The opening day of the impeachment trial of President Trump was a Senate fight over the rule book.

The Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, blazed into the session on Tuesday spoiling for battle over a procedural map put forward Monday night by his Republican counterpart, Mitch McConnell. In keeping with Mr. McConnell’s preference for a fast and perfunctory trial, the resolution did not guarantee that the proceedings would include testimony from witnesses or the presentation of documents related to the Ukraine scandal at the heart of the impeachment. On the contrary, Mr. McConnell’s proposal would explicitly put off any discussion of additional evidence until both sides had presented their cases, at which point senators would decide whether they thought more evidence would be useful.

Mr. Schumer called the plan a “national disgrace” and accused Mr. McConnell of rushing a sham trial. The Democratic leader vowed to force votes on multiple amendments to the rules aimed at compelling the administration to fork over evidence.

Which is where things stood when Chief Justice John Roberts, who is officially presiding over the trial, got things rolling a little after 1 p.m. After some light housekeeping — the chief justice swearing in a senator who was absent last week, the clerk reading Mr. McConnell’s resolution, a motion from this side, a response from that one — the floor was turned over to Representative Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who has been heading the impeachment inquiry.

It pretty quickly became clear that Mr. Schiff and his fellow House managers did not intend to risk boring television viewers with the nuts and bolts of Senate process. Instead, Mr. Schiff’s team devoted the bulk of their time to reviewing the core case against the president, with a heavy focus on his stonewalling of the investigation.