House Democrat revives push to impeach Trump

Talk of impeaching President Trump has gone from 0 to 60 in a matter of days.

Rep. Al Green, a veteran of the first-term Trump impeachment battles, announced on the House floor Wednesday that he will propose new articles of impeachment against the president after Mr. Trump proposed the U.S. should take over the Gaza Strip.

“The movement to impeach the president has begun,” Mr. Green said. “I rise to announce that I will bring articles of impeachment against the president for dastardly deeds proposed and dastardly deeds done.”

The move is unlikely to go anywhere in the GOP-controlled House, but it serves as a rallying point for Democrats seeking ways to show their frustration with the new president and his frenetic pace of changes.

Mr. Green, Texas Democrat, did not specify the high crimes and misdemeanors he plans to accuse Mr. Trump of, but he chastised the president for suggesting that Palestinians should move out of Gaza and that the U.S. could occupy the land.

“Ethnic cleansing in Gaza is not a joke, especially when it emanates from the president of the United States,” Mr. Green said.

​The White House declined to comment.

House Oversight Chair James Comer, Kentucky Republican, said he wasn’t surprised to hear Democrats vowing impeachment.

“Well, that’s what they do. They don’t do anything to try to help or govern, they just want to impeach,” said Mr. Comer, who was part of the GOP impeachment probe of President Biden.

In 2017, it wasn’t until July that the first Democratic lawmaker, California Rep. Brad Sherman, proposed articles of impeachment. Mr. Green, meanwhile, was the first to force a floor vote in December of that year, watching his proposal scuttled in a bipartisan 364-58 vote to table the matter.

The congressman said that experience will help him this time.

“I did it before, I laid the foundation for impeachment and it was done,” he said. “Nobody knows more about it than I.”

Congressional Republicans eagerly seized on Mr. Green’s decision, firing off fundraising emails Wednesday asking supporters to pony up to fight the impeachment.

“Just a few short weeks after President Trump returned to the Oval Office, the left isn’t even giving him a chance,” Sen. Jim Banks, Indiana Republican, told his backers.

Mr. Green also called for outside support to pressure Congress, saying the impeachment push “is going to be a grass-up movement, not the top down.”

An impeachment petition launched by Free Speech for People had 120,000 signatures as of early this week.

John Bonifaz, the group’s president, said Mr. Trump deserves impeachment for his conduct during the campaign, including working with Elon Musk and making xenophobic comments about immigrants. Mr. Bonifaz said Mr. Trump’s actions now in office boost the case.

“There’s no question in the less than two weeks Donald Trump has been back in power he’s been abusing his power, he’s been trampling on the Constitution,” Mr. Bonifaz said in an audio clip posted online.

Mr. Trump is the first president ever to have been impeached twice.

The first came in 2019. Democrats accused Mr. Trump of abusing his power and obstructing Congress after he withheld security money Capitol Hill had directed to Ukraine.

The House voted for two articles of impeachment.

The GOP-led Senate held a trial in early 2020 and acquitted Mr. Trump on both counts, with a majority of senators voting “no” and leaving it well shy of the two-thirds needed to convict and remove him from office.

A year later, as Mr. Trump prepared to depart office, the House impeached him again, citing his behavior surrounding the 2020 election and the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. That time 10 Republicans joined Democrats in backing the proceedings.

The Senate, then under Democratic leadership, began its trial in February, after Mr. Trump was out of office. It would eventually vote to acquit, albeit by a narrower margin, with 57 senators — including seven Republicans — voting to convict him.