THE BIG STORY

The House passed a resolution formalizing the Trump impeachment inquiry

After weeks of Republicans arguing that the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump was not legitimate since it hasn’t been voted on by the House, this condition has been met: the Democrat-controlled House passed a resolution formalizing the probe.

It passed by a vote of 232–196. Just two Democrats voted with Republicans against impeachment.

The resolution makes Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff the lead person for upcoming public hearings, which Democrats say will begin in earnest in the coming weeks.

Two Trump administration officials who delivered key testimony have reportedly said they are willing to testify publicly: Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council staffer who was on Trump’s July call with Ukraine’s president, and Bill Taylor, the top US diplomat to Ukraine, whose testimony was described as the most thorough accounting the inquiry has gotten so far.

👉 Meanwhile, the Justice Department argued Congress can’t force senior Trump advisers to testify. It’s in the context of a fight about the Mueller report, but it tests an immunity argument that the Trump administration is making to block potential witnesses from testifying in the impeachment inquiry.

Brendan Smialowski / Getty Images

Impeachment Today

In today's episode of our impeachment podcast: Get in loser, we're going impeaching! What it means for the impeachment inquiry to go official. Plus: what the hell is Crowdstrike, and how did it get into the president's brain. Listen and subscribe.

STAYING ON TOP OF THIS

Two senators are demanding that a special counsel investigate the death of a transgender woman in ICE custody

Last week, we reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had deleted the surveillance footage of Roxsana Hernández, a 33-year-old asylum-seeker who died in ICE custody.

After her death, the surveillance footage could not be located. Attorneys representing Hernández's family in a potential lawsuit said that under federal rules, ICE is required to preserve evidence, including electronic information, if it reasonably anticipates it will be part of litigation.

Now, Democratic senators Kamala Harris and Richard Blumenthal have demanded that a special counsel investigate whether immigration authorities broke the law when failing to preserve the surveillance video footage.

SNAPSHOTS

In the place Fox News dominates, defending Trump from impeachment is a part of a war against evil. Molly Hensley-Clancy went looking for what the impeachment story looks like from inside the Fox News bubble: “I see what the others say, but the minute they start talking trash, I go back on Fox.”

A 7-year-old girl was shot in the lower neck while trick-or-treating in Chicago. The little girl was with her family when she was caught in the middle of a shooting between a group of men. She was taken to hospital in critical condition. As of Thursday night, no one was in custody, and detectives were investigating.

Taylor Swift hinted that her mom’s health is the reason for not doing a Lover world tour after backlash from fans. The album came out in August, but the tour dates have been sparse. In an interview with Zane Lowe, Swift said, “I’ve got some pretty intense things happening with my family right now. I can't go on long tours and not have the ability to go home if I need to.”

A man whose legs were severed in an accident called out his insurance for denying him a wheelchair — twice. Mark Poss's legs were severed in 2017 when he was struck by a drunk driver after he pulled over to help a couple whose car had broken down. When seeking a wheelchair, his insurance told him it “doesn’t cover this type of equipment for somebody with my need.”

MAKE SOME TEA, HAVE A GOOD SIT

These essays are worth your time this weekend

I Started Vomiting While I Was Pregnant. Two Years Later, I’m Still Sick. After a tough fight with cyclic vomiting syndrome that began during pregnancy and wouldn’t go away, Laura Turner describes the way anxiety extends beyond your brain: “What I didn’t know then is that as much as anxiety is a mental illness, growing in dark synapses and neural pathways, it also lives in the body — in the tightening stomach, the knot in the gut, the dizzy head, the tingling extremities, the racing heart.”

The Problem With Queer Thirst For Straight Celebrities. Grace Perry takes on a complicated question: when there are more openly LGBTQ public figures than ever before, why is the queer community still choosing to invest time and attention and money in straight people? Perry writes, “Celebrity fandom is really just a bizarro reflection of ourselves: who we are, what we value, who we want to be, and, sometimes, who we want to fuck. Our faves are us, basically, just in that creepy sexy lady Snapchat filter. And as fans, we invest in the celebrities we love.”

Your Dumb Tweets Are Getting Flagged To People Trying To Stop School Shootings. Schools are using a dragnet to scan social media for threats. They're finding a lot of jokes on Twitter. It’s a terribly modern reality: dumb, bad jokes are triggering the algorithms powering an automated monitoring system that scans social media for language or images suggesting a potential threat to school safety.

Give yourself permission to rest the way you need to rest,

Elamin