There Is No Choice: Trump Must Be Impeached

The Trump Impeachment Question: There are times in a democracy when the law has to steer a narrow course between two serious threats. America is in one of those moments now – like a ship trying to make its way between Scylla and Charybdis. In the old myth, Scylla was a monster that snatched sailors off passing ships, while Charybdis was a whirlpool that could swallow the entire vessel. 

Our modern version may not involve sea monsters, but the danger is just as real. On one side is a president who treats legal limits as if they don’t matter. On the other is the risk that the courts, Congress, and other institutions meant to check that power are too slow, too timid, or too broken to do their job. This isn’t a warning about what might happen someday. We’re already in the strait.

Trump’s Return Creates New Challenges for the Rule of Law

Donald Trump’s return to power is not just another act in the familiar drama of American politics. It is a direct assault on the very framework of American constitutionalism. This isn’t about pushing legal boundaries or stretching precedent. It is about transforming legal defiance into public performance. Trump is not merely ignoring the law – he is staging a spectacle of impunity. Every ignored subpoena, every violated gag order, every delayed trial becomes a demonstration of dominance. The message is clear: the law will not touch me, because I have turned it into theater.

And like all good theater, it draws an audience. What should be a straightforward exercise of legal accountability has become a recurring ritual in which enforcement mechanisms are twisted into symbols of persecution. Each indictment becomes a campaign prop. Each judicial rebuke is recast as political martyrdom. Institutions built to constrain are instead conscripted into a narrative of grievance. And because the machinery of justice moves slowly by design, Trump’s tactics – delay, diversion, denigration – are proving effective. He doesn’t need to win in court. He just needs to run out the clock.

This is Charybdis: a legal system whirling in futility while deadlines lapse and consequences evaporate. Justice doesn’t just fail here – it becomes farce. Trump has figured out how to convert the slow grind of due process into a tool of mockery. Gag orders become proof of censorship. Trials are dismissed as witch hunts. The very idea of law is hollowed out and rebranded as tyranny. And the longer the system hesitates, the deeper the damage. Rule of law begins to resemble a punchline.

But Scylla waits on the other side. That’s the danger of overreaction – the temptation to stretch legal remedies into political revenge, to let fear drive institutions into excess. That’s what Trump is counting on. He dares prosecutors to push too hard, courts to act too aggressively, lawmakers to go too far. He wants the system to stumble into overreach, to justify his claim that it was never about justice to begin with. His strength lies in forcing the guardians of legality into a trap: act, and look like tyrants. Don’t act, and look like cowards.

America Faces a Historic Challenge

This is the bind. The dangers are real, and the choices are terrible. Veer too far one way, and legitimacy crumbles. Veer too far the other, and law loses its teeth. That’s the tragic symmetry of the Scylla and Charybdis metaphor – not a choice between good and evil, but a high-wire act where the price of imbalance is catastrophe. Odysseus didn’t conquer the monsters. He outlasted them. And that, now, is the task before the republic: not conquest, but survival.

But survival demands clarity. It demands the ability to see what’s actually happening. This isn’t a cultural squabble. It’s not the latest round in some never-ending partisan brawl. It is a stress test of whether constitutional limits still mean anything. Because what we are witnessing is not the ordinary friction of democratic politics. It’s the steady conversion of the presidency into a stage for personal power – where law is not enforced but inverted, not respected but turned into a weapon against itself.

We’ve seen this before, just not here. From Orbán to Erdoğan to Putin, we’ve watched elected leaders keep the outward forms of democracy – elections, courts, legislatures – while draining them of substance. The systems look intact, but their spirit is gone. Power is centralized, opposition is marginalized, and the rule of law becomes rule by law. Trumpism is not some American anomaly – it is part of a broader global drift toward strongman politics cloaked in democratic rituals.

Why Donald Trump Must Be Impeached

That’s why impeachment is not some fringe idea or radical gesture. It is the constitutional response to executive lawlessness. If a president announces he will ignore the courts, encourages violence to escape legal consequences, or turns federal agencies into instruments of personal loyalty—then impeachment is not a political maneuver. It is an act of institutional defense. It is the firewall between a functioning republic and something darker.

Impeachment won’t fix everything. It may fail in the Senate. It may deepen division. But not impeaching in the face of overt constitutional defiance would be worse. It would teach future presidents that so long as you can dominate the media cycle, rile up a base, and weaponize delay, the law will retreat. That the Constitution is a suggestion, not a boundary. And that is how republics end—not with a bang, but with the slow corrosion of norms that once seemed unshakable.

Some will argue that voters, not lawmakers, should decide. But that’s a misreading of democracy. Elections matter, but they are not the only safeguard. A democratic system rests on laws, on checks, on balances. Strip those away, and elections become rituals, not safeguards. A ballot is not a blank check. It is a promise to govern within limits. When those limits are shattered, voting alone cannot fix what’s already broken.

So here we are—caught between dangers. A presidency that mocks the law, and a system afraid to defend it. But the Constitution isn’t made of parchment. It lives only if people are willing to act. Not someday. Not when it’s easy. But now, when it’s hard. Because if we choose drift over direction, hesitation over courage, we may find ourselves too far gone to steer back.

In myth, Odysseus didn’t escape unscathed – he lost men to Scylla to avoid being swallowed by Charybdis. That’s the grim lesson for us now: there is no clean exit from this crisis, no perfect choice. But doing nothing is not caution – it’s capitulation. A constitutional democracy cannot survive if it’s afraid to enforce its own rules.

If this moment doesn’t justify impeachment, then the mechanism is a dead letter. And if the Constitution can’t defend itself through those who swore to uphold it, then we are no longer sailing between monsters.

About the Author: Dr. Andrew Latham

Andrew Latham is a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities and a professor of international relations and political theory at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. You can follow him on X: @aakatham.