The debate is heated almost from the start as House sets up a vote to impeach President Donald Trump.

Democrats and a few Republicans say Trump must be removed immediately after he egged on a violent mob of supporters a week ago who then stormed the Capitol. The insurrection happened as some of Trump’s GOP allies were challenging his election defeat, echoing the president’s false claims that there was widespread fraud in his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Most Republicans are saying impeachment is divisive. They’re not mentioning the president.

Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio is one of Trump’s most vocal defenders. Jordan blames Democrats for objecting to previous election results and he’s repeating baseless claims that the 2020 election was rigged.

But Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts says Democrats haven’t pushed conspiracy theories that a president won in a landslide when he actually lost — which is what happened to Trump.

McGovern is looking back at the deadly Capitol siege and saying “people died because of the big lies that were being told.” And he says that’s enough to merit impeachment.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is on the verge of being impeached for a second time, with an afternoon vote expected in the House. He faces a single charge, “incitement of insurrection,” after telling a mob of loyalists to, as he put it, “fight like hell” against election results. The subsequent attack on the U.S. Capitol turned deadly and delayed finalizing Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory.

Security is exceptionally tight at the Capitol, beefed up by armed National Guard troops, with secure perimeters set up and metal-detector screenings required for lawmakers entering the House chamber. A small number of Republicans are supporting impeachment along with the Democrats.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden has selected Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Barack Obama, to run the U.S. Agency for International Development. That’s the agency that oversees U.S. foreign humanitarian and development aid. Biden made the announcement Wednesday and said he was elevating the position to the National Security Council in the White House.

Power served as U.N. ambassador from 2013 to 2017.  She won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for her book “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” about the U.S. foreign policy response to genocide.

(Story by Sandy Giordano, Beaver County Radio News Correspondent)

Ambridge Borough Council met last night and approved the fire department’s application for a FEMA SCBC grant in the amount of $135,000. The cost share is estimated to be between $6,500-$8,500, plus a 1.5% grant writer fee of $2,038.50.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is on the verge of becoming the first president to be impeached twice, as lawmakers move quickly to punish him over last week’s deadly Capitol attack. Trump’s fiery speech at a rally just before the Jan. 6 riot is at the center of the impeachment charge against him, even as the falsehoods he spread for months about election fraud are still being championed by some Republicans.

The Democratic-controlled House will move to impeach Trump Wednesday for the second time in 13 months — this time with just days left in the defeated president’s term.

The wall of Republican support that has enabled President Donald Trump to weather a seemingly endless series of crises is beginning to erode. Trump’s weakened standing among his own party will come into sharper focus on Wednesday when the House is expected to impeach the president for inciting a riot at the U.S. Capitol last week.

A handful of Republicans have already said they’ll join the effort, a number that could grow as the vote nears. The choice facing Republicans isn’t just about the immediate fate of Trump but whether the party’s elected leaders are ready to move on.

Jim Brewster will be sworn in as a state senator today, ending a dispute over counting ballots in Allegheny County. The U-S District Court for Western Pennsylvania ruled on Tuesday that disputed votes in the state’s 45th senatorial district should be counted. Republicans lost challenges in state and federal courts to Democrat Brewster’s narrow victory in November. But on January 5th, Senate Republicans blocked Brewster from taking the oath of office, insisting on another federal court ruling.

The G-O-P wanted to toss out 23-hundred mail-in ballots that lacked a written date on the outer envelope, but had been received on time. Marc Stier, who heads the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, says the court ruled the federal claims of Brewster’s opponent, Nicole Ziccarelli, failed on their merits. But the state Supreme Court had ruled those ballots could be counted. Stier believes Ziccarelli might have had a stronger case had she gone to court to demand that those similar ballots in Westmoreland County also be counted. About 15 years ago, Republicans joined with Democrats to extend and expand the Voting Rights Act. But Stier points out that the access to ballots – and even the voters’ right to choose electors in a presidential election – have become partisan issues.

Facing difficulty due to the novel coronavirus, Girl Scouts have found a way to create the first national delivery service collaboration in the organization’s history, using Grubhub Inc. to help the Girl Scouts ensure 2021 cookie sales are safe and socially distant.

We’re proud of the resourceful ways Girl Scouts are running their cookie businesses safely and using their earnings to make the world a better place,” interim GSUSA CEO Judith Batty stated in a news release. “This season, our girls will continue to exemplify what the cookie program taught them: how to think like entrepreneurs, use innovative sales tactics, and pivot to new ways of doing business when things don’t go according to plan.”

(Beaver Falls, Pa.) “Good News from the Mountain” with host Pastor Rod Smith will be broadcast at the special time of 4:30 p.m. today, January 13, 2021 on Beaver County Radio due to Pittsburgh Penguins Hockey on Beaver County Radio 1230 WBVP, 1460 WMBA, 99.3 FM and beavercountyradio.com .  The Penguins have their season opener on Beaver County Radio with pre-game at 5 p.m. and puck drop at 5:30 p.m.

The show will return to its normal time  of 6:30 p.m. next Wednesday January 20, 2021.