Goodlander talks Trump impeachment, passing on Senate bid, and where she finds hope

Yahoo

25-04-2025

U.S. Rep Maggie Goodlander (center) speaks to Monadnock Community Hospital leaders in Peterborough on Tuesday, April 22, 2025. Cynthia K. McGuire, president and CEO, is at left, and Richard Scheinblum, executive vice president and CFO, is at right. (Photo by William Skipworth/New Hampshire Bulletin)
U.S. Rep. Maggie Goodlander, a Democrat from Nashua, has represented New Hampshire's 2nd District in Congress for just over three months. While she acknowledges the hectic nature of becoming a lawmaker during President Donald Trump's second term, Goodlander made a point to emphasize some basics in an interview with the Bulletin this week: the housing market, health care, and child care prices.
'I think our system is being tested right now in ways that we've never seen before,' she said, during a visit Tuesday to Monadnock Community Hospital. 'Government's not functioning at the federal level in the way that it ordinarily functions where, when, as a member of Congress, I ask a question of the Department of Health and Human Services, and we get answers to that question.'
Goodlander harkened back to her work on Trump's first impeachment trial. Prior to becoming a congresswoman, Goodlander worked in a number of non-elected government roles, including as an adviser to several U.S. senators and in the Biden administration. An attorney, she served as counsel to the House Judiciary Committee in late 2019 when the Democratic-controlled House voted to impeach Trump over a phone call he made to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy threatening to withhold military aid unless Zelenskyy announced an investigation of Joe Biden. The Republican-led Senate ultimately voted to acquit Trump in early 2020. Goodlander compared the administration's recent actions to those that motivated her and her colleagues to impeach Trump during his first term.
'The case that we brought is really, at bottom, what we're seeing play out every single day with this administration,' she said. 'We're seeing abuses of power of all varieties, including of the variety that was like the direct case that we brought back in 2019.'
She condemned the Trump administration sending hundreds of migrants to a Salvadoran prison without due process, decried Trump's tariff strategy as a senseless trade war conducted at ordinary Americans' expense, and called for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has been embroiled in controversy over mishandling classified information, to resign. Goodlander said that if Democrats were in the majority, she would support an impeachment investigation into Trump.
'There has been no inquiry that has started,' she said. 'But what I can tell you is that we've seen a pattern and a practice over the course of this second Trump administration that repeated itself in the first and so yes, I do believe that there would be credible grounds to really conduct a thorough investigation. But I want to stress that I really believe that there shouldn't be casual talk about impeachment proceedings. This is a punishment that our Constitution really reserves for a very, very select subset of offenses. We're talking treason and high crimes.'
Goodlander said it's a priority of hers to help her party win a majority in the House of Representatives during 2026's midterm elections.
'The system our Constitution creates is of three co-equal branches,' she said. 'And we need a check on this administration.'
Goodlander cited this as one of the reasons she decided against giving up her seat in the House to run for Senate in 2026. When Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, who has represented New Hampshire in the Senate since 2008, announced she wouldn't seek reelection last month, Goodlander openly considered joining the race to replace her. However, she announced last week she would not launch a campaign, instead endorsing U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas, who remains the only candidate in that race so far.
'I'm really grateful, and I'm humbled by the outreach that I got from people all across the state who encouraged me to take a look at the Senate seat,' she said. 'The job I'm in right now, I'm on Day 109. … I want to dedicate all of my energy towards ensuring that we have a House of Representatives, which is the body that's closest to the people.'
Throughout communication with constituents, Goodlander said she's heard consistently about the rising cost of housing, child care, and health care. As such, those are priorities for her, she said.
'Our system is just simply not working for so many hard-working people,' she said. 'And we're in an environment right now where the big fight is about how we're going to dedicate federal resources and federal programming. And I just can't think of a more wrong approach than the approach that we see the Republican majority in Congress taking and this administration taking, which is to fund trillions of dollars in tax breaks on the backs of hard-working people, and that's going to mean higher health care costs. That's going to mean higher costs across the board.'
She singled out housing among these issues as one she hears about constantly.
'Housing is a cornerstone of the American dream, and it is so far out of reach for far too many people,' she said, pointing to rapidly increasing rent and home sale prices in New Hampshire.
Asked whether she thinks the constant controversies swirling around the White House are a distraction to addressing issues like housing, Goodlander said, 'We've got to do both at once.'
'We are seeing people — Republicans, independents, Democrats — who are stepping up and speaking out and want to be involved in a way that I don't think we've seen in a long time in this country,' she said. 'And this is what gives me a lot of hope: the people who are coming from across the ideological spectrum, some of whom I'm sure voted for President Trump, but did not vote for what they're seeing happen here right now. They did not vote for the biggest cuts to Medicaid in American history. They did not vote for an indiscriminate, reckless, senseless set of trade wars that are jacking up costs and putting small businesses out of business. This is not what they voted for.'