Tamara Keith

The silence was broken suddenly and unexpectedly. A woman burst out from a tent at Dover Air Force Base where families waited for a ceremony marking the return of their loved ones' remains to U.S. soil.

Screaming and running toward a massive gray C-17 transport plane, the woman made it part way up the ramp toward the cargo hold, her footsteps reverberating on the metal ramp as relatives and a service member tried to catch her and hold her back.

When President Trump stands before Congress on Tuesday to deliver his State of the Union address, he will be a president impeached, but not yet acquitted.

Traditionally, the State of the Union address is the most important and most-watched speech of the year for a president. Doing it in the midst of an impeachment trial adds another political dimension.

President Clinton faced a similar situation in 1999. He delivered his State of the Union on the very day his legal team began presenting his impeachment defense to senators.

Updated at 12:58 p.m. ET

The White House is offering a fiery legal response to the articles of impeachment, in an executive summary of a legal brief obtained by NPR.

Decrying a "rigged process" that is "brazenly political," President Trump's legal team accuses House Democrats of "focus-group testing various charges for weeks" and says that "all that House Democrats have succeeded in proving is that the President did absolutely nothing wrong."

Updated on Jan. 17 at 9:30 p.m. ET

President Trump has picked some high-wattage lawyers to round out his defense team for the Senate impeachment trial — a group of attorneys who are as comfortable in front of the television cameras as they are in courtrooms.

Ken Starr, a Fox news commentator whose special counsel investigations led to President Bill Clinton's impeachment, will join the team. Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz also will help deliver opening arguments.

On the night that the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Trump, he delivered a two-hour campaign rally speech that took a detour — into the bathroom. His long riff about plumbing, household appliances and lightbulbs had the crowd in Battle Creek, Mich., cheering and laughing along.

"I say, 'Why do I always look so orange?' You know why: because of the new light," Trump said in a complaint about energy-efficient lightbulbs. "They're terrible. You look terrible. They cost you many, many times more. Like four or five times more."

Impeachment is the ultimate form of censure, a permanent mark on a president. But there's little indication that President Trump has been chastened by last week's impeachment vote. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Trump is leaning in, attacking political opponents in deeply personal terms and setting records for rally length and the sheer volume of his tweets.

"I think it's the new 'not normal' that we're in right now," said Doug Heye, a former House Republican leadership aide.

In late 1987, Joe Biden was in the midst of two high-stakes battles: one for the Democratic presidential nomination, and another, as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to try to stop President Reagan's nominee to the Supreme Court, Robert Bork.

His fight for the presidential nomination would end abruptly, dealing Biden his biggest political setback up until that point. But Biden was successful in the other battle, as he thwarted Bork's nomination to the high court.

Plagiarism charges against Biden

Tucked inside a must-pass defense bill expected to make its way through the Republican-controlled Senate next week is a sweeping policy change: 12 weeks of paid parental leave for all 2.1 million federal employees.

It's not a surprise that Carolyn Maloney, a Democratic congresswoman from New York, would be celebrating the move. She's been working to get it passed for two decades, after her own experience in the workplace.

Sitting next to each other with cameras rolling on Tuesday, President Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron made their differences known on trade, Turkey, Russia, ISIS and the appropriate role for NATO.

Early on in the extended exchange between the leaders of two of the most significant powers in the NATO alliance, Trump expressed confidence that their personal connection could overcome policy disagreements.

"That's usually the case with the two of us," Trump said. "We get it worked out."

President Trump leaves Washington on Monday to meet foreign leaders at a NATO summit. But if history is any guide, Trump won't be able to leave behind the impeachment inquiry that looms over his White House.

At one time, lawmakers would refrain from criticizing a president traveling overseas, abiding by the adage that "politics stops at the water's edge." But even in 1998, when then-President Bill Clinton was traveling in Ireland and the Middle East during the impeachment hearing process, he could not escape questions about what was happening in Washington.

Updated at 4:50 p.m. ET

President Trump on Friday released the rough transcript of a brief, 16-minute congratulatory conversation he had on April 21 with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, timed to coincide with the beginning of the second day of open hearings in the House impeachment inquiry.

Some of the top names in conservative politics have a message for President Trump: don't fire acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. In fact, Trump should "make him permanent in the Chief of Staff role," they write in an open letter obtained by NPR and set to be released later Thursday.

Updated Oct. 25, 2019

When President Trump spoke to Volodymyr Zelenskiy on July 25, Trump held the keys to two things the new Ukrainian president needed in order to demonstrate he had full U.S. backing to push back on Russian aggression: military assistance and an Oval Office meeting. Both would send a necessary signal that the U.S.-Ukraine alliance was strong.

For President Trump, attacking rivals is like breathing. Using vulgar language is the norm. Calling stories he doesn't like "fake news" is an everyday sort of thing. But as Trump faces down an impeachment inquiry from House Democrats, his language escalated in distinct ways.

The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee took in a huge haul in the third quarter, which ended Monday — a combined $125 million.

This means that this year alone, they've raised more than $300 million — double the total that then-President Obama and the Democratic Party had raised at this point in 2011 on Obama's way to a successful reelection bid.

President Trump's White House is struggling with how to respond to the ever-growing Ukraine scandal as the House Democrats' impeachment inquiry is set to take depositions from key witnesses this week.