The session could last late into the night if Republicans offer numerous amendments. But the outcome is not in doubt, since Democrats hold a 9-to-4 majority on the panel.

At the heart of the Democrats’ case is the allegation that Trump tried to leverage a White House meeting and military aid, sought by Ukraine to combat Russian military aggression, to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch an investigation of former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. Trump is also said to have sought a probe of an unfounded theory that Kyiv conspired with Democrats to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., will not be present at Rules Committee meeting due to a family emergency, according to a Judiciary committee aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personal matters.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., has been tapped to fill in for Nadler, whose committee approved two articles of impeachment last week. The committee aide said lawmakers are hopeful that Nadler will return on Wednesday for the full House debate and vote.

Also attending is Rep. Douglas Collins of Georgia, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, who said he would argue that for Democrats to “give us as much time as they possibly can” during debate over impeachment on the House floor.

On Wednesday, a procedural vote by the full House, expected around midday, will launch the debate, which is expected to last several hours and culminate in an evening vote on the articles of impeachment.

The House also is planning to vote Wednesday on a resolution formally naming House managers, or prosecutors, for the Senate trial, who will be selected by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

The Senate trial is expected to start in early January.

While the White House has prevented senior administration officials from appearing before the House committees conducting the impeachment investigation, a large 71% majority of Americans say the president should allow those officials to testify at a Senate trial, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

That includes majorities across partisan and demographic lines. Among Democrats, 79% say Trump should let his advisers appear before the Senate, while 64% of Republicans agree. Among independents, 72% favor their appearance. There is also sizable agreement among men and women, whites and nonwhites, and all age groups, contrary to the divisions over impeachment itself.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is advocating for several senior administration officials to testify, including acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton.

But on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., rejected Schumer’s call to subpoena new witnesses. “We certainly do not need jurors to start brainstorming witness lists for the prosecution,” McConnell said, referring to the role of senators during the trial.

“The fact that my colleague is already desperate to sign up the Senate for new fact-finding . . . suggests something to me,” McConnell said of Schumer. “It suggests that even Democrats who do not like this president are beginning to realize how dramatically insufficient the House’s rushed process has been.”

Overally, 49% of Americans say Trump should be impeached and removed from office, while 46% say he should not, according to the poll. It also finds that regardless of whether Trump committed an impeachable offense, 49% say he improperly pressured Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son, while 39% say Trump did not do this.

Congress has impeached only two presidents: Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998. President Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 before the House could vote on articles of impeachment in the Watergate scandal. Lawmakers drafted three articles against Nixon, including charges of “high crimes and misdemeanors” that mirror the abuse-of-power and obstruction allegations Trump now faces.

Earlier Tuesday, group of Trump’s conservative critics, including George Conway, the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, announced the launch of a new super PAC with the aim of defeating Trump and his “enablers” at the ballot box.

“Our efforts are aimed at persuading enough disaffected conservatives, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in swing states and districts to help ensure a victory in the Electoral College, and congressional majorities that don’t enable or abet Mr. Trump’s violations of the Constitution, even if that means Democratic control of the Senate and an expanded Democratic majority in the House,” four leaders of the group, dubbed the Lincoln Project, wrote in a New York Times op-ed.

Besides Conway, other authors of the piece include veteran GOP consultants Steve Schmidt, John Weaver and Rick Wilson. Others involved in the effort, according to the group’s website, include Reed Galen, an independent political strategist; Jennifer Horn, a former chairwoman of the New Hampshire Republican Party; and Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist.

In the op-ed, the group is critical not only of Trump but of congressional Republicans who have opposed the president’s impeachment.

Trump, meanwhile, took to Twitter on Tuesday to again proclaim that he’d done no wrong: “The Stock Market hit another Record High yesterday, number 133 in less than three years as your all time favorite President, and the Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrats, want to impeach me. Don’t worry, I have done nothing wrong. Actually, they have!”

The judges’ 2 to 1 decision marked the first time a court has handed down the death penalty to a former army chief or leader of Pakistan. But analysts said the penalty is unlikely to be carried out: Musharraf, who was sentenced in absentia, has been out of the country since 2016 and has been receiving medical treatment in Dubai.

The Pakistani armed forces later issued a strong statement supporting Musharraf and denouncing the legal process against him. The court’s decision “has been received with lot of pain and anguish” by the military’s rank and file, said the statement, which was issued after a meeting of top army leaders. As a former army chief and president of Pakistan who served the country for more than 40 years and fought wars in its defense, Musharraf “can surely never be a traitor,” it said.The statement added that “due legal process seems to have been ignored” by the court. It said the military expects justice to “be dispensed in line with [Pakistan’s] Constitution.”

Musharraf, 76, ruled nuclear-armed Pakistan from 1999 to 2008 as head of a military-led government after he seized power from then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a coup. He became a key supporter of Washington in the U.S.-led war on terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The retired general lives in self-imposed exile in the United Arab Emirates and is reported to be seriously ill. In a video statement he recorded from a hospital bed earlier this month, Musharraf described the case against him as unfounded and baseless.

The charges arose from Musharraf’s November 2007 move to suspend the constitution and impose emergency rule, after which numerous judges were placed under house arrest or dismissed, sparking widespread protests. He resigned the following year to avoid a threat of impeachment.

A government law officer, Salman Nadeem, told reporters Tuesday that Musharraf had been found guilty of violating Article 6 of Pakistan’s constitution, which states that any person who suspends the constitution by use of force shall be guilty of high treason.

Legal experts said Musharraf could appeal the verdict to the country’s Supreme Court.

Responding to the judges’ decision, Musharraf’s lawyer, Akhtar Shah, said the case against his client was “unfair, no doubt about that.”

“We have always maintained it was a wrong case,” he told reporters. “Pervez Musharraf has developed this country, he respected the rule of law and freedom of press, and the way he served the country, no one else did.”

The state of emergency was “good for the country during those times” and was enacted only after extensive consultations, he said.

Shah added that Musharraf had wanted to return to Pakistan to record a statement but was not offered sufficient security measures to ensure his safety.

Firdous Ashiq Awan, an adviser to Prime Minister Imran Khan, told Pakistan’s ARY News channel that the government would review the court’s ruling against Musharraf before announcing its position on the matter.

The case against the former leader had been pending since 2013, when a government led by his old rival, Sharif, was in power. Musharraf was indicted in 2014, but the trial was delayed, and he left Pakistan two years later.

Monday’s announcements dealt a blow to Trump and his allies, who had been encouraging Democrats to defect to bolster their depiction of impeachment as a crusade by extremist liberals. The White House had mounted an all-out effort to pressure the centrists, many of whom faced a blitz of anti-impeachment ads and are risking significant political damage.

These Democrats characterized their choices as acts of conscience. “The president’s actions violate his oath of office, endanger our national security and betray the public trust,” said Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., a freshman who represents a Richmond-area district that voted for Trump in 2016.

With the outcome in the House increasingly certain, Senate leaders maneuvered Monday to set parameters for a possible trial, which would begin in January. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., demanded the chamber conduct a “full and fair trial,” including live testimony from acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and other administration officials. A trial without witnesses, which many Republicans favor, would amount to “a coverup,” Schumer said.

Republican leaders dismissed Schumer’s request, arguing that decisions about witnesses should not be made before the trial begins. Senate Republicans have largely coalesced around a strategy of calling no witnesses and restricting the length of a trial, although no decisions have been made.

The back-and-forth was prompted by the House’s move to the brink of a momentous vote on two articles of impeachment charging Trump with abusing power and obstructing Congress. House leaders plan Tuesday to begin the process of bringing those articles to the floor, setting up hours of debate Wednesday capped by votes later that night.

Monday’s dynamic solidifies the prospect that those votes will unfold almost entirely along party lines, a reflection of the hard-edge partisan mood in Congress and the country.

Adding to the momentum Monday, the House Judiciary Committee released a 658-page report accusing Trump of criminal bribery and wire fraud. It argued that Trump’s actions in soliciting political probes from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met the definition of both constitutional and criminal bribery.

The report also argued that Trump’s July 25 call with Zelensky, in which he asked for a probe of former vice president Joe Biden, met the standard of federal wire fraud.

“Although President Trump’s actions need not rise to the level of a criminal violation to justify impeachment, his conduct here was criminal,” the report said.

Trump again proclaimed the impeachment push a “hoax” and defended his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who has been central to the investigation. Trump praised Giuliani as “a very great crime fighter” and said he was pursuing his theories of wrongdoing in Ukraine out of patriotic duty.

“He’s a great person who loves our country,” Trump said. “And he does this out of love, believe me. He does it out of love.”

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and her leadership team were buoyed by the steady announcements from an array of centrist Democrats that they would back articles of impeachment. Their position had been in doubt as Republicans tried to ratchet up pressure, especially on those elected in 2018 in districts that supported Trump.

Reps. Ben McAdams of Utah and Joe Cunningham of South Carolina, for example, had been widely expected to be among the half-dozen or so Democrats breaking with their party. Both said Monday they would vote in favor of impeaching Trump.

A trio of women Democrats with backgrounds in national security, who in September came out in favor of opening an impeachment inquiry into the president’s conduct, also said they have decided to vote for impeachment. That includes Spanberger, a former CIA officer, as well as Reps. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former CIA analyst and Defense Department official, and Elaine Luria of Virginia, a former Navy commander.

Slotkin announced her decision at a town hall meeting in Rochester, Michigan, where hundreds of constituents either cheered or booed her as she explained her reasoning.

“I can hear that this is a very controversial decision – and I knew that,” Slotkin said. “And all I can ask from the people who are listening is that while we may not agree, I hope you believe me when I tell you that I made this decision out of principle.”

In New Jersey, Rep. Andy Kim announced his support for impeachment with “a sense of humility,” acknowledging that some of his constituents disagreed but arguing that the House vote “will determine the very framework of our democracy, what constitutes acceptable behavior by future presidents, and the kind of country our children and grandchildren will grow up in.”

The announcements raised hopes among Democrats that they may face fewer defections than originally predicted. Of the 31 House Democrats who represent districts that Trump carried, at least 17 have said they will vote to impeach the president. Only two so far have said they would vote against impeachment.

One of them, Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, has often lambasted the impeachment inquiry on Fox News and is now preparing to join the Republican Party, spurring a mass resignation of staffers from his office. The other, Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota, argued that Trump “has not committed a crime” and said if Americans do not approve of the president’s conduct, they can vote him out of office next year.

Van Drew had lost support from his Democratic base, jeopardizing his reelection and raising the prospect of a primary challenge. Republicans have warned swing-district Democrats about the potential blowback if they support impeachment, but Van Drew’s experience served as a reminder of an alternative backlash – the reaction by angry Democrats whose votes they need to win reelection in 2020.

Monday’s developments unfolded as the House looked ahead to a rapid-fire series of events this week to formally accuse Trump of wrongdoing.

The House Rules Committee meets Tuesday to debate how the articles of impeachment will be debated and voted on by the full chamber. Set to take place in a cramped room just off the House gallery, that session could last late into the night if Republicans offer numerous amendments. But the outcome is not in doubt, since Democrats hold a 9-to-4 majority on the panel.

Next will come a procedural vote by the full House, around midday Wednesday, launching the debate, which is expected to last for several hours and culminate in an evening vote on the articles of impeachment. The House also is planning to vote on a resolution formally naming House managers, or prosecutors, for the Senate trial, who will be selected by Pelosi.

Meanwhile, jockeying is underway in the Senate for the expected likely trial. Schumer held a news conference to press his case for testimony by four officials who were asked to appear in the House inquiry but declined – Mulvaney; John Bolton, former national security adviser; Robert Blair, a senior adviser to Mulvaney; and Michael Duffey, associate director for national security at the Office of Management and Budget.

All have direct knowledge of the president’s actions, Schumer said. “In the coming weeks, senators – particularly Republicans senators – will have a choice: Do they want a fair, honest trial that examines all the facts? Or do they want a trial that doesn’t let the facts come out?” he said.

Republicans responded that Schumer was being hypocritical, since in 1999 he opposed calling witnesses during the Senate impeachment trial of then-President Bill Clinton.

Schumer said the situations were fundamentally different: In 1999, the House had already heard from the witnesses in question, while none of those named Monday by Schumer have testified yet.

The trial’s parameters will be determined largely by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who could begin negotiating with Schumer as early as this week. The key decisions include the starting date for the proceedings, likely in early January; the length of time each side gets for opening arguments; and how much time will be set aside for senators to ask questions.

Top Senate Republicans spoke about witness strategy in their weekly leadership meeting Monday evening and will almost surely discuss it again at the regular Senate GOP luncheon Tuesday.

Several said decisions about witnesses should not be made before the trial begins. “I don’t think that can be decided in advance of this thing getting underway,” said Senate Majority Whip John Thune, R-S.D.

By the time House impeachment managers and Trump’s attorneys finish making their case in a Senate trial, Republican leaders hope a majority of senators will be ready to vote without hearing witnesses.

Schumer and Senate Democrats are zeroing in on a handful of Republican senators who may be willing to break from McConnell and insist on hearing from more administration officials with insight into the decision to hold up nearly $400 million in military assistance to Ukraine. Republicans hold a 53-to-47 majority in the Senate, but several GOP senators are up for reelection in swing states.

One Republican closely watched by Democrats – Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah – declined to comment Monday. Another, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, did not elaborate beyond saying she hoped McConnell and Schumer can work together.

A third Republican who occasionally departs from the party line, Susan Collins of Maine, said she would reserve comment until McConnell and Schumer have had a chance to speak privately. It was “unfortunate” that Schumer spoke publicly before sitting down with McConnell, she added.

Still, Collins distanced herself from her party’s leadership. Referring to McConnell’s comments last week on Fox News saying he was closely coordinating trial strategy with the White House, Collins told reporters, “That would not be the approach that I’ve taken.”

The American side was responding to a UN Security Council proposal by China and Russia to lessen the economic embargo on North Korea. The countries – Cold War allies of North Korea who have recently repaired ties with leader Kim Jong Un – said the changes were warranted because the regime had complied with United Nations resolutions and needed “humanitarian and livelihood” relief, according to a draft provided by diplomats who asked not to be named.

The U.S. rejected the proposal, saying it was premature to ease sanctions while North Korea advances prohibited weapons systems and threatens escalation, according to a state department official who asked not be named. The U.S. remained committed to achieving North Korea’s “complete denuclearization” through negotiations, the official said.

The Chinese-Russian resolution, which may prompt further Security Council discussions Tuesday, came after Trump’s top envoy to North Korea countered Kim’s threat of a “Christmas” provocation by urging renewed talks and to usher in a “season of peace.” Trump later warned the regime against any weapons tests or other actions in the coming days.

“We’re watching it,” Trump told reporters Monday at the White House. “We’ll see. I’d be disappointed if something would be in the works. And if it is, we’ll take care of it.”

Tensions have slowly risen on the Korean Peninsula as time runs out on Kim’s threat to take a “new path” if Trump doesn’t make him a better offer in nuclear talks. North Korea has fired a record number of short-range ballistic missile in recent months and has threatened to withdraw Kim’s two-year-old freeze on tests of nuclear weapons and longer-range rockets needed to carrier them to the U.S. mainland.

Last week, the U.S.’s ambassador to UN, Kelly Craft, warned of “deeply troubling indications” that North Korea was poised for a major provocation such as launching “space vehicles using long-range ballistic missile technology” or even test-launching an intercontinental ballistic missiles “which are designed to attack the continental United States.”

On Saturday, North Korea said it had conducted a second “crucial test” to boost its nuclear-deterrent capabilities. Such tests have put further pressure on the U.S. to try to break the deadlock in negotiations between the two countries after working-level talks collapsed in October in Stockholm.

The two sides have reached no agreements since committing to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” during an unprecedented face to face-to-face meeting between Trump and Kim in June 2018. The U.S. has so far refused to lift sanctions without a stronger pledge from North Korea to eliminate its nuclear weapon capabilities.

The Chinese-Russian resolution included exemptions for inter-Korean rail-and-road projects long sought by Seoul, potentially reviving a source of tension between Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. The proposal would allow sales of machinery and vehicles for infrastructure construction, as well as household items such as air conditioners, dishwashers and vacuum cleaners.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry said in a statement that the resolution was a Security Council matter, although the government would follow developments closely.

The U.S.’s North Korea envoy, Stephen Biegun, urged Kim to return to talks during a visit to Seoul, which was viewed as the administration’s last chance to dial back tensions. Biegun also met with Moon and Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chol and was expected to head to Tokyo later in the week.

“It is time for us to do our jobs. Let’s get this done,” Biegun said in a direct message to North Korea. “We are here, and you know how to reach us.”