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impeachment
'Love It': Trump Reflects on Why the Democrats Won't Put Up a Fight
'They do nothing. That’s normalizing me before the American people. How wonderful.”
Sep 19, 2026
“I was in the Oval Office when I got a call with the results of the September 15th House Impeachment vote. Unbelievable. Of course, my Repubs all voted against this persecution, but 47 of the Dems, including their leaders—Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi, and Richard Neal from Democratic Massachusetts—voted PRESENT! That is really a vote against Impeachment and makes them ON MY SIDE! My aide read their lame excuse, saying that ‘serious work’ had to be done, including ‘comprehensive investigations, reviews of thousands of documents … Congressional hearings, sustained public organizing … to build a broad national consensus.’ That’s why they voted PRESENT!”
“But they were really AWOL. The polls show well over a majority of people want me FIRED. The Dems are really cowards. All they had to do was to use my scores of Executive Orders, which they claim were illegal and unconstitutional. Plus, repeat my widely reported statements that I can do whatever I want as President and what they have condemned as my outlaw actions here and abroad. I’m the only evidence they need.”
“Look at crazy Nancy. She impeached me twice, once on the Hunter Biden fabrication and once on the January 6 peaceful demonstration. Now she refuses to vote for Impeachment for the far wilder and more destructive things she has accused me of doing daily. Go figure.”
“Am I just lucky, or are they afraid of my going after them by name? Fear is a coward’s fuel, someone once told me.”
“Thankfully captive to their corporate consultants—look all I’ve done for their corporate clients—cut taxes, cut regulation, subsidized them—the Dems are helpless. They’ve let me normalize me in every way. They look at how I MAGA every day, call them traitors and lunatics and fanatics, demand the execution of six senators, and they say, ‘There he goes again.’ Then they do nothing. That’s normalizing me before the American people. How wonderful.”
“They are sooo out of it. They have no slogans, unless you are stupid enough to think ‘Build Back Better’ does anything other than bring us more of Sleepy Joe. They have no nicknames to counter my torrent of nicknames, even though my name lends itself to many.”
“Examples: I said, ‘Drain the Swamp.’ They could have said, unfairly, ‘Close the Trump Dump.’ I expected them to call me ‘Dictator Donald,’ ‘Trump the Chump,’ ‘Tyrant Trump,’ ‘The Trump Pump’ (because of gas prices), ‘The Trump Sump’ (their nutty charges of de-regulated air pollution) or ‘Dangerous Donald.’ Or, taking off from my naming things after me, have you heard words like Hurricane Trump, Tornado Trump, or Trump’s Dark Ages? We’ve laid off firefighters. But no giant wildfire has yet been given my name.”
“What really stuns me is how they have normalized what they call my greed. I had to disclose my finances for 2025 when I made $2.2 billion working out of my Trump House position. Again, a few words of rage, but no Dems broke it down to $1.1 million an hour, over a 40-hour week, as I proudly keep the federal minimum wage at $7.25 per hour for our business friends. ‘Billions’ go in one ear and out the other. But $1.1 million an hour hits home! They blew it again.”
“To my praise of our brave, lethal soldiers, the Dems could have regularly called me a serial draft dodger during the Vietnam War. Silence. They do once in a while call me a ‘convicted felon,’ but it’s a throwaway line. Then they vote in Congress for an even bigger unaudited Pentagon budget.”
“In an anger fit, I threaten to bomb like hell our ally Oman; they call me ‘frustrated’ over the war with Iran. How kind of them.”
“I pardoned over 600 violent convicted criminals over January 6. Over a hundred of them have already committed serious crimes since their release from jail. The Dems just say I’m abusing my pardon powers. Don’t they remember what damage the first Bush’s campaign did to Dukakis in 1988, blaming him for the crime Willie Horton committed after his early release from jail?”
“Am I just lucky, or are they afraid of my going after them by name? Fear is a coward’s fuel, someone once told me.”
“I campaigned on making the US dollar stronger than ever. Now it is weaker than in many years against other currencies. From the Democrats—silence.”
“I call them socialists and communists. They don’t call me fascist—just authoritarian. How feeble can you get? Such people are often called ‘useful idiots’”
“I call global warming and possible AI extinction ‘hoaxes,’ along with labeling wind power and solar energy ‘scams.’ ‘There he goes again,’ is the shoulder-shrugging reaction. Love it.”
“Were I a churchgoer, I would thank Almighty GOD for blessing me. With such enemies, who needs friends?”
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Nader Rips 'Feeble, Weak, Cowardly' Democrats for Eschewing Trump Impeachment
"The Democrats and electorally frightened Republicans pushed Richard Nixon out in 1974 for far, far lesser transgressions than those committed by Trump in a week."
Sep 17, 2026
As Democrats campaign for the November midterm elections after helping kill the latest congressional effort to impeach President Donald Trump, progressive consumer advocate and four-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader this week renewed attacks on the party's leadership for abandoning their constitutional responsibility to hold the president accountable.
In a September 14 essay published by Current Affairs, Nader argued that Democratic leaders have effectively given up on impeachment even as Trump's second administration faces continuing allegations of executive overreach and misconduct.
"The chronic prevaricator and delusionist Donald J. Trump knows that the worse his outlaw actions become, the less likely the Democrats in Congress are to impeach him," the Public Citizen co-founder wrote. "The massive number of blatant, impeachable acts by the lawless, corrupt, violent, systemically racist, unstable, dangerous tyrant increases by the day."
"The American public knows it," Nader continued. "The majority of Americans favor impeaching Trump. Among Democrats, it’s 84% in favor, as well as a majority of independents. Polling even shows that most Americans think Trump is a 'dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy.'"
Yet, "when asked about impeachment, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries [D-NY] replied: 'We haven’t ruled anything in and we haven’t ruled anything out,'" he noted. "What? Every day, the mega-arsonist is burning down our republic and its Constitution, with tens of millions of Americans suffering and endangered. Yet Jeffries has been noncommittal about whether Democrats would pursue impeachment even if they had a congressional majority."
In a column republished by Common Dreams earlier this month, Nader wrote, “What must Tyrant Trump be thinking about his opponents’ feeble, weak, cowardly responses to his daily torrent of serious, impeachable offenses?”
“Even his egomaniacal narcissism cannot fully explain his amazing good luck," he opined.
Earlier this week, the House of Representatives voted 232-147 to table an impeachment resolution introduced by Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), effectively ending the measure's consideration. Eighteen Democrats joined Republicans in voting to table it, while 46 Democrats—including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries—voted “present.”
Green's resolution accused Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors arising from the administration's deadly anti-immigrant crackdown, including alleged violations of civil liberties and due process. Green said before the vote that the Constitution contains no provision requiring Congress to wait before confronting impeachable conduct.
Democratic leaders have attempted to justify their decision not to support Green's resolution by arguing that impeachment requires a substantial investigative record, hearings, witness testimony, and document review. Jeffries, along with Democratic leaders Katherine Clark of Massachusetts—the House minority whip—and Pete Aguilar of California, the House Democratic Caucus chair, said they would vote “present” because “none of that serious work has been done," as they jointly explained.
Nader rejects that reasoning. In Current Affairs, he argued that saying Democrats “don’t have the votes” misses the purpose of a sustained impeachment campaign, which he described as a way of building public pressure and organizing voters.
“Impeachment is a mobilizer for get-out-the-vote efforts," he wrote, as well as "for educating and energizing the people back home."
Trump has already been impeached twice by the House, although the Senate failed to convict him either time. No other president has been impeached multiple times. Nader has pointed out that Trump's high crimes and misdemeanors are more grave than those for which then-President Nixon resigned from office in 1974 rather than face impeachment, and that Democrats' fear of the consequences for impeaching Trump again is no excuse for their cowardice.
"The Democrats and electorally frightened Republicans pushed Richard Nixon out in 1974 for far, far lesser transgressions than those committed by Trump in a week," he wrote.
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Did Johnson Just Adjourn Congress for 7 Weeks to Avoid Massie's Impeachment Articles Against Hegseth?
"These people are such incredible cowards," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal. "They know that what Pete Hegseth has done, his role in driving us into the war, is absolutely wrong."
Sep 16, 2026
US House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday that with seven weeks to go until Election Day, it was time for lawmakers to "go home to their districts and make the case to the American people"—a day earlier than scheduled.
But with the US public overwhelmingly disapproving of President Donald Trump's war in Iran and demanding accountability for his bombing of boats in the Caribbean Sea, Republicans may be headed home hoping their constituents don't ask questions about those issues, particularly as Johnson (R-La.) faced accusations of ending the House session early in order to avoid a vote pertaining to them.
Johnson announced the early adjournment a day after Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) filed articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, arguing in the resolution that Hegseth violated the War Powers Resolution of 1973 by initiating strikes against Iran without authorization from Congress and continuing to attack the country past the 60-day mark set by the law.
He also accused Hegseth of “ignoring laws that minimize civilian casualties," citing an attack that killed more than 150 children and teachers at a school in Minab, Iran, and of conducting an illegal campaign of extrajudicial killings by overseeing dozens of boat bombings in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean that have killed at least 230 people since last September.
Massie's resolution was privileged, meaning it had to be taken up by the House within two legislative days.
With House members now on their way back to their districts to campaign ahead of the midterm elections, lawmakers will be unable to pursue the impeachment effort until at least November. They are not set to return to Capitol Hill until after Americans vote on November 3.
"These people are such incredible cowards," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) of her Republican colleagues. "They know that what Pete Hegseth has done, his role in driving us into the war, is absolutely wrong."
Republicans just CANCELLED votes for tomorrow, the last legislative day before the midterms.
Why? Because they’re afraid we’ll impeach Pete Hegseth. What a bunch of cowards. pic.twitter.com/vTTfNNtpmP
— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) September 16, 2026
Johnson derided Massie's resolution as "ridiculous" and "a publicity stunt by someone who wants attention."
“It’s a publicity stunt by someone who wants attention," he said. "It will immediately be tabled, of course, but we probably won’t do that today. We’ll probably do it when we come back. But it’s a stunt. Secretary Hegseth has done an extraordinary job at the Department of War. We’re in the middle of international conflicts right now, and we should not be playing games with national security."
A motion to table a resolution immediately kills the measure without debate.
"We're calling off Congress," said Massie on the House floor Wednesday, "and we're in the majority... I would implore all of us to take it up with the leadership. Why are we going to be denied a debate on whether there should be an impeachment or not?"
Massie: We’re in the majority. Why are we whining about The Save Act? We won the elections. Why are we saying the elections were stolen if we won them all? pic.twitter.com/sab4GGViw3
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 16, 2026
Public polling suggests most Americans likely do not think Hegseth and other top officials are doing an "extraordinary job" regarding the war in Iran, as Johnson claimed.
A survey in late July showed that nearly two-thirds of Americans felt the war was not worth fighting, and an Associated Press poll in June found the same percentage of respondents disapproved of Trump's handling of issues concerning Iran. The war has sent oil and gas prices skyrocketing, and a majority of voters told Reuters/Ipsos in April that they blamed the Trump administration.
Massie noted that Johnson's maneuver would make it harder for supporters of a discharge petition to force a vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act to gather the 218 signatures they need.
"I thought we’re supposed to be running a government here. Speaker Mike Johnson just sent the House home. Why? Because Rep. Thomas Massie filed articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth," said Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.). "Speaker Johnson, the WEAKEST speaker of all time, was so scared that we had the votes to impeach Hegseth and hold him accountable that he’s sending us all home to make sure it doesn’t happen."
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Massie Files Impeachment Articles Against Hegseth for Illegal Iran War, Boat Murders
"By directing the Department of Defense in a manner that foreseeably dismantled the safeguards necessary to distinguish civilian objects from military objectives, Secretary Hegseth thereby effected the murder of civilians."
Sep 15, 2026
Rep. Thomas Massie on Tuesday filed articles of impeachment against US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for his roles in waging an illegal war against Iran and conducting a spree of boat bombings that many human rights groups and international law experts consider acts of murder.
Massie (R-Ky.), who earlier this year lost a Republican primary election to a challenger endorsed by President Donald Trump, accused Hegseth of a wide variety of misconduct across a set of eight impeachment articles.
The most prominent allegedly impeachable conduct highlighted by Massie involves the Iran War, which was launched in February without any congressional authorization.
Massie argued that, in carrying out the war, Hegseth violated the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which specified that the president cannot send the US military into combat operations absent "a declaration of war, specific statutory authorization, or a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces."
Congress, Massie noted, did not declare war against Iran, nor enact "any specific statutory authorization" for the use of force against the country. Additionally, Massie wrote, "no national emergency had been created by an attack by the Islamic Republic of Iran upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces."
Massie said that Hegseth "nevertheless knowingly executed and implemented the order to commence such hostilities," which he described as an abuse of his powers.
The GOP lawmaker argued in a separate impeachment article that Hegseth further violated the law by ignoring a war powers resolution passed earlier this year by both chambers of the US Congress that compelled him to end hostilities with Iran.
In a fourth impeachment article, Hegseth is accused of "ignoring laws that minimize civilian casualties" by tearing up rules of engagement that the defense secretary has openly derided as "stupid."
It was this recklessness, Massie alleged, that led to the deadly US attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in the city of Minab, Iran, which killed more than 150 schoolchildren and dozen teachers.
"By directing the Department of Defense in a manner that foreseeably dismantled the safeguards necessary to distinguish civilian objects from military objectives," Massie wrote, "Secretary Hegseth thereby effected the murder of civilians and abused the trust of the men and women under his command by requiring them to conduct military operations within a targeting and legal-review system that he had deliberately degraded."
The fifth article of impeachment accuses Hegseth of conducting an unlawful campaign of extrajudicial killings by bombing alleged drug-trafficking vessels in international waters.
Massie said that this campaign sentenced people to death merely on the suspicion of criminal conduct, "without judicial process, without congressional authorization, and without establishing a lawful basis for treating such persons or vessels as military targets."
The result of this, Massie continued, is that Hegseth has anointed himself "the roles of judge, jury, and executioner and asserted a unilateral power to determine who may live and who may die."
"Such a power is foreign to the rule of law," Massie continued, "repugnant to the legal traditions and fundamental values of the United States and the Western world, and contrary to United States law and customary international law."
At least 225 people so far have been killed because of the boat bombing spree.
Other articles of impeachment accuse Hegseth of attempting to suppress free speech by threatening to court marshal Sen. Mark Kelly (R-Ariz.) after he reminded US military personnel that they should not carry out illegal orders; of illegally kidnapping a foreign leader by having the military abduct Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro; and of launching unauthorized combat operations in Yemen.
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Trump's DHS Is Preparing To Engage In Voter Suppression and Intimidation
The Trump administration is desperate. They will do anything—regardless of how illegal or unconstitutional—to subvert the will of people and remain in power. Yet, with the stakes so high, we cannot allow ourselves to be intimidated.
Sep 06, 2026
On September 1, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents could be deployed to polling sites across the country. He remarked, “The only reason why we would be at polling places is if there is a threat to that polling place or we’re serving a warrant on someone that we have been actively tracking down.” Later that day, DHS doubled down on this point. In a statement, the department said that, while ICE is not “planning operations targeting polling locations,” the agency conducts “intelligence-driven targeted enforcement, and if an active public safety threat endangered a polling location, they may be arrested as a result of that targeted enforcement action.”
Missing from those statements, however, is that this “intelligence-driven” enforcement would be based on DHS’ explicit and baseless efforts to amplify President Donald Trump’s election fraud lies. In July, Mullin said, “We will scrub all election records, looking for illegal aliens and those who are ineligible to vote, including those that somehow voted, yet they were deceased.” At the time, he also threatened to withhold federal election-related aid to states that failed to comply with the Trump administration’s probe.
That same month, DHS issued a statement alleging that over 250,000 noncitizens are illegally registered to vote in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Nevada. According to DHS employees and officials familiar with the situation, those numbers were wildly inflated. For instance, while DHS claimed that there were close to 16,000 noncitizens on Nevada’s voter list, it only managed to provide state officials with information on 185 voters. DHS failed to disclose what data they used to match those voters to noncitizens.
This is unsurprising. As the Brennan Center for Justice reports, empirical studies, state investigations, and work by journalists have consistently found that cases of noncitizens voting are exceptionally rare. Moreover, claims made by Republicans and their media allies to the contrary have been repeatedly shown to be false.
These extreme measures also point to just how afraid Trump is ahead of the midterms.
The reality is that Mullin’s DHS is actively trying to fabricate a pretext for ICE to be present at polling sites, regardless of how illegal it would be. 18 U.S.C § 592 directly prohibits any deployment of military personnel or “armed” federal agents “at any place where a general or special election is held.”
To that end, Mullin is exploiting every resource available to him. On September 1, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) reportedly launched “a coordinated criminal voter fraud surge initiative to pursue investigative leads, conduct field interviews, and support timely prosecutorial review,” according to a federal guidance reviewed by CNN. HSI offices in Washington, Wisconsin, Missouri, Georgia, California, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York, and Connecticut are expected to take investigative action from early September through mid October. While HSI ordinarily focuses on crimes like human trafficking, drug smuggling, and child exploitation, it has been repeatedly tasked with investigating voter fraud in Trump’s second term. In February, the White House directed the agency to determine if any naturalized citizens voted or registered to vote prior to becoming citizens. HSI has also been directed to coordinate with US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to issue removal proceedings for noncitizens suspected of or linked to voter fraud.
ICE is also currently seeking vendors to handle “and secure delivery of publicly available voter registration files and voter history files to support Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) fraud detection and data segmentation activities.” To be clear, as J.B. Branch, the director of Federal AI Governance and Technology Policy for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division, notes, “Publicly available does not mean ‘fair game’ for unlimited government surveillance.” He continues, “There is an enormous difference between a voter record sitting in a state database and the federal government aggregating millions of those records, cross-referencing them against other government and commercial databases, and using algorithms to generate investigative leads about individual Americans.”
That contract would be worth between $2-5 million according to an acquisition forecast document published by DHS on August 31.
This latest data grab is one of several coordinated efforts by ICE and the Trump administration to undermine voter eligibility. A procurement record from July indicated that ICE planned to pay Thomson Reuters, a major data broker firm, $125 million for access to its CLEAR database, which includes “peoples’ names, addresses, Social Security numbers, ethnicity, social media posts, and geolocation information,” to help the agency investigate voter fraud.
On September 3, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), along with individual voters, filed a motion asking a federal judge to block the Trump administration’s plan to compile state-by-state lists of people it deemed eligible to vote—“State Citizenship Lists”—and publish them online. The basis for this project is an executive order Trump signed on March 31. While a lower court blocked several key provisions from going into effect in 33 states and Washington, DC, the Supreme Court stayed the injunction in August, thus paving the way for the plan to be implemented nationwide. This, despite the fact that the Constitution clearly dictates that only states and Congress—not the president—have the power to control US elections.
All of these escalating efforts so close to the midterms point to one undeniable truth: DHS is readying itself, on behalf of the Trump administration, to engage in nationwide voter suppression and intimidation this November.
These extreme measures also point to just how afraid Trump is ahead of the midterms. On August 21, he told supporters that if Republicans lose, he will be impeached. Several Republicans, including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), have recently echoed this "warning."
And they are right to be afraid. Democrats are favored to take back control of the House and possibly win control of the Senate. If this happens, Congress should immediately impeach Trump and put him, as well as everyone who enabled his corrupt administration, on trial for their many crimes.
The Trump administration is desperate. They will do anything—regardless of how illegal or unconstitutional—to subvert the will of people and remain in power. Yet, with the stakes so high, we cannot allow ourselves to be intimidated. This country cannot afford two more years of unchecked Trumpism. While there is still time, we must continue to advocate for progressive candidates as well as calling out and challenging every effort by Republicans to steal our elections.
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Tyrant Trump Is Lucky in the Cowardice of His Enemies
Democratic leadership's refusal to pursue impeachment signals to Trump that he has two-plus unchallenged years to ravage the lives and livelihoods of millions of people here and abroad.
Sep 05, 2026
What must Tyrant Trump be thinking about his opponents’ feeble, weak, cowardly responses to his daily torrent of serious, impeachable offenses? Even his egomaniacal narcissism cannot fully explain his amazing good luck.
Start with the House’s two impeachments of Donald Trump, while Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was Speaker, in 2019 and 2021. The first was over Trump’s trying to bribe or extort Ukraine into going after Hunter Biden—an investor and Board member of a Ukrainian business. Pelosi knew there was no chance of getting the required two-thirds vote required for Senate conviction, but went for the House vote anyway. At the same time, Pelosi declined to pursue numerous other "slam dunk" kitchen table impeachable offenses we and others presented to her. (See Congressional Record, December 18, 2019).
In 2021, after the January 6 Trump-incited violent insurrection involving attack on the Capitol and Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election, Pelosi did the same thing: impeached Trump in the House. Unfortunately, the Senate fell short of the two-thirds vote required to convict and remove him from office because most Senate Republicans cowardly failed to hold Trump accountable for these treacherous actions.
Come the Second Trump term, after criminal indictments, a felony conviction, and civil litigation brought by women accusing him of sexual misconduct, on Day One, January 20, 2025, Trump began issuing illegal executive orders. Many of them were impeachable offenses as he boastfully implemented them, with the aid of Elon Musk’s criminal enterprise—DOGE.
Trump continues to commit “high crimes and misdemeanors,” brazenly, taunting the so-called leaders of the Democrats by saying, “This is just the beginning."
Trump probably anticipated a much more vigorous impeachment drive by the Democrats, even though they were in the minority in the House. His luck continued. The Democratic Party’s so-called leadership decided against this excellent galvanizing get-out-the-vote initiative for their voters, 90% of whom wanted Impeachment yesterday. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries’ (D-Calif.) staffers told inquirers that they didn’t know how it would play out.
Jeffries himself told a reporter that “he didn’t want to get ahead of that discussion.” What? Ahead of 90% of his party’s voters!!?
Trump, who called for the execution of six Congressional Democrats for reminding soldiers of their obligation not to obey an illegal order that is contrary to the Constitution or the laws of the United States (as in described in the Army Manual for Courts-Martial [MCM] along with international law) must be privately dumbfounded. The more violently extreme and erratic he gets, the less interested the Democratic Party is in an Impeachment Drive. (See “Statement from Medical Professionals” in the April 30, 2026 Congressional Record.)
Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) introduced H. Res. 537 on June 24, 2025. It was treated as a privileged impeachment resolution and Rep. Al Green took to the floor for debate and a prompt vote to educate the public about the necessity of ordering Trump, “You’re Fired.” Jeffries and his cohorts opposed it! Trump must have been stunned.
After all, people and their children are feeling, seeing, and hurting in the tens of millions from Trump’s wrecking, endangering, and weakening America. (See my column last week, “Open Letter to Representative Hakeem Jeffries.”)
Under the Jeffries and Schumer anti-impeachment bans, thus agreeing with Trump, the news media has little activity to cover in Washington, DC. Also, it’s not keeping up with the civic activity around the country demanding Impeachment. (See nader.org/impeachment.)
More puzzling is the refusal of editorial writers to urge impeachment. They regularly make the Impeachment case against Trump but decline to tell their readers the obvious conclusion: that the House should begin an impeachment inquiry and approve articles of impeachment. Congress also has an important role under Section 4 of the 25th Amendment. Congress, by statute, may appoint itself—in lieu of the principal officers of the Executive Branch—to determine whether the president is disabled and should be temporarily removed until the disability lapses.
Despite the many detailed editorials in The New York Times, such as one showing how Trump is harming the health of the American people and another “Autocracy Index” titled “Trump’s Election Meddling Erodes Our Democracy,” the editorial writers limped off their pages without answering the alarmed readers’ question, “What do you want done about this?”
The Times Sunday columnist Jamelle Bouie relentlessly documents Trump’s impeachable crimes, but not once has he moved to recommend this Republic-saving mechanism given to us by our Founding Fathers. Same for other Times columnists, Michelle Goldberg and EJ Dionne.
The Times’ reluctance to employ the “I” word is typical of the mass media. What about the independent progressive media? The Nation, In These Times, Progressive Magazine, and The Washington Monthly have all mentioned impeachment, but few have made a sustained, prominent editorial demand for an impeachment drive. Also, they do not report on the rising citizen activities behind Impeachment around the country.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to commit “high crimes and misdemeanors,” brazenly, taunting the so-called leaders of the Democrats by saying, “This is just the beginning.” He provides the Democrats with daily evidence that should prompt SHADOW CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS organized by Democratic members of Congress and designed to build a public factual record. Such hearings could attract substantial media attention, particularly if they focused on specific alleged abuses and featured affected witnesses, legal experts, and former public officials. Nonetheless, Jeffries and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) block any shadow hearings by dissenting House members.
What explains this historic cowardice? Is it fear of Trump retaliating? Is it smugness over Trump’s low polls, and a belief they can win in November by lying low, raising AIPAC and corporate campaign money, mumbling about affordability, and avoiding heavily poll-favored Pledges or Contracts for the American people showing specifically what they stand for? (See, Compact for American Workers and Robert Reich’s 10-Point Plan To Make America Affordable.) Or is it just trying to avoid Trump accusing the Democrats of having done similar things when they controlled the White House, such as starting or backing unconstitutional wars?
Whatever explains their inhibitions, the result is to signal to Trump that he has two-plus unchallenged years to ravage the lives and livelihoods of millions of people here and abroad, oppose preparedness for climate and pandemic catastrophes, to suppress renewable energy and favor omnicidal fossil-fuel combustion, invade our cities with his stormtroopers, and treat children with unsurpassed cruelty. It also leaves unanswered serious questions about his personal financial enrichment while in office—estimated to be $1.1 million per working hour. All this invites the demand that they resign. The people need fresh, stand-up leaders to take over the Democratic leadership and its party committees. (See RootsAction: “Tell Democrats in Congress to Insist That Schumer and Jeffries Step Aside”.)
The Democrats and electorally frightened Republicans pushed Richard Nixon out in 1974 for far, far lesser transgressions than those committed by Trump in a week.
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Impeach Pete Hegseth. Do It Today.
Hegseth is the most incompetent person in the Trump regime — with the exception of Trump himself — and a clear and present danger to the security of the United States and the world.
Sep 03, 2026
The latest casualty of Pete Hegseth’s disastrous tenure as Secretary of “War” is Dan Driscoll, who resigned Monday as Secretary of the Army after repeatedly clashing with the Heg.
Driscoll isn’t a liberal in lion’s clothing. He’s an old friend of JD Vance from Yale Law days. He resigned because of his concerns that Hegseth is damaging the Army’s efforts to modernize and adapt to the 21st century battlefield environment — where drone warfare is becoming increasingly important — by firing or pushing out leaders spearheading those efforts.
A defense official in Europe told CNN that even though Hegseth talks about technology reform, he’s focusing instead on “muscles, dudes in dresses, testosterone.”
Hegseth’s tenure has been disastrous from the moment he walked into the Pentagon. Even if Trump were capable of hearing sound advice, Hegseth hasn’t come close to giving it to him. Instead, he’s been pursuing grievances about DEI, promoting testosterone, and denigrating or firing women and Black officers.
The Army now has no Senate-confirmed secretary or chief of staff (George’s replacement, General Christopher LaNeve, so far doesn’t have the votes to be confirmed).
The Iran war, meanwhile, is requiring the ongoing deployment of 19 warships, air-defense units, fighter squadrons and paratroopers across the region — straining service members and their families and creating a maintenance backlog that could take years to unwind, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The Washington Post reports that multiple senior military leaders — those still left, that is — have warned Hegseth that the United States cannot indefinitely extend military operations against Iran. Even the chief of naval operations, Admiral Daryl Caudle (who campaigned for the job by signaling agreement with Hegseth’s culture-war obsessions), told Hegseth that the Navy cannot “sustain its current level of support for the Iran conflict because there is no anticipated end date.”
Hegseth’s response? He castigated the media for revealing classified information.
I’ve known many other defense secretaries, starting with Cap Weinberger, who served as defense secretary under Reagan. I can say without fear of contradiction that Pete Hegseth is the stupidest and least qualified of them all.
Hegseth’s incompetence and determination to suck up to Trump helped launch the war against Iran in the first place.
Among the regime’s senior officials, Hegseth was the only one who supported Trump’s fantasies of a quick victory. Marco Rubio was against the war as was JD Vance; even then–Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Trump that a war with Iran was not winnable.
Since then, Hegseth has lied his way through more than six months of Pentagon and Iran war mayhem.
At a press briefing in March, Hegseth complained about a CNN report that the Trump administration had underestimated Iran’s ability to disrupt global oil traffic by closing the Strait of Hormuz. “Patently ridiculous,” Hegseth told reporters, adding — even as the strait’s blockage was proving to be Iran’s most powerful leverage in the war — we “don’t need to worry about it.” It was a false and insulting claim to an American public that deserved to know what the Trump regime was planning to do about soaring prices at the gas pump, directly due to that blockage.
He also denied that the U.S. bombed the school where some 175 children were killed — a claim belied by mounting evidence that the U.S. did bomb the school. Hegseth’s further insistence that the U.S. “never targets civilians” was refuted by the U.S. military’s killing of over 200 people on small boats in the Caribbean without evidence they were “narcoterrorists” rather than civilians.
Hegseth then lied about the severity of Iranian attacks on U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf that disrupted logistical support for American forces, leading to the deprivations suffered by the crew of the aircraft carrier the USS Abraham Lincoln.
Hegseth evidently believes that his job is to cheerlead and defend Trump with absurd claims like “We didn’t start this war, but under President Trump we’re finishing it” and “America is winning decisively, devastatingly, and without mercy” and “we will show no quarter for our enemies.” (“No quarter” means kill everyone and take no prisoners, which is a war crime.)
In the days leading up to the U.S. attack on Iran, Hegseth spent his time criticizing “wokeness” at American universities and forcing Scouting America to abandon programs aimed at promoting diversity.
Last year, he didn’t just mistakenly share the military’s plans with the editor of The Atlantic; we now know he shared them with a second Signal group, including his wife, brother, and personal lawyer.
John Ullyot, who resigned as Pentagon spokesman, said Hegseth had brought “total chaos” to the Pentagon and that the Pentagon “is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership.”
Hegseth dismisses war crimes, pooh-poohs the rules of engagement, and projects unequivocal belligerence at a time when the United States is rapidly losing whatever moral standing it once had in the world.
Pete Hegseth is the most incompetent person in the Trump regime — with the exception of Trump himself — and a clear and present danger to the security of the United States and the world. If Trump won’t fire him, Democrats should impeach him when (hopefully) they take over the House next January, and two-thirds of the Senate should convict him.
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The Best Propaganda Money Can Buy Can't Convince Americans to Like Trump's Iran War
Only about a quarter of respondents to a new poll think the US should have gone to war with Iran, and that the US is winning.
Sep 01, 2026
A new University of Massachusetts-Amherst opinion poll, conducted August 21-26, finds profound American disillusionment with President Donald Trump, with his Iran War, and with its economic fallout in their lives.
Apparently the Ellison family’s attempt to drum up support for Donald Trump and his Iran War by buying up CBS News and gutting it as a respected news organization was a costly failure. Likewise, Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp and his various pro-Trump organs, from Fox Cable News to The Wall Street Journal, have not pulled the wool over the public’s eyes in the ways that Murdoch hoped. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted of the effort he expended convincing the American people to go to war with Iran, saying he had a thousand hours on US television , but while he may have prevailed on the gullible and avaricious Trump to fall on that country like a ravenous wolf, he did not succeed in altering the views of the American public on the desirability of such a war. The only significant impact of Netanyahu on most Americans has been to convince them that the Israeli government is a combination of genocidal maniacs and welfare queens that Americans should cut off economically and perhaps even militarily.
The UMass poll asked a weighted sample of respondents how well Trump has handled his Iran War. The response of 55% of those asked this question was “not well at all.” Ouch. Another 13% replied “not too well.” So 68%, over two-thirds, think he has done a piss-poor job on his Iran War, which was his war of choice. Two-thirds is the percentage needed in the Senate to impeach and remove a president, so if our representatives actually mirrored public opinion, Trump would be toast.
That question had to do with Trump’s handling of the war. Asked whether they approved of the war on Iran, a majority, 54%, said they strongly or somewhat disapproved, and another 20% were noncommittal, which I would interpret as not actively supporting the war even if they didn’t particularly oppose it. Those statistics yield a picture of a war that nearly three-fourths of Americans either oppose or about which they just don’t care. It isn’t what the commander of a war would want to hear from his own public.
Trump and the Republicans are always campaigning on being the party of business and therefore the party that knows how to handle the economy, but only a tiny minority, 7%, think Trump is handling the economy very well.
A majority think the war was a mistake and question whether it has made the US safer or forestalled an Iranian bomb.
Another way of putting it is that only about a quarter of respondents think the US should have gone to war with Iran, and that the US is winning.
The UMass report on the opinion poll noted that Raymond La Raja, professor of political science at UMass Amherst and co-director of the poll, said, “Americans are overwhelmingly negative about Trump on the Iran situation.” He continued: “Only 1 in 4 Americans thinks he is handling Iran well. The real divide is increasingly between Trump’s hardcore MAGA base and almost everyone else. Among Republicans who identify very strongly with MAGA, 87% approve of Trump’s handling of Iran. But that falls to 58% among Republicans who are ‘somewhat MAGA’ and just 30% among Republicans who say they are ‘not MAGA at all.’ The more loosely attached Republicans are to the MAGA identity, the more skeptical they are of the war.”
Conducting a war in the Middle East, as even the cowboys in the G. W. Bush administration recognized, requires at least some allies. But Americans don’t think Trump plays well with other children. Asked how he has handled working with allies in global affairs, 52% say “not well at all” and 12% say “not too well,” showing that nearly two-thirds view his foreign policy performance negatively.
Based on this sounding, we can further project that Americans are even more angry about the main fallout of the failed war on Iran, which is high inflation. Fully 80% of respondents said that the Iran War has increased the cost of gasoline and groceries. Asked about how Trump has dealt with inflation, 57% responded, “not well at all.” A further 18% said “not too well.” That is 75%, fully three-fourths, who disapprove of his handling of inflation. Trump and the Republicans are always campaigning on being the party of business and therefore the party that knows how to handle the economy, but only a tiny minority, 7%, think Trump is handling the economy very well, and I presume they are wealthy investors in Trump’s casino stock market. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is up 14-16% so far this year.
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Answer Me This, Hakeem Jeffries: What Do Democrats Stand For?
Twice Democrats lost to the corrupt, chronically lying, corporatist, and failed gambling czar Donald Trump when you should have defeated him and his GOP handily. It is time for serious introspection, a change of attitude, and tactics.
Sep 01, 2026
August 31, 2026
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries
U.S. House of Representatives
2267 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Rep. Jeffries,
Like other civic advocates, I read the New York Times and Wall Street Journal articles about your private meeting with Jared Kushner, Trump’s amateur Ambassador at Large, who is also furiously seeking investment opportunities while abroad. It is not difficult to read between the lines. You’re seeking a deal, should you be chosen as House Speaker in January. Trump also wants a deal as—you will hold off any Impeachment initiative, and in exchange, he will not oppose some undefined bills that you want to pass.
You can rebut this supposition by announcing very soon that you will seek to impeach Trump once the Democrats take over the House. About 90% of Democratic voters and two-thirds of independent voters want “Impeachment Now” (see Celinda Lake’s polls.) This is what the Bar of the City of New York urgently concluded, following two detailed reports on Trump’s executive violations of law in December and March. (See “The Abuse of Presidential Power and Breach of Public Trust” and “The Crisis Deepens: Congress Must Act Now to Address Escalating Abuses of Executive Power”.)
When asked about your stand on Impeachment in April by a reporter, you replied: “I don’t want to get ahead of that discussion.” What? Don’t want to get ahead of 90% of Democratic voters? Don’t want to move to fire an outlaw, corrupt, violent, raving racist, and serial sexual abuser of women? A dangerously unstable dictator (see April 30, 2026 Congressional Record) who is wrecking, endangering, and weakening America, making life more unaffordable for tens of millions of lower-income Americans and their children, many of whom are losing their Medicaid, food stamps, and health and safety protections? You are signaling that Trump has two more unchallenged years to destroy our Republic and the Constitution for which it stands. Adamant in drafting our Constitution to block any “monarchs,” what would our Founding Fathers have done?
Observers of your brand of politics know your game, Mr. Jeffries. Nonetheless, some weeks ago, your Executive Director Gideon Bragin told a respected intermediary that he was okay with receiving my suggestions for landsliding the GOP. You were sent a few pages, which your office received, but did not even courteously acknowledge, much less respond substantially. This is typical of the Democratic leadership’s incommunicado attitude toward independent citizen groups. (See the report The Incommunicados.)
Being control freaks, the Democratic leadership does not like “mandates.” Which is why they do not like popular Pledges, Compacts, or Contracts for the American People or for American Workers. When former Secretary of Labor, bestselling author, and popular podcaster Robert Reich sent his Party’s leaders a list of “What Democrats Must Pledge to America,” in December 2025, he probably expected a response. To date, not a single response from anyone in the so-called leadership of the Party. Many of his proposals are New Deal updates that test well with liberals and many conservative families where they live, work, and raise their families. NO RESPONSE!
We know the game, Mr. Jeffries. But in these times and with some stunning primary elections, it is a game that won’t be as easily played with impunity as in previous years under Speaker Pelosi. You may wish to refine your political antennae and answer the question most asked by voters, which is, “What does the Democratic Party stand for?” other than scapegoating when it loses to the most cruel, corrupt, anti-worker, corporatist GOP in history.
Having huddled with the genocide-backer Kushner, how can you continue not to meet with National citizen groups like Public Citizen, Common Cause, People for the American Way, Pension Rights Center, and others familiar to you as long-time advocates for policies that the past Democratic Party used to find commendable and support on Capitol Hill? No more excluding them, despite what your corporate-conflicted consultants advise. Also, no more of your silencing House Democrats from even talking about Impeachment. Under Rule 9, there will be a vote on an impeachment resolution after Labor Day, which you should support and NOT join Trump in opposing. (See Rep. John Larson’s H.Res 1155 and the April and July citizen impeachment symposiums on Capitol Hill.)
Ask yourself, is Trump going to continue becoming worse—violently and cruelly worse—both domestically and abroad without a mounting deterrence as in a fast-rising Impeachment Drive?
Would not such an Impeachment Drive led by the Democratic Party galvanize its voters—seeking fighters on their behalf—and increase voter turnout for a decisive November victory, not a marginal, unworkable majority?
If your answer is YES to both questions, what are you waiting for? If your answer is NO, what are you waiting for? More destruction of the living conditions of the American people, including loss of life to blatantly neglected natural disasters, the closure or depletion of crucial scientific alert and research programs, political brutalities, Trump’s inflation and job losses, and his “endless wars” and attacks and crazed military threats abroad? So you can cut deals with a treacherous Trump with his record of betrayals?? (See New York Times: “The Autocracy Index: The editorial board tracks 12 markers of democratic erosion” and “Trump’s Broken Promises, in 11 Charts”.)
You and your Party need to be seriously introspective about your mounting political disasters, the independent exclusion of input from progressive citizen groups and progressive labor unions that decades ago so assisted the Party’s better angels in enacting key legislation. (See When the Senate Worked for Us: The Invisible Role of Staffers in Countering Corporate Lobbies by Michael Perschuk, Vanderbilt University Press).
First introspection: Twice Democrats lost to the corrupt, chronically lying, corporatist, and failed gambling czar when you should have defeated him and his GOP handily. You and the Party stubbornly want to win, having years ago electorally abandoned almost half the country (red states), but without upsetting your paymasters. These are principally Wall Street, AIPAC and the military industry. Your corporate-conflicted consultants, to whom you have contracted out so much of the Party’s campaigns, lean strongly in that direction.
Back in 1994, I called the savvy Elizabeth Moynihan. She told me she had just fired Senator Pat Moynihan’s re-election consultants and is taking over management of his campaign. She firmly added: “These consultants are destroying the Democratic Party.”
How do you explain the Democratic Party’s failure at numerous critical junctures to stop Trump’s presidential campaigns? Trump’s energy levels to overcome impossible odds in 2016 and even more in 2024 tower above the feeble, indecisive ways of the Democratic Party. Your Party totally bungled, letting Trump continue to destroy our Democracy despite serious indictments, becoming a convicted felon, being sued, and being credibly charged with sexually abusing five dozen women. Trump is a foul-mouthed racist/bigot who constantly used defamatory language, such as against fallen GIs in World War II (a serial draft dodger, no less), and who was profiteering in suspect manners. He was low in the polls, and was widely condemned for his initiatory role inciting the January 6, 2020 insurrection in Congress, taking lives and causing injuries of many defending Capitol Police and other casualties. Still, he defeated your Party in 2024!
Who could overcome such odds and win the presidency? Someone with towering egomaniacal energy, opposed by the anemic, indentured Democratic Party that refuses to replace losers with new progressive energy. Indeed, losers get promoted, such as heading the Democratic National Committee, while presumptive presidential winners like Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020 are sabotaged by Party apparatchiks and their large donors.
More basically, the Party has become about raising money in place of credibly advancing progressive policies and programs. The almighty campaign dollars leave raising the paltry federal minimum wage ($7.25 per hour) to one-liners that your voting public doesn’t believe, or not taking up authentic full Medicare for all – which you just stunningly came out against!! Throwaway one-liners, like cracking down on corporate crooks, are not believable, because of the Party’s terrible record regarding corporate crime waves and massive corporate welfare. The same is true for not challenging Trump’s enormous 2017 tax cuts for the rich and big corporations when the Democrats took the House in January 2019. House Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal (D-MA), astonishingly announced on opening day that he was not going to reopen these deficit-ballooning tax cuts, depriving investments in public works and services throughout communities nationwide.
Then, of course, there is the long-sustained Democratic Party of overseas Empire, of a runaway unaudited – as long required by federal law – military budget and the aiding and abetting of Netanyahu’s genocidal mass murder and starvation of infants, children, mothers and fathers in Gaza, using U.S. bombs you voted for to drop the TNT equivalent of over eight Hiroshima bombs on that tiny enclave, the geographical size of Philadelphia, crowded with defenseless families having nothing to do with October 7, 2023, and the prior bombing raids by Israeli F-16s in the previous decades. Still, you proudly remain one of the top beneficiaries of AIPAC, which is the reason you and Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) didn’t endorse your newly elected Mayor, Zohran Mamdani.
More introspection may lead you to ask yourself whether you are up to leading the House Democrats in their immense and immediate tasks of policy and program restorations and adopting our Constitution’s mandated Congressional independence from the Presidency for the protection and advancement of the livelihoods, peace and freedoms of the American people. There is no indication that you are so willing and prepared. Unfortunately.
Your response is invited.
Sincerely,
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
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Al Green Files Impeachment Articles Over Trump Using CBP, ICE as 'Unaccountable Paramilitary Police Forces'
"The framers anticipated this kind of abuse of executive power," said one legal expert. "They gave Congress the remedy: impeachment."
Aug 24, 2026
Congressman Al Green on Monday filed articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump over the twice-impeached Republican's violent campaign to round up and deport immigrants, which has killed citizens of various countries, including the United States.
Green, a Texas Democrat who has repeatedly pushed to impeach Trump for a range reasons during his two terms, argued in his new resolution that "our country and the lives of people within it are at risk as President Donald John Trump is a great threat to the United States democratic republic, its Constitution, and democracy."
"He is abusing the powers of the presidency by operating United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as his vicious, quota-driven, unaccountable paramilitary police forces," Green's resolution states, "transgressing with anonymity and secrecy, assaulting people, committing and covering up unjustified killings of civilians (including Renée Good, Alex Pretti, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero) with impunity (acting as judge, jury, prosecutor, and executioner), terrorizing communities, and brazenly and wantonly devolving the United States democratic republic into an authoritarian regime, where unjustified killings and coverups by ICE and CBP are normalized."
Despite agents with ICE and CBP killing Good and Pretti, both US citizens, as part of Trump's anti-immigrant operation in Minnesota's Twin Cities in January, the Republican-controlled Congress passed and the president signed a $70 billion bill for the Department of Homeland Security agencies in June.
Roughly a month later, an ICE agent fatally shot Salgado Araujo, a Mexican man, in Houston, Texas. Less than a week after that, another agent similarly killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, of Colombia, in Biddeford, Maine. Deaths on US streets and in immigrant detention centers have fueled anger and calls for reform—or even abolishing ICE—from the public and some elected Democrats.
The resolution introduced Monday is the first from Trump's second term to mention his anti-immigrant policies. Green—who has served in the House of Representatives for over two decades but is set to leave his seat at the end of this session after losing a May primary—has introduced articles of impeachment three other times since the president's return to power last year. Reps. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) and John Larson (D-Conn.) have separately put forward resolutions during this term.
Green and other Democrats also introduced impeachment articles during Trump's first term. The president was first impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in December 2019, then again after his supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. However, Trump—the only president to be impeached twice—was not convicted by the Senate either time.
Polling conducted in March by Lake Research Partners for Free Speech for People (FSFP)—a legal advocacy group behind a campaign to impeach Trump again—found that 52% of US voters support a third impeachment, including 84% of Democrats, 55% of Independents, and 14% of Republicans. Leaders at the organization welcomed Green's new articles on Monday.
"The president of the United States has no authority to wield armed federal agents to intimidate communities, suppress constitutional rights, or consolidate political power on American soil," said FSFP chairman and senior legal adviser. "The framers anticipated this kind of abuse of executive power. They gave Congress the remedy: impeachment."
John Bonifaz, FSFP's president and co-founder, declared that "this is an existential moment for our nation and our democracy. We either have a Constitution, or we don't."
"Donald Trump has already engaged in multiple abuses of power," he stressed. "We call on our elected officials in Congress to carry out the mandate of their oath to protect the Constitution at this critical time by standing up and demanding impeachment proceedings against this lawless president."
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