Welcome to Wednesday. NCR political columnist Michael Sean Winters says to remember that Donald Trump's impeachment trial is political, not criminal, and the case is whether or not he undermined American democracy. A Georgetown University panel discusses how the criminal legal system disproportionately harms Black women.
The second impeachment trial of Donald Trump has begun and NCR political columnist Michael Sean Winters isn't sure what is more remarkable: the frightening facts that undergird the case or the rhetorical gymnastics displayed by the former president's defenders.
Some reports say that Republicans, just like Democrats, also want to be rid of Trump, but worry that convicting the former president and barring him from running for office again will only galvanize him and his supporters. Others say that the trial cannot be fair because it is being presided over by Senate President Pro Tempore, Sen. Patrick Leahy, not the Chief Justice of the United States, and Leahy has already said he believes the president is guilty.
"Seriously, the core issue at stake in this trial is not whether the jury will be fair or whether Trump violated some item in the criminal code," Winters writes. "We should not confuse an impeachment proceeding with a criminal proceeding. For starters, there is no requirement that the standard of proof in a criminal trial — beyond a reasonable doubt — be met. Impeachment is a political trial, and this case is about whether or not a public official, and not just any public official, but the president of the United States, should be punished in some way for the political crime of trying to undermine American democracy."
You can read more of the column here.
More background:
- In a commentary for NCR, Alison Benders of Santa Clara University says the insurrection at the Capitol was an attempt to lynch our democracy.
When Syrita Steib was incarcerated for 10 years, she got used to being called "inmate" or "convict," or being referred to using a number.
Now, as co-founder and executive director of Operation Restoration, an organization that provides education, health care and other services for formerly incarcerated women, Steib is trying to fight the dehumanization Black women face on a daily basis in interactions with the criminal legal system.
In an online panel hosted by the Georgetown University Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, Steib and other speakers discussed how the criminal legal system disproportionately harms Black women, and proposed looking for alternatives to incarceration that balance accountability with forgiveness and dignity.
The female prison population has exploded in the past few decades. Between 1980 and 2019, the number of women in prison shot up by more than 700%, from roughly 26,400 to almost 222,500, according to a report by The Sentencing Project. Black women are incarcerated at almost twice the rate of white women, the report said.
You can read more the story here.
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Final thoughts
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Until Thursday,
Stephanie Yeagle
NCR Managing Editor
[email protected]
Twitter: @ncrSLY
