Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may finally be ready to send the Senate the articles of impeachment for President Trump that the House passed last month, now that it is clear Democrats will not win a pretrial agreement for witness testimony.

Schumer, a New York Democrat who is working very closely with Pelosi on the timing for delivering the two impeachment articles, said the new information would allow Pelosi to decide which Democratic lawmakers should serve as impeachment managers who would deliver the articles to the Senate and present the case to lawmakers there.

“The speaker has said all along that she wanted to see the arena in which she was playing so she could appoint impeachment managers,” Schumer said Tuesday. “She has some idea of what’s happened.”

The trial terms became clearer on Tuesday when Republicans quashed Democratic demands for a pretrial agreement to summon impeachment witnesses.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said at least 51 GOP lawmakers support his plan to start the trial without an immediate agreement on witnesses, which McConnell said would be decided on later in the trial.

Schumer and Pelosi had been demanding a pretrial agreement to summon four Trump administration officials as well as documents, but it’s now clear they lack the votes to win such an agreement.

House Democrats last month passed two articles impeaching Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Pelosi held on to the articles, bucking precedent, because she hoped to pressure the GOP into agreeing to the witness list ahead of the trial.

Schumer, on Tuesday, appeared ready for Pelosi to send over the impeachment articles and is pivoting to a plan to call votes on witnesses individually after the trial opens. Schumer said he believed some Republicans would join Democrats in agreeing to summon those witnesses. Democrats need only four GOP lawmakers to side with them on votes to compel a witness to testify.

One of the witnesses Democrats are seeking, former national security adviser John Bolton, announced Monday he would agree to testify if called by the Senate.

“They can delay it, but they can’t avoid it,” Schumer said of the GOP.

Pelosi hasn’t made any new announcements about when or if she’ll send over the articles, but pressure is mounting in both parties for her to do so, and it increased further on Tuesday when it became clear the effort had failed to require witnesses before a trial begins.

"I think the time has passed,” Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, told the Washington Post. “She should send the articles over.”

About a dozen Republicans are backing a proposal to alter the Senate rules to allow an impeachment trial to begin without Pelosi sending over the articles.

Republicans are eager to start the trial. Although it is all but certain the president will be acquitted, it could damage his reelection bid if the trial is delayed and the matter drags on.

“I don’t think we’ll wait indefinitely,” Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, told the Washington Examiner, when asked when the Senate might change the rules to allow a trial to proceed. “It’s sort of like a sword of Damocles hanging over the presidency. I don’t think that is what the founders had in mind when it comes to impeachment.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said he planned to bring up a nonbinding resolution this week urging Pelosi to send over the articles.

Graham told the Washington Examiner that if Pelosi does not send the articles over this week, he’ll push McConnell for a vote to change the Senate rules to allow a trial to proceed without them.

“If she doesn’t deliver them this week, I want to move on to the trial next week,” Graham said.