Impeachment

Can You Un-Impeach a President?

Democrats may revive impeachment if they take Congress in November. Trump and his allies, meanwhile, want his two impeachments erased.

Gene Healy | 6.22.2026 5:00 PM

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Impeachment is on the table if the Democrats take Congress in the November midterms, according to the party's leadership. Still, they're anything but irrationally exuberant about removing President Donald Trump from office. "I think it's very likely predictable how everyone would vote," Sen. Brian Schatz (D–Hawaii), the likely Democratic whip, grumbled to CNN's Inside Politics on Sunday. Impeachment's "not a panacea," adds Rep. Jamie Raskin (D–Md.), who'd be chair of House Judiciary if the Democrats win the House; it's "one more tool in the toolkit, and we will use it if we need to use it."

Meanwhile, Trump and his congressional allies are mulling a contrary scheme to get the president un-impeached. According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, the president has spoken to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R–La.) about getting his two first-term impeachments "expunged," and Alan Dershowitz is on the case.

As usual, when Trump floats a bizarre new legal scheme, the first question is: "Can he do that?" A better question, for those of us who care about presidential abuse of power, is whether symbolic impeachment fights are the best use of our time.

As to the first question, there's actually some precedent for this odd gambit. It involves one of Trump's favorite presidents, fellow rageaholic Andrew Jackson, whose portrait now........

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