David A. Graham via The Atlantic:

‘As a constitutional matter, the case for impeaching the president is solid. Trump has usurped congressional powers, started an unauthorized war or two, defied courts, and used his position for outrageous personal and family enrichment. In 2019, my colleague Yoni Appelbaum made the intellectual case for impeachment as a useful democratic process.

The political case for impeaching Trump is shakier. Regardless of the results in November, Democrats are unlikely to get enough votes in the Senate to convict and remove him, meaning that a third impeachment would hit the same dead end as the first two. An impeachment can still be effective as a way of damaging a president, but Trump is already deeply unpopular and will never face voters again, so the upside is limited, and an impeachment might give him a way to rally his remaining base around him—which would only strengthen his power and resolve.

But what if House Democrats impeached Trump’s Cabinet members instead? The power to impeach secretaries and other executive-branch officers is explicit in the Constitution but perhaps not well known, because it’s been used only twice in history. One reason such proceedings are rare is that a president usually fires a Cabinet member or forces them to resign before they can be impeached, but Trump has shown serious reluctance to fire aides because of public pressure. The congressional scholar Norm Ornstein has argued that if Trump won’t rein them in, Democrats should. On Tuesday, outgoing Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican, brought new attention to the possibility by moving to impeach Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. GOP leadership promptly shut down all voting until after the election.…’