For the first time in office, Trump doesn’t face the threat of impeachment

President Trump’s political opponents have called him cruel and authoritarian and dictatorial. They have accused him of rewriting the Constitution and trampling on basic rules of government.

One thing missing in the early vitriol over Mr. Trump’s first 10 days is the I-word.

For the first time in his political career, Mr. Trump sits in the White House without a serious threat of impeachment hanging over him.

No House members have rushed to file articles of impeachment, and no senators are thundering about it from the chamber floor. The usual leftist activists were vociferous in their criticism of the new president but are now barely rumbling and focusing more on resistance than removal.

“Our focus is going to be on how do we fight back,” Rep. James McGovern, Massachusetts Democrat, told The Washington Times. “We’re not talking about impeachment, and we’re not talking about anything like that. We’re talking about how we stop his right-wing agenda and how we stop his undermining of our democracy.”

Mr. Trump is the first president to be impeached twice: first for efforts to withhold security assistance money from Ukraine in 2019 and then for the events surrounding the 2020 election and certification of the results.

Impeachment loomed large since his first day in office in 2017 when liberal activists launched ImpeachDonaldTrumpNow.org just after his swearing-in. “The effort to impeach President Donald John Trump is already underway,” The Washington Post declared that afternoon.

The next day, protesters descended on the District of Columbia for the Women’s March, some holding signs saying, “Impeach Him Already!”

Those sentiments were fueled by fantastical and thoroughly if belatedly discredited allegations about “collusion” with Russia. Mr. Trump’s firing of FBI Director James B. Comey, who allowed the erroneous claims to fester, fanned the impeachment flames even further.

Rep. Al Green, Texas Democrat, forced a first impeachment-related vote on the House floor in late 2017. By the time Mr. Trump left office, more than a dozen impeachment resolutions had been drafted. Two succeeded in the House, though neither led to a Senate conviction.

This year, Mr. Green has brushed aside questions about impeachment plans for Mr. Trump.

The groups behind the 2017 Inauguration Day impeach-Trump website, Roots Action and Free Speech for People, have also gone silent.

Any talk of impeachment has come from fringe media figures.

Brian Beutler, a left-wing journalist, wrote a piece the day after the inauguration saying Democrats should “start that process today” because of Mr. Trump’s pardons for those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who has assisted in impeachment cases before Congress, said Mr. Trump’s opponents would impeach him if they could, but they don’t see an opening.

“The threat of impeachment is lowered is not because of a decline in appetite but opportunity for critics,” Mr. Turley told The Washington Times.

He said Mr. Trump’s election in November represented a rejection of the “weaponization of the legal system” and suggested Democrats learn from that.

“It is true that generals often focus on fighting the last war, but these generals lost the last war in spectacular fashion,” he said.

Some Democrats have been tempted to consider impeachment over Mr. Trump’s early actions, including an unprecedented set of executive orders and actions to rewrite the structure and purpose of key government work, such as immigration, spending and diversity.

Rep. Glenn Ivey, Maryland Democrat, said Democrats are looking to the courts, where some of Mr. Trump’s aggressive moves are being litigated.

A federal judge in Washington has halted Mr. Trump’s spending pause, prompting the White House to rescind the order. A judge in Seattle put his attempt to change birthright citizenship for children born to illegal immigrants and temporary visitors on hold.

Mr. Ivey didn’t rule out impeachment and suggested it may be a matter of time.

“If his first term is any indication, he’ll probably give us reason to take a look at it at some point,” the congressman said.

Rep. Jared Golden, Maine Democrat, said Democrats must commit to a plan if they are going to impeach Mr. Trump.

“You don’t start from a plan and then walk back,” Mr. Golden said. “That’s something you learn in the military: to stay on schedule.”

It’s also a lesson for Republicans.

Ten House Republicans voted for Mr. Trump’s second impeachment in 2021 after the chaos of Jan. 6. Of those, eight have either retired or been ushered out the door by Trump-backed challengers.

Mr. Trump, if anything, has even more control of his party now.