23 Dangerous Propositions the Senate Just Ratified
In voting to acquit President Trump, the Senate has legitimated legal and moral claims that will not serve America well.
The Senate today voted largely along party lines to acquit President Donald Trump on two articles of impeachment. The acquittal, in the simplest sense, is a declaration that the House of Representatives failed to prove its case. But it is also a statement of values by the Senate—an embrace of certain basic propositions about the president’s conduct, the House’s conduct in impeaching him, and its own responsibilities.
At least in those circumstances in which the president and the majority of the Senate are of the same political party, the Senate has adopted the following propositions:
- It is not an impeachable offense for the president of the United States to condition aid to a foreign government on the delivery of personal favors to himself.
- It is not an impeachable offense for the president of the United States to demand that a foreign head of state
