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Impeachment?

This note from Michigan Member of Congress Rashida Tlaib came to me via the the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. You may be interested in reading it.

Tim
Central Minnesota Political


Hi, PCCC community.
I'm Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, a bold progressive who is committed pushing bold ideas like Medicare For All and a Green New Deal in our new Congress...AND starting the impeachment conversation around Donald Trump.
We can do both.
And we must do both because we cannot normalize this President's actions. As we fight his backward policies, history is depending on us to right this ship and foster accountability for rampant law breaking and attacks on democratic norms.
At the end of this email, I'm going to ask you to chip in to my next re-election because many people are already out to get me for standing up for what's right. But first, let me spell out clearly why we must begin the impeachment conversation now.
President Donald Trump is a direct and serious threat to our country. On an almost daily basis, he attacks our Constitution, our democracy, the rule of law and the people who are in this country. His conduct has created a constitutional crisis that we must confront now.
The Framers of the Constitution designed a remedy to address such a constitutional crisis: impeachment. Through the impeachment clause, they sought to ensure that we would have the power, through our elected representatives in Congress, to protect the country by removing a lawless president from the Oval Office.
We already have overwhelming evidence that the president has committed impeachable offenses, including, just to name a few: obstructing justice; violating the emoluments clause; abusing the pardon power; directing or seeking to direct law enforcement to prosecute political adversaries for improper purposes; advocating illegal violence and undermining equal protection of the laws; ordering the cruel and unconstitutional imprisonment of children and their families at the southern border; and conspiring to illegally influence the 2016 election through a series of hush money payments.
Whether the president was directly involved in a conspiracy with the Russian government to interfere with the 2016 election remains the subject of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. But we do not need to wait on the outcome of that criminal investigation before moving forward now with an inquiry in the U.S. House of Representatives on whether the president has committed impeachable "high crimes and misdemeanors" against the state: abuse of power and abuse of the public trust.
Each passing day brings new damage to the countless people hurt by this lawless president’s actions. We cannot undo the trauma that he is causing to our people, and this nation. Those most vulnerable to his administration’s cruelty are counting on us to act -- act to remove the president and put this country on a path to true justice.
This is not just about Donald Trump. This is about all of us. What should we be as a nation? Who should we be as a people? In the face of this constitutional crisis, we must rise. We must rise to defend our Constitution, to defend our democracy, and to defend that bedrock principle that no one is above the law, not even the President of the United States. Each passing day brings more pain for the people most directly hurt by this president, and these are days we simply cannot get back. The time for the impeachment conversation to begin is now.
And while we do that, we must fight to re-open the government and then push bold ideas like Medicare For All, a Green New Deal, and infrastructure investments that help all communities -- including those like Detroit and Flint, Michigan. I know I'm willing to do the work to fight on these multiple fronts, and it's what the people who voted for us in 2018 elected us to do.
Thanks for being a bold progressive.
-- Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Michigan

Rep. Rashida Tlaib

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