The House set itself on a course to impeach President Trump on Wednesday for a historic second time, planning an afternoon vote to charge him just one week after he incited a mob of loyalists to storm the Capitol and stop Congress from affirming President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the November election.
Returning to a heavily fortified Capitol, protected by thousands of National Guard troops, lawmakers began what was expected to be a daylong debate on an article of impeachment that accuses the president of “inciting an insurrection” that led to the rampage by his supporters.
The final vote after the debate is expected to pass, with a small but significant number of Republicans joining Democrats to impeach Mr. Trump, making him the first president to be impeached twice. The chamber had dispensed with two earlier, procedural votes just after noon and planned two additional hours of debate culminating in an up-or-down vote on the charge.
“Mr. Speaker, we are debating this historic measure at an actual crime scene, and we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the president of the United States,” Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts and the Rules Committee chairman, said as he opened the debate.
Mr. McGovern recounted looking in the eyes of some of the Capitol invaders and seeing “evil.” “This was not a protest, this was a well-organized insurrection against our country that was organized by Donald Trump,” he said.
After years of standing monolithically beside Mr. Trump, Republicans were fracturing over the vote. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, has embraced the effort as a means to purge Mr. Trump from the party, according to people who have spoken to him, and at least five House Republicans planned to vote to impeach.
The most blistering condemnation by a Republican came from Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 House Republican, who said there had “never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States.” Her announcement is likely to give cover to two dozen or so other House Republicans looking to break ranks and join the effort to remove Mr. Trump from office.
Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the top Republican in the House, has said he is personally opposed to impeachment but was not formally lobbying members of the party against the effort, making an implicit break with Mr. Trump. Not a single House Republican voted in favor of impeachment during the 2019 proceedings.
Few Republicans were willing to defend Mr. Trump’s actions outright. Those who opposed impeachment largely said they were doing so on principle, accusing Democrats of a rushed process that would deny the president his right to defend himself and further inflame the forces of division…
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