GOP impeachment efforts hit brick wall

Table Of Content

• Senate votes to end Mayorkas impeachment trial on party-line vote
• House Republicans’ bid to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas fails in US Senate
• House Republicans postpone sending Mayorkas impeachment articles to Senate
• New York Times Analysis
• How TikTok grew from fun app into potential threat
• ABC News
• Joe Biden wins Democratic primary in Puerto Rico

By a single vote, House Republicans impeached Mayorkas in February for his handling of the border. House Republicans are wasting no time on their pledge to again try to bring articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over Mayorkas' handling of immigration and the border. “I will strenuously oppose any effort to table the articles of impeachment and avoid looking the Biden administration’s border crisis squarely in the face,” the Senate minority leader said. After the House transmits the articles of impeachment to the upper chamber, the chamber must schedule a trial to begin the next legislative day, according to Senate rules. With 51 seats controlled by Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, the majority can speed up, delay or dismiss the impeachment outright.

Senate votes to end Mayorkas impeachment trial on party-line vote

Republicans seized on the opportunity to assail Mayorkas, blaming him for the humanitarian crisis at the country’s southern border. Testifying separately from the trial before the House Homeland Security Committee Tuesday, Mayorkas responded to a few questions about the impeachment, telling members he is focused on his job. Mayorkas is not the only Biden administration official the House Republicans want to impeach. They have filed legislation to impeach a long list including Vice President Kamala Harris, Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. The Biden administration also maintains that Mayorkas has complied with the House committee's requests.

House Republicans’ bid to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas fails in US Senate

GOP’s Mayorkas impeachment push races ahead of Biden probe - The Hill

GOP’s Mayorkas impeachment push races ahead of Biden probe.

Posted: Mon, 22 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Schumer called for the votes to dismiss the two charges after Republicans rejected a proposed agreement for Senate debate time and several votes on GOP objections. Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt stood in the chamber and said Republicans wouldn’t accept Schumer’s offer because Democrats were “bulldozing 200 years of precedent” on impeachments by trying to dismiss the trial. Since then, Johnson has delayed sending the articles to the Senate for weeks while both chambers finished work on government funding legislation and took a two-week recess.

House Republicans postpone sending Mayorkas impeachment articles to Senate

"If Secretary Mayorkas does not resign, House Republicans will investigate every order, every action and every failure to determine whether we can begin an impeachment inquiry," McCarthy told reporters in El Paso, Texas. A DHS official reiterated that the secretary has no plans to resign and that they believe the impeachment articles have no factual grounds. "The Department will continue our work to enforce our laws and secure our border, while building a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system," Espinosa said. "Members of Congress can do better than point the finger at someone else; they should come to the table and work on solutions for our broken system and outdated laws, which they have not updated in over 40 years."

While the Senate is obligated to hold a trial under the rules of impeachment once the charges are walked across the Capitol, the proceedings may not last long. Democrats are expected to try to dismiss or table the charges later this week before the full arguments get underway. This charge goes back to a hearing in 2022 when Mr. Mayorkas testified that his agency had "operational control" of the border. Republicans accuse him of lying, citing the 2006 Secure Fence Act, which defines operational control as the absence of any unlawful crossings of migrants or drugs, which no administration has ever achieved. This is referring to group-based parole programs that the administration has set up to let people fleeing war-torn countries, like Afghanistan and Ukraine, or certain economically ravaged countries to live and work in the United States temporarily. The Biden administration has expanded the number of such programs available, which House Republicans argue is an abuse of the president’s power under immigration law to parole people into the country on humanitarian or public benefit grounds.

He said the Republican charges were policy disputes, not high crimes, and it was important to set a precedent. House impeachment managers delivered the charges to the Senate on Tuesday, standing in the well of the Senate and reading them aloud to a captive audience. Republicans argue that President Joe Biden has been weak on the border as arrests for illegal crossings skyrocketed to more than 2 million people during the last two years of his term, though they have fallen from a record high of 250,000 in December amid heightened enforcement in Mexico. Democrats say that instead of impeaching Mayorkas, Republicans should have accepted a bipartisan Senate compromise aimed at reducing the number of migrants who come into the U.S. illegally.

Johnson initially delayed the delivery of the articles to focus on funding legislation to avert a government shutdown. Then the transmission was delayed again after Senate Republicans asked for more time to strategize ways to ensure a Senate trial. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said last week he wasn't sure what he would do if there were a move to dismiss the trial. “I think it’s virtually certain that there will not be the conviction of someone when the constitutional test has not been met,” he said. Under the Constitution, the House has the "sole Power" of impeachment, while the Senate has the authority to hold a trial.

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Earlier in the Biden administration, some migrants were released into the country with notices to report to immigration enforcement officers — a practice that led to a lawsuit in Florida, referred to as part of this charge. The department eventually replaced the practice by paroling migrants into the country with some alternative to detention, such as an ankle bracelet or a phone to check in with the authorities. In recent months, the department has switched to another practice, of issuing notices to appear in court, instead of using parole authority.Republicans say these are all means of skirting statutory mandates to detain migrants, as well as negative court rulings.

“If anybody is a prime candidate for impeachment in this town, it’s Mayorkas,” Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told CNN. "We don't want this to come over on the eve of the moment when members might be operating under the influence of jet-fume intoxication," Lee added at a news conference, saying it's better for the Senate to take up the issue at the beginning of the week. House Republicans have been eager to impeach Mayorkas since seizing majority control last year, particularly as their efforts to impeach Biden over the business dealings of his son Hunter Biden have come to a standstill. But the panel’s top Democrat, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who has repeatedly insisted policy differences with President Joe Biden are not grounds for impeachment, was backed up by one of the witnesses, Princeton University law professor Deborah Pearlstein. The outright dismissal of the charges, without the opportunity to argue their case, was yet another setback for House Republicans, plagued by internal drama and a vanishingly thin majority.

The real mistake, they argue, would have been to treat the case Republicans brought against the homeland security secretary as legitimate, rather than a thinly veiled attempt to amplify border security as a political issue and create chaos in the Senate. Democrats then voted to adjourn the trial, just one day after House Republicans presented the articles to the Senate. Chuck Schumer, the senate majority leader, moved to dismiss the charges outright, arguing that a cabinet official cannot be removed from office for implementing the policies of the administration he serves.

Democrats cast the impeachment effort as election-year political theater designed to draw attention to the situation at the border, one of the president’s biggest liabilities. Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has made immigration the centerpiece of his campaign for the White House. At a news conference at the border in November post-midterms, McCarthy said the incoming GOP House majority would open investigations that could lead to impeachment proceedings. Biden has also asked Congress to approve requests for more border patrol agents and immigration court judges, but Republicans have refused, saying Biden should use his executive authority to stem the flow of migrants.

Impeachment is only the first step toward removing an official from office, followed by a Senate trial, which could result in removal. Last week’s failed vote to impeach Mayorkas — a surprise outcome rarely seen on such a high-profile issue — was a stunning display in the chamber that has been churning through months of GOP chaos since the ouster of the previous House speaker. Various House Republicans have prepared legislation to begin deporting migrants who were temporarily allowed into the U.S. under the Biden administration’s policies, many as they await adjudication of asylum claims. In a frantic scene of vote-tallying on the House floor, the GOP effort to impeach Mayorkas over his handling of the southern border took on an air of political desperation as Republicans struggle to make good on their priorities. The second impeachment article goes on to accuse Mayorkas of rolling back a series of Trump-era policies including the controversial "Remain in Mexico" program, construction on the southern border wall and international agreements that pressured Central American countries to hold asylum seekers.

"What is glaringly missing from these articles is any real charge or even a shred of evidence of high crimes or misdemeanors - the Constitutional standard for impeachment," the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, Bennie Thompson, said in a statement. "That should come as no surprise because Republicans' so-called 'investigation' of Secretary Mayorkas has been a remarkably fact-free affair." The Senate voted to end Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas' impeachment trial on a party-line vote of 51-49.