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The Democrats have the law on their side, but they shouldn’t have waited so long to have this fight.

Yesterday, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration was legally obligated to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry. Impeachment is a constitutional process, and President Trump was trying to act like a king by not allowing administration officials to testify, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote.

But it’s not clear how much the ruling matters. The administration will appeal, and the case — which specifically involves Donald McGahn, the former White House counsel — likely won’t be resolved for weeks. If Democrats wait for the appeal process to finish, the country’s attention will have moved on from the revelations of the past two weeks.