With the GOP currently controlling both chambers of Congress, House Democrats are doing everything they can to claw their way back into power. And now that midterms are just over a month away, ranking members of the POP [Party of Outrage Professionals] are giving voters a tantalizing preview of what they’ll do if they get there.
Are they threatening lower grocery prices? Nope. Affordable housing? Not this time around. World peace? Also not a priority. If the left manages to secure the congressional upper hand, leaders told the Associated Press, they plan to look so far up Donald Trump’s backhole that they’ll be able to tell what the man had for breakfast the morning he stared directly into the solar eclipse. Because nothing says “we heard your concerns about the price of eggs” quite like vowing two years of wall-to-wall C-SPAN hearings.
“With majority power comes bigger budgets and staff, and the ability to investigate, subpoena and potentially course-correct what the Democrats say are widespread corruption and abuses of power,” the AP helpfully explained.
Democrats will apparently not be pointing their shiny new subpoena cannon at USAID, Minnesota’s welfare-fraud machine, New York’s Medicaid boondoggle, or California’s multibillion-dollar unemployment-fraud fiasco. As best I can decipher, the priority of the planned investigatory colonoscopy—which the AP calls “as robust as it is daunting”—includes Trump, Trump’s finances, Trump’s family, and roughly anything Trump has ever looked at, sneezed in the vicinity of, or briefly considered looking at or sneezing in the vicinity of.
From there, the examination list expands to cover ICE operations, the Epstein files, HHS under RFK Jr., Venezuela, Iran, minerals deals, private funding for America’s 250th birthday bash, and White House “vanity projects” including the gilded ballroom and L’Arc de Trump. In other words, Democrats’ 2027 legislative calendar looks less like a governing agenda and more like the Cheesecake Factory menu.
After explaining that Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries will “almost certainly be under pressure to move swiftly to articles of impeachment against Trump,” the AP acknowledged—without a single trace of irony—that “impeaching the president a third time may not hold the currency that it once did.”
Hahahahahahaha, you don’t say.
Impeachment used to be the equivalent of your dad unbuckling his belt. Now it’s your mom counting to two and seven-eighths while you continue to lick the shopping cart handle.
It’s not that Democrats think they’ve got a cakewalk ahead of them. Lawmakers are reportedly “bracing” for a Trump administration that [*checks notes*] might even ignore subpoenas or refuse to hand over documents. Can you imagine? The White House telling Congress to pound sand?
Oh, wait. There was that time, not even all that long ago, when Joe Biden asserted “executive privilege” over the audio of his interview with special counsel Robert Hur—the one that made Biden sound like an “elderly man with a poor memory” and that AG Merrick Garland refused to turn over to Congress. Republicans responded by holding Garland in contempt of Congress—at which point Democrats decided that declining to cooperate with the guy with the gavel is perfectly permissible when you have a good reason. Such as really, really not wanting to.
More recently, Bill and Hillary Clinton RSVP’d “nah, we’re good” to their subpoenaed depositions in the House Epstein investigation, eventually showing up to testify only after the Oversight Committee advanced contempt proceedings against them. Naturally, the whole thing was dismissed as more of that good old “political theater” the GOP is famous for.
There was also Hunter Biden straight-up defying a congressional subpoena—declining to appear for a closed-door deposition and instead holding a press conference outside the Capitol to explain why he wouldn’t be appearing inside it. Democrats called the investigation an “illegitimate exercise” and the White House dismissed the whole thing as a “partisan smear campaign.” Republicans called it breaking the law, mostly because “man holds press conference announcing his refusal to obey a subpoena” was already taken.
Back then, congressional investigations were less of a constitutional guardrail and more of a deranged Republican pastime—like competitive bass fishing or chanting “Let’s go Brandon” in an Applebee’s. But apparently subpoenas have since regained their sanctity—particularly now that Democrats are gearing up to investigate everything and everyone from Trump’s children and his tax returns to the deportation of illegal immigrants and, presumably, whether the guy who installed the White House toilets itemized his mileage properly.
To be clear, Republican probes are “bizarre political stunts” and “baseless fishing expeditions.” But this? This is different, you see. This isn’t a witch hunt or a taxpayer-funded game of Where’s Waldo. This is oversight, silly. The distinction is actually quite simple: A fishing expedition is what the other party conducts. When it’s your party doing the conducting, it’s a painstaking, democracy-saving marine research project.
And that really sums up the magic of Washington: Nothing has intrinsic moral value anymore. Subpoenas, investigations, privilege, contempt, impeachment—they’re all either sacred constitutional safeguards or outrageous abuses of power depending entirely on which side of them you happen to be standing.
Republicans, obviously, are hardly immune to this phenomenon. Give either party a congressional gavel and within 15 minutes it will discover a deep and abiding reverence for checks and balances that mysteriously evaporates the moment the gavel changes hands. But Democrats are currently doing something particularly impressive: they’re campaigning for the gavel by announcing in advance everyone they intend to hit with it. Think Lock Her Up on steroids or Drain the Swamp with a seating chart.
“We haven’t ruled anything out,” Jeffries told the AP, “and we haven’t ruled anything in.”
Oh, good. They haven’t ruled anything in. I mean, except Trump. And Trump’s family. And Trump’s money. And ICE. And Epstein. And RFK Jr. And Iran. And Venezuela. And minerals deals. And corporate corruption. And the ballroom. And the arch. But apart from that, the field remains wide open.
Say what you will about Make America Great Again, but at least somebody remembered to put the America in the sales pitch. Democrats appear to be running with “Give Us the House and We’ll Get That Guy.” And good luck fitting GUTHAWGTG on a baseball cap.
Republicans already have the House, the Senate, and the White House. They’re holding the winning hand—all they really have to do is not drop the cards. The problem is, midterm elections are notorious for low turnout, which is a funny time for nearly half of the country to decide politics is boring and stay home. If you’re down for the two-year GOP colon probe, by all means, sit this one out. Otherwise, I’ll see you at the polls.
POLL REDUX FOR FINICKY PHONES:
Are you planning to vote in the midterms?
Does Hunter Biden smoke crack?
I am now!
I’ve penciled in democracy.
Sorry, I’m Vee.
*combo/unsure/other
Missed opportunity: The acronym for Party of Outrage Professionals should be PoOP.
Great post. I'm running for Republican Committeeman of my tiny ward and district in extremely blue, insanely "progressive" West Philadelphia. I have nineteen constituents. But I'm doing something! Working to get more former Dems to switch not to just independent but actually register Republican so we can do something.