How Congress Can Block Donald Trump from Running in 2024
President Donald Trump has faced renewed calls for impeachment over the past week, after a mob of his supporters left a rally where he spoke and stormed the Capitol building on Wednesday. If Trump is impeached again, Congress will not only have the chance to remove him from office, but also bar him from running again in 2024.
Republicans and Democrats have both rebuked the commander-in-chief for allegedly inciting the protesters at his rally before they breached the Capitol. He told the crowd they would walk to the building, and said they could "never take back our country with weakness" shortly before the riots began.
As lawmakers from both aisles have blamed Trump for the mobbing of the Capitol building, Democrats in the House plan to press forward with a resolution calling on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment, and remove the president from the White House.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told colleagues in a Sunday letter they would bring impeachment to the floor for the second time in Trump's one-term presidency, if Pence did not invoke the 25th Amendment by the end of Monday.
"In protecting our Constitution and our Democracy, we will act with urgency, because this president represents an imminent threat to both," she said. "As the days go by, the horror of the ongoing assault on our democracy perpetrated by this president is intensified and so is the immediate need for action."
If the House does move forward with a second impeachment of Trump, it is highly likely that the measures will pass the Democratic-controlled lower chamber. It is expected that a vote could go ahead as early as Wednesday this week.
Articles of impeachment will then be passed onto the Senate, which is effectively controlled by the Democrats after Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock beat Republican incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in the Georgia runoff elections earlier this month.
Senators would then have the chance to put Trump on trial under the charges set out in any articles of impeachment related to the Capitol riots last week. Once any future trial concludes, lawmakers in the upper chamber will vote on conviction.
However, they would need more than a simple 51-49 majority vote to convict Trump on any future impeachment charges. Under the Constitution, two thirds of senators have to vote in favor of the charges for the president to be convicted.
Trump would not automatically be removed from office, or barred from holding federal office in the future, after a conviction vote. The Senate would have to vote again on whether or not to block the commander-in-chief from public office.
The Constitution is not clear on whether the supermajority vote needed to convict a president on impeachment charges is also required to bar them from public office in future. But, past precedent would suggest that a simple majority vote is enough to pass impeachment penalties in the upper chamber.
Once the Georgia runoff election results are certified, the Senate will be split 50-50 along party lines, meaning Vice President Kamala Harris will hold a crucial tiebreaker vote. Yet, to convict President Trump, and have the power to move forward on a vote blocking him from future public office, Democrats will still need to win the support of 17 Republicans while not losing a single vote on their side.
