These cowards can end Trump-fueled madness — but won't

Over a year into President Donald Trump’s second lawless, unconstitutional administration, Congress is only “considering” reasserting itself as a co-equal branch of government.

It has mounted no meaningful response to repeated usurpation of war powers and purse, ignoring continued obstructions of justice and violations of civil liberties. Congress has been so desperate to avoid imposing accountability on this administration that the mere idea of impeachment sent them into a “frenzied rage” throughout 2025.

This inaction bears rotten fruit again and again. The president’s unilateral declaration of war on Iran in February 2026 can be traced directly to congressional inaction after Trump’s unilateral strikes on Iran in May 2025.

At that time, Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) forced a vote on H.Res 537, impeaching Donald J. Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors. Congress voted to table the resolution. By refusing to impose consequences eight months ago, Congress has effectively green-lit this war, including the murder of more than 160 schoolgirls.

American voters across the nation and in swing districts have supported impeachment for nearly a year. Today mainstream grassroots groups like 50501 have joined the call for Congress to impeach Trump. Imagine if Congress was leading this effort instead of fighting it. What could we accomplish if we had our nominal leaders on our own side, rather than fighting against us at every step?

Today, individual representatives say they support impeachment, but they throw up roadblocks: insisting it is a process (Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)), that there should be an inquiry first (Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI)), that they need to have leadership’s buy-in (Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY)), or that they must wait for the midterms (Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)).

These are all lies.

Impeachment is a privileged resolution, and that means any member can introduce articles of impeachment at any time through Rule IX and demand that the House address it within 48 hours. Congress is missing the will to act.

The first impeachment articles of Trump’s second term were filed in April 2025 by Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.), after Citizens’ Impeachment (then Operation Anti-King) coordinated a grassroots campaign to push for impeachment.

H.Res 353 incorporated Citizens’ Impeachment’s article on tyranny and was filed under Rule IX to force a vote. The backlash — from Democratic leadership and from his own party — was so intense that Thanedar withdrew the articles from the floor five minutes before the vote. The resolution has been with the Judiciary Committee, untouched, for the last 10 months.

Where would we be if the opposition party had followed through on that vote in April? What if DOGE; illegal firings of federal workers; and wildly destabilizing, illegaltariffs had been enough for Congress to begin asserting their power?

Rep. Thanedar has since learned to use the drafting of impeachment articles as a political tool instead of the desperately needed accountability that the nation requires. In December of 2025, Thanedar’s office asked Citizens’ Impeachment to endorse H.Res 935 impeaching Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for the murder of two shipwrecked survivors. Citizens’ Impeachment did so, with the caveat that simply drafting articles was not enough — the articles needed to be filed under Rule IX and brought to a vote as soon as possible. Rhetoric was escalating, military assets were being moved into position, and it was clear that military action was imminent.

Had Rep. Thanedar forced a vote then, when Hegseth’s murder of shipwrecked survivors was in the news and Congress had just reminded military members that they must refuse illegal orders, he would have brought consequences to bear on one of the least popular members of Trump’s cabinet, and possibly forestalled the Venezuela strikes. Instead, President Trump and Secretary Hegseth once again usurped congressional war powers without consequence. H.Res. 935 remains with the Judiciary Committee, irrelevant and ignored.

Similarly, Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) spent months requesting an impeachment inquiry into Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s behavior before Robin Kelly (D-Ill.) decided to just write up the articles and make it happen. A full 187 members of Congress have now endorsed H.Res 996, an impeachment resolution for Noem. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) even claimed he would pursue impeachment if Noem wasn’t fired “immediately.”

Without a vote though, even those actions are empty. Jeffries made that promise one month ago. Noem is still in office, H. Res 996 remains in committee, and Noem’s federal paramilitary forces continue their occupation of American cities unabated.

Articles of impeachment record the lawlessness of this administration, but they aren’t magical. The real power Congress has is to force votes on those articles, putting their colleagues on record for their endorsement of the Trump administration’s repeated constitutional violations. And with the exception of Rep. Green, they absolutely refuse to use it.

In perhaps the most baffling abdication of both power and good sense, only two members of Congress have even considered impeachment for the Department of Justice’s inept and corrupt handling of the Epstein Files.

No articles have been written or filed though, despite the nearly unanimous vote to release the Epstein Files; the enormous, bipartisan outrage of the public at the Epstein Class; the blatant cover-up and obstruction of justice at the hands of Attorney General Pam Bondi; and pre-written articles of impeachment sent directly to Congress by thousands of constituents. Congress cannot seem to connect the dots to realize that not only would impeachment be good for the country, it would be overwhelmingly popular, even as midterms loom on the horizon.

The American people like cowards even less than they like fascists. As a result, Democrats are less popular than Trump.

What’s new here is that Congress already knows it can and should do more. As early as July 2025, one anonymous representative admitted it to NBC, saying of their constituents: “They aren’t buying that just because we are in the minority, we can’t do anything. The truth is we can. And we should.”

With the midterms coming up, voters have a chance to do something about this toxic dynamic. There are more than 100 pro-impeachment candidates on the ballot, including prominent contenders like NJ-11 Analilia Mejia, former national political director for Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign and a member of former President Joe Biden’s Department of Labor

The 435 members of the House are the only people with the power to begin impeachment proceedings. The 100 members of the Senate are the only people who can convict and remove Trump and his enablers from power. For a year, these powerful people have refused to take action. They have chosen to delay, and wait, and defer, allowing ever more harm to come to America and its people. In 2026 we should replace them all — they do not have the courage to meet this desperate moment for the country.

• Keira Havens is the executive director of Citizens’ Impeachment, a nonpartisan grassroots movement powered by everyday Americans with a unifying mission: to uphold the Constitution of the United States and impeach, convict, and remove officials who violate their oath of office. The Courage Candidates have pledged to pursue the impeachment of Donald Trump and his enablers for Tyranny, Treason, and Obstruction of Justice. The Courage Candidates are aligned on a pro-democracy platform that includes anti-corruption, anti-oligarchy, and anti-authoritarian positions, including the abolition of ICE. For a full list of Courage Candidates, see: https://couragefordemocracy.com/#candidates.