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No more than five or six Senate Republicans are expected to vote to convict the former president, who continues to have enormous power over his party. That is far less than the 17 needed to secure a conviction.
Yet many Republican senators over the past few days have complimented the arguments of the prosecutors, and while Democrats are signaling unity on the trial, the GOP has been badly divided. If Democrats do win several Republican votes, it will be the most bipartisan presidential conviction vote in the nation’s history.
The managers, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin
Their strategy included the liberal use of harrowing video footage and victim testimony, and served up the emotional equivalent of a Mike Tyson gut punch, forcing senators to revisit the trauma of the day through never-before-seen security footage.
“We won t be doing any of that until we pass our COVID bill. That s the first order of business,” Pelosi told reporters at a news conference.
Pelosi said that the sergeant-at-arms and the attending physician would be making recommendations about how to have a joint session in a safe way amid the coronavirus pandemic and increased security threats following the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol.
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Biden has said he plans to address Congress in February and use the speech to lay out his recovery plan, which he wants Congress to pass after the initial coronavirus relief package he has proposed.
The groups, including NARAL Pro-Choice America, Ultraviolet, Public Citizen, and the Women’s March, said that creating a $15 minimum wage and eliminating “subminimum wages” for tipped workers would be a start toward ensuring economic equality through wage justice.
“The simple truth is that women, especially Black women, Latina women, Asian American and Pacific Islander women, and Indigenous women, have suffered the worst impacts of the pandemic, and they need to be lifted up in the solutions and relief you draft and ultimately pass in Congress,” they wrote. “If we are to truly build back better, we must build an economy that works for women.”