Republicans Move to Erase Trump Impeachments From the Record

Republicans in Congress have found another way to rewrite history—and bend the knee to Trump.

House Republicans are trying to completely expunge any record of President Trump’s two impeachments.

This latest show of fealty, led by California Representative Darrell Issa, would have Trump’s 2019 and 2021 impeachments “expunged as if such Articles had never passed the full House of Representatives.”

“An impeachment is basically an indictment and it’s an indictment that you can’t really be acquitted from. If you are impeached by the House, famously, ‘Where do you go to get your reputation back?’ is the question,” Issa said to Fox News Digital. “And that’s sort of a problem that we’re dealing with, which is that the president was wrongfully accused, the evidence is now out that there was withheld information and false information, but where do we go to unring this bell? And the answer is we go back to Congress and we go to the House floor and we have a vote.”

The president was not wrongfully accused on either count. There is a wealth of evidence to confirm the first article of Trump’s 2019 impeachment, which came after he tried to convince the Ukrainian government to give him some damning dirt on Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election. There is a transcript of Trump personally requesting it. As for his second impeachment, the president most certainly incited an insurrection on January 6, 2021. Yet GOP House members are acting as if they have some moral obligation to strike the impeachments from the record.

Even more confusing—both of these impeachment attempts failed spectacularly, and Trump came out of them stronger, winning reelection in 2024. Isn’t that a more compelling story to Republicans than trying to rewrite history with a symbolic expungement for someone who never faced consequences?

Trump Wants to Suspend Gas Tax as Peace Deal Seems Nowhere in Sight

This plan is a confession that things are about to get a whole lot worse.

President Trump wants to suspend the federal gas tax, telling CBS News Monday that he thinks “it’s a great idea.”

“We’re going to take off the gas tax for a period of time, and when gas goes down, we’ll let it phase back in,” Trump said in a phone interview. It’s a tacit admission that the effects of the Iran war aren’t going away anytime soon.

Gas prices have gone up 50 percent since the war started February 28, and cost an average of $4.52 per gallon in the U.S. as of this writing. As long as Iran (and the United States) block transit to and from the Strait of Hormuz, those prices will stay high. Pausing the federal taxes on fuel would amount to 18.4 cents less per gallon of gas and 24.4 cents less per gallon of diesel, but doing so requires an act of Congress.

Republicans in Congress are already working to carry out the president’s wish. Senator Josh Hawley and Representative Anna Paulina Luna said Monday that they plan to introduce bills in the Senate and House, respectively. If they’re successful, pausing the gas tax would cost the federal government half a billion dollars per week, money that pays for highway maintenance and other transportation projects.

Meanwhile, a peace deal with Iran is far away. Trump said Monday that the current ceasefire was on “massive life support” after he rejected Iran’s latest proposal as “TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE” the day before. If the ceasefire ends and the U.S. resumes strikes against Iran, that would only send oil prices even higher, wiping out whatever temporary relief Americans get from the tax pause.

Trump’s poll numbers are already historically low. Does he think he can fool the American people with a temporary measure?

Trump Sued Over Reflecting Pool Renovation as Cost Skyrockets

Like many of Trump’s other renovation projects, the cost of repairing the Lincoln Memorial pool is far higher than what he initially claimed.

President Trump just got sued for painting the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool blue as part of an increasingly expensive renovation project.

The Cultural Landscape Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on increasing “support and understanding for cultural landscapes,” filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., Monday against the Department of the Interior and the National Parks Service, alleging the Trump administration broke federal law with the new paint job.

The lawsuit states that since the pool is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the paint job was subject to a review under law. The organization is seeking either a preliminary injunction or a temporary restraining order to prevent more blue paint from being added.

The group’s president and CEO, Charles Birnbaum, said in a statement that the blue paint “is more appropriate to a resort or theme park,” adding that the bottom of the pool has been grey since its construction in 1924.

The lawsuit comes on the same day as a New York Times report that found Trump’s renovation of the pool will cost more than seven times the $1.8 million he originally estimated. The Interior Department said Friday that it now plans to pay $13.1 million to a Virginia firm, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, which Trump chose because it worked on his Sterling, Virginia, golf club’s swimming pools.

Last month, the company was awarded a no-bid contract by the Trump administration, which claimed that renovating the pool was so urgent that delaying it would cause “serious injury” to the government, but wouldn’t say why. The government has also said that Trump wants to get the project done before America’s 250th birthday celebrations on July Fourth. The contract gives Atlantic Industrial Coatings a 20 percent profit margin.

This is just another example of Trump attempting to remake Washington, D.C., in the aesthetic of his real estate properties. He is also getting sued over his proposed golden arch and White House ballroom. With a compliant Congress and Supreme Court, it seems Trump will end up leaving his permanent stamp on the nation’s capital.

Is Stephen Miller’s Time at White House Finally Coming to an End?

Donald Trump is turning to Miller less and less.

The........

© New Republic