Pressure mounts on Trump to leave office amid concerns of more unrest ahead of Biden’s inauguration

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Sunday that the House will proceed with legislation to impeach President Donald Trump unless the vice president and Cabinet invoke constitutional authority to force him out, calling Trump ‘a threat to democracy’ after the assault on the Capitol.

Pelosi made the announcement in a letter to colleagues, framing it as an ultimatum to Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the powers of the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. If not, she said, the House would proceed with impeachment. Trump could become the only president to be impeached twice.

“In protecting our Constitution and our Democracy, we will act with urgency, because this President represents an imminent threat to both,” she said, and added: “The horror of the ongoing assault on our democracy perpetrated by this President is intensified and so is the immediate need for action,” as per reports carried by multiple media website including NYC.

Pelosi's plan seeks a vote on Monday on a resolution calling on Pence and Cabinet officials to invoke the 25th Amendment. Under rules when the full House is not convened, any objection would reject the resolution. Pelosi would then put the resolution before the full House on Tuesday. If it were to pass, Pence and the Cabinet would have 24 hours to act before the House would move toward impeachment.

As of Sunday morning, 210 of 222 Democrats — nearly a majority of the chamber — had signed onto the article of impeachment drawn up by Representative David Cicilline of Rhode Island, Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Ted Lieu of California. It charges Trump with “willfully inciting violence against the government of the United States.”

Separately, Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat and the District of Columbia’s nonvoting House delegate, planned to introduce a resolution formally censuring Mr. Trump. Though Ms. Holmes Norton supports impeachment, she argued that given Republican resistance to impeachment, censure was “the only way to send a bipartisan, bicameral message without delay to the country and the world that the United States is a nation of laws.”

Pressure was mounting for Trump to leave office even before his term ended amid concerns of more unrest ahead of the inauguration.

Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania on Sunday joined Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska in calling for Trump to “resign and go away as soon as possible."

“I think the president has disqualified himself from ever, certainly, serving in office again,” Toomey said. “I don’t think he is electable in any way.”

Murkowski has been quoted as saying Trump simply “needs to get out.” A third Republican, Sen. Roy Blunt, of Missouri, did not go that far, but on Sunday he warned Trump to be “very careful” in his final days in office.

House leaders, furious after the insurrection, appear determined to act against Trump despite the short timeline.

The Democratic effort to stamp Trump's presidential record — for the second time — with the indelible mark of impeachment had advanced rapidly since the riot.

Rep. David Cicilline, a leader of the House involved in efforts to draft impeachment articles accusing Trump of inciting insurrection, said on Sunday that his group had 200-plus co-sponsors.

The articles, if passed by the House, could then be transmitted to the Senate for a trial, with senators acting as jurors to acquit or convict Trump.

If convicted, Trump would be removed from office and succeeded by the vice president. It would be the first time a U.S. president had been impeached twice.