WASHINGTON — House Democrats have been publicly grappling with the issue of impeaching President Donald Trump, with grassroots activists pressuring lawmakers to more aggressively confront Trump and centrist members of the party dismissing the push as futile.
During a six-week stretch this year, House Democrats twice were confronted with impeachment votes — forced by their own rank-and-file members — that had zero chance of passing, given that Republicans control the chamber.
In May, Democratic leaders convinced Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-Mich., to back off his impeachment push at the last minute. But the following month, Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, forced a failed vote to impeach Trump, exposing stark divisions among Democrats and putting the party’s vulnerable members in a difficult position ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
Before the 119th Congress is over, it’s likely there will be other pushes to impeach Trump, who survived two such efforts during his first term, even as many Democrats grow frustrated by them.
“They’re massively unhelpful, and they just fire up the base,” said one moderate House Democrat who opposed the recent impeachment efforts.
A second centrist Democrat called them a “waste of time,” and suggested that colleagues who had voted for impeachment had only done so to appease the party’s base.
“Even people that voted ‘no’ on it, they don’t really want to impeach Trump. But they have to feed the left-wing base,” said the second Democrat, who spoke anonymously to freely discuss internal party dynamics. “They don’t want to have to go home and answer questions why they didn’t vote for impeachment.”
That lawmaker said impeachment should only be pursued after holding a committee investigation and hearings — and that won’t happen until Democrats win back the majority.
“If you respect the process here, you don’t go right to an impeachment vote,” the lawmaker said. “You go through a process, and then you have an impeachment vote. So let’s go through that process.”
That was the roadmap that House Democrats followed in 2019 during Trump’s first impeachment, over allegations he withheld military aid to pressure Ukraine to launch an investigation into political rival Joe Biden’s family. Democrats voted to launch a formal impeachment investigation, took closed-door testimony and held a series of televised hearings.
The second impeachment, in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, happened in a much more haphazard way as Trump was preparing to leave office. There was no lengthy House investigation or hearings before an impeachment vote. The Senate acquitted Trump in both cases.
In Trump’s second term, talk from some Democrats about impeaching the president began early. In February, Green gave a floor speech announcing he’d pursue articles of impeachment. Two months later, he introduced a single article accusing Trump of “devolving democracy within the United States into authoritarianism” and detailed a lengthy list of grievances about Trump flouting the courts and attacking the judiciary.
But by June, when Green finally called up his resolution, forcing an impeachment vote on the floor, the Texas Democrat swapped out the language of the resolution and replaced it with new language hitting Trump for failing to consult with Congress before striking Iran.
Green’s resolution failed on a 344-79 vote, with 128 Democrats joining all Republicans to table the measure. Among those who backed Green were Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and Raja Krishnamoorthi and Robin Kelly, who are both running for Senate in Illinois.
Some Democrats said the vote served only as a distraction from more pressing matters, like Republicans’ megabill that was moving through Congress.
But in an interview Monday night, Green said he had no regrets about forcing the impeachment vote and vowed to do it again — though he wouldn’t say when or what the new articles might say.
“I can’t say that he committed an impeachable offense and then not vote to impeach. I have a conscience; it’s a vote of conscience. And I say to members, ‘Vote your conscience,'” Green told NBC News. “By the way, I’m going to bring articles against him again. Those were not the last.”
He said he respected the views of colleagues who believe that political “tactics supersede the Constitution.” But he felt he had no choice but to act on impeachment.
“A person who breaches the Constitution that the courts can’t manage and their party won’t manage, then there’s but one option left,” Green added. “And the Constitution is kind of important.”
In a sign of how Democrats are struggling to find the right message on impeachment, Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., who voted to kill the Green impeachment effort, asked to cosponsor impeachment articles one day later in a post to X.
And Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., recounted how he changed his vote from killing the Green measure to supporting it after a conversation on the House floor with a colleague. Longtime Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who has participated in all four modern presidential impeachments, informed Beyer that the revised language of the resolution effectively made it a vote to restrict Trump’s ability to use military force against Iran.
“This is the only chance as a Democrat to make a war powers vote,” Beyer said Lofgren told him. “I would not have voted for it based on the original impeachment text that Al Green put in, which I thought was thin.”
Some freshman lawmakers have been worried about the optics of Democrats being publicly split over impeaching Trump. They’re seeking more coordination and guidance from leadership to get rank-and-file members marching in the same direction, according to one Democratic member who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity.
This lawmaker, who represents a progressive district, said they are getting inundated with calls from constituents who want Democrats to fight harder.
“They aren’t buying that just because we are in the minority, we can’t do anything,” the lawmaker said. “The truth is we can. And we should.”
After Thanedar’s impeachment push, the lawmaker said there was “anxiety” among freshmen in particular. The lawmaker added that they’d want to see a concerted push in relevant committees that has been blessed by leadership, rather than disjointed attempts from rank-and-file members.
Still, there is little Democratic leaders to do to stop these efforts. Any lawmaker is able to call up an impeachment resolution as “privileged” and force a full vote in the House.
Democratic leaders have consistently poured cold water on the rogue impeachment efforts, arguing that Republicans — in control of the House and Senate — won’t hold Trump accountable.
The newly minted ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., said in the middle of last month’s fight over Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” that Democrats should focus on stopping Trump’s legislative agenda.
“We know that Donald Trump is corrupt. We know that we’re going to have the ability and we’re going to need to investigate his corruption. But at this moment, the priority has to be in stopping this bill. I think that’s the focus,” Garcia told NBC News.
Asked if Democrats will move to impeach Trump eventually, Garcia replied: “He’s going to have to be held accountable for his actions. At this moment, we’ve got to focus on stopping this massive bill.”
At various times this year, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., has dodged the question of whether he supports impeaching Trump. But Jeffries and his top Democratic lieutenants all voted to table the Green resolution. And speaking with NBC News recently, Jeffries deferred to Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee who has dismissed impeachment as “not a plausible instrument” while in the minority.
“Impeachment, of course, rests with the Judiciary Committee under the leadership of Jamie Raskin. He has been very clear that this is a moment where we have to expose the corruption and abuse of power that is taking place as a result of the extreme behavior by the Trump administration,” Jeffries said.
“Follow the facts, apply the law, and be guided by the Constitution,” he said.
