Democrats Announce Draft Resolution for Impeachment Proceedings
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We ran the numbers: There are 2136 news articles covering this topic. 45% (955) are left leaning, 40% (865) center, 15% (316) right leaning.
On Tuesday, House Democrats introduced a draft resolution to officially begin their impeachment inquiry. Left-leaning coverage of the resolution focuses on the content of the resolution and Republicans’ reactions to it, while right-leaning articles tend to focus on President Trump’s reaction to the resolution and centrist articles analyze the implications of the resolution to the impeachment inquiry.
A left-leaning New York Times article notes that the Democrats have produced the resolution after weeks of Republican criticism for not formalizing the impeachment inquiry. The article also reports that the impeachment inquiry continues to be met with intense pushback from the right, with White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham saying that the resolution only confirms that the impeachment inquiry is a “illegitimate sham.” The article also reports that the resolution sets up two phases: one in which the Intelligence Committee would hold open hearings and write a report for the Judiciary Committee. The Judiciary Committee would then decide whether to recommend one or more articles of impeachment.
A right-leaning article from Fox News focuses on Trump’s reaction to the news of the resolution. In a tweet on Tuesday, Trump said that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats are trying to destroy the Republican party. The article also reports a common criticism of the impeachment inquiry, which is that it distracts the House from other legislative business; the article quotes Republican Representative John Ratcliffe as saying that the House Intelligence Committee has not had a briefing related to terrorism in “well over a month.”
A centrist article from NPR reprints the resolution in its entirety, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions about the import of its contents. The article reports that the draft resolution authorizes the chair of the House Intelligence Committee to conduct open hearings and grants the ranking Republican on the committee to issue subpoenas with the concurrence of the chair. The full House will vote on the resolution on Thursday.