Politics

Updated at 7:13 p.m. ET

The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to impeach President Trump for "high crimes and misdemeanors" — specifically, for inciting an insurrection against the federal government at the U.S. Capitol.

Just one week before he will leave office, Trump has now become the first U.S. president to be impeached twice.

Wednesday's vote came a week after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a chaotic scene that left five people dead.

As a sixth Republican came forward on the House floor to announce support for impeaching President Trump, the president issued a statement calling for calm amid FBI warnings of demonstrations leading up to Inauguration Day.

Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy added his name to a shortlist of Republicans in Congress who unequivocally blamed President Trump for the insurrection at the Capitol last week.

But with seven days to go in the Trump presidency, he said he will not be voting for impeachment and said he might instead be in favor of a fact-finding commission and possibly censure, items with even less teeth than impeaching but not removing a president.

For the second time in his presidency, the House is moving to impeach Donald Trump, who will become the first president in history to undergo such a rebuke.

Throughout Wednesday's debate, Democrats portrayed Trump as an ongoing threat to the country and democracy, while Republicans largely either defended the president or argued that the impeachment process would only cause further division.

Update at 5 p.m. ET: Special coverage of this event has ended. Follow more updates on NPR.org.

The House of Representatives passed an article of impeachment against President Trump on Wednesday, making him the first president in U.S. history to be impeached twice.

Before Amazon took down Parler, the messaging app favored by far-right activists, Amazon says it flagged dozens of instance of violent and hateful posts that Parler "systematically failed" to remove.

The two companies are facing off in court after Amazon's decision to stop hosting Parler took the website offline on Monday. Parler remained unavailable on Wednesday morning. Its app was also blocked by Google and Apple.

"We are debating this historic measure at an actual crime scene," Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said Wednesday morning, discussing House Resolution 24, the measure that would impeach President Trump for the second time. He was speaking in the same chamber that was evacuated one week ago as a mob of pro-Trump extremists breached security and flooded into the halls of Congress.

The violent attack on the U.S. Capitol is "the darkest day" of his career in Congress, Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., said in his opening statement Wednesday as the House prepared to take up a resolution to impeach President Trump.

But pursuing impeachment, Cole said, would only further divide the country. And he noted that the effort comes one week before Trump is set to leave office.

In an hourlong Instagram Live video Tuesday night, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., described her personal experience last week when a violent mob of pro-Trump extremists breached the Capitol and forced lawmakers into hiding.

"I had a pretty traumatizing event happen to me," she described. "And I do not know if I can even disclose the full details of that event, due to security concerns. But I can tell you that I had a very close encounter where I thought I was going to die."

President-elect Joe Biden is set to restore a bipartisan norm upon moving into the White House: presidential dogs. The Bidens have two German shepherds, Champ and Major.

Major, in particular, has a "wags to riches" tail.

He'll soon be the first dog to go from a shelter to the White House. That shelter, the Delaware Humane Association, plans to "indogurate" Major on Sunday in a virtual ceremony. (People and pets alike are invited to attend.)

Updated Friday at 9:26 p.m. ET

The U.S. Census Bureau has halted all work on President Trump's directive to produce a state-by-state count of unauthorized immigrants that would have been used to alter a key set of census numbers, NPR has learned.

As the House debated impeaching President Trump, security was heightened Wednesday all around the Capitol, with barricades set several blocks from the Capitol building and law enforcement and national guard officials checking badges for anyone to enter the perimeter even by foot.

President-elect Joe Biden has nominated former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power to lead the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Biden also said he was elevating that role — USAID administrator — to be a member of the White House National Security Council.

Up to a dozen House Republicans are likely to join Democrats on Wednesday in voting to impeach President Trump for inciting the attack on the U.S. Capitol one week ago, predicts Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat from Michigan.

Updated 12:48 p.m.

Among some prominent Republicans, inside social media companies and in other major institutions throughout society, a reckoning has erupted following the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol last week.

Not at the Fox News Channel, however. On the contrary, the network that has helped shape conservative politics in the U.S. for more than two decades has yet to acknowledge how the heated rhetoric radiating from its shows and stars may have helped inspire the pro-Trump rampage.

YouTube, citing "the ongoing potential for violence," has suspended President Trump's account for at least a week.

The social media platform is the latest to take action against Trump following a riot at the U.S. Capitol last week organized by the president's supporters. The attack forced lawmakers into hiding and resulted in the deaths of five people, including an officer of the Capitol Police.

Updated at 5:50 p.m. ET