At a Thursday news conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that a constitutional crisis has begun. “The administration has decided they are not going to honor their oath of office,” she said, echoing Representative Jerry Nadler, Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee. In addition to Barr, Pelosi said the House could hold others in contempt. Yet she repeated the Democratic refrain that the House needs to engage in further investigation rather than impeachment. “What we want to do is get the facts, we want to do it in a way that is the least divisive to our country,” she said.

Pelosi is a sharp and pragmatic woman, and her evident belief that impeachment carries strategic risks for Democrats should be taken seriously. But it is incoherent to argue that Trump constitutes an existential threat to the Constitution, and that Congress should wait to use the Constitution’s primary defense against such a threat. Democratic fear of divisiveness — even as Republicans gleefully embrace it — is leading to unilateral political disarmament.

When it comes to holding the Trump administration accountable, contempt votes are a fine first step, but they’re mostly symbolic unless Democrats find a way to enforce them. A criminal contempt charge would have to be prosecuted by Barr’s own Justice Department, which it will almost certainly not do. A civil citation could take months or even years to move through the courts. A subpoena fight from the gun trafficking case known as “Fast and Furious” — which led to then Attorney General Eric Holder being held in contempt in 2012 by a Republican-controlled House — was only settled last month.

In the face of an administration that is trying to amass dictatorial powers, Democrats need to bring to bear all the powers of their own. Trump’s outright rejection of congressional authority makes impeachment proceedings necessary, but even impeachment alone is not sufficient.

Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee and former constitutional law professor, points out that Congress has the power of “inherent contempt.” That’s a provision, last used in the 1930s, that allows the body to enforce its own orders, including by sending out the House’s sergeant-at-arms to arrest people. “People keep saying to me, ‘Well, isn’t that an old law?’ ” he said, but it’s not a law with an expiration date. In fact, he argues, “the older it is, the more venerable it is.”