On Wednesday, Donald Trump stormed out of a meeting on infrastructure with Democratic leaders and held a tantrum of a news conference. He was indignant that the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, had said earlier in the day that he was engaged in a cover-up, and insisted he wouldn’t work with Congress unless it stops investigating him. “You can’t do it under these circumstances. So get these phony investigations over with,” he said.

Shortly afterward, Pelosi was interviewed onstage at a conference of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. “The fact is, in plain sight, in the public domain, this president is obstructing justice and he’s engaged in a cover-up, and that could be an impeachable offense,” she said, to applause from a crowd full of Democratic operatives and donors. She pointed out that the third article of impeachment against Richard Nixon involved his refusal to comply with congressional subpoenas, which, of course, Trump has done as well. A few moments later she described Trump as an “existential threat to our democracy.”

Yet even as a growing number of Democratic lawmakers are calling for an impeachment inquiry, Pelosi insists that the time has not yet come for such a serious step. The “House Democratic caucus is not on a path to impeachment,” she told reporters on Thursday.

This position is increasingly incoherent. If Trump’s outrageous misdeeds are visible for all to see — and they are — you don’t need further investigation to justify beginning an inquiry into whether impeachment is justified. Pelosi has suggested that impeachment will distract from the affirmative Democratic agenda, but the Republican-controlled Senate is no more going to pass progressive legislation than it will vote to remove Trump. And now the president has ruled out action on bipartisan initiatives like infrastructure investment, essentially refusing to fulfill his constitutional responsibilities whether he’s impeached or not.