The Hard Reality Of Impeachment

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Hunter Walker

Jun 24, 2025

WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 24: U.S. President Donald Trump walks toward the Marine One presidential helicopter before departing the White House on June 24, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump is not being impeached again (for now).

On Tuesday, Rep. Al Green (D-TX) brought a resolution to the House floor calling for Trump to be impeached for launching military strikes against Iran without congressional approval. The House tabled Green’s resolution with a bipartisan vote that saw 128 Democrats vote with Republicans, while 78 of Green’s colleagues joined him in voting to move impeachment forward.

Green’s resolution accused Trump of having “disregarded the doctrine of separation of powers by usurping Congress’s power to declare war and ordered the United States military to bomb another country without the constitutionally mandated congressional authorization.”

Green became the first Democrat to call for Trump’s impeachment in May 2017 during the President’s first term. He repeated that role in Trump’s second term by filing articles of impeachment in February citing what he described as Trump’s threat of “ethnic cleansing in Gaza.”

In conversations with me during Trump’s first four years in the White House, Green said it was his “mission” to remove the President from office. Green, a former lawyer and president of Houston’s NAACP branch, described his push as motivated by constitutional duty. It was an, at times, lonely push that saw Green become a thorn in the side of Democratic leadership when they were not ready to call for Trump’s ouster. He has also weathered attacks from Trump. Ultimately, during his first term, Trump became the only president to be impeached twice — once for his dealings with Ukraine and then again over the Jan. 6 attack.

Both of Trump’s first term impeachments ended when the Senate did not vote to convict. Green’s current push faces similar hard realities. Firstly, recent presidents — including Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — arguably pushed the legal boundaries here and launched military action without congressional approval. Secondly, as in Trump’s first term, impeachment cannot succeed without some Republican votes. Those numbers clearly aren’t there.

One of the Democrats who voted to table Green’s resolution was House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY). Speaking to reporters afterwards, Jeffries argued the opposition’s focus should lie elsewhere.

“My vote speaks for itself,” Jeffries said. “We’re going to continue to work on these issues of war and peace, to push back against the GOP Tax Scam, the effort to rip away healthcare from the American people, which includes the largest cut to Medicaid in American history and allow the appropriate committees like the Judiciary Committee, under the leadership of Jamie Raskin and the Oversight Committee, under the leadership of Robert Garcia, to do their work with respect to holding this out-of-control President accountable.”

While Green has cited various grounds in his different attempts to impeach Trump, they have always been grounded in simple moral clarity and direct interpretations of the law. Green, whose office did not respond to a request for comment, presented some hard realities of his own in a floor speech on Tuesday where he previewed the impeachment resolution.

“I rise today because our country is nearing a moment of decision. … We are at the intersection of democracy and autocracy,” Green said, later adding, “No one person should have the power to take over 300 million people to war without consulting with the Congress of the United States of America.”

Along with the Iran strikes, Green cited January 6 and alluded to Trump having denied “due process of the law” in his mass deportation drive.

“I believe that, if we do not take immediate action, this authoritarian president will not only devolve the country into authoritarianism, I believe he is a would-be dictator who will become a dictator,” Green said. “The hour of decision is upon us.”

— Hunter Walker

Cassidy Hits RFK Jr. For Doing Exactly What He Said He Wouldn’t Do

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a medical doctor who is the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has always been an RFK Jr. skeptic. Even before Kennedy was confirmed as the head of HHS by Senate Republicans, Cassidy was vocal in his apprehension about supporting the then-Trump nominee, whose vaccine skepticism has, predictably, infiltrated his work as head of the public health department.

Earlier this month, RFK Jr. fired all 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The panel makes vaccine recommendations and sets the schedules for childhood immunizations. RFK replaced them with eight new members, many of whom are known vaccine skeptics. It’s a move that RFK specifically told Cassidy he would not make in order to secure his confirmation vote.

A bamboozled Cassidy is calling for the panel’s scheduled meetings this week to be delayed, at least until a CDC director is appointed.

“Although the appointees to ACIP have scientific credentials, many do not have significant experience studying microbiology, epidemiology or immunology. In particular, some lack experience studying new technologies such as mRNA vaccines, and may even have a preconceived bias against them,” Cassidy wrote.
“Wednesday’s meeting should not proceed with a relatively small panel, and no CDC Director in place to approve the panel’s recommendations. The meeting should be delayed until the panel is fully staffed with more robust and balanced representation—as required by law—including those with more direct relevant expertise,” he continued.

— Nicole Lafond

Senate GOP Tries To Ease Medicaid Cut Worries

Senate Republicans are considering including a fund in their “big beautiful” reconciliation package to help rural hospitals that could be impacted by the provision that curtails provider taxes, according to Politico.

That comes as Republican leadership is hoping to ease the holdouts’ worries after the Senate Finance Committee text revealed deeper cuts to Medicaid than what the House-passed reconciliation bill envisioned.

The upper chamber’s text includes a provision that would lower provider taxes from 6% to 3.5% by 2031 for states that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. For states that do not have an expansion population, the bill would place a moratorium on new or increased provider taxes — the same suggestion the House included in their text.

It is unclear if a rural hospital fund would be enough to convince the Republican senators who are not happy with the deeper cuts to the provider taxes. And it is a completely different question whether the plan would survive a House vote even if it successfully passed in the Senate.

Meanwhile, amid the uncertainty, Senate GOP leadership is still pushing for a vote this week. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told Axios he thinks the chamber will start voting on Friday and into the weekend so Congress could meet the self-imposed July 4 deadline to get the reconciliation package on Trump’s desk.

— Emine Yücel