The #Liz48 Plan: This Is How We Remove Them—Legally, Quickly, and Nonviolently

The way to get rid of Trump—and his entire corrupt, inept Administration—is to cut the line of presidential succession. Here's the entire ten-step process.

I. The Problem

It’s almost a year since Donald Trump—defying logic and statistical probability and U.S. history and exit polling and human decency and the very concept of American exceptionalism that was the thrust of his campaign—swept all seven swing states and won the 2024 election. Since his “restoration” in January, much of the odious Project 2025 plans have been installed, with emphasis on racist policies that promote white male supremacy; six corrupt Supreme Court Justices have bequeathed him near-unlimited power; legacy media, many colleges and universities, most white-shoe law firms, and too many wealthy elites have capitulated to his will; and the country has lurched closer and closer to full-blown authoritarianism. Not since 1860 has the future of our democracy been so rickety.

And for what? The economy is a wreck. Our country is being terrorized by a state secret police that kidnaps our residents, sprays teargas in the face of peaceful protestors, and zip-ties the wrists of children. The Department of Justice has become the Department of Retribution. Miller and Hegseth want to send U.S. troops into U.S. cities and are itching to invoke the Insurrection Act. Already there’s Texas National Guard in Illinois—pitting Red against Blue, like they want another Civil War. Meanwhile, Donald and his family have raked in hundreds of millions of dollars and counting. Eric Trump—fucking Eric!—recently became a billionaire.

Our standing in the world has cratered along with the dollar. NATO allies have stopped sharing intelligence with us. The United States was once a mighty champion of democracy that locked horns with the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan. Now our military is blowing up Caribbean fishing boats small enough for me to own, while our Commander-in-Chief bows before the puny, Botox’d strongman in Moscow unleashing human safari on our democratic allies in Ukraine. In the Middle East, Trump fervently and unequivocally supports a criminal regime openly committing genocide.

Oh, and he has a demolition crew razing the historic East Wing of the White House, after assuring us that wasn’t part of the design plan, to make way for the architectural monstrosity that only he seems to want; this, after gilding the Oval Office like it’s some two-bit whorehouse—which, given its current occupant, it kinda sorta is.

This is what we’ve become.

It’s a shit-show—literally. Over the weekend, Donald Trump posted on “Truth Social,” his MAGA social media platform, an AI video of himself in an airplane, called the KING DONLD, dumping feces on “No Kings” protestors, including the 23-year-old political commentator Harry Sisson. That is a real thing that actually happened. Watch for yourself:

Worst of all, there’s no obvious way out of this. The midterms are a year away, and the Trump regime has already taken drastic steps to ensure that the elections will not be on the up and up. Plus: at the rate things are going, our democracy may not survive 13 more months of this sustained demolition.

Millions of us around the country came out on Saturday in defiance of Trump and his regime. But what, exactly, are we asking for? We say NO to kings, but what do we say YES to? What are our demands?

What we want is for them—all of them, not just Donald—to GTFO.

That’s a tall order. For months now, I have been wracking my brain, trying to devise a realistic exit strategy. How do we get out of this mess? It’s tricky. Even if we somehow impeach and remove Donald Trump, JD Vance would be president. We’d be out of the pussy-grabbing frying pan, into the couch-on-fire. Is his ascension even an improvement? Even among the seemingly endless parade of obnoxious shitheads in the Trump Administration, the VP stands out as singularly vile.

Furthermore, all of the inept, soulless ghouls who comprise the current Cabinet would remain: Bondi at the DOJ, Hegseth at Defense, RFK, Jr. at HHS, Rubio at State, Gabbard at DNI, Noem at DHS, Patel at FBI, and so on. We’re one more pandemic away from half the country dying because the whale-beheading fraud in charge of our public health system knows less about medicine than Steve Martin in that old “Who’s the Barber?” sketch. We can’t afford to sit on our hands.

This is the point in my Ocean’s 11-style, odds-are-against-us presentation where I show that the list of presidential succession is brutal and bleak:

1. Vice President (JD Vance)

2. Speaker of the House (Mike Johnson)

3. President Pro Tempore of the Senate (decrepit traitor Chuck Grassley)

4. Secretary of State (Marco Rubio—once a “good” Republican but now a war criminal and hardcore fascist)

5. Secretary of the Treasury (liar Scott Bessent, last seen bailing out Argentina to help salvage his buddy’s shitty investments there)

6. Secretary of Defense (inept drunk Pete Hegseth)

7. Attorney General (abusive asshole Pam Bondi)

Do we want any of those heartless monsters sitting behind the Resolute Desk?

But then, this past week, it came to me: a viable way out—a roadmap back to normalcy. I call it the “#Liz48” plan.

[Danny Ocean voice]: The line of presidential succession is a non-starter, right? So we simply…cut the line.

For now, this can be filed under the “ideas Greg has that sound great in theory but will never happen IRL,” along with my piece on “Dark Brandon Godfather Moves.” Whatever. I understand that #Liz48 is closer to “pipe dream” than “way out.” I also understand that this plan is not perfect.

But it’s a plan that would work, under current U.S. law. It’s a way out—a legitimate, Constitutional way out. And if nothing else, it might inspire someone to come up with a better plan.

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II. The Solution

So, here it goes, step by step. I ask that you read this with an open mind, and table all questions and criticism until the end of the section, like we’re in high school English class:

1. The House of Representatives removes Mike Johnson as Speaker.

Any lingering questions about “Hot Mic” Johnson’s fitness to hold office have been incontrovertibly answered these past few weeks, when the mendacious little shit has elected to, in effect, keep the entire government shut down to prevent the release of the Epstein files. Every day the lies of this so-called Christian grow more brazen.

Whether Johnson is being blackmailed, is just a sniveling toad by nature, or both (and the two things might very well be connected; only his browser history knows for sure), Hot Mic is arguably the worst House Speaker we’ve ever had—and that includes the convicted pedophile.

Two hundred eighteen seats make a majority in the House. The GOP currently controls 219; the Dems will have 214, after Adelita Grijalva is seated. It won’t take many GOP defections to defrock Johnson. Louisiana District 4 is free to keep the unctuous twerp, but his expulsion from Republican leadership is compulsory—and the plan will not work unless he’s removed.

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2. The House of Representatives elects Liz Cheney as Speaker.

Thanks to the many, many times the Republican majority has made a mockery of the leadership election process—remember the whole Kevin McCarthy fiasco?—we all know that the Speaker of the House does not have to be a sitting member of Congress. For our purposes, this is extremely helpful. The Speaker, as we have already shown, is second in the line of presidential succession—so in my #Liz48 plan, this is the individual who will ultimately replace Donald Trump in the White House.

Why Liz Cheney? She is 1) a compromise candidate, 2) extremely competent, and 3) one of precious few Republicans to demonstrate courage, honor, and respect for the Constitution and our democracy during the last nine years. She’s also a woman, and it’s frankly embarrassing that (Edith Wilson notwithstanding) there hasn’t been a woman in the White House yet—especially because the elections of 2016 and 2024, when Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris respectively were at the top of the ticket, were so close and so asterisk-y.

I know, I know. She’s Dick Cheney’s daughter, Halliburton, Iraq, blah blah blah. We can quibble about policy later. Right now, what matters are first principles: liberty (actual liberty, not the bullshit MAGA t-shirt version), national security, and a commitment to—as the old Superman comic had it—truth, justice, and the American way. Liz Cheney has that in spades. Liz Cheney’s not going to humiliate President Zelensky, suck up to Putin, hit on Giorgia Meloni, fall asleep during meetings with world leaders, or warn Maduro not to “fuck around with us.”

Perfect is the enemy of good!

Repeatedly, for many months now, members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have shown themselves to be poltroons, incapable of rising to the moment; dinosaurs, stuck in the legislative La Brea tar pits of the 1990s; or both. That obviously includes pretty much every GOP senator and House rep, it includes Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, and, sadly, it includes Barack Obama and Joe Biden, who both surrendered the ample power they had and went easy on Trump in the name of “norms.” (Kamala Harris, meanwhile, who I’ve fervently supported since early in the last Democratic primary, has work to do to regain trust, after ghosting us after the election.)

Obviously there are exceptions. A number of Democrats have courageously spoken out—Gavin Newsom and J.B. Pritzker, AOC and Jasmine Crockett, Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff, Chris Murphy and Sheldon Whitehouse, to name a few. My Congressman, Pat Ryan, is great. Even Bernie Sanders has been refreshingly stout in defense of our democracy. These are the individuals who should form the leadership of the new iteration of the Democratic Party.

But right now, to prove that this plan is not some Deep State, Soros-funded, libtard coup, it’s prudent to have a non-MAGA Republican take the reins—with certain conditions, as I will discuss later.

Don’t like Liz Cheney? Great! That’s your Constitutional right! Here’s the deal: even if you prefer another candidate, this is the way to make it happen.

This is the roadmap.

We have to cut the presidential line of succession, like we paid extra for those special passes at Disney World. And it’s a lot easier than robbing the Bellagio.

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3. The House of Representatives votes to impeach Donald Trump and JD Vance.

With the caveat that I am neither lawyer nor Constitutional scholar, the two sections of the Constitution involving impeachment of a bad president seem pretty straightforward:

Article II, Section 4.

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

and

Article III, Section 3.

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

An army of annoying legal sticklers on Twitter during the first Donald go-round ceaselessly asserted that treason cannot be charged unless the nation is at war. That isn’t actually true, as I read it. “Adhering to [our] Enemies” is treason, as is “giving them Aid and Comfort.” There’s nothing in the founding documents that says that the “Enemies” must be hostile foreign powers; indeed, domestic enemies—colonial Tories—were who Washington & Co. were fighting against. The oath of office confirms this (boldface mine):

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…

By the very act of seeking dictatorial power, Trump is guilty of treason. Sending a Gestapo to kidnap citizens is treason. Deploying U.S. troops to U.S. cities is treason. And, of course, fluffing our mortal enemy Vladimir Putin is treason.

But if we don’t want to risk impeaching on such a subjective and hard-to-prove charge, there are any number of lesser offenses to nail him on. Here are a few:

• undisclosed financial ties to Russia, Egypt, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and other foreign powers

• insider trading scams and market manipulation to benefit him, his family, and his cronies

• memecoin and other crypto scams

• the bailout of Argentina

• all things DOGE

• the many judicial orders he’s ignored

• mishandling of classified documents

• illegal exfiltration of legal residents to prisons in other countries

• extrajudicial slayings of fishermen in the Caribbean

• corrupt pardons

• repeated Hatch Act violations

• repeated Emoluments Clause violations

Pick from any one of dozens of Donald’s “high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” It doesn’t matter.

This is the first vote Speaker Cheney calls for, and after the results of the Epstein files vote, it easily passes the House.

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4. Chief Justice John Roberts recuses himself from presiding over the impeachment trial.

After this arrogant, self-absorbed fascist treated the first and second Trump impeachments like huge inconveniences to his golf game, Roberts has twice shown he doesn’t take the process seriously. Also, he’s spent the last nine years bending over backwards to grant Donald dictatorial powers. His very presence taints the process. He must recuse.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, and the three Trump appointees on the Supreme Court must also recuse; the latter three, for obvious conflict-of-interest reasons, and the two senior Justices because they, like Roberts, have capitulated to Trump.

Bottom line: Justice Sonia Sotomayor—the most senior of the three non-recused Justices, and also, helpfully, the most staunchly vocal in defense of democracy during the last few years—should preside over the Senate trial.

How this happens, I don’t know. But Roberts is not immune to political pressure. Public criticism seems to rankle him. Maybe recusal can be spun as the Supreme Court coming back to the fold of democracy?

The good news is, even if Roberts is there, it’s not a dealbreaker. But I’d like the #Trumpire¹ to be nowhere near the Senate chamber when this is happening. And in the long term, to truly heal our democracy, all six of these MAGA cheerleaders have to go.

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5. Vance resigns the office.

His whoremaster Peter Thiel might want to roll the dice and hope the Senate eighty-sixes Trump but acquits Vance, but for JD, there is nothing to be gained by sticking around and getting couchfucked in public. He’s taken enough luxe vacations on the taxpayers’ dime. He’s young enough, smart enough, and amoral enough to read the writing on the wall—and live to fight another day. Encouraged to make like Spiro Agnew rather than face the humiliation of a public trial, Vance quits.

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6. The Senate tries Trump.

The trial promises to be so devastating, so obvious, so indefensible, that Donald opts to Richard Nixon his way out the door rather than wait for a vote and suffer a narcissistic injury. That is the best outcome. But if he stupidly sticks around for the further public humiliation, then. . .

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7. The Senate votes to impeach Trump, who is immediately removed from office.

For sure, this is the hardest of the ten steps to accomplish.

We need two-thirds of the vote—66 out of 100—and there are a lot of horrible, pusillanimous Republicans in the Senate. The Mike Lees and Tommy Tubervilles are never going to vote to remove him. The onus is on the American people to make the Josh Hawleys, Ted Cruzes, John Kennedys, Lindsey Grahams, and Mitch McConnells of the world see that their political survival depends on how they vote.

My guess—and I’ve seen reporting that confirms this—is that most Republican Senators hate the SOB almost as much as we do. Are they really going to rally around a guy who looks like he’s on death’s door?

And you know what they say: the third time’s a charm.

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8. Speaker Liz Cheney, the next in the line of presidential succession, becomes President for the remainder of the term.

To ease the concerns of liberals (like me), President Cheney—our 48th President, hence #Liz48—agrees to two conditions: 1) any subsequent vacancies on the Supreme Court will not be filled until after January 20, 2029, when the next president is sworn in; and, 2) any attempt to criminalize abortion nationally will be vetoed.

To further assuage the fears of progressives. . .

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9. President Cheney names Pete Buttigieg as VP.

He is confirmed by the House and the Senate. This ensures that there is at least one Democrat in a position of power in the coalition government.

And, most importantly. . .

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10. President Cheney fires the entire Trump Cabinet and gets to work.

Kash Patel and Dan Bongino at FBI and any other non-Cabinet Trump appointees are also given the pink slip.

She then spends her time undoing the damage caused by the Trump regime; dismantling ICE; re-establishing and strengthening our alliances, especially with the NATO countries; and shoveling so many weapons at Zelensky that Putin immediately caves.

And that’s how we do it. That will work.

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III. The Fun Part

After those ten steps, things can get really fun. In my juicy West Wing fan fiction, it goes like this:

Jack Smith is named Acting Attorney General.

James Comey returns as Acting Director of the FBI. He rehires all the FBI agents Kash Patel let go.

AG Smith fires acting U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan and throws out her bogus indictments of James Comey, Tish James, John Bolton, and etc.

AG Smith cleans house, firing any suspect Pam Bondi appointees, including the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Andrew S. Boutros.

Working with members of Congress, AG Smith establishes a Special Counsel Antifascist Tribunal (SCAT), to investigate and prosecute crimes committed by Trump associates. This includes a full investigation of: Elon Musk’s role in the 2024 election; Trump’s financial ties to Russia, which Robert Mueller was not permitted to look into; Trump’s financial ties to Qatar; insider trading and market manipulation related to Trump’s tariff announcements; crypto scams involving Trump’s sons; memecoin scams involving Melania Trump; Jared Kushner’s financial ties to Saudi Arabia; the relationship of members of Congress to the J6 insurrectionists; the relationship of Ginni Thomas and Turning Point USA to the J6 insurrectionists; the bailout of Argentina, vis à vis the investments in the country held by associates of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; War Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s release of classified information via Signal chat, as well as posse comitatus violations; Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s relations with El Salvador and Venezuela; the extrajudicial slayings of fishermen in the Caribbean; Elon Musk’s immigration status; Melania Trump’s immigration status; Trump’s corrupt pardons; and the various building projects underway in Washington, including the ballroom.

SCAT sets up a “Truth & Reconciliation” system, whereby especially members of Congress can confess to their crimes in exchange for immunity, confidentiality, and immediate resignation from public office of any kind. An astonishing number of Republican members of Congress resign.

The new U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois—someone of unimpeachable character and ample prosecutorial experience—indicts the leaders of the flagrantly illegal ICE activities in Chicago: Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Tom Homan, and Greg Bovino. They are all held without bail pending trial.

AG Smith names a Special Counsel to investigate ICE and indict any ICE officers who violated the law; this will be financed by the ICE budget.

President Cheney declassifies all of the Epstein files, as well as Trump’s FBI and IC files.

Congress passes a law expanding the Supreme Court from nine to 13. The four new Justices—and hopefully a few more—will be appointed after January 20, 2029, by the next President.

We celebrate our 250th anniversary with dignity, honor, and pride.

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Photo credit: Still shot of Liz Cheney from the PBS broadcast of the J6 Committee hearings.

1. The portmanteau was coined by Lisa Graves, who wrote a whole book, Without Precedent, about Roberts. It alludes to his disingenuous assertion at his confirmation hearing that he’s merely an umpire, calling balls and strikes. Trump + Umpire = Trumpire.