House Republicans advance impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas

Table Of Content

• Tighten Voting Laws
• The next vote could be on Schumer's point of order, which could kill first article of impeachment
• Trial will have a 'Wild West' feeling with no strict process
• What to know about the New York special election that risks the GOP's slim House majority
• Senate votes against adjourning the trial until April 30
• Potential absences loom over renewed effort to impeach Mayorkas

All 100 senators will be sworn in as jurors in Mayorkas’ impeachment trial beginning at 1 p.m. “History will not look kindly on House Republicans for their blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship that has targeted an honorable public servant in order to play petty political games,” he said in a statement. House Republicans muscled through a vote to impeach Mayorkas over his handling of the border on Feb. 13, exactly one week after their first attempt to impeach him collapsed spectacularly on the floor. At an unrelated event in New York today, Mayorkas mostly skirted questions on the articles of impeachment against him.

Tighten Voting Laws

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey accused Mayorkas of facilitating an "orchestrated lack of enforcement" of the country's immigration laws, which he said has led to the impeachment proceedings. Romney wouldn’t say whether he’d support a vote to table or dismiss the impeachment articles from the outset of the trial, saying he wanted to look at the legal process. “But I think there’s no question but that this is not going to result in a conviction, because the test of a high crime or misdemeanor being committed has not been alleged, and as a result of that, there will not be a conviction,” he said. "That’s why it’s so wild to me that he is such a subject of animosity for House Republicans because, in the Senate, he seems to have a decent amount of credibility, notwithstanding legitimate disagreements Senate Republicans have with Biden’s immigration policy." In the end, Sen. Eric Schmitt’s objection to allowing for debate and procedural votes ahead of the Democrats’ motions to dispense with the two articles of impeachment precluded Republicans from putting Democrats in a tough spot with substantive votes.

The next vote could be on Schumer's point of order, which could kill first article of impeachment

Capitol to present the articles of impeachment to the Senate, which they read aloud on the Senate floor. While a majority of senators voted against Belknap on all five articles, the Senate didn’t reach the two-thirds threshold necessary for conviction on any of them. Tester is up for re-election in red Montana in November and voted with all other Democrats to dismiss the impeachment articles against Mayorkas.

Trial will have a 'Wild West' feeling with no strict process

Last month, Republicans unveiled two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas after speeding through impeachment proceedings. Republicans assert Mayorkas should be charged with high crimes and misdemeanors for not enforcing immigration laws. They've focused much of their arguments on the failure to detain all migrants while they await court proceedings. The vote on two articles of impeachment was 214 in favor to 213 opposed, with three Republicans voting with all Democrats against impeachment. Washington — The House voted to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday over his handling of the U.S.-Mexico border, with Republicans issuing the chamber's harshest constitutional punishment against a Cabinet secretary for just the second time in U.S. history.

What to know about the New York special election that risks the GOP's slim House majority

Central to the package is the provision the conservative Freedom Caucus wanted that reinstates a longstanding rule that allows any one lawmaker make a motion to “vacate the chair” — a vote to oust the speaker. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi had done away with the rule when Democrats took charge in 2019 because conservatives had held it over past Republican speakers as a threat. With sky-high ambitions for a hard-right conservative agenda but only a narrow hold on the majority, which enables just a few holdouts to halt proceedings, the Republicans are rushing headlong into an uncertain, volatile start of the new session. They want to investigate Biden, slash federal spending and beef up competition with China. If Republicans do want to highlight what they see as immigration policy failures, they could add funds to the Department of Homeland Security appropriation to finish the wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, former President Donald Trump’s answer to migration into the United States.

In Pennsylvania, Democrat John Fetterman defeated Dr. Mehmet Oz and flipped a Republican-controlled Senate seat that's key to the party’s hopes of maintaining control of the chamber. Senator Ron Johnson, R-Wis., narrowly won re-election in a tight race in battleground Wisconsin. "Today's decision by the Senate to reject House Republicans' baseless attacks on Secretary Mayorkas proves definitively that there was no evidence or Constitutional grounds to justify impeachment," said Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg.

Biden swipes at Trump at White House correspondents' dinner

Except that her sons died in July 2020 during the Trump administration and several months before President Biden appointed Mayorkas. Asked about the factual inconsistency, a spokesman for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who sits on the Homeland Security committee, told CNN reporter Daniel Dale in colorful language that, essentially, facts are irrelevant in this case. Greene's resolution accused Mayorkas of violating federal law and the Constitution by failing to "maintain operational control of the border" and prevent an "invasion." The attorneys general railed against Mayorkas' leadership on Wednesday, testifying that the situation has grown dire in their states under the secretary's tenure, attributing local drug and trafficking incidents to the flow of migrants at the southern border. Thompson said House Republicans are pushing the impeachment inquiry "to distract from their own failures," while highlighting that some are opposing funding for the border in the White House's supplemental funding request despite their push to enhance border security.

Those members promise more open and free-flowing debates and are insisting on 72 hours to read legislation ahead of votes. As McCarthy gaveled open the House on Monday as the new speaker, the Republicans launched debate on the Rules package, a hard-fought 55-page document that McCarthy negotiated with conservative holdouts to win over their votes to make him House speaker. Republicans might introduce legislation that would curb practices they claim lead to voter fraud, tightening rules on voter IDs, curbs on the number of days of early voting, restrictions on absentee voting and mandatory post-election audits. He said Mayorkas was "probably the least effective and I think most dangerous, in terms of his policy implementations, of any cabinet secretary in the history of the United States." Johnson predicted there would be a "reckoning" over the border issue in the November election. Had the Senate moved to an impeachment trial, it would have been the third time in five years. Trump was impeached twice during his presidency, first over his dealings with Ukraine and later over his involvement in the January 6 assault on the US Capitol.

When the House impeached William Belknap in 1876, he had resigned as war secretary just hours earlier. The vote on adjourning until April 30 failed as well, also on a party-line vote. He called for the Senate to then vote on tabling Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's point of order. On another party-line vote, Kennedy's corrected motion to adjourn until May 1, 2024, was rejected by the Senate. The second article impeached Mayorkas on breach of trust, charging him with lying to Congress about how secure the border is. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said that the House's impeachment of Mayorkas was political and that it would have set a worse precedent to move forward with a trial.

"In my humble opinion, Mr. Mayorkas' border policy is partially responsible for my daughter's death," Josephine Dunn, who testified about her daughter's death from fentanyl poisoning, said. "His wide open border policy allows massive quantities of poisonous fentanyl into our country." DHS said Mayorkas has testified before Congress 27 times in less than three years. The committee has also not communicated with the department in the last week about alternate dates for Mayorkas to testify, a spokesperson said. "This hearing is about the human costs of Secretary Mayorkas' egregious misconduct and failure to fulfill his oath of office," said GOP Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee, the committee's chairman.

The House vote to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas failed on February 6, a stunning blow to House Republicans who had pushed the effort as a key political goal. President Joe Biden's Homeland Security secretary is accused of committing high crimes and misdemeanors in his handling of the southern border, even though constitutional experts have said the evidence does not reach that high bar. House Republicans claim Mayorkas has committed high crimes and misdemeanors for his handling of the southern border, even though several constitutional experts have said the evidence does not reach that high bar.

Washington — House Republicans moved forward with their effort to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for his handling of the situation along the U.S.-Mexico border, holding their first hearing on the matter Wednesday. Some moderate Republicans said Tuesday that they support impeaching Mayorkas. And I would say there’s so many laws on the books that he could enact or enforce, and he does not,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said.

And indeed they have done just that starting with the wasteful and pointless exercise of gathering evidence to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for his supposed mismanagement of U.S. border strategy. "There is nothing I take more seriously than our responsibility to uphold the law," Mayorkas said, later adding that "the majority of all migrants encountered at the Southwest border throughout this administration have been removed, returned or expelled — a majority of them." During a visit to the border on Monday, Mayorkas called on Congress to take action to fix the nation's immigration system and said accusations that he has not enforced the nation's laws "could not be further from the truth." "Our investigation made clear that this crisis finds its foundation in Secretary Mayorkas' decision-making and refusal to enforce the laws passed by Congress, and that his failure to fulfill his oath of office demands accountability," he said in a statement announcing the hearing. Frank Bowman, a professor at the University of Missouri's law school, appeared before the committee at the invitation of Democratic members. He stressed that impeachment "is not supposed to be a routine tool to resolve ordinary public policy debates."

House Republicans advance impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas - NBC News

House Republicans advance impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas.

Posted: Wed, 31 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

They also have a copy of the resolution that named the House impeachment managers. Sens. John Thune, R-S.D., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, were spotted speaking with Murkowski during the quorum call earlier. Murkowski has never shared how she plans to vote on a possible motion to dismiss or table the articles with reporters. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., has forced a vote to table Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's motion to declare the second impeachment article unconstitutional. The Senate voted that Schumer's point of order to rule the second impeachment article is unconstitutional was well taken.

Opening an impeachment investigation into a Cabinet member of the opposing party has become especially common in the past two decades. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on the Senate floor that tabling the articles "would mean declining to discharge our duties as jurors. It would mean running both from our fundamental responsibility and from the glaring truth of the record-breaking crisis at our southern border." Republicans, however, are expected to object to this, and then the Senate will enter an unstructured process, where Schumer would likely move to immediately table one of the articles.