Political divide deepens following Capitol siege

Senators, businesses take stand amid calls for Trump's removal

Democrats in the US House of Representatives plan a vote to urge Vice President Mike Pence to take steps to remove President Donald Trump from office after his supporters' deadly storming of the Capitol, before attempting to impeach him again.

In a letter to members on Sunday evening, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said leaders of the Democratic-led House would attempt on Monday to pass a resolution calling on Pence to activate the 25th Amendment of the Constitution to declare Trump incapable of fulfilling duties of his office.

If Pence does not respond, Democrats would proceed with impeaching the president for a historic second time.

"In protecting our constitution and our democracy, we will act with urgency, because this president represents an imminent threat to both," wrote Pelosi in the letter.

Pence opposed using the 25th Amendment to remove Trump, said one of his advisers.

Trump was already impeached once by the Democratic-controlled House in December 2019 for pressuring the Ukrainian president to dig up political dirt on President-elect Joe Biden.

Though time is running short, Democrats likely have the votes in the House to impeach Trump again and could even draw some Republican support for the move.

However, according to a report by Agence France-Presse, it is unlikely that the Democrats can muster a two-thirds majority needed to convict Trump in the 100-member Senate and remove him from office.

There was support among some Republicans for Trump's departure. Senator Pat Toomey, a conservative backer of Trump until recently, told NBC that Trump's resignation would be best for the country "as soon as possible".

Lisa Murkowski became the first Republican US senator on Friday to say that Trump should resign immediately. Republican senator Ben Sasse said he would "definitely consider" impeachment.

Biden, who is due to be inaugurated on Jan 20, has not taken a stand regarding the impeachment, saying that he will leave it to Congress. However, he did say Congress must be able to hit the ground running once he takes office, as he will focus on the coronavirus pandemic and economic recovery.

Trump, who has without evidence challenged the validity of Biden's election victory, praised and egged on supporters before they laid siege on Capitol, where lawmakers were certifying the Electoral College vote for Biden.

In a video released on social media on Sunday, former Californian governor Arnold Schwarzenegger compared the mob that stormed Capitol to Nazis and called Trump a failed leader who "will go down in history as the worst president ever".

Schwarzenegger, who is a Republican, said that "Wednesday was the Night of Broken Glass right here in the United States." In 1938, Nazis in Germany and Austria vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses during an attack that became known as Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass.

"The broken glass was in the windows of the United States Capitol. But the mob did not just shatter the windows of the Capitol, they shattered the ideas we took for granted," he said. "They trampled the very principles on which our country was founded."

US law enforcement officials have opened at least 25 domestic terrorism cases following Wednesday's assault on Capitol, according to US news website The Hill.

Fiery support

Five people died in the rampage through the seat of government by Trump's backers after a fiery speech by the Republican president denouncing the Nov 3 election results.

The FBI confirmed late on Sunday that it had received more than 40,000 digital media tips, including videos and photos, from the public in connection with Wednesday's Capitol violence.

So far, at least 90 people have been arrested on charges ranging from misdemeanor curfew violations to felonies related to assaults on police officers, possessing illegal weapons and making death threats against Pelosi, according to The Associated Press.

Muriel Bowser, mayor of the District of Columbia, called on the Department of Homeland Security on Sunday to take additional steps to ensure that the nation's capital is secure ahead of the inauguration.

Bowser has called for an extension of the special security period surrounding the inauguration, the declaration of a pre-disaster zone and more.

Based on an analysis from AP, the insurrectionist mob that showed up at the president's behest and stormed the Capitol was overwhelmingly made up of longtime Trump supporters, including Republican Party officials, GOP political donors, far-right militants, white supremacists, members of the military and adherents of the QAnon myth.

The AP found that many of the rioters had taken to social media after the November election to retweet and parrot false claims by Trump that the vote had been stolen in a vast international conspiracy. Several had openly threatened violence against Democrats and Republicans they considered insufficiently loyal to the president.

Businesses are rethinking political contributions in the wake of the deadly Capitol siege.

Citigroup confirmed that it is halting all federal political donations for the first three months of the year. Others like Marriott are only stopping donations to the 147 Republicans who opposed certifying Biden's election.

The political divide in the US heightened over the weekend, with big tech companies moving to deplatform social networking service Parler, where many Trump supporters have gravitated to after he was taken off Twitter. Parler touts itself as a "free expression with no violence and censorship" haven, while its opponents said it allows extreme views.

Trump was suspended from most mainstream social media platforms, including Facebook and YouTube, following his supporters' siege on Capitol.

Trump had 88.7 million followers on Twitter, and Parler had been seen as a likely beneficiary of Trump's rerouted social media traffic.

Google and Apple earlier removed Parler from their app stores, while Amazon decided to take the domain off its web hosting service by midnight Pacific time on Sunday.

Parler CEO John Matze called the moves a "coordinated attack" by tech giants to kill competition in the marketplace. "We were too successful too fast," he wrote on a Saturday night post, saying it was possible that Parler would be unavailable for up to a week as they rebuild it from scratch.

Reuters contributed to this story.