Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey on Thursday became the latest Senate Democrat to call for President Donald Trump's removal from office, joining a small but vocal group of lawmakers who have escalated their opposition to the administration's military campaign in Iran from procedural complaints to open demands for impeachment or invocation of the 25th Amendment.
"I certainly think the president should be removed," Kim told Fox News Digital.
Kim did not hedge. He laid out two paths and endorsed both.
"I mean, he's unfit for office. I think the 25th Amendment, and if not, then impeachment."
The New Jersey senator now joins Sens. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, and Ron Wyden of Oregon, all of whom have demanded that Trump be impeached or removed through the 25th Amendment. Their demands echo a growing sentiment among House Democrats who have been pushing the same line.
The trigger, Fox News Digital reported, was a series of comments Trump made in the past few days, including a threat that a "whole civilization will die" unless the Strait of Hormuz was reopened. Those remarks, the report noted, "sparked the latest growing push to have him removed from office."
The calls make for dramatic press clips. They do not make for a viable removal effort, and even some Democrats concede as much. Republicans control both chambers of Congress. Invoking the 25th Amendment would require Vice President JD Vance, a majority of Trump's Cabinet, and then a two-thirds majority vote in Congress, a mathematical impossibility in the current political landscape.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island was candid about the odds. He described the push to remove Trump as "not realistic right now, given his oddball Cabinet of sycophants and eccentrics."
Whitehouse's alternative? Patience, and elections.
"We're going to have to buckle down and win this the old-fashioned way."
That framing, an admission that the removal talk is more about positioning than governance, is worth lingering on. Democrats have openly acknowledged the effort is going nowhere under current conditions. What they are doing, in practical terms, is laying groundwork for the fall midterm elections.
Fox News Digital noted that the Democrats' position "foreshadows what could happen if they win big" in those midterms. The removal talk, in other words, doubles as a campaign platform.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has stopped short of calling for impeachment. Instead, he is teeing up another war powers resolution, the fourth since the war began in February, aimed at reining in Trump's authority to conduct military operations in the region. A fragile two-week ceasefire continues as Schumer prepares the measure.
Four war powers resolutions in a matter of months. None have succeeded. The pattern suggests a caucus that is more interested in the gesture than the outcome, a messaging strategy dressed up as a constitutional stand. Rep. Ro Khanna has gone further, openly pledging that Democrats will impeach Trump if they reclaim the House.
There is a difference between asserting Congress's war powers, a legitimate constitutional prerogative, and using that assertion as a stepping stone to removal demands that everyone involved knows cannot succeed. The first is serious governance. The second is theater.
On the other side of the aisle, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso of Wyoming offered a full-throated defense of the administration's military campaign. Barrasso framed the conflict in historical terms, noting that Iran has been hostile to the United States for nearly half a century.
"[Iran has been at war] with the United States for 47 years, and it's time for Iran to choose peace."
Barrasso added bluntly: "They haven't done it yet."
He described the ongoing operation as a decisive success, casting it as the fulfillment of long-standing American strategic objectives. The Iran standoff that prompted Democratic backlash also produced, in Barrasso's telling, concrete military results.
"We have done what we have talked about doing. Eliminate their missiles and eliminate their missile production and eliminate their missile firing capacity, undermine their ability to ever get a nuclear weapon, and sink the navy."
Barrasso also characterized the broader situation as "American peace through strength" and called the operation an "incredible success by the United States." He went further, accusing Senate Democrats of trying to "rip apart DHS", a reference to broader Democratic opposition that extends well beyond the Iran conflict.
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment and had not received a reply at the time of publication.
What stands out is not that a handful of Senate Democrats want Trump removed. That impulse has been a recurring feature of Democratic politics for years. The anti-Trump removal industry has cycled through high-profile antagonists and legal theories with metronomic regularity. What stands out is the gap between the rhetoric and the reality.
Kim says Trump is "unfit for office." Murphy, Markey, and Wyden have made similar demands. But Whitehouse, their own colleague, says the effort is "not realistic." Schumer, the party's Senate leader, won't even endorse the impeachment call. He is filing his fourth war powers resolution instead, a procedural move with no chance of clearing a Republican-controlled Congress.
Meanwhile, Republicans describe a military campaign that has degraded Iran's missile infrastructure, neutralized its naval capacity, and moved the country closer to abandoning its nuclear ambitions. Whether you agree with every tactical choice or not, that is a record of action, not a record of press conferences about actions you cannot take.
The political dynamics are also worth noting. The impeachment question continues to divide even Republican-adjacent figures, but the core math has not changed. Two-thirds of Congress is not voting to remove this president. Not now. Not over Iran.
Democrats know this. The removal talk is aimed at voters, not at the Constitution. It is a midterm strategy packaged as a constitutional crisis.
And that is the problem. When you call a president "unfit" every time the political winds shift, the word stops meaning anything. It becomes a fundraising line, not a constitutional judgment. The country deserves better than permanent impeachment as a campaign tactic.
