September 24, 2019

John Lewis Just Delivered a Rousing Call for Impeachment

“There comes a time when you have to be moved by the spirit of history to take action to protect and preserve the integrity of our nation.”

Michael Brochstein/Zuma

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Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) delivered a call action for the House of Representatives on Tuesday to impeach President Donald Trump over the Ukraine scandal.

“We cannot delay. We must not wait. Now is the time to act,” the longtime civil rights leader said on the floor of the House. “We will never find the truth unless we use the power given to the House of Representatives and the House alone to begin an official investigation, as dictated by the Constitution.”

Lewis is one of 156 representatives—155 Democrats and one independent—who support impeachment as of Tuesday. Support for impeachment has grown since Trump admitted to discussing former Vice President and current presidential candidate Joe Biden on a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in July. Trump insisted that there was “no quid pro quo” in the conversation, but he withheld $391 million in military aid to Ukraine in the days leading up to the call, the Washington Post reports.

Lewis, one of the Big Six civil rights leaders who organized the 1963 March on Washington, voted no on all four articles of impeachment raised against former President Bill Clinton in 1998. Trump’s actions, he said, threaten the future of democracy.

“There comes a time when you have to be moved by the spirit of history to take action to protect and preserve the integrity of our nation,” he said. “I believe I truly believe the time to begin impeachment proceedings against this president has come. To delay or to do otherwise would betray the foundation of our democracy.”

Watch Lewis’ statement below:

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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