Democrat Congressman Al Green of Texas introduced another resolution to impeach President Trump on Monday. The House tabled it 232-147. Dozens of his own party members refused to back him, with 47 lawmakers voting present instead of standing behind the effort.
Green has been doing this since Trump's first term. The difference now is that even the Democrats have stopped pretending it's serious.
The resolution targeted the conduct of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection — framing immigration enforcement as an impeachable offense. Green cited specific individuals in his resolution, including Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero, attempting to build a case that enforcement actions constituted abuses of power.
The math tells the whole story. Republicans moved to table the resolution and won 232-147. Of the 147 who voted to keep it alive, every single one was a Democrat — but that number is well short of the full Democratic caucus. Democratic leadership, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, didn't whip the vote. They announced in advance they would vote present. Forty-seven lawmakers took that route.
When your own leadership won't even vote yes on your impeachment resolution — just "present" — that's not a party divided on strategy. That's a party trying to create distance from a colleague who's become a liability.
Jeffries tried to thread the needle with a statement that managed to praise impeachment as a concept while refusing to support this particular one. "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," Jeffries said. He then added: "None of that serious work has been done, with the Republican majority focused solely on rubber stamping Donald Trump's extreme agenda."
Translation: we'd love to impeach Trump, we just don't want to do it with Al Green's name on it.
This is the same Al Green who lost his own primary in his Houston-area district. He's leaving Congress in January. The House censured him last year for interrupting the president during a joint session address. His political career is a series of escalating stunts with diminishing returns, and this impeachment push fits the pattern perfectly — maximum noise, zero legislative consequence.
The 147 Democrats who voted to keep the resolution alive still represent a significant number willing to go on record supporting impeachment with no investigation, no hearings, and no evidence package. That's not a legal process. That's a loyalty pledge.
But the story isn't the 147 who voted yes. The story is the dozens who wouldn't. Democratic leadership looked at this resolution, calculated the political cost, and decided that voting "present" — the congressional equivalent of looking at your phone — was the safest play. They didn't defend it. They didn't attack it. They just stood in the middle of the room hoping nobody would ask them about it later.
Green files his last impeachment resolution in a Congress he's about to leave, backed by a leadership team that won't even vote for it, in a chamber where the outcome was never in doubt. The resolution is dead. His career in Congress is over in January.
The boy who cried impeachment finally ran out of village.
