By Fernando Alfonso III, Veronica Rocha, Mike Hayes and Amanda Wills, CNN
A majority of the US House of Representatives has voted to support the first article of impeachment against President Trump.
House Democrats have 216 votes, which is the number needed to impeach the President.
Voting is still happening on the House floor.
The US House of Representatives has started voting on the first article of impeachment against President Trump: abuse of power.
Trump is facing two articles of impeachment — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
From CNN's Allie Malloy and Kevin Liptak
As House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff gave his closing remarks on the House floor tonight — to wrap up the day long debate on the impeachment of the President, — Trump took the stage at his Christmas themed campaign rally at the Kellogg Arena in Battle Creek, Michigan.
Vice President Mike Pence introduced Trump and blasted the impeachment proceedings in the House, calling them a “disgrace.”
“What’s going on in Washington, D.C. tonight is a disgrace,” Pence said, adding that from “day one of this administration” Democrats have been “trying to impeach this president because they know they can’t defeat this president.”
Pence continued that Democrats are “trying to impeach this president because they know they can’t defeat this president.”
Pence called tonight’s vote a “partisan impeachment” before he continued with remarks touting the administration’s work on the economy and the military.
Deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley told reporters the President will begin his remarks with a Christmas message — and then he will spend about a third of the speech “talking about what is happening right now with the impeachment scam.”
Back in Washington, House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy had just concluded his closing remarks on the floor of the House arguing "there are no grounds for impeachment."
Rep. Adam Schiff said during his closing remarks that "we should care about our allies."
He continued:
"We should care about Ukraine. We should care about a country struggling to be free and a democracy. We used to care about democracy. We used to care about our allies. We used to stand up to Putin and Russia. We used to.
Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told the House tonight that the impeachment of President Trump represents "the most partisan and least credible impeachment in American history."
"What we’ve seen is a rigged process that has led to the most partisan and least credible impeachment in American history. That is your legacy. Any prosecutor in the country would be disbarred for such blatant bias, especially if he was a fact witness, judge, and jury. But Democrats haven’t just failed on process. They’ve also failed on evidence," McCarthy said.
In his closing remarks, Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer singled out Justin Amash, an independent who left the Republican party.
Amash spoke earlier today in support of the two articles of impeachment against President Trump.
"Representative Amash is of course, the only member of this House who has no allegiance to either party, but to his country. He is supporting, as I've said both articles," Hoyer said. "We need not ask who will be the first to show courage by standing up to President Trump. The question we must must now ask is who will be the last to find it?
Rep. Steny Hoyer, the majority leader, said "Democrats did not choose this impeachment."
He continued:
"We voted against it. We voted against it once. We voted against it twice, we voted against it three times as recently as July. We did not want this. However, President Trump's misconduct has forced our constitutional republic to protect itself."
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who has served in Congress for 38 years, said he never expected to witness "such an obvious wrongdoing by a President of the United States."
On his Republican colleagues in the House, Hoyer added he also never expected to witness such "craven rationalization of presidential actions."
He noted that Trump was elected "legitimately" by the Electoral College but also pointed out that more people voted for Hillary Clinton — about 65 million compared to Trump's 63 million votes.
From CNN's Matthew Hoye
The House is nearly finished with six scheduled hours of debate.
House leaders may make remarks at the close of the debate. When that is done, the voting will soon begin on two articles of impeachment.
The chair will announce that the debate has ended, and then announce that the next order of business is the vote. There will then be a roll call, and then the second vote.
Here's the vote order:
