House Democrats are preparing a vast oversight agenda, with investigations of President Donald Trump, his family and his administration if the party sweeps control of the chamber from Republicans in the November elections.
The undertaking is as robust as it is daunting, spanning several House committees. With majority power comes bigger budgets and staff, and the ability to investigate, subpoena and potentially course-correct what the Democrats say are widespread corruption and abuses of power. Impeachment of the Republican president and Cabinet officials is not off the table.
“There is a cost to the American people of the out-of-control corruption,” said Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who is in line to become House speaker if Democrats win control at the Capitol.
If you can’t get 2/3 of the senate to convict, impeachment is so much political theater. Democrats will be quite lucky to take a majority in the senate, 67 is theoretically possible but not realistic, I don’t think, and unless a lot changes quickly there won’t be many republican defections. Not that it’s useless, because impeachment proceedings are another time sink for the executive branch, but it’s foolish to put eggs into that basket because it’s a broken mechanism.
The more important function of Congress over the next two years will be the stoppage of rubber stamping of Trump-friendly legislation, subpoenaing executive officials and forcing them to choose between testifying under oath and risking contempt (and public reporting of same, for whatever that’s worth), and investigating and reporting on the crimes that Trump and his administration have committed over the past two years.
Are they going to do anything about the people who ignore the subpoena or just let that slide like last time?
It is absolutely not “theater,” though if you don’t understand the process I could see how it could be tempting to think that
Yeah but what about my rage at very complicated things that seem super simple to me? How will I blame the Democrats for that?