President Donald Trump likes superlatives: He often asserts that everything—the economy, the military, his ratings—is better, bigger and stronger than ever before. Everything is at levels no one’s ever seen. That’s what everyone is saying.

It’s certainly true for presidential impeachments. The United States had experienced only two of them—Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998—until Trump’s first term, during which he was impeached twice!

Whether Trump will raise presidential impeachments to record levels during his second term is an idea worth considering.

Don’t misread this column to mean that a third Trump impeachment is something that anyone should hope for. Few things are more unsettling for our national well-being than the legislative branch calling the executive branch to account for the commission of high crimes and misdemeanors. Ugly politics are almost impossible to exclude from such proceedings.

But the Constitution is clear about the obligation that it imposes on the legislative branch to check and balance the power of the executive, even if it means using the drastic process of impeachment.

Impeachment requires a simple majority in the House of Representatives, where Republicans currently hold an edge of only a few seats. As Trump continues to push up against the limits of executive power, are there issues that might provoke several Republicans to vote with Democrats to reassert legislative balance against the executive?

Panama? Trump has declined to take military action off the table if he thinks it’s necessary to retake the Panama Canal. If he deployed troops to Panama—a move that would be almost certainly an act of war—would four or five Republican representatives join Democrats in an effort to reassert Congress’s sole power to declare war?

Or Greenland? Trump says that the U.S. will “go as far as we have to go” to gain control of Greenland. We’re going to get it “one way or another.” Does that include military action against Denmark, a NATO ally? Trump is known for bluffing, but if he is as serious as he sounds, House Republicans will have to decide if they really have the stomach for checks and balances or if they will quietly relinquish the power of Congress to check an out-of-control executive branch.

But it’s the judicial branch that may need defending more immediately than the legislative, and the problem of judicial review may reach a crisis much sooner than Panama or Greenland.

Some Republicans seem shocked by the idea that a lowly federal judge can block an order issued by a president. They haven’t taken it well when several federal judges have enjoined some of Trump’s executive orders, prompting him to threaten impeachment of the offending judges and leading House Speaker Mike Johnson to threaten to defund and eliminate some district courts.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts felt compelled to issue a gentle rebuke: “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.” Of course not. It’s Civics 101: A federal judge cannot eliminate an executive action; she can only block it temporarily. The next step is appeal, all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary, at which point, everyone has to accept the decision. One hopes.

This is the crisis that will probably arise before we invade Panama or Denmark. If it happens before the midterms in 2026, a precious few Republicans in the House will face a monumental decision. (The Senate is another matter, but every branch or sub-branch of the government can do only so much.)

Trump’s been impeached twice, and for good reason: extorting an ally for political gain and trying to overturn an election. It hasn’t turned out well.

Still, if Trump commits illegal acts of war without authorization of Congress or if he refuses to accept the rulings of the Supreme Court, some subset of Republicans in the House will have to confront the point where impeachment ceases to be an option and becomes an obligation.

Trump likes setting records; let’s hope he doesn’t aspire to this one.

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