Democratic Michigan Rep. Shri Thanedar dropped his ill-fated effort to force the House to vote on his impeachment resolution against President Donald Trump following widespread pressure from Democrats to stand down.
Thanedar, an embattled two-term lawmaker facing a primary challenge from the left, filed a privileged resolution Tuesday that would have forced House Democrats to vote on seven articles of impeachment brought against the president. Thanedar’s decision to cave to House Democratic leadership and not trigger a vote Wednesday, comes as Democrats viewed his impeachment effort as a distraction from the conference’s united opposition against the president’s “one big, beautiful bill.”
“[A]fter talking with many colleagues, I have decided not to force a vote on impeachment today,” Thanedar wrote on X Wednesday afternoon. “Instead, I will add to my articles of impeachment and continue to rally the support of both Democrats and Republicans to defend the Constitution with me.”
Thanedar said earlier Wednesday he had no misgivings about making his colleagues, even Democratic lawmakers representing battleground districts Trump won in November, vote on his impeachment resolution.
“We’ve got to take a stand,” Thanedar told the Daily Caller News Foundation at a press conference Wednesday morning. “As a member of Congress we take hard votes every day. Every day there is a hard vote to take.”
“They [Democrats representing swing districts] just need to look into not what plays well politically, not what the polls are saying. We got to do the right thing. That’s what you [voters] sent us here to do,” the congressman added.
House Democratic Conference chair Pete Aguilar, the No. 3 House Democrat, publicly criticized Thanedar’s impeachment effort at his weekly news conference Wednesday.
Many House Democrats privately torched Thanedar to reporters with one lawmaker telling Axios under the protection of anonymity, “This is the dumbest fucking thing. Utterly selfish behavior.”
Another House Democrat told the outlet the anticipated impeachment vote was “a waste of fucking time.”
“Our focus is on health care being stripped away from the American people,” Aguilar said. “That is the most urgent and dire thing that we could be talking about this week. Everything else is a distraction.”
Thanedar did not rule out forcing a vote on his impeachment resolution in the future.
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