How to Think About Impeachment No. 3—and the One After That

By Kevin D. Williamson

Wednesday, September 30, 2026

 

The Democrats are sitting on a clutch of very promising-looking political eggs, but they won’t be hatched until the first Tuesday in November. You never know about chickens, but the widely held consensus is that the Republican majority in the House is fixing to be as dead as the fried ones over at KFC, and more than a few observers are betting on a Senate flip, too.  

 

It is of some interest that Republican dogs are not barking much about impeachment. Donald Trump’s foundering popularity is such that Republicans rat-paddling away from the sinking ship of his administration evidently have calculated that there is not a lot of cheese to be got from squeaking about the threat of a third impeachment. Rep. Jim Jordan, who is only the second most detestable Republican from Ohio on the political scene, complained last week that Democrats would conduct a campaign of “nonstop weaponized investigations” once in the majority. Coming from a Trump loyalist, that is a little like hearing the ghost of Sonny Barger complaining that a few of the mourners didn’t wear ties to his funeral.

 

Mostly, Republicans are not talking much about the possibility of another Trump impeachment, mainly because doing so would perforce remind voters that Donald Trump is still the president of these United States and that they are sycophants groveling along behind in his debased wagon train and making barely a peep as he and his circle loot and murder their way around the globe.

 

Democrats are divided. That is how they like to be, flattering themselves, as they do, that this is a sign of their independent spirit and high-mindedness: “I am not a member of any organized political party, I am a Democrat,” and all that self-aggrandizing Will Rogers humblebrag baloney. Democratic division on impeaching Trump—and Pete Hegseth, and Scott Bessent, and others who need impeaching—mainly is not a matter of principle but a matter of self-interested political calculation.

 

About that: If Democrats do indeed win a majority in the House and—the possibility seems more real by the day—the Senate, too, then all of the ones who promised on the campaign trail to prioritize their own political careers and the short-term interests of their party have my personal permission to make whatever calculation they think best. But the ones who ran for office promising to put country ahead of self and principle ahead of party should probably do that instead, since that’s what they said they would do.

 

What would that mean?

 

A Democratic majority in the House will have to do the bulk of the political work on a third Trump impeachment irrespective of the outcome in the Senate: In case of a small Democratic majority in the Senate or continued Republican control, Democrats will have reasons—substantive reasons and reasons having to do with political calculation—to give the case against Trump and his allies a full, extensive airing in the House rather than hastily sending articles of impeachment over to the Senate, because, absent some currently implausible scenario, a small Democratic majority in the upper chamber would produce the same result as a small Republican majority: The articles would fail to produce a conviction, which requires a two-thirds majority.

 

That is, unless some Republican senators can be shamed into acting like the thing they always boast about being: patriots. As we all know, Republicans at the moment are immune to embarrassment, and all political plans that require the Republican Party to suddenly grow a conscience are nearly guaranteed to fail. Democrats have before them a considerable task of persuasion: They need a few million Americans to come around to their point of view, and a dozen or so of them need to be Republican senators. The Democrats’ historical weakness for sliding into mere moral hysteria and rhetorical excess is a real danger here. What’s needed is careful investigative and political work, not a couple of hundred elected Democrats all simultaneously vying for viral social-media moments.

 

Democrats will have excellent political incentives to drag out investigations, oversight hearings, and impeachment proceedings over the course of many months beginning in January. They will also have good practical reasons to do that: Some of the issues are complicated as legal and constitutional questions, and others will require extensive work in investigating, reporting, and documenting matters of fact. What probably should be understood is that, as tall an order as it would be to impeach Trump and remove him from office, the challenge before Congress—and prosecutors and the courts—is bigger than that. Things are going to be complicated: It is not only Trump who needs to be removed and prohibited from holding office; in many cases, impeachment and removal will be a prelude to criminal charges; in some cases, it is likely that investigators will turn up substantial wrongdoing, including criminal wrongdoing, among people who are not officeholders subject to impeachment or other similar sanction. Oversight proceedings, congressional investigation, criminal investigation, and impeachment-related work all will be necessary, in some cases will need to proceed simultaneously.

 

There are three broad categories of misdeeds to consider, those being personal corruption (the improper enrichment of the Trump family and its allies in matters ranging from the largesse of Russian oligarchs to questionable government contracts awarded to Trump-connected firms), lawlessness (the illegal wars in Venezuela and Iran, the illegal imposition of a new national system of taxation in the form of unauthorized tariffs, ongoing attempts to rule by decree, etc.), and incompetence (Pete Hegseth is always ready for his close-up).

 

It is important to keep in mind that Trump has not acted alone in these matters: Consider, for example, that the Trump administration conducted an unauthorized war on Venezuela, kidnapped its president, and is operating a puppet regime in Caracas for the purpose of appropriating Venezuelan oil wealth—and this was in no small part the work of Marco Rubio, whose relatively mild public temperament should not be mistaken for moral distance from the administration and its crimes. Investigations into the administration’s financial corruption are certain to involve scrutiny of Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick. J.D. Vance’s role as an enabler of the abuse of ICE as a political weapon to be wielded against Democratic cities such as Minneapolis will be of interest. There is plenty of room inside the cordon sanitaire.

 

Democrats should take a look across the aisle at an old nemesis, one whose sad example ought to haunt Democratic leaders: Nobody wants to play Mitch McConnell’s part this time around and leave the one needful thing undone. Yes, Trump should be impeached a third time—and if it comes to it, a fourth time, a fifth time, and twice on Sunday. The work is not done until the work is done.