After the President’s unrepentant comments this morning and the Republican Party’s rapid return to baseline–witness Lindsey “Count Me Out” Graham accompanying Trump on his border visit–the correct course seems clear: Impeach this afternoon and send the article or articles to the Senate this afternoon. The purpose of the 25th Amendment gambit in the interim remains unclear, and it suggests Congress would prefer to outsource its responsibilities to the vice president.

Any delay in sending the article(s) to the Senate would suggest political maneuvering. More important, it would suggest subservience of House Democrats to President-Elect Biden’s wishes. An immediate impeachment and trial would be an important and double statement of legislative assertion: First, Congress would be defending itself. Second, it would be doing its own job on its own terms rather than helping Biden do his. Congress is not the president’s orderly. Only a Congress of the president’s party can tell him with adequate clarity that legislative priorities–which include institutional self-defense, especially when self-defense must be taken literally–are not up to the White House to determine.