a record number of women sworn in and many more firsts. the first muslim american women, the first native american women and the first female house speaker in history reclaimed the gavel. i m particularly proud to be a woman speaker of the house of this congress which marks the 100th year of women having the right to vote. reporter: speaking of nancy pelosi, going head-to-head with president trump is one of the 2019 story lines. starting with the longest government shutdown in u.s. history federal workers will not be receiving paychecks. the president is in sensitive to that. he thinks maybe they could just ask their father more more money but they can t. the state of the union speech has been canceled by nancy pelosi because she doesn t want to hear the truth. reporter: in october, a clash over the president deciding to
focus their impeachment inquiry on, a quid pro quo. it would make its way through the house intelligence committee with closed-door witness testimonies followed by several days of notable public testimony. was there a quid pro quo? as i testified previously, with regard to the requested white house call and the white house meeting, the answer is yes. reporter: former trump russia adviser fiona hill called out the team for carrying out a domestic political errand and sent a warning. russian security services and proxies have repeated their interference in the 2020 election. we re running out of time to stop them. reporter: republicans attack the process, side stepping the facts. you can t make your case against the president because nothing happened. reporter: democrats drafted two articles of impeachment, abuse of power and obstruction of congress. which passed the committee and later the full house on party
president is obstructing congress. that s just simply a crazy allegation. it really is. why do you say it s crazy if they have denied any of the testimony coming from what are clearly key members of administration who have insight? well, the reason we say that is because it s a very customary thing. it s a very common thing. in fact every administration, virtually everyone in the modern era has done exactly the same thing. the previous administration, president obama, during the fast and furious investigation of congress, he denied subpoenas that was not an impeachment inquiry. this is a very different animal we re talking about here. asking those who are in charge of this administration or directly involved with either the calls or the claims of what the president did or did not do seem to be perfect witnesses to have and come forward rather than deny them. this is a very unusual set of circumstances and it should be the highest level of transparency and due process. in fact
out the facts as they basically are. most republicans have made up their minds in the senate and in congress generally. most republicans in the senate seemingly want to make this short. most republicans have gone with this line that there s an election in less than a year, so why are we even bothering with this. he s not wrong on all of those points. on the other hand, it is jarring to see someone who is voting in a senate trial, a constitutional legal proceeding, essentially saying that before the proceeding even takes place, he s already made up his mind and i will just note on that whole thing about this there being an election in less than a year, nothing in the constitution says that impeachment only applies in years one through three of a presidential term. it just says that the senate has the sole power to try all impeachments. jeff, to david s point, let s listen to graham on what he had to say about whether he s being appropriate stating his opinion ahead of this trial.
that will makeout washington insiders very uncomfortable: term limits. you and i both know we need term limits, that congress shouldn t be a lifetime appointment. but members of congress, and the corporations who ve bought our democracy hate term limits. too bad. i m tom steyer and i approve this message because the only way we get universal healthcare, address climate change and make our economy more fair is to change business as usual in washington. a lot of folks ask me why their dishwasher doesn t get everything clean. i tell them, it may be your detergent. that s why more dishwasher brands recommend cascade platinum. it s specially-designed with the soaking, scrubbing and rinsing built right in. cascade platinum s unique actionpacs dissolve quickly. .to remove stuck-on food. . . for sparkling-clean dishes, the first time.