WASHINGTON — The House took its strongest step yet in the standoff with President Trump over congressional oversight, voting Tuesday to seek court enforcement of subpoenas for Attorney General William Barr and former White House counsel Donald McGahn.

On a party-line vote of 229-191, the House passed a resolution that would empower the House Judiciary Committee to go to court against Barr and McGahn over non-compliance with requests for documents and testimony.

The vote keeps Democrats squarely on a meticulous investigative track favored by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and other top leaders – and away from the formal impeachment inquiry that some 60 rank-and-file Democrats and several 2020 presidential candidates have been seeking.

Still, the House vote reflects the frustration among Democrats with Trump’s unwillingness to cooperate with congressional investigators who argue they have a constitutional right to examine the executive branch.

“We are here today because the times have found us,” said Pelosi, quoting one of the Founding Fathers, Thomas Paine, in remarks on the House floor. “While we do not place ourselves in the same category of greatness as our founders, we do recognize the urgency of the threat to our nation we face today.”

In fact, shortly before the House vote, a new clash erupted between the administration and Congress. Barr said he will ask Trump to assert executive privilege to shield documents on the administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census if the House Oversight Committee moves ahead Wednesday on holding Barr in contempt.

The Justice Department letter revealing the threat came on the eve of an expected Oversight Committee vote to hold Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt for not turning over documents lawmakers had subpoenaed and stopping a witness from testifying without a Justice Department lawyer.

Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd wrote that the decision to schedule the vote was “premature,” and he accused lawmakers of refusing to negotiate with the department to get at least some of what they wanted.

The vote and moves by the congressional committees have hardened the divide between the two parties.

House Republicans lambasted the House vote as a distraction from bigger issues facing the country, including the crisis on the southern border. Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., borrowed one of Trump’s favorite descriptions, calling the vote “presidential harassment.”

“When you go around the country, you don’t hear people saying they want to continue going down this rathole of witch hunts and impeachments,” he told reporters. “They’re on this witch hunt, this search to find something, as opposed to focusing on the problems of this country.”

Democrats have already gone to federal judges in Washington and New York to seek enforcement of subpoenas targeting Trump’s financial records that are in the possession of private companies. They have scored initial wins in trial courts, but appeals are likely to play out over the coming months – a sluggish timeline that has fueled the push for impeachment.

The vote stops short of a criminal contempt citation, a more serious sanction, and it comes a day after the Justice Department agreed to begin providing materials gathered by former special counsel Robert Mueller during his nearly two-year investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Still, Democrats cast the vote as their most serious move yet in a campaign to hold Trump accountable for his actions to derail Mueller’s investigation.

“Who does this president think he is?” asked Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee. “He carries on like a dictator or a crime boss, publicly saying things like, ‘We’re fighting all subpoenas’ and ‘I don’t want people testifying.’ In the United States of America, no one is above the law.”

House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said: “This is a dark time. This Congress is being tested – in this case, not by a foreign adversary but by our own president.” He added that Trump’s blanket policy of not complying with congressional subpoenas makes President Richard Nixon “look like an Eagle Scout.”

Speaking at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s Fiscal Summit Tuesday, Pelosi said “not even close” to a majority of House Democrats favor launching impeachment proceedings against Trump and would not say whether she would allow an inquiry to proceed if most Democrats favored one.

“Why are we speculating on hypotheticals?” Pelosi asked. She also argued that Trump’s attacks on her – he called her a “a nasty, vindictive, horrible person” last week – have only bolstered her political standing.

“My stock goes up every time he attacks me,” said Pelosi.

Heading to Iowa, Trump told reporters that Pelosi “is a mess” and criticized Democrats’ investigations.

“All they do is waste time where there is no obstruction, no collusion. And in the meantime, we can’t get anything done,” said the president. “We need them to work on illegal immigration, on drug prices, on infrastructure.”

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and a Judiciary Committee member, said the aggressive tactics helped force the Justice Department to make at least some of Mueller’s material available to Congress after a monthslong standoff.

“They’ve begun to recognize that we are going to function like a separate and coequal branch of government,” he said, contrasting Democrats’ posture to that of the prior Republican majority: “They consistently bent the knee to Donald Trump. That is something we will refuse to do. And we are going to make it clear that no one is above the law, one way or the other.”

Barr’s agreement to make some of Mueller’s materials available has at least temporarily forestalled any enforcement action. The Justice Department’s understanding when it reached a deal with Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., was that while the committee would proceed with Tuesday’s resolution vote giving the committee authorization to sue, it would not actually file a suit if the Justice Department held up its end of the bargain, according to a U.S. official. The department never viewed the resolution as holding the attorney general in contempt, the official said.

Nadler confirmed in floor remarks Tuesday that enforcement of the Barr subpoena would be held “in abeyance for now.” But he said the House would take action to secure testimony from other former and current Trump officials.

“This unprecedented stonewalling by the administration is completely unacceptable,” he said.

The Judiciary panel could move swiftly to ask a judge to order testimony from McGahn, who was a key witness in Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump obstructed justice during the probe. The committee could also petition a federal judge to release protected grand jury materials gathered in the probe, which underpin many of the key sections that Justice Department officials redacted from Mueller’s report.

McGahn has so far declined to testify pursuant to a White House legal opinion holding that close presidential advisers cannot be compelled to testify. “Mr. McGahn remains obligated to maintain the status quo and will respect the president’s instruction,” his lawyer, William Burck, told the committee last month.

Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., a Judiciary Committee member, said it will be up to Nadler to determine how to proceed against McGahn but predicted little hesitation.

“I think he’s made it clear that he is very committed to getting Mr. McGahn before the committee as quickly as possible,” Cicilline said.

Tuesday’s vote also does nothing to bring Mueller himself before the House for testimony, whether public or private. Many Democrats believe that a high-profile hearing starring the former FBI director is the best opportunity they have to refocus public attention on Trump’s alleged misdeeds – and build the case for impeachment.

“I hope we don’t have to subpoena him. But if we do, we will,” Nadler told reporters.

A Judiciary Committee hearing Monday featuring former Nixon counsel John Dean and legal experts, for instance, did little to change sentiments on Capitol Hill, and it did not appear to generate any nationally relevant moments that could make a broader impact on public opinion.

“The most important thing from my perspective remains public testimony from Bob Mueller,” Jeffries said after that hearing.

The panel is also seeking the testimony of two other Trump aides, former communications director Hope Hicks and Annie Donaldson, a top aide to McGahn. Those subpoenas were not targeted for enforcement in the resolution passed Tuesday, but it permits the committee to seek authorization from the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, a special panel of top House leaders controlled by Democrats – sidestepping the need for future floor votes.

The chairman of nearly any House committee, in fact, now has the ability to seek authorization from the group to “initiate or intervene in any judicial proceeding before a federal court” to enforce any duly issued subpoena.

The vote “lends credence to a narrative that ‘We are in a process, now let that process play out,’ ” said Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., chairman of an Oversight Committee subpanel. Pelosi “will be able cite some evidence that it is working. I don’t know that that is an overwhelmingly convincing case, because critics can point to where it is not working or where it will take way too long.”

But Connolly said it was important that the resolution streamlined the process for enforcing future subpoenas: “There’s real power now behind committee chairmen issuing a subpoena.”