The House Judiciary Committee will convene Thursday morning to debate two articles of impeachment against President Trump, the final step before Democrats bring them to the House floor for an expected vote next week to charge the president with high crimes and misdemeanors.
The basics: Who, what, when and how to watch.
Who: The 41 members of the Judiciary Committee.
What: The committee members will consider any amendments to the two draft articles that House Democrats unveiled Tuesday. The panel will then vote on whether to recommend that the full House approve the articles.
When and Where: 9 a.m. Thursday in the Ways and Means Committee Room near the Capitol.
How to Watch: The New York Times will stream the committee debate live, and a team of reporters in Washington will provide real-time context and analysis of the events on Capitol Hill. Follow along at nytimes.com, starting just before 9.
The debate will underscore partisan divisions over impeaching the president.
For only the third time in modern history, lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee will formally consider articles of impeachment against a sitting president. In a daylong session, their debate will underscore the deep divisions between Democrats and Mr. Trump’s Republican allies.
Democrats plan to use the session to put the last touches on articles accusing Mr. Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, finalizing charges stemming from their two-and-a-half month inquiry into the president’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to announce investigations of his political rivals.
For Republicans, the meeting — called a “markup” because it gives members the opportunity to offer amendments and edits to the articles — is their last chance to try to derail the impeachment before the articles are expected to go to the House floor early next week.
That is unlikely to happen in the committee, which is firmly under the control of Democrats and led by Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York. Both sides expect the panel to vote along party lines by Thursday afternoon to send the articles to the full House.
But the committee debate is certain to be intense as Democrats make their case that Mr. Trump “ignored and injured the interests of the nation” and as Republicans angrily accuse the president’s adversaries of waging an unfair assault on the presidency based on insufficient evidence.
Before then, catch up on some important background on the impeachment inquiry.
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Mr. Trump and his advisers repeatedly pressured President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to investigate people and issues of political concern to Mr. Trump, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Here’s a timeline of events since January.
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A C.I.A. officer who was once detailed to the White House filed a whistle-blower complaint on Mr. Trump’s interactions with Mr. Zelensky. Read the complaint.