Amid opposition from the left and right in her own party, and the filing of articles of impeachment against President Trump, Nancy Pelosi recaptured the speaker’s gavel Thursday.
She opened the 116th Congress promising Democrats will lead the charge to combat health-care costs and climate change, among other priorities. Referencing the November elections in which Democrats retook the House, she said “the American people spoke, and demanded a new dawn.”
“I am particularly proud to be the woman speaker of the House of this Congress, which marks 100 years of women having the right to vote,” she said.
Fifteen Democrats did not vote for Pelosi. Republicans re-elected Rep. Kevin McCarthy as their leader.
Amid the partial government shutdown over Democrats’ refusal to fund Trump’s request for $5 billion in border-wall funding, the House is considering two bills to re-open the government.
But they don’t include border-wall funding, and Republicans in the Senate and the president likely will not support the legislation.
Meanwhile, House committees with Democrats now in charge are poised use their subpoena power to investigate the Trump administration.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement Wednesday his panel plans to “investigate waste, fraud, and abuse in the Trump Administration” and “other issues that affect the American people every day.”
Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., and Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, are reintroducing articles of impeachment against Trump.
Pelosi said in an interview Thursday, however, that she wants to wait until special counsel Robert Mueller issues his report of his investigation of alleged Trump-Russia collusion in the 2016 election.
“We shouldn’t be impeaching for a political reason, and we shouldn’t avoid impeachment for a political reason. We have to see,” she told NBC’s “Today.”
KABC in Los Angeles reported the articles are based on Article 1, dealing with “Obstruction of Justice,” which was passed by the Judiciary Committee on a bipartisan vote on July 27, 1974, regarding Richard M. Nixon.
“Unsurprisingly, Republican leadership did not hold hearings on the Articles of Impeachment, H.Res. 438,” Sherman said in a press release.
“On January 2nd, the 115th Congress ended, thus terminating all legislation that had been introduced earlier and had not been enacted into law. Accordingly, it’s necessary and appropriate to reintroduce the Articles of Impeachment. I have not changed the text. I continue to believe that Obstruction of Justice is the clearest, simplest, and most provable high crime and misdemeanor committed by Donald J. Trump.”
