Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team are nowhere close to launching impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump — with the chances diminishing as the 2020 election moves ever closer.

Democratic lawmakers and senior aides say Pelosi and her deputies are unmoved despite a groundswell of impeachment talk among rank-and-file members who are infuriated by Trump’s stonewalling of congressional investigations.

Story Continued Below

And absent any bombshell testimony from Attorney General William Barr or special counsel Robert Mueller stemming from his report, they say, senior Democrats view the approaching 2020 election season as a likely hard deadline for any impeachment push.

“Everything’s got to be done this year. Next year, forget about it,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell of New Jersey, who said he sees more rank-and-file Democrats leaning toward impeachment but noted everything rides on Pelosi.

Even the most ardent supporters of ousting the president concede that the chance of launching proceedings against Trump gets slimmer once all of Washington — and the country — becomes consumed by the presidential election, and Democrats will be wary of an impeachment backlash.

“There’s a certain point in time … it becomes an issue, for sure,” said Rep. John Yarmuth of Kentucky, an impeachment supporter, of the looming calendar.

Added a senior Democratic aide: “The closer you get to an election year, it’s not going to happen,” the aide said. “I don’t see any way we go there. I just don’t think there’s enough there.”

It’s a sign of how little has actually changed since the release of Mueller’s report, which some Democratic supporters of impeachment had hoped would be the catalyst they needed to spur a formal impeachment inquiry.

The report, plus Trump’s escalating hostility toward congressional subpoenas and investigations, has sparked even some seasoned Democrats to suggest they’re more open to impeachment than they had been. But they make clear that without Pelosi’s blessing, the effort is dead.

“More members that speak out may think that this is what’s going to bring about a new reality,” Pascrell said. “I don’t think so. Nancy has to be committed.”

Even Democrats who have recently spoken up in favor of impeachment, like Rep. Val Demings of Florida, said they see why Pelosi and other members of leadership aren’t moving in that direction.

“I think the leadership has to be like a good quarterback. They have to have the ability to see the entire field,” said Demings, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, the panel tasked with launching impeachment proceedings.

Leadership aides and top lawmakers say Pelosi’s calculus has not changed, despite devastating evidence outlined in Mueller’s report on Trump’s alleged attempts to obstruct justice and the president’s bellicose posture toward congressional subpoenas.

The main conditions Pelosi and other senior lawmakers have said must be met if Democrats are going to pursue impeachment — a well of public support and at least some Republican buy-in — have not materialized since Mueller’s full report was released less than two weeks ago.

And it’s not just Pelosi. Other senior members of her team, like Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, are in lockstep.

Still, Pelosi, Hoyer and Clyburn have not ruled out impeaching the president. They want to allow the six committees investigating Trump’s administration, finances and businesses to continue their work — using the Mueller report as a road map. House Democrats will make a final decision once those probes are finished.

“We are not going to over-politicize, we are not going to over-investigate, we are not going to overreach,” New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the No. 5 House Democrat, said Tuesday. “But we are not going to run away from our constitutional responsibilities.”

But the speaker and her top deputies know they must strike a delicate balance between the party’s liberal base — clamoring for impeachment proceedings — and more moderate swing voters, who might be turned off by what could be perceived as Democratic overreach without any Republican support. House Democrats could win the fight over impeachment and lose the war over Trump’s presidency.

And right now, both the public and the caucus aren’t there.

Impeachment didn’t come up at all during Democrats’ closed-door caucus meeting Tuesday, their first time together since the Mueller report was released. And members across the ideological spectrum said voters rarely — if ever — asked about Mueller report and impeachment in their districts during the two-week congressional recess.

Illinois Rep. Cheri Bustos, a swing-district Democrat who also chairs the caucus’ campaign arm, said no one brought up impeachment during her public events. And Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who represents one of the bluest House districts, said the topics were also barely raised during his time back home.

“While, around here, people like to ask the impeachment question, I think it’s less back home now than prior to the report. Because people understand there’s some easy, simple steps we have to do,” Pocan said in an interview, noting the ongoing investigations by various House panels. “And the president, again, will really expose himself if he doesn’t cooperate.”

Still, the actual appetite for impeachment inside the caucus could soon be on full display. Rep. Al Green of Texas, a longtime impeachment pusher, is promising to force another vote on the issue on the House floor, although he won’t say when. House Democratic leaders are not working behind the scenes to force Green to back off, according to aides, but don’t expect his effort to be successful.

“You can’t impeach someone for threatening to do something,” a senior Democratic aide said of Trump’s promises to continue stymieing House investigations. “Will that lead to more people probably calling for him to be impeached? Yes. But will it lead to impeachment? Not necessarily.”

In the absence of a more concerted push toward impeachment, Democrats have begun floating other draconian measures to punish Trump and his allies — from raising the prospect of levying fines and jailing those who don’t cooperate with their investigations to formally censuring Trump to challenging the president in court.

The top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee said Democrats’ increasingly aggressive tactics amount to an attempt to convince their base they’re taking the hardest possible line against Trump without actually opening impeachment proceedings.

“They know they don’t have the will or fortitude to have an impeachment resolution,” Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) said.

Collins characterized the Democrats’ efforts to investigate Trump for obstruction of justice and to spar with Barr over access to Mueller’s report as a “sideshow of theatrics” because “they didn’t get what they wanted out of the report.”

Since the Mueller report was published, the president has filed two federal lawsuits to block banks and accounting firms from complying with subpoenas for his financial records, accusing Democrats of trying to stifle his presidency with one-sided investigations.

“I think the president is responsible for the fact that more members are openly talking about it,” said Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.). “He is of the belief that our Article I authority represents a coup. And he is trying to create an environment where it looks like this. So who knows? Maybe he wants this.”

Sarah Ferris contributed to this report.

Senate Democrats’ bid to take back the majority is running into a big roadblock: Some of their most coveted recruiting targets are refusing to run.

After straining to defend seats in bright-red states in 2018, Democrats are focused on picking off Republicans to claim the Senate majority. But, so far, a number of the party’s high-profile recruits have said no to Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the party’s campaign arm.

Story Continued Below

Stacey Abrams, a rising star in the party after nearly winning the Georgia governor’s race last year, passed on a Senate run Tuesday despite a sustained and public recruitment that included multiple meetings with Schumer. Hours later, Rep. Cindy Axne, who flipped a swing district last year, confirmed she was running for the House again — and not challenging Iowa’s first-term Republican senator, Joni Ernst.

Democrats haven’t struck out completely: Former astronaut Mark Kelly in Arizona was a huge get in a critical battleground state. But three Democrats in other key states have passed on Senate bids to run for president despite the crowded field, and the party has missed out on their top recruits in Georgia and North Carolina.

“The Senate is not an appealing place for smart, talented candidates because it’s a broken institution. And Democrats have not yet offered a vision for how to fix it, aside from wringing their hands and wishing things were different,” said Adam Jentleson, a longtime aide to former Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). “What’s the pitch? ‘Come here, do nothing and let Mitch McConnell eat your lunch every day?’”

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, denied she and Schumer had blown it. Democrats only need to flip a handful of seats, and they’ll be in a position to get them, she said.

“We don’t need all of these states to take back the majority. We just need three or four. And we’re going to do really well,” Cortez Masto said. “Just because we don’t get somebody that you’re aware of doesn’t mean we’re not going to have somebody that can beat those Republican incumbents.”

Schumer declined to answer whether Abrams’ decision was a personal rejection for him, but said the party will find a strong candidate to take on freshman Sen. David Perdue.

“We’re going to win in Georgia. And we have lots of good candidates in many different states, including Georgia,” Schumer said.

Interviews with nearly a dozen Democratic senators and strategists turned up little overt concern about the status of the Senate map. It’s very early in the cycle, they said, and the party has promising prospects in battleground races who haven’t officially announced yet. Sens. Jacky Rosen of Nevada and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, the two Democrats who flipped seats last cycle, announced in July and September of the year before the election, respectively.

But privately, some Democrats are alarmed by the lack of candidates.

“We really need to get some good recruits as quickly as possible,” said one Democratic strategist who is a veteran of Senate races, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to be candid. The strategist expressed optimism about the national political environment but cautioned: “We just need enough candidates to ride the wave if it comes.”

The party’s path to the majority is narrow. Democrats have to win three seats to flip the Senate if they win the presidency, and four if they don’t. Only two Republicans are running in states Hillary Clinton carried in 2016, and Democrats are defending two seats in states President Donald Trump won, including in solidly Republican Alabama. That means Democrats will have to win multiple races in red states to win the chamber.

Some Democrats are concerned that the party’s focus on its upcoming presidential nominating process is distracting from the groundwork needed for its Senate efforts.

“I worry a little bit that the activists and donors and regular Democrats across the country haven’t quite internalized the importance of taking back the Senate,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii). “But there’s a fair amount of time to make that argument.”

Republicans have jumped at criticizing Democrats for the missed recruits and are optimistic about keeping their majority.

“Look at the map. Look at the states that Democrats were hoping to contest, including the states that have sort of been Republican-leaning. They haven’t gotten their top tier candidates,” said Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.). “And it all starts with good candidates if they have any hope of winning in some of these places.”

Democrats counter that Republicans haven’t had recruiting success yet either: They have yet to lock down candidates in Michigan and New Hampshire to challenge Democratic incumbents and could face competitive primaries in Kansas and Alabama that could complicate races in red states. But those factors alone are unlikely to cost the GOP its majority.

Democratic senators also said that they would soon have new recruits to announce that would refute the GOP’s narrative. And they said some of the Democrats who have passed on Senate races to run for other offices, including the presidency, could change their minds and transform the landscape. That list includes former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock. Hickenlooper and O’Rourke spurned calls to run for Senate to seek the presidency, and Bullock appears likely to enter the presidential race soon instead of challenging GOP Sen. Steve Daines.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), a former DSCC chair, said “it’s early enough” in the cycle that if their presidential bids flame out, “then some of them may opt in to an opportunity for the Senate.”

In Georgia, Democrats turned to other options after Abrams passed. Teresa Tomlinson, the former mayor of Columbus, plans to run, and Sarah Riggs Amico, who ran for lieutenant governor in 2018 alongside Abrams, is considering a campaign. She said in a statement Tuesday that “dysfunction paralyzing Washington is actively harming Georgia workers and families, and we can’t allow it to go unchallenged.”

Perdue said he’s still preparing for a competitive election, even without Abrams’ star power in the race.

“We’re going to run against somebody from the Democratic side that’s going to be well-funded, and they’re going to espouse these radical, social agenda that they’re trying to perpetrate right now,” he said. “So I’m geared up.”

Axne’s decision to pass on the Iowa Senate race was viewed by Democrats as much less significant. Axne didn’t publicly express interest in the Senate despite meeting with party leaders to discuss it — and few Democrats in Iowa or Washington expected her to run. Others are considering running, including Theresa Greenfield, a businesswoman who grew up on a farm in the state, and J.D. Scholten, a former professional baseball player who narrowly lost to Rep. Steve King last year. Some Democrats view both as better recruits.

And Democrats have had other successes. In Texas, MJ Hegar, an Air Force veteran who narrowly lost a House race in 2018, is running against Sen. John Cornyn, though she could face a primary against Rep. Joaquín Castro, who is expected to decide this week whether to run.

In North Carolina, state Attorney General Josh Stein was seen as a top-tier recruit, but passed early on challenging GOP Sen. Thom Tillis. Democrats are still searching for a candidate, but several state legislators and former elected officials are seen as potential recruits.

Democrats acknowledge Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) will be difficult to beat, but argue she is more vulnerable than ever. They’ve yet to land a candidate in the race, but state House Speaker Sara Gideon and former state House Speaker Hannah Pingree are considered strong options. And there is a pot of nearly $4 million raised by activists after Collins’ vote last year to confirm Brett Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court justice waiting for the Democratic nominee.

In the past four years, Democrats have struck out with boldface names in high-profile races: Russ Feingold in Wisconsin, Phil Bredesen in Tennessee and Ted Strickland in Ohio. Some Democrats argue that the over-reliance on those types of candidates should come to an end.

“We sometimes are way too obsessive about getting big, big-name recruits,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “Our big-name recruits in previous cycles haven’t done so hot.”

For his closest advisers, President Donald Trump is a godsend — literally.

Trump’s campaign manager says the president was sent by God to save the country. The White House press secretary thinks God wanted Trump to be president. And the secretary of state believes it’s possible that Trump is on a holy mission to protect the Jewish people from the threat of Iran.

Story Continued Below

Forget the allegations of extramarital affairs, the nonstop Twitter insults and the efforts to close off the border to migrants. Trump’s allies insist that his presidency is divinely inspired.

“There has never been and probably never will be a movement like this again,” Brad Parscale, the president’s campaign manager, wrote Tuesday morning on Twitter. “Only God could deliver such a savior to our nation and only God could allow me to help. God bless America!”

Parscale’s tweet, the latest example of a Trump adviser casting the president as a savior, comes as the White House is preparing to host religious leaders on Wednesday and Thursday for the National Day of Prayer, an annual event in which people of all faiths are encouraged to “pray for the nation.“

The president, who doesn’t regularly attend church services, has emerged as an unlikely ally of the evangelical right, building close relationships with influential conservative religious figures. The White House screened a controversial anti-abortion documentary earlier this month, part of a broader strategy to energize evangelical voters ahead of the 2020 election by amplifying false claims about late-term abortions.

But for observers of American history and advocates for the separation of church and state, the assertions that Trump’s presidency is endorsed by God are alarming.

“Christians should beware of a political use of the word savior, which goes to the very heart of our faith. This particular statement is a gross expression of Christian nationalism, which I define as equating Christian and American identities,” said Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Washington-based Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. “People of faith know that God is much larger than any one candidate, party, election or country.”

Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian, said: “What these political lieutenants are saying to the faithful is that you have no choice; God has told you how you must vote.“

He continued: “Republican administrations historically have talked about individual rights, the autonomy of the individual, preventing government from dictating political choice. By bringing the sacred into politics, they are actually imposing a view onto his followers and depriving them of a freedom of choice.”

And even some of Trump’s most vocal evangelical backers have some qualms with the notion that God wanted him to win the presidency.

“If you give God credit for a good president, than you’ve got to blame God when you have a bad one. So I don’t think that’s the way to look at it,” Jerry Falwell Jr. told POLITICO, adding later: “I don’t think you can say that God gives us good leaders. What do you do when you get a bad one, say God messed up? That’s silly.”

Falwell, the president of Liberty University, has long maintained that he and other evangelicals support Trump because they agree with his policies, often seeming to dismiss allegations of marital infidelity and mistreatment of women. “I don’t think he needs to come forward. I think everyone knows his past,” Falwell told CNN last year when asked about allegations of past affairs.

“God called King David a man after God’s own heart even though he was an adulterer and a murderer,” Falwell said in 2016 after endorsing Trump. “You have to choose the leader that would make the best king or president and not necessarily someone who would be a good pastor.”

Falwell said he would be among the attendees at a National Day of Prayer dinner at the White House on Wednesday night with the president and first lady Melania Trump.

Parscale, who did not respond to a text message seeking comment, isn’t the first Trump ally to make the case that Trump is carrying out God’s will.

“I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times, and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said in an interview with Christian Broadcasting Network News earlier this year. Sanders did not comment on this story.

And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suggested in March that Trump might have been sent to protect the Jewish people from the threat of Iran.

“Could it be that President Trump right now has been sort of raised for such a time as this, just like Queen Esther, to help save the Jewish people from the Iranian menace?” a reporter for the Christian Broadcasting Network asked Pompeo during a visit to Israel.

“As a Christian, I certainly believe that’s possible,” Pompeo replied.

Sanders was raised Southern Baptist, and Pompeo, according to a Washington Post article last year, often attends Eastminster Presbyterian Church in Kansas, which is affiliated with the conservative Evangelical Presbyterian denomination.

Trump’s allies might have some backing from many Republicans. A Fox News poll released earlier this year found that 45 percent of Republicans believe God wanted Trump to be president. That figure is even higher among evangelicals.

Campaign advisers think evangelicals will be crucial to Trump’s reelection chances. And the president’s defenders argue that his opponents dismiss them at their peril.

“Liberals may have gotten a few chuckles out of Sanders’ remark, but they don’t seem to realize that the joke is actually on them,” Paula White, a pastor who leads Trump’s evangelical advisory board, wrote after the press secretary came under fire for her comments.

“No matter how much they try to deride religion in the news and popular culture, the vast majority of Americans are believers,” she added. “Furthermore, when you consider everything that President Trump has done for people of faith since taking office, it’s easy to see why so many of them agree with Sanders that Donald Trump is doing God’s work.”