The extended weekend, due to the day dedicated Monday in memory of Martin Luther King, will be particularly taken advantage of by four Democratic presidential nominees. All senators, they will indeed be nailed to the Senate from Tuesday, January 21, 1 p.m., by the recall trial of Donald Trump.
This unusual case concerns two favorites, Bernie Sanders (Vermont) and Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), as well as Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar and Colorado senator Michael Bennet, who did not qualify in any of the last debates due to lack of voting intentions and sufficient donations. A fifth, Cory Booker (New Jersey) dropped out earlier this week.
No derogation is possible. " Some things are more important than politics. I have been sworn in to defend the Constitution of the United States. It establishes that no one is above the law and that includes the president Assured Elizabeth Warren during the last Democratic debate, on January 14.
Strict discipline
Before being called back to the Senate for an indefinite period, when the first nomination votes will take place in Iowa on February 3, some future conscripts are working hard. Bernie Sanders has scheduled two meetings for Monday. Amy Klobuchar has scheduled four meetings on Saturday, four on Sunday and three on Monday. She also planned to involve her family in the following days. Only Sunday can be used for campaigning, provided you return to Washington in time.
The four elected officials will therefore leave the field open to two other favorites of the Iowa caucuses, the former vice-president Joe Biden, who had sat during the dismissal trial of Bill Clinton, in 1999, and the former mayor of South Bend (Indiana), Pete Buttigieg. The latter has also planned to plow the first state to rule in the nomination contest. He will hold eight meetings there from January 20 to 22.
For senators, this obligation to sit is accompanied by a strict discipline that the sergeant-at-arms of the Senate, Michael Stenger, already recalled Thursday January 16 during the session during which the elected officials swore to be impartial. " Hear ye! Hear ye! Everyone is required to remain silent, under penalty of imprisonment ", He launched in the preamble.
The formula undoubtedly comes from the decorum which accompanies this procedure particularly rare in the history of the United States. The Senate has no jails. But the hundred elected officials will, however, be required to stay in their place instead of conversing in the spans as they are used to, deprived of their mobile phones, and silenced. Their questions, when they have them, will have to be written down for reading by the president of this special tribunal, the head of the Supreme Court, John Roberts.
This iron discipline is not limited to elected officials. Strict rules are also planned for the press which will limit its possibilities of interaction with elected officials during breaks. Journalists in the galleries overlooking the assembly will also be deprived of any digital instrument. These draconian rules precipitated an intervention by the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization that defends rights, supported by some 20 other institutions. They considered that they potentially limited the freedom to inform, inviting the Senate to review these rules.