The Case for Impeaching Donald Trump

I think Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch has summed up the past week in American life more succinctly than I ever could: “We are going to look back fondly on 2025 as ‘the sane year’” of Trump’s second term.

Here’s where we left off in 2025: Trumpism isn’t working, ordinary people are being crushed under the wheels of elite impunity, the cost of everything is going up, the administration either has no answers for it or doesn’t care, and the president is deteriorating before our eyes, dogged by obvious health concerns and the slow-rolling Jeffrey Epstein affair. And as the year drew to a close, it looked for all the world that the president—an inveterate telegrapher of his own punches—was about to launch a regime-change war in Venezuela.

When the news finally came, on January 3, that the invasion had begun, it was even more chaotic and loopy than one might have imagined. The U.S. has abducted a head of state on cocaine-trafficking charges, an offense that would not seem to warrant either military intervention or the wholesale destabilization of a state. Trump has given the strong impression that the objective was the plunder of Venezuela’s oil, but that makes very little sense from either a business or an economic perspective—and, in a weird move for an “America First” movement, it will seem to require a pillage of taxpayer money to finance. Meanwhile, the administration’s tantrums have already moved on to other targets—Greenland and Mexico among them.

Just as the nation was contending with the possibility of going to war with another country, one of Trump’s ICE goons gunned down a Minneapolis woman in cold blood. The context of this crime cannot be shorn from all the other aforementioned ones. Everything is connected: Trump’s war machine is seizing territory for his mass deportation scheme (that was another goal in Venezuela); his goons plunder the country’s mineral resources with one hand while abducting our friends and neighbors off the streets with the other (some of them to be sent to Venezuela, presumably). It’s a vertically integrated autocracy—tearing a hole in the heart of the American civic fabric while funneling wealth to his plutocratic masters.

As Trump withers in his dog-wagging fugue, casting about for sundry distractions to occupy our attention while his administration fails to deliver peace, prosperity, or liberty to the American people, the rest of us can cut through the confusion: This administration is a criminal enterprise, first and foremost. These are impeachable offenses, plain as day. They must be treated as such. And a recent report from NOTUS finds that a number of Democrats seem to share this view.

Let’s dispense with the obvious: No, there are not enough votes to convict Trump in the Senate. And it’s a heavy enough challenge to get articles of impeachment out of the House—though the passing of California Republican Representative Doug LaMalfa has shrunk Speaker Mike Johnson’s majority to 218–213, leaving us on the cusp of tantalizing possibilities. But the salient point is this: Given the devotion of Trump’s cult in Congress, there’s no way an impeachment effort will end with the removal of the president.

Do it anyway. The rule of law is meaningless if you only take it up when it’s easy. The point of doing the right thing isn’t to merely experience the catharsis of success—it’s to assert standards, uphold values; to acknowledge the existence of moral authority and answer its call for redress courageously. Trump’s lawlessness has to be opposed, if only because the times demand it. This being an election year, Democrats are in need of some simple ideas on which to anchor a national campaign. “The president is a degenerate criminal, and if you send enough of us to Washington we will bring the madness to an end” is a message Democrats should be sending. Even if an impeachment effort hits the skids, it will signal to voters that Democrats have the political courage to defend our values.

Even a doomed-to-fail impeachment effort offers Democrats some distinct advantages. Remember: Democrats are in a content-creation war with the Trump regime. The news media thirsts for conflict and controversy; Democrats going all in on an impeachment effort sets the table for a feeding frenzy. Frankly, the fact that this is never getting to the Senate for a trial should free Democrats from having to strictly tether a case to statutory realities or tailor it to the austere sensibilities of doddering senators. There’s no reason an impeachment effort can’t be a kaleidoscopic panoply of Trumpian misdeeds presented with an eye toward capturing tabloid headlines.

Regardless of whether Democrats want to pursue the formal impeachment process, the larger idea—to hinder the Trump regime by calling attention to misconduct and lawlessness—is critical to Democrats’ messaging in this election year. Their campaign should be a thorough indictment of the president, the dismantling of his credibility, and the exposure of his every misdeed. Criminality is the Rosetta Stone that translates the Trump presidency, and as I’ve said before, the Democratic leaders of the future should be ready to speak fearlessly about putting the members of this lawless cabal in jail.

So let the prosecution of the president begin today. And if the Democrats, bolstered by that message, win back the House in the November midterms, then they can impeach him in earnest next year. Even Trump himself wouldn’t expect anything less.

This article first appeared in Power Mad, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Jason Linkins. Sign up here.