For the first time in office, Trump doesn't face the threat of impeachment

President Trump’s political opponents have called him cruel and authoritarian and dictatorial. They’ve accused him of rewriting the Constitution and trampling on basic rules of government.

But one thing that’s been missing in all the early vitriol over Mr. Trump’s first 10 days is the I-word.

For the first time in his political career, Mr. Trump sits in the White House without a serious threat of impeachment hanging over him.

No House members have rushed to file articles of impeachment, no senators are thundering about it from the chamber floor. There’s barely a low-level rumble about it from the usual suspects among leftist activists, who while being vociferous in their criticism of the new president are focusing more on resistance than removal.

“Our focus is going to be on how do we fight back,” Rep. Jim McGovern, Massachusetts Democrat, told The Washington Times. “We’re not talking about impeachment, and we’re not talking about anything like that. We’re talking about how we stop his right-wing agenda and how we stop his undermining of our democracy.”

Mr. Trump is the first person to be impeached twice, earning that ignominy first for efforts to withhold security assistance money from Ukraine in 2019, and then for the events surrounding the 2020 election and certification of the results.

But impeachment had loomed large since his first moment in office in 2017, when liberal activists went live with ImpeachDonaldTrumpNow.org just after his swearing-in. “The effort to impeach President Donald John Trump is already underway,” The Washington Post declared that afternoon.

The following day, protesters descended on the District of Columbia for the Women’s March, some holding signs such as “Impeach Him Already!”

Those sentiments were fueled by fantastical — and thoroughly, if belatedly, discredited — allegations about “collusion” with Russia. Mr. Trump’s firing of then-FBI Director James Comey, who’d allowed the erroneous claims to fester, fanned the impeachment flames even further.

By late 2017, Rep. Al Green had forced a first impeachment-related vote on the House floor, and by the time Mr. Trump left office more than a dozen impeachment resolutions had been drafted — and two succeeded in the House, though neither led to a Senate conviction.

Mr. Green, Texas Democrat, this year has brushed aside questions about impeachment plans for Mr. Trump.

The groups behind the 2017 Inauguration Day impeach-Trump website, Roots Action and Free Speech for People, have also gone silent.

That’s not to say there’s been zero talk, but what there has been has come from fringe media figures.

Brian Beutler, a left-wing journalist, wrote a piece the day after the inauguration last week saying Democrats should “start that process today” because of Mr. Trump’s pardons for those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who has assisted in impeachment cases before Congress, said it’s not that Mr. Trump’s opponents wouldn’t impeach him if they could. But they don’t see an opening.

“The threat of impeachment is lowered is not because of a decline in appetite but opportunity for critics,” Mr. Turley told The Washington Times.

He said Mr. Trump’s election in November represented a rejection of the “weaponization of the legal system, and suggested Democrats need to learn lessons from that.

“It is true that generals often focus on fighting the last war, but these generals lost the last war in spectacular fashion,” he said.

Mr. Trump’s early actions have to be tempting some Democrats, with an unprecedented set of executive orders and actions to rewrite the structure and purpose of key government work, from immigration to spending to diversity.

Rep. Glenn Ivey, Maryland Democrat, said Democrats right now are looking to the courts, where some of Mr. Trump’s aggressive moves are already being litigated.

A federal judge in Washington has halted his spending pause, prompting the White House to rescind the order. A judge in Seattle put his attempt to change birthright citizenship for children born to illegal immigrants and temporary visitors on hold.

Mr. Ivey, though, didn’t rule out impeachment — and indeed suggested it may be a matter of time.

“If his first term is any indication, he’ll probably give us reason to take a look at it at some point,” the congressman said.

But if Democrats do plan to impeach Mr. Trump, they have to commit to it, Rep. Jared Golden, Maine Democrat, said.

“You don’t start from a plan and then walk back,” Mr. Golden said. “That’s something you learn in the military, to stay on schedule.”

That’s also a lesson for Republicans.

Ten House Republicans voted to impeach Mr. Trump in the second go-around in 2021, after the chaos of Jan. 6. Of those, eight are no longer in the House, having either retired or been ushered out the door by Trump-backed challengers.

Mr. Trump, if anything, has even more control of his party now.