WASHINGTON (AP) — The House on Wednesday authorized the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, with every Republican rallying behind the politically charged process despite lingering concerns among some in the party that the investigation has yet to produce evidence of misconduct by the president.

The 221-212 party-line vote put the entire House Republican conference on record in support of an impeachment process that can lead to the ultimate penalty for a president: punishment for what the Constitution describes as “high crimes and misdemeanors,” which can lead to removal from office if convicted in a Senate trial.

Biden, in a rare statement about the impeachment effort, questioned the priorities of House Republicans in pursuing an inquiry against him and his family.

“Instead of doing anything to help make Americans’ lives better, they are focused on attacking me with lies,” the president said following the vote. “Instead of doing their job on the urgent work that needs to be done, they are choosing to waste time on this baseless political stunt that even Republicans in Congress admit is not supported by facts.”

Authorizing the monthslong inquiry ensures that the impeachment investigation extends well into 2024, when Biden will be running for reelection and seems likely to be squaring off against former President Donald Trump — who was twice impeached during his time in the White House. Trump has pushed his GOP allies in Congress to move swiftly on impeaching Biden, part of his broader calls for vengeance and retribution against his political enemies.

The decision to hold a vote came as Speaker Mike Johnson and his team faced growing pressure to show progress in what has become a nearly yearlong probe centered around the business dealings of Biden’s family members. While their investigation has raised ethical questions, no evidence has emerged that Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes in his current role or previous office as vice president.

“We do not take this responsibility lightly and will not prejudge the investigation’s outcome,” Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team said in a joint statement after the vote. “But the evidentiary record is impossible to ignore.”

House Democrats stood in united opposition to the inquiry resolution Wednesday, calling it a farce perpetrated by those across the aisle to avenge the two impeachments against Trump.

“This whole thing is an extreme political stunt. It has no credibility, no legitimacy, and no integrity. It is a sideshow,” Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said during a floor debate.

Some House Republicans, particularly those hailing from politically divided districts, had been hesitant in recent weeks to take any vote on Biden’s impeachment, fearing a significant political cost. But GOP leaders have made the case in recent weeks that the resolution is only a step in the process, not a decision to impeach Biden. That message seems to have won over skeptics.

“As we have said numerous times before, voting in favor of an impeachment inquiry does not equal impeachment,” Rep. Tom Emmer, a member of the GOP leadership team, said at a news conference Tuesday.

Emmer said Republicans “will continue to follow the facts wherever they lead, and if they uncover evidence of treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors, then and only then will the next steps towards impeachment proceedings be considered.”

Most of the Republicans reluctant to back the impeachment push have also been swayed by leadership’s recent argument that authorizing the inquiry will give them better legal standing as the White House has questioned the legal and constitutional basis for their requests for information.

A letter last month from a top White House attorney to Republican committee leaders portrayed the GOP investigation as overzealous and illegitimate because the chamber had not yet authorized a formal impeachment inquiry by a vote of the full House. Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, also wrote that when Trump faced the prospect of impeachment by a Democratic-led House in 2019, Johnson had said at the time that any inquiry without a House vote would be a “sham.”

Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., said this week that while there was no evidence to impeach the president, “that’s also not what the vote this week would be about.”

“We have had enough political impeachments in this country,” he said. “I don’t like the stonewalling the administration has done, but listen, if we don’t have the receipts, that should constrain what the House does long-term.”

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who has long been opposed to moving forward with impeachment, said that the White House questioning the legitimacy of the inquiry without a formal vote helped gain his support. “I can defend an inquiry right now,” he told reporters this week. “Let’s see what they find out.”

House Democrats remained unified in their opposition to the impeachment process, saying it is a farce used by the GOP to take attention away from Trump and his legal woes.

“You don’t initiate an impeachment process unless there’s real evidence of impeachable offenses,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, who oversaw the two impeachments into Trump. “There is none here. None.”

Democrats and the White House have repeatedly defended the president and his administration’s cooperation with the investigation thus far, saying it has already made a massive trove of documents available.

Congressional investigators have obtained nearly 40,000 pages of subpoenaed bank records and dozens of hours of testimony from key witnesses, including several high-ranking Justice Department officials currently tasked with investigating the president’s son, Hunter Biden.

While Republicans say their inquiry is ultimately focused on the president himself, they have taken particular interest in Hunter Biden and his overseas business dealings, from which they accuse the president of personally benefiting. Republicans have also focused a large part of their investigation on whistleblower allegations of interference in the long-running Justice Department investigation into the younger Biden’s taxes and his gun use.

Hunter Biden is currently facing criminal charges in two states from the special counsel investigation. He’s charged with firearm counts in Delaware, alleging he broke laws against drug users having guns in 2018, a period when he has acknowledged struggling with addiction. Special counsel David Weiss filed additional charges last week, alleging he failed to pay about $1.4 million in taxes over a three-year period.

Democrats have conceded that while the president’s son is not perfect, he is a private citizen who is already being held accountable by the justice system.

“I mean, there’s a lot of evidence that Hunter Biden did a lot of improper things. He’s been indicted, he’ll stand trial,” Nadler said. “There’s no evidence whatsoever that the president did anything improper.”

Hunter Biden arrived for a rare public statement outside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, saying he would not be appearing for his scheduled private deposition that morning. The president’s son defended himself against years of GOP attacks and said his father has had no financial involvement in his business affairs.

His attorney has offered for Biden to testify publicly, citing concerns about Republicans manipulating any private testimony.

“Republicans do not want an open process where Americans can see their tactics, expose their baseless inquiry, or hear what I have to say,” Biden said outside the Capitol. “What are they afraid of? I am here.”

GOP lawmakers said that since Hunter Biden did not appear, they will begin contempt of Congress proceedings against him. “He just got into more trouble today,” Rep. James Comer, the House Oversight Committee chairman, told reporters Wednesday.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — After months of struggling to find agreement on just about anything in a divided Congress, lawmakers are returning to Capitol Hill to try to avert a government shutdown, even as House Republicans consider whether to press forward with an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

A short-term funding measure to keep government offices fully functioning will dominate the September agenda, along with emergency funding for Ukraine, federal disaster funds and the Republican-driven probe into Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings.

Time is running short for Congress to act. The House is scheduled to meet for just 11 days before the government’s fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, leaving little room to maneuver. And the dealmaking will play out as two top Republicans, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, deal with health issues.

The president and congressional leaders, including Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, are focused on passage of a months-long funding measure, known as a continuing resolution, to keep government offices running while lawmakers iron out a budget. It’s a step Congress routinely takes to avoid stoppages, but McCarthy faces resistance from within his own Republican ranks, including from some hardline conservatives who openly embrace the idea of a government shutdown.

“Honestly, it’s a pretty big mess,” McConnell said at an event in Kentucky last week.

Here are the top issues as lawmakers return from the August break:

KEEPING THE GOVERNMENT OPEN

When Biden and McCarthy struck a deal to suspend the nation’s debt ceiling in June, it included provisions for topline spending numbers. But under pressure from the House Freedom Caucus, House Republicans have advanced spending bills that cut below that agreement.

Republicans have also tried to load their spending packages with conservative policy wins. For example, House Republicans added provisions blocking abortion coverage, transgender care and diversity initiatives to a July defense package, turning what has traditionally been a bipartisan effort into a sharply contested bill.

But Democrats control the Senate and are certain to reject most of the conservative proposals. Senators are crafting their spending bills on a bipartisan basis with an eye toward avoiding unrelated policy fights.

Top lawmakers in both chambers are now turning to a stopgap funding package, a typical strategy to give the lawmakers time to iron out a long-term agreement.

The House Freedom Caucus has already released a list of demands it wants included in the continuing resolution. But they amount to a right-wing wish list that would never fly in the Senate.

The conservative opposition means McCarthy will almost certainly have to win significant Democratic support to pass a funding bill — but such an approach risks a new round of conflict with the same conservatives who in the past have threatened to oust him from the speakership.

Democrats are already readying blame for the House GOP.

“The last thing the American people deserve is for extreme House members to trigger a government shutdown that hurts our economy, undermines our disaster preparedness, and forces our troops to work without guaranteed pay,” said White House spokesman Andrew Bates.

In a letter to his colleagues Friday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote that the focus when the Senate returns Tuesday will be “funding the government and preventing House Republican extremists from forcing a government shutdown.”

It leaves McCarthy desperate to get the votes to keep government offices running and avoid the political blowback. As he tries to persuade Republicans to go along with a temporary fix, McCarthy has been arguing that a government shutdown would also halt Republican investigations into the Biden administration.

“If we shut down, all of government shuts it down — investigations and everything else — it hurts the American public,” the speaker said on Fox News last week.

IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY

Since they gained the House majority, Republicans have launched a series of investigations into the Biden administration, with an eye towards impeaching the president or his Cabinet officials. They have now zeroed in on the president’s son, Hunter Biden, and his overseas business dealings, including with Ukrainian gas company Burisma.

The inquiries have not produced evidence that President Biden took official action on behalf of his son or business partners, but McCarthy has called impeachment a “natural step forward” for the investigations.

An impeachment inquiry by the House would be a first step toward bringing articles of impeachment. It is not yet clear what that may look like, especially because the speaker does not appear to have the GOP votes lined up to support an impeachment inquiry. Moderate Republicans have so far balked at sending the House on a full-fledged impeachment hunt.

But Donald Trump, running once again to challenge Biden, is prodding them to move ahead quickly.

“I don’t know how actually how a Republican could not do it,” Trump said in an interview on Real America’s Voice. “I think a Republican would be primaried and lose immediately, no matter what district you’re in.”

UKRAINE AND DISASTER FUNDING

The White House has requested more than $40 billion in emergency funding, including $13 billion in military aid for Ukraine, $8 billion in humanitarian support for the nation and $12 billion to replenish U.S. federal disaster funds at home.

The request for the massive cash infusion comes as Kyiv launches a counteroffensive against the Russian invasion. But support for Ukraine is waning among Republicans, especially as Trump has repeatedly expressed skepticism of the war.

Nearly 70 Republicans voted for an unsuccessful effort to discontinue military aid to Ukraine in July, though strong support for the war effort remains among many members.

It is also not clear whether the White House’s supplemental request for U.S. disaster funding, which also includes funds to bolster enforcement and curb drug trafficking at the southern U.S. border, will be tied to the Ukraine funding or a continuing budget resolution. The disaster funding enjoys wide support in the House, but could be tripped up if packaged with other funding proposals.

LEGISLATION ON HOLD

The Senate is expected to spend most of September focused on funding the government and confirming Biden’s nominees, meaning that major policy legislation will have to wait. But Schumer outlined some priorities for the remaining months of the year in the letter to his colleagues.

Schumer said the Senate would work on legislation to lower the costs of drugs, address rail safety and provide disaster relief after floods in Vermont, fires in Hawaii and a hurricane in Florida.

Senators will also continue to examine whether legislation is needed to address artificial intelligence. Schumer has convened what he is calling an “AI insight forum” on Sept. 13 in the Senate with tech industry leaders, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, the CEO of X and Tesla, as well as former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates.

HEALTH CONCERNS

Senate Republicans will return next week to renewed questions about the health of their leader, McConnell.

McConnell, 81, faces questions about his ability to continue as the top Senate Republican after he has frozen up twice during news conferences in the last two months since falling and suffering a concussion in March. During the event in Kentucky last week, he fell silent for roughly 30 seconds as he answered a question from a reporter.

Dr. Brian Monahan, the Capitol’s attending physician, said Thursday that McConnell is cleared to work. But the question of whether McConnell — the longest-serving party leader in Senate history — can continue as Republican leader has sparked intense speculation about who will eventually replace him.

Meanwhile, the health of California Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein, 90, has visibly wavered in recent months after she was hospitalized for shingles earlier this year. She suffered a fall at her San Francisco home in August and visited the hospital for testing.

And in the House, Rep. Steve Scalise, the No. 2 Republican, disclosed last week that he has been diagnosed with a form of blood cancer known as multiple myeloma and is undergoing treatment.

Scalise, 57, said he will continue to serve and described the cancer as “very treatable.”

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