Impeachment Time.

AuthorConniff, Ruth
PositionEDITOR'S NOTE

We have more articles on Donald Trump in this issue than I like. Trump thrives on attention--of both the positive and negative variety. His personal ratings are, and always will be, his chief concern. So while we have been dedicated, for the most part, to covering on-the-ground activism since the election, we are turning our attention to the President in this issue to lay out a detailed argument for his removal.

John Nichols wrote the book on presidential impeachment. Back in 2006, in his classic work The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders' Cure for Royalism, Nichols made the case that impeachment is an essential instrument of democracy, designed by the founders as an important check on executive power.

In this issue of the magazine, he writes that the time to take up that instrument is now.

"The truth is, you could make a credible legal and Constitutional case for impeachment against any recent President," Nichols told me when we were discussing his piece. There is no problem, he stressed, finding sufficient Constitutional justifications (on war powers alone, there were ample grounds to impeach Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama). Impeachment is fundamentally a political act, and requires political will. And the political will to impeach Donald Trump is growing.

We are proud to publish the case for impeachment, laid out by Nichols in this issue, and to add The Progressive's voice to the call to remove the worst, most corrupt, and most anti-democratic American President in modern times.

Managing Editor Bill Lueders takes on another fundamental Constitutional issue in these pages, one that has been a bedrock value of this magazine since its founding, with his report on the campus free speech debate. In an essay that would bring a smile to the face of our late editor and free speech absolutist Erwin Knoll, Bill points out what's wrong both with students preventing conservative speakers from making remarks on campus, and with the overwrought reaction of Republicans who want to punish the people who disrupt conservative speech. The solution to despicable political speech is more speech--not the aggressive suppression of ideas by campus thought police or overbearing government officials.

Publisher Norm Stockwell has a terrific interview...

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