On Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX) will serve as one of seven Democratic lawmakers prosecuting the impeachment case against President Donald Trump in the Senate. She is the only Latina on the team.
Garcia, who made history in 2018 when she and Rep. Veronica Escobar became the first Latina congresswomen in Texas, is joined by other impeachment officers like U.S. Reps. Adam Schiff of California, Jerry Nadler of New York, Zoe Lofgren of California, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Val Demings of Florida and Jason Crow of Colorado.
Together, the group will act similarly to prosecutors in a criminal case, making a case for Trump’s impeachment in a Senate trial expected to begin next week.
The congressional freshman told The Texas Tribune that the post comes as an “awesome responsibility.”
“I will be married to this process for the next two weeks. So no district work for me,” she said.
While Garcia, a graduate of Texas Southern University Law School who was once the Director and Presiding Judge of the Houston Municipal System, said she wasn’t totally surprised when Pelosi called her on Tuesday asking her to join the prosecuting team.
“I wasn’t shocked,” Garcia said. “It feels sort of a mix of kind of awesome and somber and sad because of what you think about it. This is prosecuting the president of the United States. It’s a defense of the Constitution, a defense of our democracy.”
Trump is the third U.S. president to be impeached by the House; however, no previous head of state has been removed from office by the Senate.