Every Texas Democrat in Congress joins call to impeach Trump

All 13 Texas Democrats serving in the U.S. House now favor opening impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump or are open to the idea.

One by one Tuesday, the last six Texas holdouts — including two in vulnerable seats and one who backtracked after getting pushback from a primary opponent — joined a national wave of Democrats who support impeachment if Congress was not given a report on a whistleblower's complaint about Trump's contact with Ukraine's president.

U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, called for immediate action hours before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House will launch an official impeachment inquiry.

"While we are still gathering the full facts of what occurred between the president and the foreign leader, I believe Congress must act now in the face of our president's continued dangerous behavior," he said in a statement.

"No one is above the law — not even the occupant of the highest office," Veasey said.

U.S. Reps. Colin Allred of Dallas and Lizzie Fletcher of Houston — Republican targets in 2020 after flipping GOP seats in the 2018 election — joined the call Tuesday morning.

"The law is clear that the director of national intelligence must provide Congress with a report of the whistleblower's complaint," Allred said in a statement. "If he does not, and this administration continues to violate the law and obstruct Congress' constitutional duty, I will be forced to conclude that the only remaining option is for the House to begin impeachment proceedings."

By midmorning, Rep. Sylvia Garcia of Houston told reporters that she is "leaning toward" impeachment, and Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson of Dallas said she would support impeachment proceedings if the information were withheld from Congress.

U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, was the last Texan to back impeachment proceedings Tuesday, falling into line after his primary challenger, Jessica Cisneros, pounced on his hesitation.

In a statement, Cuellar said that "if investigations prove that impeachment is the necessary course of action, then I will be forced to act on impeachment proceedings."

The 13 Texas Democrats joined more than two-thirds of the 235-member House Democratic caucus who support some kind of action on impeachment, according to a count by multiple news outlets. A majority of House lawmakers must vote on articles of impeachment before the proceedings move to the Senate, where two-thirds must find the president guilty before he could be removed.

Also weighing in were Democratic presidential candidates Beto O'Rourke and Julian Castro, who called on Trump to release the full whistleblower complaint.

And U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, repeated his demand to move forward on impeachment.

"We should fulfill our constitutional duty to hold Trump accountable for his lawlessness by beginning hearings on specific articles of impeachment," Doggett said, adding that submitting anything less than the complete report "would represent further lawlessness and obstruction."

Texas Republicans denounced the impeachment talk.

U.S. Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Terrell, introduced a resolution Tuesday that seeks to remove Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-New York, as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

Gooden, who called the impeachment talk a "rogue witch-hunt," argued that Nadler had improperly begun impeachment proceedings against Trump without House approval.

Texas Republican Party Chairman James Dickey called the growing chorus "a sad reflection of the Democrats putting party before country."

"The fact that Democrats want to criminalize bringing power to light is simply normal for them," he told the American-Statesman.

The National Republican Congressional Committee fired back at Democrat Wendy Davis, who is running to unseat freshman U.S. Rep. Chip Roy in Hays County over her support for impeachment.

"If (Davis) wanted to run for Congress as an impeachment-obsessed socialist, she probably should have moved to a district that Trump didn't win by double digits," the committee said.