The presidency of Donald J. Trump becomes official at 12:01 Eastern Standard Time on Friday afternoon, when a social-media celebrity who recently paid a $25 million settlement for scamming Americans with his fake university takes the presidential oath of office from Chief Justice John Roberts in front of the United States Capitol. Those of you who are feeling dismayed by the prospect of a petulant, incurious bully imminently becoming Leader of the Free World may be wondering if there is any course of action that would allow America to wake itself up from this dystopian nightmare before 2020 or, heaven forbid, 2024. Unless you have a time machine that you could use to go back and drown James Comey’s BlackBerry before he could send out that dumbass e-mail—seriously, if you have one, now is the time to use it—the information you want relates to a process called impeachment.

First things first, though. What about a recall? Can we recall him?

We cannot. Recall is a procedure that allows voters to vote on removing an elected official from office before their term is up. It can be a response to an official's alleged misconduct or malfeasance, but voters are also allowed to invoke the procedure if they've changed their minds and want a do-over. Californians recalled then–Governor Gray Davis in 2003 over budget-mismanagement concerns, replacing him in the recall election with action hero and second-rate Celebrity Apprentice host Arnold Schwarzenegger. In 2012, Wisconsin successfully recalled Scott Walker, its union-busting goon of a governor, but he survived the subsequent election by a comfortable margin. (Dammit, Wisconsin.)

Anyway, yes, it would be great to take some kind of mulligan here, but the recall process is a creation of state law. There is no analogous procedure that allows voters to initiate the removal of federal elected officials. Impeachment is pretty much the only way to go.

All right then, what is impeachment, and how does it work?

Basically, it’s the power laid out in the U.S. Constitution that allows Congress to put certain officials on trial and potentially remove them from office. At a high level, the impeachment process moves through the legislature in largely the same way that a bill does, so feel free to dust off your fondest Schoolhouse Rock memories. The House Committee on the Judiciary is usually charged with investigating the relevant allegations, and if they determine that there are adequate grounds for impeachment, booting the president is a two-step process. First, the full House (that’s the legislative chamber, not the cast of the hit TV show—common mistake) votes on whether to impeach the president; second, the Senate votes on whether to convict the president of said charges. If two-thirds of the Senate votes yes, the president is out and the vice president steps in.

So, Mike Pence?

Uh-huh.

That’s still not ideal.

Listen, a racist conspiracy theorist is the president of the United States, my friend. A middle schooler who's good at SimCity is ideal compared to this. Pick your battles.

What are the grounds for impeachment?

Probably higher than you want them to be, to be honest. Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution states that presidents (among other federal officials) may be impeached and removed from office only for “Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

Isn’t that a Woody Allen movie?

Yes! Great memory. But in this context, it's a decidedly unhelpful 200-plus-year-old legal term of art, and its modern meaning is a subject of significant debate. The general idea is that a “high” crime or misdemeanor must be one related to a public official’s execution of his or her duties—one that “betrays the public trust.” So, if Trump gets a jaywalking ticket or lifts a Toblerone from his nearest Duane Reade, it’s not happening. But if he uses his power to jail a political opponent, or trash the First Amendment, or sell an aircraft carrier for 20 cents on the dollar to his new best friend Vladimir Putin, then impeachment might be in play.