Republicans have a warning for their base: If you let Democrats retake the House, they’ll impeach Donald Trump again.

“Democrats would vote to impeach (Trump) on their first day,” Speaker Mike Johnson claimed in an interview with the Shreveport Times this month. Conservative columnist Bryon York warned Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to redistrict California was a veiled threat to “end the Trump presidency by using the constitutional procedure to end presidencies — impeachment.” And the National Republican Congressional Committee recently unleashed a digital ad framing the stakes of the midterms this way: Democrats’ “Project 2026” agenda is to “impeach President Trump.”

As the GOP is girding for potentially tough midterms battles, it sees the spectre of impeachment as a reason for conservative-leaning voters to come to the polls in a year when Trump is not on the ballot.

But so far, at least, Democrats seem wary of e

ven talking about it. In conversations with roughly a dozen Democratic strategists and elected officials, there is little consensus about the party’s strategy on impeachment. Many warned against focusing on it.

“We should never, at least in the near future, use the ‘I’ word,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.). “One of the things we learned is that articles of impeachment are also articles of recruitment for Trump.”

Trump survived removal efforts and found his way back into power, even though Democrats said he was a threat to democracy. If anything, impeachment and his legal troubles before returning to office resulted in a fundraising boon for Trump.

House Democratic leaders appear vexed at the prospect of making a third run at removing Trump from office after previous attempts ended in acquittals in the Senate. With the party needing only a handful of seats to take back the majority in the House, it is not clear the broader electorate is clamoring for another impeachment fight.

Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ office declined to comment for this story. But a person close to House leadership, granted anonymity to discuss campaign strategy, blasted Republicans for going into “full fear mode” about the midterm elections.

“There will be some emotional members who want to grab headlines with impeachment, however [House Democratic] leadership has thus far shown that it’s not a tool in our box” to hold Trump accountable, the person added, with House Democrats blocking attempts by some members to impeach him.

“Of course impeachment is a tool of the Congress that should always be available and appropriate,” said Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), who also chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “But right now, I think we’re in a stage where we’re trying to try this case out in the court of public opinion before we do anything else.”

Even outside groups that were leading agitators for Democrats to launch impeachment efforts during Trump’s first term seem reluctant to deploy that same strategy again.

“Impeachment is good, but it’s a symbolic act. It’s not enough,” said Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible.

So far this year, House Democrats have doomed efforts by their own caucus members to impeach Trump, including a majority of the caucus joining House Republicans to kill an impeachment push from Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) over Iran airstrikes in June. House leadership successfully dissuaded Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) from moving forward with another article of impeachment stemming from Trump’s push to annex Greenland and on tariffs.

Green plans to keep trying.

“I will not stop and I promise you this president is going to be brought down. He’s got to be brought down,” Green said during a press conference this month in suburban Chicago. Speaking alongside several Democrats from the Texas legislature that left the state to prevent a quorum in Austin to pass the new Texas maps, Green vowed: “He will be impeached again.”

For now, Green is considered an outlier among the caucus, but he was in 2018, too.

Back then, House Democrats, led by then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, were initially uneasy about leaning fully into impeachment talks heading into the midterms. But the burgeoning blue wave that helped Democrats take back the House was propelled by a broader message from the party’s base, who harnessed anti-Trump sentiment promising to hold Trump to account.

Just two weeks after Trump was inaugurated in 2017, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said her “greatest desire is to lead him right into impeachment,” and she continued to call for his impeachment. Four articles of impeachment were introduced in that Congress, by Reps. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) and Green of Texas on a range of offenses ranging from obstructing investigation by firing then-FBI Director James Comey, violations of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution and a pair of articles citing Trump’s use of “racially inflammatory statements.”

By 2019, about a week after being sworn in, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) revved up an anti-Trump audience proclaiming, “We’re gonna impeach the motherfucker!”

While many of these key figures from past impeachments are still in Washington, the politics of impeachment have changed. Democrats have struggled to craft a coherent message and maintain a sustained fight against Trump and his Republican allies.

Many Democrats see it as a fool’s errand to go down that path again.

“Absolutely not. It is bananas to even think about it,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of Third Way.

His organization has been trying to warn Democrats against engaging in maneuvers that make them look weak compared to Trump’s aggressive dismantling of federal government and political norms. Impeachment would be a “Trump dream,” he said, that plays into the president’s political strengths.

Some frontline Democrats aren’t running away from impeachment, but they caution that more energy needs to be spent convincing voters Democrats have an agenda worth supporting.

“Impeachment is simply one tool in the tool belt of opportunities to hold the other branch to account,” said Rep. Janelle Bynum, one of incumbent House members Democrats are preparing to defend in next year’s midterms.

There are other tactics Democrats should deploy, according to Levin of Indivisible: “We want hearings, investigations, subpoenas, testimonies, oversight. Trump isn’t the only or even the most important target here — collaborators, capitulators, and enablers should know what’s coming.”

For some, that includes going after those in the president’s orbit who are ramping up pressure campaigns on elected officials in red-leaning states like Texas, Indiana, and Missouri to take up off-year redistricting to create more winnable districts for Republicans to maintain control of the House.

As both parties become entrenched in redistricting battles, some GOP operatives fear it may muddle the party’s ability to elevate a third Trump impeachment as top issue in the midterms.

Republicans worry that without control of the House, Trump’s agenda will grind to a halt. Even with their slim control of both chambers of Congress, Republicans have had difficulty passing much legislation. Trump’s signature tax law was passed through a special reconciliation process requiring a simple majority of both chambers to pass.

If Democrats get power back, Republicans warn, they’ll be looking to wield it.

“If Hakeem Jeffries and Democrats get the majority, day one they’re going to pass articles of impeachment,” said Indiana Republican strategist Pete Seat, pointing to calls from the Democratic base to push back against Trump.”How could they not?”

Shia Kapos contributed to this report.

Texas Democrats who left the state to stymie Republicans over redistricting have returned to Austin, ending a two-week standoff over President Donald Trump’s plan to carve out five new GOP congressional seats.

Their return to the state means the Texas House now has the sufficient number of legislators needed to pass a new map benefiting the GOP. Democrats had used the gambit to stall legislative business and bring national attention to Republicans’ decision to pursue off-cycle redistricting ahead of the midterms.

In a statement, the Texas House Democratic Caucus said that members returned on Monday morning “to launch the next phase in their fight against the racist gerrymander that provoked a weeks-long standoff with Governor [Greg] Abbott and President Trump.”

The drama in Texas set off a national redistricting battle, most prominently with California Gov. Gavin Newsom vowing to retaliate against Texas Republicans by extracting an equal number of Democratic-leaning districts from California’s congressional map. Trump has also been pushing to take his redistricting plan to other Republican-led states, like Indiana and Missouri.

The Democratic National Committee has fallen far behind in the cash race.

After a brutal 2024 election and several months into rebuilding efforts under new party leadership, the DNC wildly trails the Republican National Committee by nearly every fundraising metric. By the end of June, the RNC had $80 million on hand, compared to $15 million for the DNC.

And the gap — nearly twice as large as it was at this stage in Trump’s first presidency — has only grown in recent months, a Blue Light News analysis of campaign finance data found, fueled by several distinct factors.

Major Democratic donors have withheld money this year amid skepticism about the party’s direction, while the small-dollar donors who have long been a source of strength are not growing nearly enough to make up the gap. And the party has quickly churned through what money it has raised in the first half of the year, including spending more than $15 million this year to pay off lingering expenses from Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.

The DNC has less cash this summer than it did at any point in the last five years.

“I understand that donors want some kind of a reckoning,” said Steve Schale, a Florida-based Democratic strategist. “But I also think that the kind of state party building that I think [DNC Chair] Ken [Martin] wants to do at the DNC is really vital to our success. And so I hope people kind of get over themselves pretty quick.”

The fundraising troubles reflect ongoing questions about the DNC’s direction under Martin, who was elected earlier this year, and comes as the DNC has faced months of bitter infighting. Continued cash shortages could limit the party’s ability to rebuild for a new cycle. And the DNC’s money woes stand in particularly stark contrast to Republicans, who have leveraged President Donald Trump’s fundraising prowess to raise record sums.

“Chair Martin and the DNC have raised more than twice what he had raised at this point in 2017, and our success in cycles thereafter is well documented. Under Ken, grassroots support is strong,” DNC Executive Director Sam Cornale said in a statement. “It’s now time for everyone to get off the sidelines and join the fight. Rebuilding a party is hard — rebuilding relationships and programs take time and will require all hands on deck to meet this moment.”

The DNC’s money woes stand out among major Democratic groups, Blue Light News’s analysis found: Democrats’ House and Senate campaign arms are near financial parity with their Republican counterparts, and several major donors who have withheld funds from the DNC are still giving to those groups.

“Donors see the DNC as rudderless, off message and leaderless. Those are the buzzwords I keep hearing over and over again,” said one Democratic donor adviser, granted anonymity to speak candidly about donors’ approach.

The DNC, on the other hand, touts Democrats’ success in state and local elections this year as proof the party’s investments are paying off. The group also began transferring more funds to state parties this year, and argues it is better-positioned financially than it was at this time in 2017, when it also significantly trailed the Trump-powered RNC.

Some Democrats attribute the slowdown among donors primarily to the need for a break after 2024, and the challenges of being the party out of power. Large donors would rather bump elbows with high-profile figures like a president or House speaker; Democrats cannot put on those kinds of fundraising events right now. The DNC also struggled for cash during Trump’s first presidential term, and that did not stop Democrats from taking back the House in 2018, or winning the presidency in 2020.

Still, the longer the DNC struggles to build up cash, the harder it will be to close that gap heading into the 2026 midterms and beyond. And the fact that other party committees are not seeing the same financial struggles puts more responsibility on Martin and his team to figure out a way to right the ship.

“Obviously, the sooner the DNC and other Democratic-aligned groups can get investment, the better. It’s better for long-term programs on the ground, it’s better to communicate our message early on,” said Maria Cardona, a DNC member and Democratic strategist. “However, I think you’re going to see donors coming into those things because they are starting to see Democrats fighting back, and that’s what they want.”

Just 47 donors gave the maximum contribution to the DNC in the first half of the year, according to the Blue Light News analysis of the party’s filings with the Federal Election Commission. Over the same period in 2021, more than 130 donors gave a maximum contribution. (In 2017, when the party was similarly struggling with large donors, the figure was 37.)

That means dozens of the DNC’s biggest donors from early last cycle have not yet given to it this year — accounting for several million dollars the party group has missed out on this time.

Many of those biggest donors have continued to contribute to other Democratic groups and candidates, indicating they are still aligned with the party and willing to dole out cash — though often not as much, and not to the DNC.

In the run-up to the DNC chair election earlier this year, several large donors publicly preferred Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin Democratic Party chair, to Martin, who long served as the leader of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and also led the Association of State Democratic Parties.

“If Ken [Martin] really wanted to impress donors, he’d go do 20 or 30 salon events with donors and let them yell at him,” said the Democratic donor adviser. “If you take that on the chin, make some changes, then I think we could see some movement. But [he’s] not going to do that.”

With large donors lagging, the DNC has touted record grassroots fundraising from online donors. On ActBlue, the primary Democratic online fundraising platform, the group raised $33.8 million over the first six months of the year, up from $27 million over the same time in 2021.

But the total number of online donors was roughly the same in both periods — suggesting online donors are giving more than they were four years ago, but the group’s donor base has not expanded substantially.

Most DNC donors this year were contributors to Harris’ campaign or the DNC last cycle, according to the Blue Light News analysis. Another 14 percent of donors had no record of donations on ActBlue last cycle, suggesting the DNC is finding new small donors — but not nearly fast enough to make up for the drop-off among large donors.

In fact, the rate of online giving to the DNC has slowed in recent months. The party’s best online fundraising month was March, when it raised $8.6 million on ActBlue from 254,000 donors; in June, the party raised $4.1 million on the platform from 157,000 donors.

And reaching those online donors comes at a cost: The DNC has spent $5.7 million on online fundraising this year, according to its FEC filings. On Meta, which includes Facebook and Instagram, it is one of the largest political spenders this year, according to the platform’s data. The total spent on fundraising expenses so far is nearly as much as the DNC has sent to state parties this year.

Another set of major expenses also stands out for draining the DNC’s coffers: continuing to pay off expenses from Harris’ failed 2024 presidential bid.

Her campaign ended last year’s election with roughly $20 million in unpaid expenses, according to people familiar with its finances, although none of Harris’ campaign committees or affiliates ever officially reported debt. The DNC has spent $15.8 million total on coordinated expenses with the Harris campaign this year, including $1.3 million in June. A party spokesperson declined to comment on future campaign-related payments.

Elena Schneider contributed to this report.