House Tables Al Green's Third Impeachment Resolution Against Trump, 147 Democrats Vote to Advance It

The House voted 232-147 on Tuesday to table Rep. Al Green's resolution to impeach President Trump, killing the measure before it could reach a substantive vote. Forty-seven members, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Whip Katherine Clark and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar, voted present rather than take a position, according to CBS News.

Green, a Texas Democrat, forced the vote using a privileged resolution, H.Res. 1486, which requires House leadership to schedule action within two legislative days once introduced. It's the third time in roughly two years Green has used this tool to try to force an impeachment vote, according to Axios.

The resolution accused Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors tied to the conduct of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. It named four people killed by federal immigration agents this year: Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who died in Minneapolis; Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who died in Houston; and Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero, who died in Maine, according to mediabias.news and Anadolu Agency. None of the sources reviewed identify criminal charges filed against any specific agent in connection with these deaths, and no formal investigation findings are cited.

Green has argued Trump turned ICE and CBP into what he called "dangerous, unaccountable paramilitary police forces that operate without oversight," per mediabias.news. He didn't hold back on his own party's leadership either. "They will acknowledge that what the president is doing is impeachable, but they would have us wait. Well, the Constitution doesn't have a wait clause in it," Green told reporters Monday, according to WFMD.

Leadership held back, and said so plainly

Jeffries, Clark and Aguilar laid out their reasoning in a joint statement Monday. "Impeachment is a sacred constitutional vehicle designed to hold a corrupt executive accountable for abuse of power, breaking the law and violating the public trust," they said, adding that it "traditionally requires a comprehensive investigative process, the collection and review of thousands of documents, an exacting scrutiny of the facts, the examination of dozens of key witnesses, Congressional hearings, sustained public organizing and the marshaling of the forces of democracy to build a broad national consensus."

"None of that serious work has been done, with the Republican majority focused solely on rubber stamping Donald Trump's extreme agenda," they added, according to CBS News.

Eighteen Democrats crossed over to vote with Republicans on the motion to table, according to Anadolu Agency. Roughly 147 members voted against tabling, meaning they wanted the impeachment question to move forward.

Aguilar told reporters Tuesday that impeachment is "not anything that is top of the agenda for House Democrats," per CBS News. But Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who would chair the Judiciary Committee if Democrats retake the House, told NBC's "Meet the Press" earlier this month that Trump has "undoubtedly" committed impeachable offenses and that Democrats "will not hesitate" to use the tool if they win back the majority.

The political math behind the split

The Hill's reporting, cited by Breitbart, noted the bind Democrats are in: pushing impeachment risks distracting from an economic message that polls better with moderate and independent voters, and could energize Trump's base heading into the midterms. Axios reported some Democrats who ultimately voted with Green privately grumbled beforehand that the vote was a distraction from the party's messaging in the House's final in-session week before the midterms.

On the other side of the ledger, the White House pointed to officer safety. White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis told The Gateway Pundit, according to mediabias.news, that "this type of garbage is contributing to our law enforcement officers facing a more than 1,300% increase in assaults against them." That figure did not appear in any of the other outlets' coverage reviewed for this story, including Breitbart's own reporting on the vote, meaning it has not been independently corroborated here.

Green is leaving Congress in January after losing his primary in a newly redrawn Houston-area district, according to CBS News. He was censured by the House last year for shouting at Trump during an address to a joint session of Congress.

The vote settles nothing about the underlying allegations. No independent investigation into the four deaths cited in Green's resolution has been announced by any body named in these reports, and whether Democrats revisit impeachment now hinges on one outstanding variable: whether they retake the House majority in November.