Updated at 5:35 p.m. with Trump denouncing mob violence.

WASHINGTON — One week after a deadly riot at the Capitol, House members forced to seek refuge from a mob trying to overturn President Donald Trump’s defeat impeached him for “incitement of insurrection.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said a trial couldn’t possibly finish before Trump’s term expires at noon next Wednesday, so he won’t allow it to start before then.

Ten Republicans joined a unified Democratic caucus in the vote Wednesday afternoon.

Trump has now made history as the only president impeached twice.

“He must go. He is a clear and present danger to the nation that we all love,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi exhorted the House during the debate.

“Those insurrectionists were not patriots,” she said. “They were domestic terrorists, and … they did not appear out of a vacuum. They were sent here by the president” who whipped a mob into a frenzy with relentless lies about a stolen election, aiming to achieve an indefensible goal: “clinging to power. The goal of thwarting the will of the people. The goal of ending in a fiery and bloody clash nearly two and a half centuries of our democracy.”

The House vote was 232-197.

Texans voted along party lines, except for Fort Worth Rep. Kay Granger, one of four Republicans who did not vote. Aides provided no explanation.

Republicans largely focused on the timing so close to the end of Trump’s term, without addressing any blame he bears for the attack, though after a parade of ardent defenders had weighed in Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy did forcefully take the president to task.

“The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack in Congress by mob rioters,” he said. “He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding” and used his bully pulpit “to quell the brewing unrest.”

Still, he rejected impeachment in favor of censure — a step nearly as rare, if only symbolic.

It takes a simple majority to impeach and 2/3 of the Senate to convict. Trump could still stand trial as a former president, though the only punishment at that point would be to bar him from holding federal office again.

“Even if the Senate process were to begin this week and move promptly, no final verdict would be reached until after President Trump had left office,” McConnell said, noting that the three presidential impeachment trials held since the nation’s founding lasted 83 days, 37 days, and 21 days.

Democrats will control the Senate after Jan. 20 and their leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer, said Republicans can only delay the inevitable.

“The president of the United States incited a violent mob against the duly elected government of the United States in a vicious, depraved and desperate attempt to remain in power. For the sake of our democracy, it cannot and must not be tolerated, excused, or go unpunished,” he said.

National Guard troops slept overnight in the Capitol as part of a massive security build-up amid fears of further attacks, the first time troops have bivouacked there since the Civil War and a sobering reminder to lawmakers of the uprising they survived. The 15,000 troops deployed through inauguration is triple the number in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

“Trump basically attempted to overthrow the government,” said Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin. “We not only demand accountability for his gross misconduct but more importantly, we declare to the next Trump-like aspiring tyrant: Not in America. ... If this is not an impeachable offense, nothing is.”

Trump’s comments

Trump denies blame for the riot. On Tuesday, he defended his comments to the crowd that invaded Congress and halted review of the Electoral College results as “totally appropriate.” After the House vote, the White House used its official account to tweet a 5-minute video in which Trump, seated at a desk and looking into the camera, makes no mention of the impeachment but does denounce violence.

“Mob violence goes against everything I believe in,” he says, seeming to absolve his supporters while insinuating that the attack was the work of antifa agitators, a conspiracy theory the FBI has flatly rejected. “No true supporter of mine could ever endorse political violence. No true supporter of mine could ever disrespect law enforcement or our great American flag.”

Silenced by Twitter on his personal account, Trump lacked the megaphone he used to cajole and pressure fellow Republicans through most of his presidency, though most stood by him anyway.

Democrats have argued that if he’s too dangerous to tweet, he’s certainly too dangerous to control a nuclear arsenal.

Austin Rep. Chip Roy went further than most Republicans, declaring he would have voted to impeach Trump if, rather than focusing on insurrection, Democrats had charged Trump for pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to disregard the Electoral College results — “clearly, in my opinion, impeachable conduct.”

It was also impeachable that Trump “purposely seeded the false belief ... that there was a legal path for the president,” Roy said. “It was foreseeable and reckless to sow such a false belief that could lead to violence and rioting by loyal supporters whipped into a frenzy.”

Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Houston, joined Roy and two others in a statement calling Trump’s actions “reckless” and decrying the rush, and timing, of this impeachment.

Rep. Michael McCaul, another Austin Republican and a former federal prosecutor, indicated he wrestled with the vote but ultimately felt it was too rushed.

“There very well may have been impeachable offenses committed leading up to, and on, that tragic day,” he said, adding that he wants a thorough Justice Department probe. “I truly fear there may be more facts that come to light in the future that will put me on the wrong side of this debate.”

The Democrat-controlled House voted late Tuesday to urge Pence to sideline Trump by invoking the 25th Amendment and declaring him unfit. That vote was 223-205. Pence — who’d been hustled off the Senate floor by security as rioters stormed the Capitol, some calling for his death because he refused Trump’s demand to hand him an election he’d lost — rebuffed the unsolicited advice in a letter to Pelosi.

With that ultimatum rejected, Democrats moved ahead with impeachment in record time, bypassing the traditional Judiciary Committee hearings. Many reminded colleagues of the chilling shouts of rioters that day: “Hang Mike Pence!” or “Where’s Nancy?”

“Donald Trump is the most dangerous man to ever occupy the Oval Office,” argued San Antonio Rep. Joaquin Castro, one of the impeachment managers Pelosi assigned to prosecute Trump in a Senate trial.

A mere seven days ago, he recalled, “People were barging through these doors, breaking the windows, with weapons, armed pipe bombs — coming here to harm all of you, to harm the Speaker, to harm the Senate. … And who do you think sent them here? ... If inciting a deadly insurrection is not enough to get a president impeached, then what is?”

Some GOP support

Unlike the first time, when Republicans were nearly unified against allegations he abused his office by prodding Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden’s son, the threat to Trump’s presidency this time will be bipartisan, to some degree.

All 13 Texas Democrats in the House supported impeachment.

None of the 23 Texas Republicans in the House did, though the party’s No. 3 leader, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, did support Trump’s immediate ouster, saying he “summoned this mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.”

Texas Congress members

But most House Republicans argued that impeachment would be divisive even as they sidestepped whether Trump’s actions merit removal.

“The majority could not resist another made-for-TV impeachment,” argued freshman Rep. Beth Van Duyne of Irving. “In one week’s time, Joe Biden will be the president. The American people need us to rise above the heat of the moment.”

“Inflaming the divisions of the American people is not the way to move forward from all our country has been through this past year,” tweeted freshman Rep. Ronny Jackson, an Amarillo Republican and vocal Trump supporter.

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler, accused Democrats of hypocritically trying to hold Trump accountable for violence for uttering words little different from when the speaker herself called Republicans “enemies of the state.”

“You’re using this as a weapon, and you’re destroying this little experiment in self-government,” he argued.

Online, Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Terrell, solicited donations during the debate. On the House floor, he declared that “I’m really tired of sanctimonious sermons on being a sore loser from some of the same Democrats who opposed accepting results in elections past. ... When they objected it was patriotic, but when Republicans do it we’re inciting a mob, we’re liars, and we’re traitors.”

Lubbock Rep. Jodey Arrington was less hard-edged but no more open to impeachment.

“I’m not saying the president didn’t exercise poor judgment,” he said, but “the criminals who stormed the Capitol that day acted on their own volition. ... The president didn’t incite a riot. The president didn’t lead an insurrection.”

“This snap impeachment is wrong,” said freshman Rep. Pat Fallon of Sherman.

All of those Texans voted to set aside Biden’s victories in Arizona or Pennsylvania, or both, representing millions of legally cast votes. So did most House Republicans, and most would have voted to scrap electors from other states, representing tens of million more votes, if a senator had paved the way by joining their objections.

Even so, Republicans maintained it was Democrats alone sowing division.

“They want to ‘cancel’ the president … and anyone who disagrees with them,” argued Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a vocal defender in the first impeachment trial. “It’s an obsession.”

Heading into the debate only Cheney and four others had declared support for impeachment, though McCarthy refrained from whipping GOP votes.

Democrats asserted he didn’t have to because Republicans were so fearful of the wrath of Trump and his base after last week’s mob violence. They were “paralyzed with fear” and “scared for their lives if they vote for this impeachment,” Rep. Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat, asserted on MSNBC.

Houston Rep. Al Green, who began demanding Trump’s impeachment in the early months of his tenure, called him “unfit” to serve and pinned the Capitol attack on “the hate that the president has been stirring up for some time.”

Rep. Marc Veasey of Fort Worth maintained that Democrats would readily denounce one of their own for Trump’s actions and accused Republicans of making excuses.

“I care about this democracy,” he said.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston called Trump an “insurrectionist.”

”The president provoked these domestic terrorists with words, with actions and with conduct that portrays a contempt and hostility to the national values of equal justice under the law,” she said.

Senate is next

Trump’s Senate firewall has cracks.

Sen. Ted Cruz was one of two leaders of the effort a week ago to block President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral victory, though he has since distanced himself from Trump, decrying the rhetoric ahead of the riot.

Sen. John Cornyn is likely to follow the lead McConnell, who is said to be open to convicting Trump to “purge” him and his authoritarianism from the GOP.

In the House, one Republican after another questioned the wisdom and motives behind an 11th-hour impeachment and called it retribution for the last four years rather than the events last week.

“I cannot think of a more petty, vindictive and gratuitous act than to impeach an already defeated president a week before he has to leave office,” said Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif.

Correction, 11:50 a.m. Jan. 15: An earlier version of this story identified Rep. Lance Gooden as a freshman in Congress. He is in his second term.