Senators to be unplugged for Trump trial

The first time the proclamation was used, in the 1868 trial of President Andrew Johnson, lawmakers couldn’t have imagined life in the modern era.

The pace of today’s politics would have been hard to foresee even in early 1999, at the start of the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, when smartphones didn’t exist. And so the senators will have a throwback experience in 2020, disconnected from the outside world, asked only to listen.

While senators might privately grumble about the restrictions — and will likely violate them at times — they agree that the rules are justified as they execute their most solemn duty: considering whether to remove the president of the United States from office.

Senators will sit for hours on end to hear from prosecutors

An impeachment trial “deserves our undivided attention,” said Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware.

The ban on cellphones on the Senate floor isn’t new, but enforcement has become more relaxed in recent years. Coons said that when he came to the Senate a decade ago, he would be reprimanded if he even took his phone out of his pocket. Today, senators are often spotted texting or looking at their phones while waiting to speak or vote — and a ringtone has sounded more than once.

Republican Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa joked that if there weren’t restrictions, senators would be “Googling stuff” and playing games on their phones. Or worse, live tweeting the trial.

Democratic Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, said it’s a “healthy situation,” and he compared it to when his wife asks him to leave the phone at home when they go out to dinner.

As senators were sworn in as jurors and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced the next steps, Cardin jotted notes on the process and what was happening. He said the note-taking is “one of my work habits”.