Hours before Congress began to convene for Wednesday’s vote to make Donald Trump only the third US president in history to be impeached, thousands of Americans from across the country gathered to make their views plain under the banner: “Nobody is above the law”.
From snowy Portland in Maine to an even chillier Anchorage in Alaska, 4,500 miles away, protesters turned out on the eve of the impeachment vote to lend their voices to the effort to hold Trump accountable for the abuse of power and obstruction of Congress of which he is accused. Organisers of the nationwide demonstrations, drawn from a coalition of groups including Indivisible, MoveOn and Greenpeace, recorded 617 events nationwide.
The protests ranged from tiny to thousands strong. In Concord, Massachusetts, a small crowd gathered at the historically poignant spot of the Battle of Lexington and Concord that sparked the revolutionary war.
They waved placards that quoted one of the founding fathers, John Adams, who said: “Facts Are Stubborn Things”. That paean to truth was poignant too. At the very moment the Concord protesters were braving the sleet, Trump was delivering a six-page letter full of insults and ranting to Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House, denouncing the impeachment process.
Note EU-Digest: Trump is a man for whom everything is transactional, and who is engaged in a constant struggle for short-term advantage. Blustering, bullying, threatening and arm-twisting are his tools. He doesn’t feel bound by the rules and niceties that have guided most of his predecessors, or by the constitutional and institutional limits that have constrained them. Norms, shared values, civil institutions and even the rule of law take a back seat, in his playbook, to the ceaseless struggle for the upper hand. He doesn’t seem to make much distinction between what’s good for America and what’s good for him personally. His disdain for the truth and his attraction to conspiracy theories are well known. Republicans will pay a heavy price for following him.
Read more at: ‘Nobody is above the law’: Americans take to streets in support of Trump impeachment | US news | The Guardian
From snowy Portland in Maine to an even chillier Anchorage in Alaska, 4,500 miles away, protesters turned out on the eve of the impeachment vote to lend their voices to the effort to hold Trump accountable for the abuse of power and obstruction of Congress of which he is accused. Organisers of the nationwide demonstrations, drawn from a coalition of groups including Indivisible, MoveOn and Greenpeace, recorded 617 events nationwide.
The protests ranged from tiny to thousands strong. In Concord, Massachusetts, a small crowd gathered at the historically poignant spot of the Battle of Lexington and Concord that sparked the revolutionary war.
They waved placards that quoted one of the founding fathers, John Adams, who said: “Facts Are Stubborn Things”. That paean to truth was poignant too. At the very moment the Concord protesters were braving the sleet, Trump was delivering a six-page letter full of insults and ranting to Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House, denouncing the impeachment process.
Note EU-Digest: Trump is a man for whom everything is transactional, and who is engaged in a constant struggle for short-term advantage. Blustering, bullying, threatening and arm-twisting are his tools. He doesn’t feel bound by the rules and niceties that have guided most of his predecessors, or by the constitutional and institutional limits that have constrained them. Norms, shared values, civil institutions and even the rule of law take a back seat, in his playbook, to the ceaseless struggle for the upper hand. He doesn’t seem to make much distinction between what’s good for America and what’s good for him personally. His disdain for the truth and his attraction to conspiracy theories are well known. Republicans will pay a heavy price for following him.
Read more at: ‘Nobody is above the law’: Americans take to streets in support of Trump impeachment | US news | The Guardian
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