This argument will continue, with new fuel being added by the administration’s refusal to turn over a whistleblower’s complaint regarding the Trump-Zelensky conversation. It is hard to see how it could possibly be resolved before we are well into the 2020 campaign season. But there is something the House could do right now, an idea that I have raised before: censure the president.
The procedure for doing so is pretty straightforward, as spelled out in a recent report by the Congressional Research Service:
Should a House committee report a non-Member censure resolution, the full House may consider it by unanimous consent, under the Suspension of the Rules procedure, or under the terms of a special rule reported by the Committee on Rules and adopted by the House. 17 If widespread support exists for the censure resolution, unanimous consent or the Suspension of the Rules procedure may be used. Otherwise, the resolution could be brought to the floor under a special rule reported by the Committee on Rules. All three of these parliamentary mechanisms require, at a minimum, the support of the majority party leadership in order to be entertained.
In other words, a censure resolution could be brought to the House floor with support from Democrats alone, and it would not require any action on the part of the Senate.
This would not sate the appetite of the pro-impeachment forces, or end the debate over whether that step is warranted. But it could be done quickly, with the evidence at hand, and would have the benefit of forcing Republican members to go on record stating whether they do or do not find this behavior on the part of the president acceptable. While many would argue that censure is a symbolic gesture, it is a disgrace that Trump would share with only one other president in American history — his purported idol, Andrew Jackson. Jackson was censured by the Senate in 1834 as the result of a little-remembered dispute over the Second Bank of the United States; it was expunged a few years later when his pro-Jackson Democrats gained a majority in the chamber, which showed that they regarded a censure as more than a slap on the wrist.
None of this would end the argument over impeachment, but it would prove to the American people that at least part of their government sets a higher standard of behavior than our current president does. It also, finally, would force Republicans to answer a question that they have been dodging: Is there anything this president does that you will not tolerate?
Censure of Trump and five bucks will get you a pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks.
Look, at this point Pelosi doesn't have the votes for censure, let alone impeachment. Tumulty admits it won't accomplish anything even if it did happen. And Trump will simply say -- correctly for once because no Republican would risk getting Amashed over voting for it -- that there's a purely political Democratic "witch hunt" going on against him.
Not even Paul Ryan and John Boehner censured Barack Obama. Censure resolutions were introduced against Nixon but he resigned, and the censure resolution against Bill Clinton over Monica Lewinsky failed because Newt Gingrich didn't have the votes for it.
House Democrats did vote to condemn Trump over his racist remarks against Reps. Omar, Tlaib, Ocasio-Cortez, and Pressley earlier this year, but it fell short of official censure.
And like the condemnation vote, censure is not going to fix a damn thing, and Tumulty should know better. If censure was a real option, it would have been used already for precisely the reasons Tumulty laid out.
But that of course leaves us in the same position we've been in since January: Democrats control the House, and Nancy Pelosi controls House Democrats, but so far the votes aren't anywhere close to being there in order to be able to impeach Trump.
The Ukraine situation may change all that in the near future, however.
With Pelosi unwilling to impeach Trump, Democratic rank-and-file members are frantically looking for something to fortify their investigations. On Friday, Judiciary members pressed Nadler to invoke Congress’s long-dormant inherent contempt authority that would allow Congress to jail or fine people for defying subpoenas.
The power hasn’t been used in more than 100 years. Pelosi, leadership and other House lawyers were dismissive of the idea when investigators first floated it last spring. But Judiciary members are once again trying to force the issue.
“Our side says it's ‘legally questionable,’ ‘it hasn't been used in forever,’ and ‘blah, blah, blah,’ ” said Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), a member of the panel, who argues Trump’s legal team frequently has used last-ditch efforts and bogus explanations to block testimony — and the House should do the same.
“I say do it,” he continued. “Let them argue in court that they take the position that it's legally questionable. We back off of everything! We’ve been very weak.”
The frustration with the Democratic approach extends to members of Pelosi’s leadership team.
“We need to develop other tools because our tools are not working,” said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), a Judiciary panel member who is co-chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee. “We cannot allow the administration to simply continuously stonewall Congress with no consequences.”
Lieu is pushing for the use of inherent contempt.
Even Schiff, who came to Congress in part by defeating a Republican who voted for President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, said on Sunday that relying on the courts may not work for Trump, Ukraine and the undisclosed whistleblower complaint.
“We cannot afford to play rope-a-dope in the court for weeks or months on end,” Schiff said. “We need an answer if there’s a fire burning it needs to be put out, and that's why we're going to have to look at every remedy . . . we're going to have to consider impeachment, as well, as a remedy here.”
Ostensibly the next step in this drama is Thursday, when Acting DNI Joseph Maguire goes before the House Intelligence Committee. This whole mess started because Maguire refused to turn over the transcript of Trump's call and the whistleblower complaint as required by law. Committee chair Rep. Adam Schiff then issued a subpoena for Maguire to do so, and that showdown comes later this week.
If Maguire doesn't comply, Pelosi has hinted that the resulting "grave new chapter of lawlessness" would lead to a "whole new stage of investigation" into the Trump regime. That gives me some small measure of hope at least, but there's not a reason to believe that Trump won't try to call that bluff between now and Thursday.
And if it is a bluff by Pelosi, well, like I've been saying, if Democrats keep walking down the middle of the road on impeachment, they're going to get hit by the bus in the 2020 elections and it won't be a question any longer, because Trump will be re-elected.
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