House sinks Al Green bid to impeach Trump

House lawmakers voted Tuesday to sink a Democratic effort to impeach President Trump over the administration’s aggressive deportation agenda.

Sponsored by Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), the resolution accused Trump of abusing his powers by launching an immigration crackdown that led to the killing of several civilians earlier in the year.

The vote was 232-147 to shelve the measure, with eighteen Democrats joining almost every Republican in voting to table the resolution, including Reps. Henry Cuellar (Texas), Jared Golden (Maine), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.), Jared Moskowitz (Fla.), Kathy Castor (Fla.) and Emanuel Cleaver (Mo.).

Forty-seven lawmakers voted “present,” including the top Democratic leaders: Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), Katherine Clark (Mass.) and Pete Aguilar (Calif.).

Democratic leaders said their noncommittal votes reflected the fact that the impeachment articles were brought to the floor without any formal investigations, hearings or broader examination of the charges they contained.

“None of that serious work has been done, with the Republican majority focused solely on rubber stamping Donald Trump’s extreme agenda,” the Democratic leaders said Monday night in a joint statement.

But there are other reasons for their cautious approach.

Democrats are bullish about their chances of flipping control of the House in November’s midterms, and they want to keep a disciplined focus on the volatile economy and high cost of living under Trump’s second term, which they see as the best message for achieving that goal.

Impeachment, while supported by many liberals, also risks distracting from the broader economic message, which has a better chance of resonating with moderate and independent voters who might want a check on Trump, but don’t support ousting him altogether.

Some Democrats are also worried that impeaching Trump would only animate the president’s supporters to get to the polls, making it tougher for Democrats to flip the House in the midterms.

Heading into Tuesday’s vote, Rep. Pete Aguilar (Calif.), the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, further distanced party leaders from the resolution.

“This is something oftentimes I think the right-wing media wants us to talk about,” Aguilar said. “But it’s not anything that’s top of the agenda for House Democrats.”

Green, for his part, has been undeterred. A 22-year House veteran and staunch liberal representing Houston, he says Trump’s actions have left him no choice but to pursue impeachment. A failure to do so, he says, would send the message to future presidents that Trump’s actions did not rise to the level of impeachment.

“The issue isn’t whether the President is guilty of impeachable offenses, because he is,” Green wrote last week to his House colleagues urging their support. “The super salient issue is: What will the U.S. House of Representatives (which has the sole power to impeach) do about it?”

Green’s impeachment articles focused on the administration’s deportation surge earlier in the year, when members of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) conducted aggressive raids around the country in search of undocumented immigrants.

In the course of those operations, federal enforcement officers killed a handful of civilians, including Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis; Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston; and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine.

The administration has defended the killings, saying federal officers feared for their lives in each instance and were merely acting in self defense — an argument disputed by the victims’ relatives, camera footage or both.

Green’s impeachment articles named those victims, accusing the president of “operating vicious, quota-driven, unaccountable paramilitary forces killing people.”

“President Trump, using the powers of his high office, individually and in coordination with officers in his administration, has transformed ICE and CBP into dangerous, unaccountable paramilitary police forces that operate without oversight and pose a direct threat to the constitutional order of the United States and the people of the United States,” the articles read.

“By such abuses of power, President Trump is brazenly and wantonly devolving the United States democratic republic into an authoritarian regime.”

Green is no stranger to clashes with Trump. Under the president’s first term, Green was among the first Democrats to pursue impeachment, even when party leaders remained cold to the idea. (They would eventually change their tune, voting twice to impeach Trump during his first term).

More recently, Green made waves in the Capitol for heckling Trump during his appearances before joint sessions of Congress in both 2025 and 2026. For the earlier incident, House lawmakers voted to censure Green .

The outbursts have frustrated some Democrats in the Capitol, who want the party to stay focused on kitchen table economics. Those critics need not worry about another round of Green impeachment resolutions next year. In May, the longtime Democrat lost his primary , a victim of the Republicans’ national redistricting campaign.