128 Democrats join House GOP to block progressive's bid to impeach Trump

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The House of Representatives voted along bipartisan lines to quash a lone progressive lawmaker's bid to impeach President Donald Trump Tuesday afternoon.

Lawmakers agreed to table the measure in a 344-79 vote. A vote to table is a procedural mechanism allowing House members to vote against consideration of a bill without having to vote on the bill itself.

The resolution was offered by Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, who was infamously ejected from Trump's address to a joint session of Congress earlier this year for repeatedly interrupting the president.

A majority of House Democrats joined Republican lawmakers to kill Green's resolution, a sign of how politically caustic the effort appears to be. Just 79 Democrats voted to proceed with the impeachment vote, while 128 voted to halt it in its tracks.

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Liberals who joined Republicans include all three members of House Democratic leadership - House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, R-N.Y., House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., and House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., voted to table the measure.

Green, who has threatened to impeach Trump before, said his latest bid is aimed at the president's strikes on Iran from over the weekend.

"I did not come to Congress to be a bystander while a president abuses power and devolves American democracy into authoritarianism with himself as an authoritarian president," Green said in a statement Tuesday morning.

"President Trump's unauthorized bombing of Iran constitutes a de facto declaration of war. No president has the right to drag this nation into war without the authorization of the people's representatives."

Other progressives, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., called for Trump's impeachment over the strikes in Iran.

Trump mocked those progressives in a lengthy Truth Social post Tuesday, taunting them to "make my day."

"She better start worrying about her own Primary, before she thinks about beating our Great Palestinian Senator, Cryin' Chuck Schumer, whose career is definitely on very thin ice!" Trump wrote. "She and her Democrat friends have just hit the Lowest Poll Numbers in Congressional History, so go ahead and try Impeaching me," he posted.

The push has put House Democratic leaders in a difficult spot as well. Jeffries sidestepped questions on progressives calling to oust Trump during a press conference Monday.

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"A tool that's on the table right now is to continue to demand that the administration present itself before the United States Congress and make the case to the American people as to why this extraordinary step has been taken. That's step one," Jeffries said.

"Step two is for the War Powers Resolution, whether that's the one that has already been introduced or others that may subsequently be introduced, for those resolutions to be debated on the House floor, as should have occurred already. And then we'll see where we're at thereafter."

Pressed again on whether he was taking calls for Trump's impeachment seriously, Jeffries said, "This is a dangerous moment that we're in, and we've got to get through what's in front of us. And what's in front of us right now is the Trump administration has a responsibility to come to Congress, justify actions for which we've seen no evidence to justify its offensive strength in Iran."