Today is Tuesday, February 9th, and you're listening to the morning announcements.

I'm Sammy Sage.

Today is the first day of Trump's impeachment trial in the Senate.

What we can expect today is up to four hours of debate, followed by a simple majority

vote on the question of whether or not this impeachment is actually constitutional, on

the grounds that Trump is now a private citizen.

All the senators already voted on that a few days ago, and while it does sound like

a convenient way to get Trump off the hook, over 100 leading constitutional scholars

from across the political spectrum wrote a letter validating the constitutionality of

the trial.

The impeachment managers and Trump's defense team are expected to start their formal arguments

on Wednesday where they'll each get up to 16 hours to make their presentations.

Then there will be testimony from witnesses if they choose to have them, although I'm

pretty sure many of these senators were themselves the witnesses, that will be followed by a vote

to convict.

If Trump is convicted, senators would then vote to bar him from running for future office,

which is kind of a whole point, isn't it?

I'm just excited to have some new content because I've finished everything on the streaming

services already.

We have one more quick update from the Senate before we move on to our next story, and that

is another cabinet confirmation.

The Senate has confirmed Dennis McDonough as Biden Secretary of Veteran Affairs.

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