Five Republicans joined Democrats to fight off a challenge to the impeachment trial of former US President Donald Trump, voting down a fellow-Republican's attempt to block it, but the vote also showed that the attempt to convict him could fail.
The Senate voted 55 to 45 on Tuesday, 26 January in the body evenly divided between the parties to quash the attempt to stop Trump's second impeachment trial on constitutional grounds. Even though the vote was successful, it was 12 short of 67 votes – the two-thirds majority – showing that Democrats may not have the votes they would need to eventually convict Trump.
That will make the trial set to begin in the week of 8 February, a symbolic attempt at punishing Trump for the riot by his supporters, rather than convict and ban him from ever running for office as the Democrats want.