How Congress Became Hooked on Impeachment
It's impossible to know who the next president will be. But one thing can be said with certainty: regardless of their performance in office, there will be an attempt to impeach them.
There's been a vast escalation of impeachment efforts in recent years, turning a once rare gesture into something routine. The latest, notable for how comparatively humdrum it was, came just this week.
What little drama accompanied the resolution wasn't about forcing accountability for a president whom many Democrats think has repeatedly violated the law. Instead, it was whether a backbencher — who is facing a competitive primary and thus has a motive for ginning up the Democratic base — would step on his party's messaging on other pressing issues by introducing such a measure.
In the end, Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) blinked and decided not to force a vote on his resolution to impeach President Donald Trump, bringing an ignoble end to what was the 13th resolution introduced by House Democrats to remove Trump from office since 2016. (The 14th came on Friday, introduced by Rep. Al Green (D-Texas).)
This is the second most impeachment resolutions offered against any president. The only president with more? Joe Biden, who faced 17 different resolutions introduced in the House to impeach him in his four years in office.
It's a distinct break from common practice in the post-Watergate era.
For all the rhetoric about impeaching Barack Obama, not a single resolution was filed to remove him from office. There were three against George W. Bush, one — albeit a memorable one — against Bill Clinton, two against George H.W. Bush, two against Ronald Reagan and no resolutions offered to impeach Jimmy Carter or Gerald Ford.
Impeachment's newfound popularity isn't just limited to the 31 resolutions filed against Biden and Trump combined since 2016. Three different members of Biden's cabinet along with Vice President Kamala Harris were the subject of multiple impeachment resolutions by various Republican lawmakers. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was the target of six different proposals to impeach him, the last of which was successful and resulted in the second Senate impeachment trial of a cabinet secretary in American history.
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York also introduced two impeachment resolutions to oust Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito from the Supreme Court.
Most of these resolutions went nowhere and few even received a vote. But their very introduction made clear that the threat of impeachment is in uncharted territory, having shifted from a rare constitutional remedy to an easy gimmick for fundraising and partisan gain.
'I do think some of it is driven by social media and some of it is real,' said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who notes 'there were impeachments filed against [President George W.] Bush.'
In Roy's view, a real impeachment was the one that led to the brief Senate trial for Mayorkas. 'He was literally ignoring his duty to defend the border of the United States and Texas was suffering.'
Meanwhile, Roy snickered at Thanedar's effort. 'The impeachment language directed at President Trump is political, and there'll probably be 20 more filed before the end of this Congress,' he said.
In fact, Roy's Democratic colleagues largely agreed with him about Thanedar's efforts, which came as the Michigan lawmaker faces a contested primary back home and while Democrats have tried to focus their entire party's messaging apparatus on combating the Republican tax bill. They confronted Thanedar on the House floor, booed him at a party caucus meeting and some members even went so far as to ask a colleague the name of Thanedar's primary opponent so that they could send campaign donations.
It may have marked a new low in the ongoing diminution of the resolution of impeachment, another sign the tool had lost its solemnity and its sting. 'The shame of it is that impeachment has lost its ability to be a form of accountability and a check on the president. And it's been just completely politicized,' said Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-N.Y.), who was elected to Congress in 2022 after rising to national prominence as a lawyer for House Democrats during the first impeachment of Donald Trump.
Republicans argue the Democratic efforts to oust Trump also removed taboos in Congress around the constitutional tool, and helped unleash a retaliatory spate of GOP resolutions once Joe Biden captured the White House. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) didn't even wait for Biden's inauguration before fundraising off an effort to impeach him.
In 2023, Trump infamously posted on Truth Social his own call for a Biden impeachment, arguing, 'They did it to us.'The desire for revenge among the MAGA base made impeachment resolutions lucrative for those politicians wooing small dollar donors. In one instance, it sparked an internal Republican feud between Greene and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) when they sparred over Boebert launching her own separate impeachment effort, rather than joining Greene's.
'It's purely for fundraising,' griped the Georgia Republican over her colleague's effort to oust Biden. Of the 17 impeachment resolutions introduced to remove Biden from office, Greene introduced six — including three different attempts to oust the then-president on one day in August 2021.
Another factor driving the phenomenon is that, unlike simply introducing a bill, launching an effort to impeach an official still remains rare enough to be worthy of a cable news hit. (Thanedar hasn't gotten himself booked yet but he has held multiple 'impeachment town halls' already in his Michigan district and put up billboards touting his effort as well).
The result is that, with the obliteration of cultural norms in Congress that once prevented a spree of impeachment resolutions, it's now seen as just another legislative — or promotional — tool, rather than a last resort against an official who has committed high crimes and misdemeanors.
As Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) said with a shrug, 'you gotta live by the rules,' noting that members were allowed to freely introduce impeachment resolutions by the rules of the House.
Roy's prediction of 20 more impeachment resolutions against Trump by the end of this Congress seems a bit unlikely —- after all, there are only so many times members can introduce similar resolutions of impeachment.
But at a moment when Democratic members of Congress are poised for an onslaught of primary challenges and demands from the base that they do something to stop Trump, impeachment resolutions will prove hard to resist — even if there is no chance of success.
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