The thrust of Rao’s dissent is that the House has to invoke its *impeachment power* to investigate the president. It cannot investigate him pursuant to its legislative authority.

Which is just not true! Congress passes legislation governing the executive branch all the time!

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) October 11, 2019

Rao writes: “the legislative power cannot target whether the President violated the law.” What? The House has already passed an ethics bill with provisions governing the president. It wants to know if it needs to go farther. That’s a quintessential exercise of legislative power!

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) October 11, 2019

Read the entirety of the threat, but yeah, Rao basically tried to personally upend any sort of precedent and turn Impeachment into the ultimate Catch-22 to insulate the president from any and all investigations.

The majority opinion rightfully smacked her down, but remember that she’s going to be on one federal bench or another for at least 2 generations.

This is what we have to look forward to in the courts. This is our future.