Metia hates the grits pot.
Whenever it was time to tidy up the house, all the kids in my family had a specific job. Even when our cousins came to visit, they knew the rules. Some people mopped, others swept and we all took turns washing the dishes after a meal. My older cousin Metia was born with a superpower that enabled her to clean a kitchen in less than 2.3 minutes. She probably could have become an X-Man if Professor X needed someone to do chores around the X-Mansion. She actually enjoyed it. So she would often trade her housecleaning duties with someone else and volunteer to wash dishes.
Unless we had just eaten grits.
I don’t know if it was the sight or the consistency of cold grits in dishwater that made her gag, but she’d say: “I’d rather clean the whole house than wash a grits pot.” She tried rubber gloves. She tried closing her eyes. But, to this day, Metia still gets queasy washing a pot of grits. And curiously, this motherfucker loves grits. She is obsessively germophobic and loves to cook. So sometimes, she will just dry heave her way through a grits pot-scrubbing because she knows someone has to do it.
The thought of impeaching Donald Trump makes House Democrats queasy.
Their political calculus concludes that impeachment will divide the country and create a backlash that might prevent Dems from winning a majority of Senate seats. Some progressives think impeachment efforts are a terrible idea because the Republican majority in the Senate would never convict Donald Trump, no matter how much evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors are exposed. But the president’s actions are backing Congressional Democrats in a corner.
So, on Tuesday, House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced formal plans to launch an impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump.
The New York Times reports:
After months of caution, Ms. Pelosi has become convinced that Mr. Trump’s reported actions, and his administration’s refusal to share details about the matter with Congress, left the House no alternative but to move forward with an inquiry that has the potential to reshape his presidency and cleave an already divided nation just a year before he plans to stand for re-election. The people close to her confirmed her plans on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose a decision that could still change...
Ms. Pelosi is considering creating a special committee — reminiscent of the one created in 1973 to investigate the Watergate scandal — to look into the president’s dealings with Ukraine and to potentially lay the groundwork for articles of impeachment based on the findings, according to officials briefed on the discussions who spoke about them on condition of anonymity.
The decision to begin a formal impeachment inquiry does not necessarily mean that the House will ultimately vote to charge Mr. Trump with high crimes and misdemeanors — much less that the Republican-controlled Senate will vote to remove him. But Ms. Pelosi and her leadership would not initiate the process unless they were prepared to reach that outcome.
Pelosi and her fellow party members would still rather clean out the White House in the 2020 elections but they have no choice because they know:
Someone has to do it.
When reports of a whistleblower complaint surfaced alleging that Donald Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky eight times in one phone call to investigate Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden, the president called the report “fake news.”
Then, on Monday, Trump publicly admitted that he instructed his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to withhold $400 million in aid from Ukraine at least a week before a July 25 phone call with Zelensky, the Washington Post reports. But Trump claims he did it out of his concern for corruption in the country because everyone knows Donald Trump doesn’t tolerate shady backroom deals with foreign oligarchs. On Tuesday, Trump changed his story again, explaining that he simply withheld the aid because he wanted other European allies to help kick in a few dollars, according to the Washington Post.
He won’t stop lying. He won’t stop obstructing justice. He won’t stop allowing foreign governments to interfere in our elections.
Congress has to impeach. It is their duty.
A growing chorus of Democrats who were previously reluctant to embark upon impeachment proceedings during a presidential election is slowly starting to realize they have no choice but to call for Trump’s impeachment. The Post reports that Biden is expected to make a speech on Tuesday calling on Trump ”to comply with all of Congress’s outstanding, lawful requests for information — in the Ukraine matter, and in the other investigations — and if Trump does not comply, Congress has no choice but to impeach.”
Seven freshman House Democrats penned an open letter begging their colleagues to “consider the use of all congressional authorities available to us, including the power of ‘inherent contempt’ and impeachment hearings, to address these new allegations, find the truth and protect our national security.”
On Tuesday, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) announced on the House floor that it was time for impeachment proceedings.
This is not a partisan issue. If any other person in the world did what President Trump is accused of doing, authorities would have to launch an investigation. In 1974, the United States Senate Judiciary Committee released the report: “Constitutional Grounds For Presidential Impeachment.” The report concluded that a president doesn’t necessarily have to break the law to be removed from office. To explain why this was true, the 64-page document cited three previous examples of conduct that necessitated impeachment:
- Exceeding the Powers of the Office in Derogation of those of Another Branch of Government.
- Behaving in a Manner Grossly Incompatible with the Proper Function and Purpose of the Office
- Employing the Power of the Office for an Improper Purpose or Personal Gain.
Or maybe that’s Donald Trump’s daily to-do list.
If Congress refuses to impeach the president, they will be just as guilty of ignoring the American Constitution as Trump. It is understandable why some politicians are hesitant to go down that road. Ultimately, impeachment is a political tool and it will result in a furious, divisive tumult that will unquestionably result in a partisan brouhaha and I’m sure that makes them uneasy.
But somebody has to clean up this mess.