Now, for the main event…

Over the past several weeks, as Donald Trump has made a show of expanding and redefining presidential power, Democrats have been anxiously discussing how to hold him accountable, both legislatively and politically, in text chains, conversations on the House floor, and closed-door caucus meetings. “No doubt about it, the military actions and threats and ICE’s gestapo tactics have added a lot of urgency to our conversations and deliberations,” one House Democrat told me. The killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent—captured in videos that have been viewed by 69 percent of Americans, according to a recent poll—has only added to the feeling that Democrats must find a way to push back.

The question, especially for party leadership, is what to do about it. Democrats are still in the minority; they have no say over committee agendas, no authority to issue subpoenas, and no control of committee resources or budgets. And Democratic strategists have pointedly counseled leadership to stay away from the I-word: So far, only a few Capitol Hill outliers are actually calling to impeach the twice-impeached Trump—including serial impeachment advocate Rep. Al Green and oddball Rep. Shri Thanedar—although that could change. Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico gave an eyebrow-raising speech on the House floor last week, saying “there will be consequences” if Trump seizes Greenland, and retiring Republican Rep. Don Bacon told the Omaha World-Herald that he’d support impeaching Trump under those circumstances. But for most House Democrats, one member told me, “the immediate priority [is] stopping the damage he’s doing.” Any articles of impeachment, the congressperson added, would be “about 100 pages long,” but that’s not practical right now. However, impeaching Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who has become the face of ICE overreach, is not out of the question. As my colleague Peter Hamby reported last week, support for ICE has collapsed over the past year—47 percent of Americans believe the agency is making the country less safe, compared to just 34 percent who say it’s making the country safer. In fact, almost half of Americans—46 percent—now support “abolishing ICE,” according to a new poll from The Economist and YouGov. That rapid shift in public opinion may have emboldened House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is now laying the groundwork for extensive oversight of Noem and ICE, especially if Democrats retake the chamber in November, according to two people familiar with the effort. Late last week, Jeffries hosted a meeting with Reps. Jamie Raskin, Robert Garcia, and Bennie Thompson—the top Democrats on the Judiciary, Oversight, and Homeland Security Committees, respectively—as well as Whip Katherine Clark and Rep. Joe Neguse, a member of his leadership team, to discuss how to hold Noem and other D.H.S. officials accountable. Asked explicitly about whether Noem could be impeached, Jeffries has said twice in the last week, “We haven’t ruled anything in, and we haven’t ruled anything out.”

Rep. Robin Kelly isn’t waiting. On Wednesday, the Illinois congresswoman introduced articles of impeachment against Noem on charges of obstructing Congress, self-dealing, and violation of public trust. Eighty-six House Democrats immediately signed on. Party leaders haven’t exactly endorsed the impeachment articles—“Members are going to find their way to get their angst out about unqualified folks, and that’s perfectly understandable,” Rep. Pete Aguilar, the number three in House Democratic leadership, told me—but they haven’t quashed them, either. And many members are taking calls to impeach Noem “very seriously,” said one senior Democrat aide.

Another senior Democrat told me that even if impeaching Noem is not the primary objective or outcome, the case against her may include shadow hearings held outside the official committee structure, as well as collaboration with cities and states to obtain documents and information about her conduct. There’s also plenty of publicly available information, of course—from Noem’s controversial deployment of ICE, to her spending more than $150 million to buy two Gulfstream G7s, to accusations of politicizing FEMA (when she’s not calling to abolish it). ProPublica has reported on how a company run by the husband of Noem’s spokesperson received fast-tracked D.H.S contracts totaling $220 million, while The Washington Post has revealed how D.H.S. pushed a nearly $1 billion contract to a company led by a donor to a pro-Trump group. In the current Republican-controlled House, articles of impeachment are probably D.O.A.—although Speaker Mike Johnson has an extraordinarily narrow minority, and a few dissidents might be tempted to cross party lines and support a privileged impeachment resolution if the politics of ICE become that toxic. But Democrats are taking the long view, following the meticulous Nancy Pelosi playbook. The former speaker oversaw two Trump impeachments by slowly building a case and moving to impeach only when the votes were there—a situation that Democrats would very much like to find themselves in after the midterms. In the meantime, Democratic aides think a thorough investigation could be litigated in the political sphere in front of voters before November—and, perhaps optimistically, curb ICE’s worst behavior. “We’re having a lot of conversations about what that looks like, what the best way to achieve the result that we all want is—and that is both oversight and accountability of the administration in the short term, and winning in November, and then more oversight and accountability,” Rep. Aguilar said.

The changing political tide risks creating some whiplash. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that Democrats were reeling from the aftermath of calls to “abolish the police.” And it was just over a year ago that Democrats lost a presidential election in large part because of the chaotic flow of immigrants over the southern border. But while Trump has kept his promise to close the border, where crossings are at their lowest level in 50 years, voters clearly have less patience with his administration’s aggressive internal deportation campaign, creating a political opening for Democrats.

Republicans, for their part, insist that the pushback against ICE will remind undecided voters in swing districts that Democrats can’t be trusted on immigration. They’re tracking anti-ICE rhetoric and targeting Democrats like frontliner Rep. Dave Min of California, who signed on to Rep. Kelly’s impeachment resolution. Democrats are indeed trying to walk a fine line: criticizing Noem and demanding accountability and guardrails for overzealous ICE agents, while being careful not to call for ICE to be defunded or abolished. No Democrat, for example, has signed on to Rep. Shri Thanedar’s bill to abolish ICE, a progressive mantra wielded by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others during Trump’s first term. Yet the politically adroit A.O.C. herself has doubled down on her objections to ICE, tying the “rogue agency,” as she calls it, to the political fortunes of J.D. Vance, her putative opponent in a potential 2028 presidential race, who has called Renee Good a “deranged leftist” whose death was “a tragedy of her own making.” (A.O.C. has not, however, called for ICE to be abolished during Trump 2.0, which is a notable shift in her rhetoric.) Trump, meanwhile, trolls on—musing about invoking the Insurrection Act to send troops into Minneapolis and other blue cities, and even suggesting to Reuters last week that he might cancel the midterm elections. With a president who seems to view law enforcement and the military as his to deploy at whim, Democrats are preparing for the unexpected come November, according to two party sources. Worried that Trump will try to undermine the midterms, Reps. Raskin, Neguse, and Joe Morelle—the top Democrat on the House committee that oversees elections—are starting to game out a variety of scenarios, including legal strategy and election protection. What happens, after all, if Trump, who still believes the 2020 election was stolen from him, decides to deploy troops on or near Election Day under the guise of combatting fraud? Or if he tries something less dramatic, like eliminating mail-in voting? Democrats want to be prepared.

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