Impeach Him

The time has come to impeach President Trump, and he has given us plenty of reasons to do it.

Free Speech for People (FSP), which gathered more than 200,000 signatures on a petition to impeach him, says he is vulnerable because of his violations of the Emoluments Clause, his unlawful and corrupt campaign practices, and his pardoning and blocking the prosecution of his fellow Jan. 6 insurrectionists.

FSP lists additional impeachable offenses that Trump committed during his 2024 election campaign and in the days leading up to the inauguration, including: threatening physical violence, including murder, against political opponents, journalists and protestors; using racist, xenophobic rhetoric that has endangered immigrant communities; and violating campaign finance laws by offering benefits in exchange for campaign contributions.

Impeaching Trump obviously sounds ludicrous right now because Republican senators are giving him everything he wants, either because they are so terrified of him they don’t have the guts to oppose him or because they want to replace our democracy with Trump as a Hitler-trained neo-Nazi dictator. Either way, they are not likely to impeach him.

Not today perhaps. But times are changing. Changing fast. A massive uprising of outrage is spreading across America and it grows every day as more and more people awaken to the fact that Trump and Elon Musk are leading a coup.

And yes, it is a coup. Webster defines coup as “a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics and especially the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group.” Doesn’t that describe the Trump/Musk combo? As for violence, think Jan. 6.

This is not who or what Americans voted for. They voted for Trump because Trump said he would reduce taxes, make groceries cheaper, end the Russian-Ukraine war on Day One, expel as many non-American citizens as he could, reduce inflation, Make America Great Again, blah, blah, blah.

That’s what they voted for, but that’s not what they got. But it is extremely doubtful they would have voted for him had they known that he would (Note to reader: Read as much of this paragraph as you wish, or spot read, or add your own examples, but you get the point.) cut spending to Medicaid, cancer research, Head Start and Meals on Wheels; throw into chaos every state and local agency and charity across America that gets federal funding; deny food and medicine to hungry people, including babies, knowing it will kill millions of people, and knowing that it will suddenly deny medical help for people who have experimental drugs inside them, and knowing that it will cause millions of babies to be born HIV positive; obliterate “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs wherever he can, thus screaming what a white-supremacist racist he is; overturn many of America’s precious civil rights and protections that date back 60 years; send the U.S. military to assist in immigration enforcement; pull out of the Paris climate accord, the World Health Organization, and a global pact to tax large multinational companies; revoke security clearances and Secret Service protections for appointees who later criticized him; order the abolition of birthright citizenship; threaten to move the 2 million Gazan citizens to other countries while he and Musk turn Gaza into a Riveria-like resort and tourist destination, which, aside from being disgusting, experts say would violate international humanitarian law and would be a war crime and a crime against humanity; refuses to say he would not use the U.S. military to invade Mexico to attack drug cartels, Panama to regain control of the Panama Canal, Greenland for political purposes and to get control of its rare earth minerals; and on, and on, and on.

In effect, Trump is installing Project 2025, the detailed scheme to destroy our democracy and create a dictatorship. The project is well planned, and Trump is installing it fast, piece by piece. This is after he said he had never heard of Project 2025 but did not approve of it, then hired most of the project’s primary authors to help him get it done.

But the resistance is beginning. Americans are revolting. Look around. Early on, the Fraternal Order of Police, the largest police union in the United States, which fully supported Trump in all three of his election campaigns because of his support of law enforcement, condemned him for freeing the Capitol rioters who were convicted of attacking police officers. Then, last Sunday, 50,000 people joined a call involving Indivisible, MoveOn and Working Families Party on how to combat the Trump/Musk coup. On Tuesday senators in both parties said they were being overwhelmed by millions – millions! – of phone calls and emails telling them to stop Trump. By the weekend the senators were being smothered by 1,600 calls a minute, up from an average of 40 a minute. Tuesday night, more than 3,000 protesters, including U.S. senators (Democrats of course) gathered outside the Treasury Building in Washington, and protesters acting in groups that ranged from three people to 300 people visited senators’ in-state offices to make their feelings clear. On Wednesday, thousands of people turned out at state capitals and city halls across America to register their anger. On Thursday, Rep. Al Green (D-Tex.) announced he will introduce articles of impeachment against President Trump “for dastardly deeds proposed and dastardly deeds done”

And it’s not just Democrats who are resisting. It’s also those hardcore Trump fans who once believed in him but are awakening to the undeniable fact that he lied to them so they would elect him but has abandoned them now that he doesn’t need their votes anymore. Jilting people like that can create angry people.

And so the resistance, in its early stage, is working. Attorneys general in several states are banding together to stop some of his actions. Legal advocacy organizations have partnered with aggrieved federal workers, among others, to file a dizzying number of lawsuits across America, and federal judges are issuing order after order halting unconstitutional executive orders signed by Trump.

So far, neither Senate majority leader John Thune nor House Speaker Mike Johnson has taken any steps to arrest Trump’s unconstitutional arrogation of power. Both have surrendered their power over the purse, both have abdicated their powers of oversight, and Republicans in both houses have been spineless, submissive and subordinate. Instead of acting as an equal of the executive branch, the Republican-controlled Congress has become a subject of Trump’s will.

But as Senators and House members see this massive uprising of outrage spreading across America, they’re going to start thinking of saving their own skin. Those up for election in 2026 very well might take note of Trump’s plummeting popularity—he’s already 10 points below where Joe Biden was at this point—and decide that staying with Trump will destroy them, and the only way to save their jobs will be to switch. They may not become Democrats, but it’s likely that enough will turn anti-Trump to stop him cold. It will only take a tiny number to turn the tide—four in each house would be enough—and once that happens a flood could follow.

We need to remember, and keep firmly in mind, that a majority of voters last November voted for someone other than Trump, either Kamala Harris or a third-party candidate but not Trump. And nobody who disliked Trump then is likely to like him now. Neither are those 30 percent of eligible voters who did not vote; surely they must be waking up to see who they elected (bad politicians are elected by people who do not vote) and not liking what they see. Surely they’ll join us.

Bottom line: We need to think big. Keep putting pressure on senators to let them know we are watching them and we will hold them accountable. Keep taking our case to the courts, which appear to be doing their jobs and thwarting Trump wherever possible. The courts can slow him now, then we can impeach him later and finish off the MAGA movement in the 2026 midterms.

But for our movement to work all of us must join it. Each of us must use whatever talent we have and do something, no matter how small, even if it’s just a phone call or two. If we will, we win.

Onward and Upward.