Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Leigh Ann Caldwell.

Alas, after more than 20 hours of negotiations, Vice President J.D. Vance is headed home without a peace deal with the Iranians. President Donald Trump took to his Truth Social soapbox to say that Iran had agreed to all other points but refused to commit to never achieving a nuclear weapon. And while Trump had previously signaled that he was okay with Iran collecting a $2 million toll for each boat attempting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, he is now calling it extortion.

In fact, he announced that he’s directed the U.S. Navy to “interdict” any ship that has paid that toll. “They want money and, more importantly, they want Nuclear,“ he wrote. “Additionally and, at an appropriate moment, we are fully ‘LOCKED AND LOADED,’ and our Military will finish up the little that is left of Iran!” (His caps, obviously, not mine.) So, yeah, that ceasefire is still on shaky ground as we enter a new week…

Congress is back in session tomorrow, and both parties face a flood of challenges, including votes to expel Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell—the leading contender in the California gubernatorial race—after multiple horrendous allegations of sexual assault against him. (Swalwell has denied wrongdoing and said all the allegations are false.) There’s also the ongoing discourse to expel G.O.P. Rep. Tony Gonzales, who has been accused of sexual misconduct with staffers, which is against House rules. And then there’s Republican pressure to vote for another Iran war powers resolution.

Then there’s the freshly revived push for impeachment—a standby during Trump’s first term that has been largely jettisoned as overly quixotic and politically fraught this time around. Democrats remain on solid ground heading into the midterms, but some worry that impeachment fever could distract from their message in the fall and turn off independent voters. And yet others argue that it would be professionally irresponsible to sit on their hands while the president is pushing the bounds of domestic and international law and threatening to end entire civilizations. Food for thought.

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Also mentioned in this issue: Pramila Jayapal, Teresa Leger Fernández, Byron Donalds, Cory Mills, Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Hakeem Jeffries, Jamie Raskin, Jared Huffman, John Larson, Mike Johnson, Sara Jacobs, Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, Gregory Meeks, Josh Gottheimer, and more…

The Cloakroom

Cleaning house: The weekend news cycle was dominated by the harrowing allegations of sexual assault and harassment made by several women, including a former staffer, against Rep. Swalwell. Members of Swalwell’s official and campaign staff have resigned, he’s lost endorsements for his gubernatorial run, and he’s facing calls to drop out of the race and resign from Congress. These demands are coming from Republicans, obviously, but also from many members of his own party. (Swalwell has denied any wrongdoing and says all the allegations against him are false.) “This guy is fucking toast, and it couldn’t happen to a better guy,” said one senior House Democratic aide with ties to California.

The politics of expulsion aren’t simple. Aides I spoke to over the weekend said it would be extremely hard for Democratic leadership to suppress the calls to expel Swalwell, which are coming from swing-seat members and progressives alike. On Sunday, progressive Rep. Pramila Jayapal said on Meet the Press that she’d support an expulsion vote, as did Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus. It will surely be a topic at Democratic leadership and caucus meetings this week.

Notably, Democrats are simultaneously pushing to expel Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales, who has also been accused of harassing women on his staff but has insisted on finishing out his term. Democrats say that if Swalwell goes, then Gonzales should too—a tit for tat that would leave the current balance of power intact. Gonzales doesn’t have many friends in Congress, and Republicans are unlikely to stand up for him in the face of the Swalwell allegations. Florida Republican Rep. Byron Donalds, who is also running for governor, said on Meet the Press that he’d vote to expel both members.

It is very rare for a member to be expelled—it takes two-thirds of the House—but it could happen, especially because ejecting both members would still leave Republicans with a one-seat cushion. Meanwhile, two other members face serious allegations of misconduct. G.O.P. Rep. Cory Mills is under investigation by the Ethics Committee over alleged sexual misconduct, including revenge porn, and misuse of funds. The committee has already found Democratic Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick guilty of misusing disaster relief funds and laundering money. Is another trade-off coming?
Attendance problems: The House, back from a two-week recess, is facing a barrage of tough votes this week, and the outcomes could be determined by attendance. Democrats are going to push a war powers resolution on Iran by Foreign Affairs ranking member Gregory Meeks. Every Democrat is expected to vote for it this time (four defected on a similar measure last month), and at least two Republicans are expected to vote for it, too. Democrats say a third Republican is needed for passage, but attendance could sway the outcome either way.

Will Swalwell show up to vote given the allegations and the calls for his expulsion? And what about Texas G.O.P. Rep. Wesley Hunt, now that he’s lost his Texas Senate race and won’t be in Congress next year? He missed 60 percent of the votes in 2026 leading up to his primary and 25 percent of the votes in 2025, before he announced his Senate run, according to numbers compiled by GovTrack. One aide told me there’s a joke among leadership that they’d rather have Rep. Chip Roy—a stubborn, demanding, and difficult-to-whip member—than Hunt. At least, the saying goes, they know Roy will show up to vote.

Now, on to impeachment…

The Dems’ Impeachment Containment Breach

For much of the past year, Democratic leaders have mostly kept a lid on threats by far-left members to impeach the president. Now, amid Trump’s unauthorized war in Iran and his increasingly erratic behavior, there’s resurgent talk of impeachment—even if it has zero chance of success.

Leigh Ann Caldwell

Thanks to his bizarre and vexing management of his war of volition in Iran, President Donald Trump continues to create diplomatic, economic, and political challenges for both his administration and his party—and, yes, it’s worth noting, his country, too. The U.S. economy is slowing, inflation is higher than when Biden left office, mortgage rates have risen, and gas prices are approaching five-year highs. Vice President J.D. Vance left a marathon negotiating session in Islamabad with no deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz—in fact, Trump said on Sunday that the U.S. will blockade the strait instead.

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Democrats, for their part, are more upbeat than they’ve been in years. They’ve won or overperformed in nearly every off-cycle or special election since Trump took office, and are now anticipating a midterm tsunami—bolstered by last week’s results in former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s ruby-red district, where the Democrat outperformed the 2024 election by 25 points. And yet there’s concern that dozens of House Democrats are conspiring to risk it all on doomed impeachment efforts that they just can’t seem to resist.

For the first 15 months of Trump’s second term, House Dems have successfully ignored the impeachment cries of far-left members, which they view as political nonstarters and electoral poison. But a growing number of them—empowered by Trump’s collapsing support and appalled by his potential war-crime threat to end Iranian civilization—are once again agitating for his removal. Trapped between the demands of an angry left and the desire to court independents, Democrats are divided over how to respond.

Leader Hakeem Jeffries hasn’t exactly shut down the impeachment talk, but he hasn’t encouraged it either. In public, he has argued that Democrats are focused on “making life more affordable.” But he also quietly directed Rep. Jamie Raskin to hold a briefing on Friday to educate members about the 25th Amendment, which can be used to replace an incapacitated president. Successfully invoking the 25th Amendment would require the vice president and the majority of the cabinet to declare the president unable to serve (not gonna happen); two-thirds of both chambers would then need to uphold that verdict (also not gonna happen) should the president resist (which he would). If anything, the exercise was less a serious removal strategy than a reality check—and a pressure valve to let members air their grievances.

Inevitably, the conversation turned to what Congress can do with a simple majority: impeach. At the Friday meeting, Raskin laid out the pros and cons in a wide-ranging conversation among the 80 or so Democrats who attended. Most Democrats think Trump has committed impeachable offenses. “There’s not a lot of debate that those lines have been crossed,” California Rep. Jared Huffman told me after the call. But the timing matters: Is impeachment worth pursuing now, when Democrats control neither chamber—especially if doing so might jeopardize their advantages heading into the midterms? Huffman, for one, told me, “There’s a political price to pay for inaction, that the country—and, I would argue, the whole world—have to see us doing something about this.”

“Strategic Malpractice”

Naturally, the calls for Trump’s removal have been loudest among members in safe blue seats. Last week, dozens of Democrats called for Trump’s removal after Rep. John Larson introduced articles of impeachment. (Larson is usually an ally to leadership, but now faces the toughest primary of his career.) There were 13 articles in all, ranging from the usurpation of congressional powers to the murder of alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean and even “piracy on the high seas.” (Larson introduced them before Trump’s “a whole civilization will die” post.) And when a separate gaggle of Democrats showed up to the Capitol on Friday to try to force Speaker Mike Johnson to take up an Iran war powers resolution, they didn’t dismiss calls for impeachment either. “All options should be on the table,” rising star Rep. Sara Jacobs, a junior member of leadership, told reporters.

The American public largely agrees. A new poll by Democratic polling firm Lake Research Partners found last week that impeachment is supported by 84 percent of Democrats, 55 percent of independents, and even 14 percent of Republicans. Meanwhile, both Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alex Jones, the far-right conspiracy theorist, have recently called for the 25th Amendment to be invoked. MAGA influencers including Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Joe Rogan, Theo Von, and Mike Cernovich have also turned on the president in recent weeks.

But as one Democratic strategist told me, the problem isn’t that a minority of voters oppose impeachment—it’s that a majority may resent Democratic efforts to elevate impeachment above more-tangible pocketbook issues. “When Democrats make it the central focus, it looks like we’re obsessed with the politics of Trump instead of the lives of people,” the strategist said. A senior Democratic leadership aide concurred. “We are holding the administration accountable, and the pressure needs to be on Republicans and the war powers resolution, not impeachment,” the aide said. Anything else would be “strategic malpractice.”

To that end, Democratic leadership is focused on pressuring Republicans to take hard votes on the Iran war, which is what they would prefer to be generating headlines. This week, they will force a vote on House Foreign Affairs ranking member Gregory Meeks’s war powers resolution. Though House Republicans blocked a similar resolution last week, and rejected another in March (with four Democrats opposing it, too), the narrative surrounding the war has soured since then. (This weekend’s failed negotiations in Islamabad, and Trump’s new threat to escalate the battle over the Strait of Hormuz, are unlikely to help.) Every Democrat is expected to vote for it this time.

If it fails, another war powers resolution, by Rep. Josh Gottheimer, is waiting in the wings. April 29 is the 60-day marker at which point, under the War Powers Act of 1973, Trump must receive authorization from Congress to continue the war. If he blows past that limit, impeachment-hungry Democrats can add another article to their list.

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