THE BIG STORY

Donald Trump is now the third president in US history to be impeached

The House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump on two charges against him — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

The abuse of power article alleges that Trump pressured Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election by withholding military aid unless the country announced an investigation into former vice president Joe Biden and his family.

The obstruction of Congress article is tied to Trump directing executive branch agencies and officials not to comply with congressional subpoenas.

The Senate will hold a trial, likely in January, on whether to convict Trump of the two articles of impeachment and remove him from office. The president is widely expected to be acquitted by the Senate’s Republican majority, with some senators already calling the outcome a foregone conclusion.

Literally one hour after he was impeached, the president of the United States was on a stage yelling about lightbulbs. Mostly, he didn’t seem like he wanted to leave the stage.

So if Trump is likely to be acquitted, why impeach at all? Democrats said it was important to impeach the president, regardless of what the Senate does, to prevent interference in the 2020 election and send a message to Trump and future presidents.

IMPEACHMENT TODAY

So you've been impeached. The House voted to impeach President Trump. Now, ahead of his trial in the Senate, we look back at the last time this happened, when Bill Clinton was charged with lying under oath. Listen and subscribe.

STAYING ON TOP OF THIS

A federal court declined to rule on whether Obamacare is lawful, extending the fight yet again

Instead, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case back to a lower court and demanded further analysis.

The court did rule that one small part of the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, was unconstitutional — the “individual mandate” tax penalty on people who could afford to buy health insurance but chose not to. That penalty had already been effectively repealed by Congress.

But the court avoided answering the broader question of whether one part of the law being unconstitutional meant the entire 900-page law was, too.

SNAPSHOTS

Facebook is not removing an ad falsely claiming Mitch McConnell endorses impeaching Trump. The ad was posted and promoted by activist Adriel Hampton, who began running bogus political ads to test the limits of Facebook’s fact-checking policy. Facebook’s policy exempting political ads from fact-checking has been in place since last year.

Hackers are breaking into websites and adding links to game Google. The search engine made the link a valuable commodity, so hackers are compromising sites and then getting paid to inject links.

Tekashi 69 was sentenced to two years in prison after testifying against his former gang. The rapper, born Daniel Hernandez, had been facing decades in prison for racketeering and firearms charges, but agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in testifying against other former gang members.

The 50 worst things on the internet in 2019. It is regrettable that this is an always-popular end of the year post. Alas, the internet was bad in 2019, and I recommend that you don’t click unless this is your kind of thing.

UNCOMFORTABLE CONVERSATIONS

The crisis in Kashmir has started a conversation I don’t know how to have

In August, India revoked Article 370, which had given the state of Jammu and Kashmir a special autonomous status within the country. Since then, Kashmir has been placed under curfew, there are internet and cell service blackouts, journalists trying to report on the region are being turned away, and Muslim residents live in fear.

Scaachi Koul, whose parents were born in Kashmir, writes honestly about the difficulty of talking to your family about politics: After years of being passive about the conflict in Kashmir, time “forced me to read more and pay better attention and, ultimately, get angrier.”

Here’s Koul on the ways second-generation immigrant kids come to their histories, fragmented and yearning: “You know you should buy the book about Kashmir, but it feels like an anvil in your hands, like it could crush your own heart. Instead, you get a bottle opener shaped like a woman, her butt connected by springs. She twerks, so you can ignore the fact that your mother’s mother tongue is dying and that you’re fighting with your whole family about the future of your little community.”

LOVE IN A HOPELESS PLACE

A guy logged back on to Twitter after a decade to announce he married the woman he tweeted a joke about back then

In November of 2009, Jared Matthews met a woman named Analyn at a bar in Las Vegas. He tweeted the following: “Met a really hot girl who was half japanese half philipino. Think i ruined it by constantly callin her a jalepeno.”

Fortunately for Jared, Analyn found it funny, and they exchanged phone numbers. Shortly after, Jared decided he was going to take a break from Twitter.

Now, almost exactly a decade later, he returned to Twitter and rediscovered his 2009 joke about Analyn on the night they met. He had an update: they got married. People are absolutely in love with the story.

Wishing you a day of remembering that you are capable,

Elamin