House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Sunday, Sept. 13, 2026, that Democrats have not ruled impeachment of President Donald Trump in or out if they take back the House in November — a carefully hedged answer that still keeps the nuclear option on the midterm table.

Asked on ABC’s This Week whether “hold the crooks accountable” meant day-one impeachment proceedings, Jeffries told George Stephanopoulos: “No, we haven’t ruled anything in and we haven’t ruled anything out in terms of impeachment.” He said accountability work would be led by Reps. Jamie Raskin (Judiciary) and Robert Garcia (Oversight) if Democrats chair those panels, and that the caucus would “follow the facts, apply the law, be guided by the Constitution, and then let the chips fall where they may, in the best interests of the American people.”

Earlier in the same interview, Jeffries framed a Democratic House as an immediate corruption-and-cost fight. “We’ve got to combat the unprecedented corruption that’s been unleashed on the American people, and beginning on day one, hold the crooks accountable,” he said, according to multiple outlets that carried the exchange. He did not name specific targets in that riff.

Beyond impeachment talk, Jeffries listed three early legislative priorities if Democrats win: nullifying Trump’s tariffs, forcing a wind-down of the six-plus-month Iran war, and restoring Affordable Care Act subsidies that expired at the start of this year. “These are some of the things that I think we can begin to do, but it’s going to have to be a bold, aggressive legislative effort that we sustain, not just for the first 100 days, but for the first year and the entirety of the Congress,” he told Stephanopoulos, per The Hill.

The politics are blunt. Trump has already said he expects Democrats to impeach him if they retake the chamber. As of Friday, Decision Desk HQ gave Democrats a 68 percent chance of flipping the House; Democrats need a net of three seats. Control would restore subpoena power and committee oversight — the practical lever Jeffries is selling even when he refuses to pre-commit to articles of impeachment.

That is the libertarian-adjacent tell in a partisan fight: impeachment is still a political weapon when conviction odds in the Senate are thin. Jeffries is keeping the threat warm while pitching tariffs, war spending, and subsidy renewal as the day-one agenda voters can scoreboard.

Sources