Embracing Impeachment
The case against Trump and his cabinet keeps growing—and the argument for waiting is no longer convincing.
THE TIME HAS COME to get serious about impeachment. Donald Trump himself expects it if Democrats win the House in this year’s midterms, and we’ve already had previews. Scores of House Democrats voted to advance impeachment articles against Trump last month, articles have targeted at least three of his cabinet secretaries, and a bipartisan pair of lawmakers is drafting charges against a fourth.
The growth of the Trump-era Impeachment Club is due to the sheer mass of Trump courtiers and enablers piling up abuses. And while it’s easy to be cynical or dismissive about these moves, the impeachment articles filed so far are not another round of politically weaponized vengeance. They read like simple statements of fact, the truth of what’s happening right before our eyes.
Practical or not, achievable or not at this moment in time, which of Trump’s illegal, unconstitutional and criminal acts does not warrant impeachment? Who among his wrecking-crew leadership does not deserve the same? “It’s not a presidency,” Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg has written, “it’s a crime spree.” He said that less than a month ago, and the spree has escalated rapidly since then.
I have spent the past year in the stand-down-on-impeachment camp—even though I wrote at Donald Trump’s 100-day mark in April that he had already matched or surpassed all the articles of impeachment brought against every past president. Impeachment seemed futile to me at that point, although I conceded that “later it might not be.” My idea at the time was for Democrats to retake the House in the midterms and then move ahead with impeachment in 2027, with or without a Senate majority.
Then came last week—the week in which Trump used U.S. military forces to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and an ICE agent in Minneapolis killed U.S. citizen Renee Nicole Good in her car.
Those deeply disturbing events spurred Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona to propose two ways to block a Trump attack and takeover of Greenland, and the Senate to bar Trump from any further military activity in Venezuela without its authorization. Democrats started talking about impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and Rep. Robin Kelly of Illinois announced three impeachment articles against Noem.
And I realized with a jolt that later is already here.
Democrats should pinpoint and spotlight all the wrongs this year instead of waiting until 2027. They don’t control committees, but they can hold their own hearing-like forums, as they have done over the past year on immigration, attacks on the rule of law, the January 6th Capitol riot, and other topics.
Well-organized, professionally produced forums, guided by impeachment articles introduced last year and still to come, would serve a double purpose: They would publicize atrocities and outrages in the run-up to the November 3 elections, and lay the foundation for quick action next year against Trump & co. in the likely event Democrats win a House majority.
The proceedings could also underscore that in order to stop Trump from naming new Supreme Court justices, Democrats need a Senate majority. Depending on how bad things get generally, a Senate impeachment trial on charges brought by the House might even offer an escape hatch for Republicans fed up at last with the unclothed emperor aspiring to rule them and the hemisphere, and those doing his bidding as well as wreaking their own special brands of havoc.
Dismantling the cabinet
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. poses the greatest immediate danger to Americans and should be first up. His decisions, priorities, and intentional sowing of confusion and complexity already are causing more illness and death. The evidence is all around us, including surges of measles and flu.
Rep. Haley Stevens of Michigan last month filed a detailed article of impeachment—“ABUSE OF AUTHORITY AND UNDERMINING OF THE PUBLIC HEALTH”—that lists twenty-eight separate charges against Kennedy divided into four sections: illegal actions that diminished the capacity of public health institutions, unconstitutional actions that have undermined federal research and programs, “inflammatory, baseless, and misleading” statements and policies that have undermined trust in vaccines and the entire U.S. public health system, and false, dangerous, inflammatory statements “that contradict established science.”
Rep. Shri Thanedar, also of Michigan, introduced two articles of impeachment on December 9 against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Article I, “Murder and Conspiracy to Murder,” arises from the killing of over a hundred people in U.S. attacks on some three dozen Venezuelan fishing boats suspected of transporting drugs. “Pete Hegseth has been using the United States military to extrajudicially assassinate people without evidence of any crime,” Thanedar said.
Article II, “Reckless and Unlawful Mishandling of Classified Information,” stems from a notorious group text in March, when U.S. forces were readying for “combat operations against Houthi forces in Yemen” that had attacked commercial and U.S. naval ships nearby. Hegseth spilled highly sensitive classified details of the imminent raids on the unauthorized Signal app, in a chat that accidentally included Atlantic journalist Jeff Goldberg. For any of Hegseth’s subordinates, the article says, this would have been “a career-ending offense and likely result in criminal prosecution.”
As noted above, Rep. Robin Kelly of Illinois—one of the states that Trump flooded with immigration enforcement agents—said after Renee Good’s death last week that she would “fight back” by bringing three articles of impeachment against Noem—obstruction of Congress, violation of public trust, and self-dealing. She said Noem had obstructed oversight by Congress and withholding funds it appropriated; compromised public safety, violated due process, and directed unconstitutional actions; and “abused her office for personal benefit and steered federal dollars to associates.”
“Secretary Noem is violating the Constitution while ruining—and ending—lives, and separating families. It’s one thing to be incompetent and dangerous, but it’s impeachable to break the rule of law,” Kelly said in a press release. The immediate response was supportive: Some colleagues said they’d sign on as cosponsors, others endorsed impeachment, and even Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries did not rule it out.
Next up may well be Attorney General Pam Bondi. Democrat Ro Khanna said on December 18 that if she did not comply with the law he and Republican Thomas Massie wrote and Congress overwhelmingly passed requiring prompt release of the Jeffrey Epstein case files, “she will be held either in inherent contempt of Congress [which could entail a daily $5,000 fine] or subject to impeachment.” On December 19, Massie said Bondi “is withholding specific documents that the law required her to release by today.” The pair said she is breaking the law in other ways as well, such as redacting names for reasons it specifically forbids (embarrassment, reputational harm, and political sensitivity).
Khanna told CNN before Christmas that he and Massie were drafting impeachment articles against Bondi. A few days after the holiday, Massie asked on X, “Should Pam Bondi be impeached?” Nearly two-thirds in the unscientific poll responded yes, because of the files on Epstein, a convicted sex offender. The pair just asked a federal judge to name a special master to oversee release of the Epstein documents because, they said, the department “cannot be trusted” to comply with the law.
Taking on Trump
The task of holding Trump accountable is daunting and uncomfortable, but Michigan’s Thanedar—a chemist, entrepreneur, and millionaire who was born into poverty in India—went for it anyway. He introduced seven articles of impeachment against Trump last April: obstruction of justice and abuse of executive power, usurpation of appropriations power, abuse of trade powers and international aggression, violation of First Amendment rights, creation of an unlawful office (the so-called Department of Government Efficiency), bribery and corruption, and tyrannical overreach.
Sounds about right, and so do the distressing details ticked off in each charge. But they have not advanced after Thanedar backed off a plan to force a vote on them in May, amid what Axios called the “fury” of colleagues who viewed him as grandstanding and impeachment as politically risky.
Rep. Al Green of Texas has been the most prolific producer of impeachment articles against Trump. He introduced a single article of impeachment in May that called Trump unfit for the presidency in myriad ways. It was referred to the Judiciary Committee, where it remains. Green tried again in June, but the House killed his resolution to impeach Trump for “bypassing Congress on war with Iran.”
The House did vote last month on two articles of impeachment Green filed on “Abuse of Presidential Power by Calling for the Execution of Members of Congress” (the case of the six military veterans advising troops they can refuse illegal orders); and “Abuse of Presidential Power to Intimidate Federal Judges in Violation of the Separation of Powers and Independence” (such as a Truth Social post in March in which Trump wrote, “This Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, was not elected President…This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!”)
The House voted 237–140 to table, or kill, the articles. But Green, noting that 47 lawmakers voted “present,” said “the diversity of support for this impeachment includes ranking members of full committees, subcommittees, and persons from different political caucuses.” In short, he said, Trump is in trouble.
That same day, writer Noah Berlatsky flagged what he called “one of the absolutely most lawless, brazenly unconstitutional impeachable offenses ever committed by any president . . . this is an open and shut case.” The offense: Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from Indiana if state Republicans didn’t redraw their House district map to eliminate the state’s only two Democratic House members.
The Indiana Republicans defied Trump, and nothing so far has come of the threat, which the lieutenant governor confirmed. But the impeachment bait continues apace, with 2026 likely to bring another flood of charges against Trump and his minions.
What about affordability?
Impeachment has a bad rap these days. Some critics question the motives of those pushing it, especially if—like Stevens and Thanedar—they’re in tough primaries. Others bemoan that it’s become pointless after the acquittals in the Trump impeachment trials of 2020 and 2021—“a dead letter,” as New York Times columnist David French has said more than once in the past few months.
Matt Bennett, senior vice president of the center-left Third Way think tank, is among those who consider it counterproductive. “All of them deserve to be removed from office,” Bennett told me, referring to Trump and the other impeachment targets. But “if it’s not about winning this year, don’t do it,” he added. “It would be cathartic and it would feel good, but I don’t think it will help us win.”
Like many in the party, Bennett says Democrats ought to focus on affordability—the financial challenges people face in their daily lives, from food and housing to health care and college. I don’t disagree. I do think the party can focus on two things at once, and link them in many ways. For instance:
Trump is preoccupied with his lethal pursuit of power, money and resources, not the wellbeing of voters. As Polling USA manager Curtis Fric put it, exaggerating only slightly, “Americans can’t have healthcare because the President is too busy bombing all of the neighbors.”
Trump is funneling pardons, tax breaks, and spoils of war to his millionaire and billionaire cronies and political allies, while slashing money and capacity from health care, education, medical research, consumer protection, and other projects for the common good.
Trump himself is driving up prices, from his immigration policies that shrink the workforce to his irrational attachment to tariffs and equally irrational aversion to renewable energy advances like wind farms and battery plants.
Beyond that, tens of millions of Americans care about Trump’s offenses against the law, the Constitution, and democracy. A Data for Progress poll as far back as April found that 52 percent of likely voters supported impeaching Trump.
And again, that was last April. Since then, his job approval rating has dropped as abuses and bad policy have accumulated. All you have to do is look at the photo of Renee Nicole Good’s front seat, with its blood-covered airbag and stuffed animals spilling out of the glove compartment, to grasp not just the enormity of what Trump is inflicting on America but also the relatability of the tragedies playing out in families and neighborhoods everywhere.
Democrats cannot ignore them. What they can do is their level best to expose them to as many people as possible right now—and when the time is right, to stop them.
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