“Further, there can be no healing of the divisions in our country without justice for the man most responsible for this horrific insurrection,” said Cicilline, who served on the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment in 2019. “The president must be held accountable.”
On Wednesday, the House of Representatives chose to impeach Trump for a record second time — the most ever for a president — setting up a fight in a Senate that is nearly evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. In order to unseat Trump, Democrats would need to flip 17 GOP votes. One of those may include Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, whom the New York Times reports “is pleased that Democrats are moving to impeach him,” believing that Trump “committed impeachable offenses.”
But while the push to convict Trump in the Senate is off to a solid start after 10 Republicans voted in favor of his impeachment in the House, what is most notable about that vote is that every single LGBTQ+ House lawmaker joined them. In 2021, a historic number of queer and transgender candidates were seated in Congress, including Reps. Sharice Davids (D-Kan.), Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.), Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), and Angie Craig (D-Minn). Among those names is Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), who was a lead cosponsor on the articles of impeachment along with Cicilline.
In addition, Congress’ historic class of LGBTQ+ lawmakers were among the most vocal in calling for the president’s removal. One day after the Capitol riots, Davids tweeted that America “cannot trust Donald Trump to uphold his oath of office over the next 14 days,” calling on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th amendment to discharge him from his duties. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) agreed, claiming that Trump has “shown himself to be a deranged demagogue that is a threat to our democracy.”
“Yesterday’s assault and desecration of our temple of democracy, the US Capitol, was a direct result of his words and actions,” Takano wrote the same day at Davids’ tweet.
Among the harshest condemnations was Torres, who made history this year by becoming the first Afro-Latino leader ever elected to Congress. Just days after being sworn in, he spoke on the House floor prior to the 232-197 vote in favor of Trump’s impeachment. He referred to the attempted coup by Trump’s supporters as a “violent assault on the separation of powers and on the peaceful transfer of power that we have long taken for granted.”
