John,
Donald Trump has spent his tenure as president of the United States as an existential threat. He was never fit to be president. And today, I'm proud to say that I cast my vote to impeach him.
Trump is now officially the only president in American history to have been impeached twice — and this time, he was impeached for inciting violence against the government.
He incited an angry and violent mob, who were armed with handcuffs and guns to kidnap and execute members of Congress, towards the seat of the United States government, attempting to destabilize our democracy and murder legislators. Five lives were lost at the Capitol that day.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party continues to make excuses for Trump's seditious stoking of white supremacist violence, urging the rest of us to pretend that the attack last week didn't happen. Some of my Republican colleagues even booed our fellow colleague Rep. Cori Bush just hours ago during debate on the House floor — all because she denounced white supremacy and called for a multi-racial democracy. Unacceptable.
Despite this and so much else, our mission after today is to remember that impeaching Donald Trump is only the beginning. White supremacy did not begin with him, and it will certainly not end with him.
The hateful and violent ideology espoused by the mob who attempted the insurrection was not created by Trump. It is something that's deeply, deeply rooted in our national history and identity.
America claims to be a shining city on a hill, but we will never realize that image while fascism, white nationalism, and oppression of working people continue to run rampant in our political, social, and economic systems. Impeaching Trump (again) today was one step forward.
I now urge my colleagues in the Senate to join us — to reconvene and vote to remove Donald Trump from the White House so that he is barred from ever again seeking high public office.
But beyond that, we must look forward. We must all continue the difficult work of building an exceptional country based on multiracial democracy — and of defending that possibility from those who wish to destroy it.
Peace and love,
Jamaal Bowman
