Lone Democrat’s Trump impeachment push blindsides party

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his leadership team believed they had successfully convinced one of their famously rogue members — Rep. Shri Thanedar — not to force the party into an untimely vote on impeaching President Donald Trump.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his leadership team believed they had successfully convinced one of their famously rogue members — Rep. Shri Thanedar — not to force the party into an untimely vote on impeaching President Donald Trump. Then Thanedar did it anyway. The Michigan Democrat had personally signaled to his party’s leadership in recent weeks that he would not offer his articles of impeachment against Trump, according to three people familiar with the conversation. But the two-term Michigan Democrat blindsided leadership and his Democratic colleagues when he decided to go ahead with the move anyways, the people familiar said. His maneuver — which comes as he faces a tough primary challenger this cycle — will now force the full House to take a vote later Wednesday on whether to advance those impeachment articles. Since Thanedar’s decision to force the vote, numerous top Democrats have spent the last 24 hours trying to convince him not to do it. And in a private Democratic meeting Wednesday morning, multiple lawmakers fumed at the prospect of interrupting their week-long push against the GOP’s tax and spending cuts bill to vote on an unrelated Trump impeachment vote. Even Rep. Jerry Nadler — the top Democrat on House Judiciary who led the charge against impeaching Trump in 2019 — stood up in front of his colleagues and called the idea “idiotic,” according to a person who was in the room. Nadler was met with applause from the room after his remarks.