Impeachment could remove Trump. The 14th Amendment should remove Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley

House Democrats moved one step closer Monday morning to invoking Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which allows Congress to remove any legislators engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States. They will find no better example of incitement than the anti-democracy cheerleading done by Republican Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz. 

Newly elected Congresswoman Cori Bush stepped forward to file formal legislation urging the removal of any elected officials involved in inciting last Wednesday’s deadly terrorist attack against the United States, but Hill insiders tell me the effort is focused squarely at Hawley and Cruz. Both are potential 2024 presidential contenders who sought a foothold among the far-right extremists willing to die for President Donald Trump, and both now find themselves isolated and subject to stinging criticism from all corners of American society.

Prior to the insurrection that left five Americans dead — including a police officer reportedly brutally bludgeoned to death by “pro-police” Trump supporters — Cruz and Hawley delighted in roleplaying the parts of gentleman revolutionaries. A darkly iconic photo taken just before the riots shows Hawley, his jaw set in TV-ready defiance, pumping his fist at the rioters in a show of solidarity. Earlier in the day Cruz stopped by the mob to deliver a rousing speech about fighting for Trump at all costs. 

Cruz and Hawley soaked up fawning right-wing media praise for their refusal to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election right up until the moment violent insurrectionists kicked down the doors of the Capitol and seized the floor of the Senate. But in the moment their made-for-television revolution became chillingly real, Hawley and Cruz were nowhere to be found.

“The names of Cruz and Hawley should go down in history next to people like Benedict Arnold,” Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego told Business Insider. “They are just traitors to the country and traitors to the Constitution.”  

After four years of enabling presidential behavior many Democrats and Republicans warned would lead to violence, the GOP may finally be facing its limits. Hawley earned the headlines he craved when he became the first US Senator to vow unflinching opposition to the democratic process, pledging his loyalty to the eternal presidency of Trump against the wishes of the American people and the rulings of federal judges Hawley personally voted to confirm. Now Republicans are trying to convince stunned voters that they actually opposed Hawley from the start.

“A real dumbass” was how Senator Ben Sasse described Hawley after his actions at the Capitol. Former senator and Hawley mentor John Danforth went further, telling the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that “supporting Josh and trying so hard to get him elected to the Senate was the worst mistake I ever made in my life.” 

In 1868, our political ancestors crafted the 14th Amendment in the crucible of another insurrectionary time. Violence still flared from the last embers of the Civil War, where lost-cause extremists engaged in guerrilla violence three years after the South’s unconditional surrender. They understood exactly the dangers posed by firebrands like Hawley and Cruz, and knew how corrosive it was to cloak the goading words of mob violence in the respectability of the United States Senate. 

The political leaders who steered our country through the fires of civil insurrection would have seen Hawley and Cruz as case studies in the proper application of the 14th Amendment’s ban on inciting rebellion against the United States. The 14th Amendment’s protections have become a fundamental part of modern American life. It also offers our country a legally clear and ethically mandatory means of cleansing our body politic of insurrectionist cancer.  

That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for contrition and understanding. Unfortunately, Hawley specifically has bristled at the idea that he’s done anything wrong. 

“I will never apologize for giving voice to the millions of Missourians and Americans who have concerns about the integrity of our elections,” Hawley said. “That’s my job, and I will keep doing it.”

Hawley and Cruz represent two ends of the insurrectionary spectrum: Hawley, the fully committed revolutionary, has decided to ride this attempt at overturning American democracy as far as he can. Cruz, on the other hand, is already backpedaling from his strident claims that rioters must make America safe from “radical Marxists” and the “leftists” who denied Donald Trump his rightful crown. Cruz’s cowardice and post-tragedy dissembling shouldn’t save him from accountability. 

Hawley and Cruz must serve as examples that the United States will not countenance attacks on democracy and the fundamental rule of law. Whether these men saw their behavior as political theater or meant it genuinely is immaterial to the fact that their words brought death and destruction to the seat of American government. Our Constitution is clear what must happen next. 

For the good of our country, these two insurrectionists must go.