The story finally broke overnight, and now here we are.
"There are signs that by tonight, impeachment could be on. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has scheduled a closed door meeting with committee chairs, and then the whole caucus. We have new reporting she's been making calls and maybe moving off her resistance to impeachment hearings," CNN's John Berman said.
"Overnight, seven key freshman Democrats, the kind that Pelosi has been protecting, mostly moderates from largely swing districts, the kind that have opposed impeachment before, these seven wrote an op-ed now saying, quote, "This flagrant disregard for the law cannot stand," and they add, "If these allegations are true, we believe these actions represent an impeachable offense."
"Democrats want the transcript of the calls between the president and the Ukrainian leader. They want the whistleblower complaint and they want it all before Thursday when the acting intelligence chief is supposed to testify about his decision to keep this information all from Congress," he said.
(He also talked about the UK Supreme Court ruling on Boris Johnson, but that's another story.)
"Joining us now senior political analyst John Avlon. Rachel, share with us, your new reporting about Democrats, where Nancy Pelosi is on all this."
"So I mean, I can't believe I'm going to be saying this, but you're right. Nancy Pelosi, it seems like, is reconsidering her position on impeachment, and I'm being told it's pretty much all a matter of time at this point," Bade said.
"We're hearing last night that she was making calls yesterday to allies, people that she's close with, lawmakers to try to gauge them, their sentiment on this, is this the turning point, and remember, Pelosi has been the single greatest reason that we haven't seen Democrats advance impeachment before. She has been super concerned about political blowback, and particularly a group of freshman in Trump districts who she thinks would be in the hot seat if they were to back something like impeachment, but those freshmen have been talking all weekend.
"They were talking on Monday, and a lot of these folks have come out and said if it is true that the president pressured Ukraine and threatened to withhold military funding, then we've got to do something about it. We can't just sit here, and these are people who are coming from Republican districts that Trump won by double-digits, so Pelosi's been feeling the pressure, and she's been making these calls, and I'm told from senior Democrats that today the discussion is going to be more of a question of process and timing as opposed to a question of if they're going to impeach him. It's just really a question of when," she said.
"Let's throw it up on the screen so we can see the Democratic freshman members, six of them who were against impeachment until last night. Now all seven are suggesting it's time," Berman said.
"They apparently spoke to Nancy Pelosi before they wrote their op-ed. So this did not happen in a vacuum. everyone knows what everyone else is doing. That's why we think by five or six tonight, impeachment could be on. Let me read a little bit of what these freshman members wrote:
Statements from House members this morning bring the number supporting impeachment tp 158. It's happening.
More bits and pieces from journalists on Twitter:
