House sinks Al Green impeachment bid, 232-147

The House voted 232-147 Tuesday to table a Democratic resolution to impeach President Trump over his administration’s deportation agenda. The measure, sponsored by Rep. Al Green, accused Trump of abusing his powers by launching an immigration crackdown that led to the killing of several civilians earlier in the year.

Eighteen Democrats joined almost every Republican in voting to shelve the resolution. They included Reps. Henry Cuellar of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, Jared Moskowitz of Florida, Kathy Castor of Florida and Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri.

Forty-seven lawmakers voted “present,” including the top Democratic leaders: Reps. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and Pete Aguilar of California.

Democratic leaders said their noncommittal votes reflected the fact that the impeachment articles were brought to the floor without any formal investigations, hearings or broader examination of the charges they contained.

“None of that serious work has been done, with the Republican majority focused solely on rubber stamping Donald Trump’s extreme agenda,” the Democratic leaders said Monday night in a joint statement.

Heading into Tuesday’s vote, Aguilar, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, further distanced party leaders from the resolution.

“This is something oftentimes I think the right-wing media wants us to talk about,” Aguilar said. “But it’s not anything that’s top of the agenda for House Democrats.”

Green, a 22-year House veteran representing Houston, has been undeterred. He says Trump’s actions have left him no choice but to pursue impeachment, and that a failure to do so would send the message to future presidents that Trump’s actions did not rise to the level of impeachment.

“The issue isn’t whether the President is guilty of impeachable offenses, because he is,” Green wrote last week to his House colleagues urging their support. “The super salient issue is: What will the U.S. House of Representatives (which has the sole power to impeach) do about it?”

Green’s impeachment articles focused on the administration’s deportation surge earlier in the year, when members of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) conducted aggressive raids around the country in search of undocumented immigrants.

In the course of those operations, federal enforcement officers killed civilians including Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis; Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston; and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine.

The administration has defended the killings, saying federal officers feared for their lives in each instance and were merely acting in self defense, an argument disputed by the victims’ relatives, camera footage or both.

Green’s articles accused the president of “operating vicious, quota-driven, unaccountable paramilitary forces killing people.”

“President Trump, using the powers of his high office, individually and in coordination with officers in his administration, has transformed ICE and CBP into dangerous, unaccountable paramilitary police forces that operate without oversight and pose a direct threat to the constitutional order of the United States and the people of the United States,” the articles read. “By such abuses of power, President Trump is brazenly and wantonly devolving the United States democratic republic into an authoritarian regime.”

Green is no stranger to clashes with Trump. Under the president’s first term, Green was among the first Democrats to pursue impeachment, even when party leaders remained cold to the idea. House Democrats would eventually vote twice to impeach Trump during his first term.

More recently, Green made waves in the Capitol for heckling Trump during his appearances before joint sessions of Congress in both 2025 and 2026. For the earlier incident, House lawmakers voted to censure Green.

In May, Green lost his primary, a victim of the Republicans’ national redistricting campaign.