WASHINGTON House Democrats just moved a lot closer to supporting an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump , in the wake of a bombshell report that Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate one of his 2020 rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden .

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who for months has resisted moving forward with impeachment, is holding meetings Tuesday afternoon with Democrats to gauge the mood of the caucus, after a wave of her deputies and first-term members voiced their support for impeachment proceedings in the past 24 hours.

On Monday night, seven first-term Democrats with national security backgrounds published a joint Washington Post op-ed calling for impeachment proceedings to begin if the Ukraine allegations are true. The lawmakers who wrote the op-ed, all of whom flipped Republican-held districts in 2018, are Reps. Gil Cisneros (Calif.), Jason Crow (Colo.), Chrissy Houlahan (Pa.), Elaine Luria (Va.), Mikie Sherrill (N.J.), Elissa Slotkin (Mich.) and Abigail Spanberger (Va.). Of the seven, only Crow had previously called for impeachment proceedings to begin.

Meanwhile, two of Pelosis top lieutenants Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and John Larson (D-Conn.) issued statements Monday suggesting that Trumps efforts to pressure a foreign government to give him dirt on Biden could leave Democrats with little choice but to begin impeachment proceedings.

This is on top of a smattering of rank-and-file Democrats announcing their support for impeachment in the past few days. For example, Reps. Debbie Dingell (Mich.) and Marc Veasey (Texas) just came out in favor of it. And freshman Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who flipped a suburban, GOP-held district where Trump narrowly lost in 2016, said he now supports impeachment, too.

If the reports are corroborated, we must pursue articles of impeachment and report them to the full House of Representatives for immediate consideration, Phillips said.