After hours of lawmakers voicing their support or objections, the US House of Representatives on Wednesday passed two articles of impeachment against Donald Trump.

Accusing Trump of abuse of power for trying to strong-arm Ukraine into doing his political dirty by withholding pre-approved aid, and obstruction of Congress for refusing to cooperate with the investigation, the vote in the Democratic-controlled house begins the process of setting up a trial in the Republican-majority Senate.  

The leader of the House Democrats, Nancy Pelosi, says she is not in a great hurry to send the articles to the Senate for trial because of concerns that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is already stacking the deck against a fair trial.  He did announce that he is coordinating with the White House on how to handle the impeachment trial, and by his owns words publicly bragged he is not an impartial juror as the US Constitution assumes each Senator would be.  Pelosi's unusual strategy could short-circuit McConnell's flagrant attempts to hastily acquit Trump or dismiss the charges outright. 

"It's up to the senators to make their own decision working together" on how to run the trial, Pelosi said.  "Hopefully in recognition that there are witnesses the president withheld from us, there are documents the president withheld from us, and I would hope that information would be available to go to a trial, to the next step."   

The strategy would also allow the Democrats and conservative critics to refer to Trump as the "impeached president" for weeks or perhaps months as the 2020 election season heats up.

The vote in the US House largely broke down along party lines.  The first count charging Trump with abusing his power passed 230-197, with two Democrats in districts where constituents voted for Trump in 2016 voting no.  The other one passed 229-198, this time with three Democrats voting "no".  Democratic party presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard chickened out and voted "present" for each count, a gutless, roundly condemned move that for many voters will likely reinforce former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's accusation that Gabbard is a Russian tool.  

The Republicans technically had no defections, but that's only because Michigan Representative Justin Amash grew disgusted and left the party in July; he voted to impeach.  Two other Republican congressmen - Duncan Hunter of California and Chris Collins of New York - resigned their seats this year because they were arrested and charged in two different corruption cases.  Coincidentally, they were Trump's first two supporters in Congress.

Trump is only the third US president to be impeached; Andrew Johnson was chastened, but not removed from office in 1868; Bill Clinton's approval rating went way up when the Republicans impeached him in 1998 for lying about having an affair with an intern, failing to get a conviction in the Senate.  The Republican House Speaker at the time who pushed for impeachment, Newt Gingrich, was driven from office months later; Gingrich was replaced by another Republican, Dennis Hastert, who was later sent to prison for being a sexual molester of teenage boys.