatory loan products while withholding retail amenities. At the same time, Black neighborhoods pay a segregation tax in the form of lower housing values.

White neighborhoods, on the other hand, pay higher housing cost premiums to maintain their exclusiveness. This premium enriches not just the homeowners, but also land speculators, builders, lenders, insurers, and tax jurisdictionsin other words, the real estate industry. The industrys role in eroding Black wealth and profiting from racial division across decades and decades has been much more destructive to our democratic experiment than Trumps four years in office.

So if the real estate industry is reckoning with Trump, it should also address its legacy of discrimination in housing devaluation, lower rates of homeownership, and higher interest rates among Black and brown homebuyers. In divesting from these formal and informal white supremacist systems, the industry can instead invest in historically disenfranchised people and places, including through reasonable protections for renters and new programs, policies, and models that expand Black and brown property ownership.

On January 6, Donald Trump attacked the legitimacy of American democracy. The real estate industrys divestment from him is a start, but does not begin to address the entirety of the anti-democratic and racially biased real estate ecosystem. To truly advance democracy, the real estate industry must divest from white supremacy and develop anti-racist systems that encourage both integration and inclusion.

Read the original:
The real estate industry is divesting from Donald Trumpbut divesting from white supremacy requires more - Brookings Institution

President Joe Biden is so over his predecessor.

Im tired of talking about Donald Trump, he saidduring Tuesday nights town hall event in Milwaukee. I dont want to talk about him anymore.

He said it twice during the event, including when asked about Trumps second impeachment acquittal.

Look, for four years all thats been in the news is Trump, Biden explained. The next four years I want to make sure all the news is the American people.

True to that sentiment, Biden referred to Trump only as the former guy at another point.

Based on the reaction on social media, the president is hardly alone in the desire to move on:

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Joe Biden Finally Says What A Lot Of People Are Thinking About Donald Trump - HuffPost