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Democrats have repeatedly argued that Republicans are resisting a new border policy that Mayorkas is helping to negotiate between senators and the administration because the bill would give President Joe Biden an advantage in the 2024 election. WASHINGTON — Members of the House Homeland Security Committee voted early Wednesday to advance the Republican-led impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the full House for a vote. But Mayorkas would be the first Cabinet official to be impeached since 1876. Biden promised protecting abortion rights would be his priority if Congress sends him a bill, but Democrats would need to gain enough seats in the Senate to overcome the requirement for 60 votes to pass the legislation. The House has twice voted to expand the rights to an abortion though the medical procedure would be banned earlier than 24 weeks, when the ability of a human fetus to survive outside a woman’s uterus is thought to begin. With control of both the House and Senate, Republicans would have more chance to impede Biden’s initiatives, an appealing move with a presidential election two years off.
Senate voting now to table Schumer's point of order
“Despite Kevin McCarthy’s efforts to keep faith with the Trump wing of the party, I think they are suspicious of him because of his remarks after Jan. 6, which were certainly appropriate,” Fowler said. “And even though he’s walked them back and tried to make his peace with Trump he may not have the votes for the speakership. "By doing what we just did, we have in effect, ignored the directions of the House, which were to have a trial," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell after senators killed the second article.
House vote to impeach Mayorkas fails in stunning defeat for Republican leaders - CNN
House vote to impeach Mayorkas fails in stunning defeat for Republican leaders.
Posted: Tue, 06 Feb 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Republicans hope to make things politically painful for Democrats
"It’s time for Congressional Republicans to support the Department’s vital mission instead of wasting time playing political games and standing in the way of commonsense, bipartisan border reforms," she said. Mayorkas and Democrats have contended that it's a matter of policy differences, arguing that Republicans are using impeachment to score political points during an election year. They say it's up to Congress to fix the "broken" immigration system and allocate more resources to border security. The vote comes the same day as a special election in New York's third congressional district to replace former GOP Rep. George Santos, which could further narrow the House's Republican majority.
Hearing on Impeachment Resolution Against Secretary Mayorkas, Part 2
The Senate is allowed to call witnesses, as well, if it so decides, and it can ask questions of both sides after the opening arguments are finished. 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. Johnson had said he would send them to the Senate last week, but he delayed again after Senate Republicans said they wanted more time to prepare. After Tuesday’s ceremonial procession and presentation of the articles, the proceedings will not begin until Wednesday.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York called the proceedings a “political stunt” ordered up by Trump and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a Trump ally, who pushed the resolution forward. The House impeachment hearings against Mayorkas sprinted ahead in January while the Republicans’ separate impeachment inquiry into Biden over the business dealings over his son Hunter Biden dragged. President Joe Biden, in his own campaign remarks in South Carolina, said if Congress sends him a bill with emergency authority he’ll “shut down the border right now” to get migration under control. The committee Republicans voted in favor, while the Democrats unified against, 18-15. “They know that there’s a bill potentially that would give us new law to help us at the southwestern border. President Trump and many of the House Republicans are fighting to oppose that because they think it would give President Biden some benefit at the elections at the polling places,” said Rep. Glenn Ivey, D-Md.
JUST IN: GOP-led House impeaches Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
But McCarthy himself announced Monday evening's final vote tally on the IRS bill to applause from his side of the aisle. Republicans might try to link inflation to Democratic spending, the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, and the economy’s over dependence on supply lines out of China. Kosar said he would expect the GOP to propose cuts in government spending, to try to lessen dependence on goods from China and support more drilling for oil and gas in the United States. The importance of the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court, has been sharply in focus with the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, rulings on Trump’s many lawsuits and other decisions.
McCarthy battled through four days and 14 failed ballots before finally winning the speaker's gavel
The absence of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, and the surprise attendance by Texas Democrat Al Green, who had just had surgery and was wheeled into the chamber to vote, denied Republicans the votes to pass when it came up previously. If the Senate were to proceed to an impeachment trial, it would be the third in five years. Democrats impeached President Trump twice, once over his dealings with Ukraine and a second time in the days after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Democrats called the opposition a policy dispute, and said it did not rise to "high crimes and misdemeanors," as required for impeachment. The Senate then voted that the second article of impeachment alleging Mayorkas "breached the public trust" was also unconstitutional, with Murkowski this time joining her GOP colleagues in voting against it. The majority leader then called for votes to dismiss the trial, setting off a series of procedural maneuvers by Republicans to delay the proceedings, all of which were rejected by the Democratic majority. This sideshow is about scoring political points, because even if the House did vote to impeach, Senate Republicans seem unwilling to participate in the charade. (Only once has a Cabinet secretary been impeached. In 1876, Secretary of War William Belknap was impeached by the House but acquitted by the Senate.) Nor would removing Mayorkas change border policy.
All 100 senators, including Senate President Pro Tem Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, were sworn in as jurors. But Senate Republicans, demanding a full impeachment trial or the creation of a special impeachment committee, want to make the coming days as politically painful as possible for Mayorkas and his Democratic allies. “The Senate must hold a full impeachment trial of Secretary Mayorkas, or at the very least, refer the articles to an impeachment committee," Schmitt said. At each senator's desk is a notepad and a copy of the impeachment articles.
"The most commonly encountered categories of impeachable conduct are official corruption, abuse of power, betrayal of the nation's foreign policy interests and subversion of the Constitution," Bowman said. "There is no serious allegation of which I'm aware that the secretary has done any of those things." Bowman explained that the Constitution defines impeachable conduct as treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors, and argued that policy disputes between Congress and a Cabinet secretary do not rise to that level.
If the House does agree to impeach Mayorkas, the charges would next to go the Senate. In 1876, the House impeached Defense Secretary William Belknap over kickbacks in government contracts, but the Senate acquitted him in a trial. The Republicans also accused Mayorkas of lying to Congress, pointing to comments about the border being secure or about vetting of Afghans airlifted to the U.S. after military withdrawal from their country. And I would say there’s so many laws on the books that he could enact or enforce, and he does not,” said Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb. “Republicans’ baseless investigation into Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is a politically motivated sham to appease extreme MAGA Members and partisan special interest groups,” Democrats said in the report. Mayorkas and Democrats have pushed back, arguing that the impeachment effort is political.
"The Trump administration overcame fierce opposition at every turn and was able to gain control of our southern border as no previous administration could. But all of that progress has been destroyed," Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen said. Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers decried the impeachment effort, calling it a political exercise with no reasonable basis. Republicans’ top driving argument for impeaching Mayorkas is that he has not kept “operational control” of the border as required by law. After winning the House GOP nomination for Speaker last month over Biggs, McCarthy traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border and called on Mayorkas to resign or face GOP investigations and a possible impeachment inquiry.
“I assure you that your false accusations do not rattle me and do not divert me from the law enforcement and broader public service mission to which I have devoted most of my career and to which I remain devoted,” he wrote. Mayorkas concluded his letter to Green on Tuesday with an emotional recounting of his work in public service, noting that his parents brought him to the U.S. from Cuba and instilled in him a “reverence for law enforcement” that led him to lead DHS. The committee also heard testimony from Deborah Pearlstein, the law and public policy director at Princeton University, who noted that Congress hasn't approved substantial policy changes on immigration in decades.
Republican leaders went ahead with last week's nail-biter of a floor vote amid uncertainty about whether they had enough support to impeach Mayorkas. "I assure you that your false accusations do not rattle me and do not divert me from the law enforcement and broader public service mission to which I have devoted most of my career and to which I remain devoted," he previously wrote in a letter to the committee. The successful vote follows an embarrassing defeat for Republican leaders last week, when a small group of Republicans who said Mr. Biden's border chief did not commit impeachable offenses voted with all Democrats to sink it.
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