Since September, the United States has been conducting an entirely one-sided assault on Venezuelan boats it alleges are carrying drugs, a claim for which they have provided no evidence at all and which would not justify the attacks in any case. Dozens have been killed. Most recently, it was revealed that survivors of one sunken vessel were murdered after their boat had been “clearly incapacitated” in the words of Senator Adam Schiff.
Frankly, this is impeachment-worthy for the president, but it definitely merits impeachment for Pete Hegseth. He may even be pressured into quitting in shame, the way things are going.
But let’s say, like his bumbling with Signal earlier this year, he knuckles down, toughs it out, and faces no real consequences. Well, then it seems to me that he would be low hanging fruit for Democrats to impeach in 2027. Impeach, and remove.
Stick with me for a moment. Allow yourself to hope. All signs from this year’s elections are that we’re in a very favorable environment for Democrats heading into the 2026 midterms. Writing of the special election in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District, where the Republican candidate won by 9 points this year after Trump won by 22 last year, G. Elliott Morris argued that “A swing half as large would give Democrats the U.S. House in 2026, and put the Senate clearly in play.”
Let’s say the unlikely happens and Democrats take both houses in 2026.
Surely that means nothing for removing people from office, right? You’ll never get two-thirds of the Senate no matter how big your majority. And if we get a majority at all, it is likely to be a slim one.
No, that’s quitter talk. We can do this.
Holding presidents accountable is a perennial problem around the world. It’s why political scientists largely suggest doing away with them altogether. Politically, however, such reform can be quite difficult to pull off once you’ve already stuck with one. So many presidential systems have adapted in a number of ways to make their executives more accountable.
One thing that presidential countries have done to give impeachment teeth is to make the removal trial a secret ballot. South Korea does this, and that is why they were successful in removing their president after he attempted to impose martial law on the country on a thin pretense. He was not the first to be removed.
The problem with impeachment procedures that have supermajoritarian requirements for removal is that they give the president’s own party de facto veto power. However, it is often the case that members of that party would readily vote to remove, so long as they had a way to do so without being perceived as selling out to the other side. There is a strong argument to be made that we would have found enough Republicans willing to vote with their conscience, or their sense of physical self-preservation, if we had had a secret ballot on the impeachment trial in 2021.
This is something we can have—at any time. It does not require a constitutional amendment, it does not even require a law. The Senate sets the rules for the trial, and it only takes a simple majority to have the power to do so. A 2027 Democratic Congress could impeach any number of officials in the Trump administration and the judiciary, and conduct the trial with a secret ballot. That does not guarantee that they would get enough Republicans for any of them. But it would increase their chances.
And there are definitely figures that Republicans would be tempted to throw out, despite the failure of the last two Trump impeachments. Again, if Hegseth still has his job in 2027, he would make for a very soft target. So would Kristi Noem, and Kash Patel. From there it gets less likely, but no less worth trying: Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Emil Bove, RFK Jr., and of course, Trump himself. It may be that we couldn’t get to the threshold for removal on any of these, but even increasing the number of Republicans who joined with Democrats would be a signal of the administration’s weakness.
Why surrender on this in advance? Let’s take Congress and then let’s impeach and remove all the bastards we can.
Featured image is The Last speech on impeachment–Thaddeus Stevens closing the debate in the House, March 2, by T.R. Davis.
