Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats are gearing up to drop the hammer on Donald Trump

| 5:50 pm EDT July 15, 2019
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This morning Palmer Report explained that, while House Democrats aren’t going to impeach Donald Trump right now, they haven’t ruled it out, no matter how many times the media misquotes Nancy Pelosi. In fact, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler just said over the weekend that impeachment is still on the table. Now the House Democrats are gearing up to drop the first of what should prove to be a series of hammers leading up to impeachment.

House Democrats are introducing a resolution condemning Donald Trump for his racist remarks about four non-white freshmen House Democrats, telling them to “go back” to where they came from. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to her membership today, urging them to vote in favor of it. This means the resolution will pass easily. It’s nonbinding, in the sense that it doesn’t cause a trap door to magically open up under Trump’s desk. But it does a few important things.

First, the resolution – which will explicitly call Donald Trump a racist – makes clear to the average nonpolitical American that Trump’s words really are racist. This matters, because the people in the middle generally sit back and wait for one side or the other to spell these kinds of things out for them.

Second, this resolution forces House Republicans to vote “yes” or “no” on whether Donald Trump is a racist. Most will vote that Trump is not a racist, and that can then be used against them when they run for reelection in 2020. A few House Republicans might vote that Trump is a racist, in an attempt at protecting their reelection prospects, but that’ll prompt Trump to begin attacking them. Either way, this forces the GOP to reckon with Trump’s racism.

Third, this is a tangible step forward on the road to Donald Trump’s impeachment. It’s an actual vote condemning a sitting President, which is a big deal when it comes to these kinds of processes. While it’s not the impeachment vote that a lot of people want, it gets us that much closer to impeachment.