The Atlantic

Conservatives Should Want to Impeach Trump

Outsourcing U.S. diplomacy to Rudy Giuliani was a constitutional violation—one whose gravity Republicans might see if they weren’t so busy making excuses for the president.
Source: Eric Thayer / The New York Times / Redux

The House of Representatives begins televised impeachment hearings today, and, if Republicans weren’t so desperate to avoid holding President Donald Trump accountable, they could add their own count to the indictment. Each of the three branches of government—the executive, legislative, and judiciary alike—has vital constitutional duties to perform, and no branch is free to delegate those duties to other branches of government or anybody else. Conservative legal scholars have been trying for years, for instance, to roll back legally binding regulations written by executive-branch bureaucrats rather than Congress.

But along came Trump. Overseeing American foreign policy is both the prerogative and the obligation of the president. In outsourcing U.S. policy toward Ukraine to Rudolph Giuliani, a private citizen whose loyalty lies with Trump personally—not to the office of the presidency, the interests of the United

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Atlantic

The Atlantic4 min read
Hayao Miyazaki’s Anti-war Fantasia
Once, in a windowless conference room, I got into an argument with a minor Japanese-government official about Hayao Miyazaki. This was in 2017, three years after the director had announced his latest retirement from filmmaking. His final project was
The Atlantic4 min read
When Private Equity Comes for a Public Good
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. In some states, public funds are being poured into t
The Atlantic4 min readAmerican Government
How Democrats Could Disqualify Trump If the Supreme Court Doesn’t
Near the end of the Supreme Court’s oral arguments about whether Colorado could exclude former President Donald Trump from its ballot as an insurrectionist, the attorney representing voters from the state offered a warning to the justices—one evoking

Related Books & Audiobooks