signalmankenneth
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It’s not enough for the Democrats to win the midterms. Whether they take back one or both chambers of Congress, their overriding objective must be to cripple the remainder of Donald Trump’s presidency and dismantle the MAGA movement he leads. Holding Trump and his key enablers to account for their lawlessness and corruption will be the standard for success. Without accountability, there will be no justice and no end to the growing threat of fascism in America.
Of all the accountability tools that will be available should the Democrats prevail on Nov. 3, impeachment and court reform stand out as the most powerful. Both are implicitly on the midterm ballot, and while neither is a magic bullet for checking Trumpism, they can and must be deployed far more aggressively and urgently than in the past.
The road ahead won’t be easy, but the party may never get another opportunity.
Impeachment
The Supreme Court’s 2024 decision on presidential immunity (Trump v. United States), penned by Chief Justice John Roberts, has made it all but impossible to hold Trump accountable through ordinary criminal prosecutions. As legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin has noted, Roberts’ opinion contains language that “suggests the president cannot even be investigated for his official actions,” much less indicted.
But the immunity ruling in no way undermines Congress’ impeachment powers. Even Trump’s lead lawyer in the case — D. John Sauer, now the administration’s solicitor general — acknowledged the broad scope of the impeachment power, contending that the Constitution’s Impeachment Judgment Clause (Article I, Section 3, Clause 7) requires that a president be impeached by the House and convicted in the Senate before being prosecuted criminally. Although the court rejected Sauer’s prerequisite argument, it recognized, consistent with the views of the Founders, that impeachment is a political process separate and apart from criminal prosecutions.
As Trump’s lawlessness and corruption have become more brazen and unrestrained, appeals for a third impeachment are mounting. In early October, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a series of editorials and op-eds calling on Congress to act in response to the president’s unconstitutional military operations in Iran and elsewhere; his attacks on judges, journalists, law firms and political opponents; his threats to execute members of Congress; his reckless deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents; his inhumane mass deportations and detentions; his assault on birthright citizenship; and his use of the presidency for base self-enrichment, among myriad other “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
As Ralph Nader and Bruce Fein put it in their contribution to the Inquirer series, “Trump has turned the Constitution into a museum piece and claimed the infinite unchecked power of a dictator.” In their view, the “doubting Thomases who dismiss” a third impeachment are turning a blind eye to Trump’s “litany” of derelictions.
Even if conviction in the Senate is unlikely, the process itself has enormous value. Writing for LawFare in 2021 at the outset of Trump’s second impeachment trial, Princeton University political science professor Keith Whittington explained,
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/bill-blum/118507/impeachment-and-court-reform-are-on-tuesday-s-ballot
Of all the accountability tools that will be available should the Democrats prevail on Nov. 3, impeachment and court reform stand out as the most powerful. Both are implicitly on the midterm ballot, and while neither is a magic bullet for checking Trumpism, they can and must be deployed far more aggressively and urgently than in the past.
The road ahead won’t be easy, but the party may never get another opportunity.
Impeachment
The Supreme Court’s 2024 decision on presidential immunity (Trump v. United States), penned by Chief Justice John Roberts, has made it all but impossible to hold Trump accountable through ordinary criminal prosecutions. As legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin has noted, Roberts’ opinion contains language that “suggests the president cannot even be investigated for his official actions,” much less indicted.
But the immunity ruling in no way undermines Congress’ impeachment powers. Even Trump’s lead lawyer in the case — D. John Sauer, now the administration’s solicitor general — acknowledged the broad scope of the impeachment power, contending that the Constitution’s Impeachment Judgment Clause (Article I, Section 3, Clause 7) requires that a president be impeached by the House and convicted in the Senate before being prosecuted criminally. Although the court rejected Sauer’s prerequisite argument, it recognized, consistent with the views of the Founders, that impeachment is a political process separate and apart from criminal prosecutions.
As Trump’s lawlessness and corruption have become more brazen and unrestrained, appeals for a third impeachment are mounting. In early October, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a series of editorials and op-eds calling on Congress to act in response to the president’s unconstitutional military operations in Iran and elsewhere; his attacks on judges, journalists, law firms and political opponents; his threats to execute members of Congress; his reckless deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents; his inhumane mass deportations and detentions; his assault on birthright citizenship; and his use of the presidency for base self-enrichment, among myriad other “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
As Ralph Nader and Bruce Fein put it in their contribution to the Inquirer series, “Trump has turned the Constitution into a museum piece and claimed the infinite unchecked power of a dictator.” In their view, the “doubting Thomases who dismiss” a third impeachment are turning a blind eye to Trump’s “litany” of derelictions.
Even if conviction in the Senate is unlikely, the process itself has enormous value. Writing for LawFare in 2021 at the outset of Trump’s second impeachment trial, Princeton University political science professor Keith Whittington explained,
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/bill-blum/118507/impeachment-and-court-reform-are-on-tuesday-s-ballot
