Al Green forced House Democrats to go on record on impeaching Trump this week.
Instead of picking a side, Hakeem Jeffries and his top deputies voted present.
Jeffries has been dodging that exact question for months – and this week's vote finally explains why.
Forty Seven Democrats Refused to Pick a Side
The House voted 232 to 147 on Thursday to sidestep Rep. Al Green's latest impeachment resolution against President Trump.
Forty seven House Democrats voted present.
That group included the party's top three leaders – Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Whip Katherine Clark, and Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar.
Not "no." Not "yes." Present.
Green, a Texas Democrat redistricted out of his own Houston seat and on his way out of Congress, has now led six separate efforts to impeach Trump since 2017, out of nine total attempts by House Democrats.
Not one other member of Congress signed on as a co-sponsor this time.
His own party would not even give him the courtesy of a straight vote.
Green Wanted to Impeach Trump for Letting ICE Do Its Job
Green's resolution did not accuse Trump of bribery or obstruction.
It accused him of letting ICE and Border Patrol agents enforce the law without a leash.
Those are the same agents getting doxxed, ambushed, and run off the road by mobs while they try to remove people who are in this country illegally.
Green wants to impeach the president for backing the agents doing that job.
Jeffries Has Given Reporters the Same Non Answer for Five Months
Reporters have pressed Jeffries on the same impeachment question since April, and on the three networks where he answered on camera, he gave the identical line every time.
On NBC in June, Kristen Welker asked him directly whether Democrats would move to impeach Trump if they win the House.
"We haven't ruled anything in or ruled anything out," Jeffries answered.
On CNN in August, a host asked the same question, and Jeffries gave the identical non-answer almost word for word.
On ABC in September, the question came a third time, and Jeffries repeated the same dodge again.
He is not undecided.
He is stalling, because he knows the answer his base wants to hear is the one answer that could sink his majority before he ever gets it.
Democrats Learned Nothing from 2006
Nancy Pelosi lived through this exact trap two decades ago.
Facing a wave election in 2006, she told her caucus that impeaching George W. Bush was "off the table," and she repeated that line all the way through Election Day.
Democrats won the House that November without ever running on removing a president.
Pelosi only reversed course in 2019, after moderate members in swing districts started drifting toward impeachment on their own – she read the room and followed her caucus, rather than leading it into a ditch.
Jeffries is trying to thread that same needle in 2026, except his caucus is already drifting without him.
Rep. Madeleine Dean has said Trump's own words were proof enough of high crimes and misdemeanors.
Rep. Sara Jacobs has accused him of threatening mass violence abroad.
Sen. Andy Kim has openly called for Trump's removal from office.
Jeffries cannot control Al Green, and he cannot control the progressive base pushing him toward a fight his own campaign chair does not want.
The Affordability Trap Democrats Built for Themselves
Rep. Suzan DelBene, who runs the Democrats' House campaign arm, has been telling anyone who will listen that affordability is the only message that matters heading into November.
A Fox News poll earlier this year found Democrats already hold a real edge with voters on the cost of living.
Every hour Jeffries spends dodging impeachment questions on national television is an hour he is not spending on that advantage.
Every headline about Al Green forcing a floor vote buries the headline Democrats actually wanted this week.
That is not bad luck.
That is Jeffries losing control of his own party in real time, on camera, over and over again.
Jeffries's Dodge Is Not a Strategy, It's Paralysis
The Democrats who are fired up enough about Trump to torch a decade of message discipline are the same Democrats who cannot win a majority without swing voters who do not want another impeachment circus.
Pelosi solved that problem by making a hard call and sticking to it for over a decade.
Jeffries is trying to solve it by saying nothing at all, on three different networks, for five straight months.
That works right up until the moment a reporter plays all three clips back to back on live television – and once voters see it, that same tired non-answer is going to sound exactly like what it is: a man too scared of his own party to say the word no.
Sources:
- Chad Pergram, "Reporter's Notebook: Democrats face an impeachment tractor beam that could derail their affordability message," Fox News, September 25, 2026.
- Fox News Staff, "Fox News Poll: An early look at the 2026 midterms," Fox News, 2026.
- Semafor Staff, "Rep. DelBene says affordability more important to voters than impeachment," Semafor, April 15, 2026.
- Steve Chapman, "Democrats and the Trump impeachment trap," Daily Herald, 2018.
