House Republicans successfully impeached Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas by a 214-213 vote on Tuesday after an initial failed attempt last week. Mayorkas is the first cabinet official to be impeached since 1876. Speaker Mike Johnson said Mayorkas “deserves to be impeached,” arguing that Mayorkas lied to Congress, refused to comply with federal immigration law and violated his oath of office. Impeachment articles accused Mayorkas of a “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law.”
To say it is extremely unlikely that Mayorkas would be convicted by the Democrat-controlled Senate is an understatement. This serves as more of a symbolic measure for Republicans. Speaker Johnson helped his party successfully rebound from last week’s embarrassing defeat, which saw four Republicans and Representative Al Green — who was wheeled in post-surgery, still in hospital clothes — vote “no.” Representative Blake Moore switched his vote to “no” at the last minute, forcing a tie so that impeachment could be brought up again. Sure enough, once House Majority Leader Steve Scalise returned from cancer treatments, Johnson put it back on the docket and managed to get the job done. The impeachment is also important as Democrats try to shift blame to the GOP for the open border because they won’t take up the Lankford-negotiated Senate immigration bill; the impeachment, combined with the passage of their own bill, HR-2, are easy ways to combat this messaging.
What happens next procedurally? The impeachment articles will be ceremonially marched over to the Senate, along with the impeachment managers chosen by the House. Then the Senate will begin its trial, which reports say will start on February 26. There are several ways for the Senate to bypass a full trial; a senator could introduce a motion to dismiss the articles or raise a point of order to declare them unconstitutional. Alternatively, the Senate can vote to have the trial held by a committee rather than by the full body.
-Amber Duke
On our radar
TRUMP’S RNC Former president Donald Trump endorsed North Carolina GOP chair Michael Whatley to be the next head of the RNC, alongside his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, who would serve as co-chair.
CBS SLAUGHTER Paramount Global, the parent company for CBS, laid off 800 employees just one day after announcing its massive Super Bowl ratings. On the news side of the company, the layoffs included award-winning journalist Catherine Herridge.
ICYMI: HOGAN FOR SENATE Former Maryland governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, is running for the state’s open US Senate seat as Ben Cardin retires. Hogan left office with a 77 percent approval rating.
It’s Suover — Santos saga ends with a Democrat win
East Meadow, New York
What’s old is new again: Tom Suozzi is heading back to Congress as the Democrat representing New York’s 3rd District. Along the way, a guy named George Santos — you’ve probably heard of him — represented the district before he was expelled from Congress on a bipartisan vote.
In an ironic twist, House Republicans had finally impeached Alejandro Mayorkas hours before a Democrat who previously boasted of “kick[ing] ICE out of Nassau County” won a special election where illegal immigration was the topic of more ads than any other issue. Mayorkas would have been impeached last week, of course, if Republicans still had Santos’s vote.
I spent election night at the headquarters of Republican candidate Mazi Pilip, who will end up losing the district by margins similar to those of Donald Trump in 2020. New York’s illegal immigration crisis was a hot topic of conversation. Curtis Sliwa, the red bandana-clad founder of the Guardian Angels, was present and told me he’s running for mayor of New York City again, whether against incumbent Eric Adams, whom he referred to as “mayor of the illegal aliens,” or scandal-plagued former governor Andrew Cuomo.
Meanwhile, Santos had a great time live-tweeting his party’s failure and giving advice on a late-night Twitter Space voice chat. “-1,” he tweeted shortly after the race was called for Suozzi, who had previously defeated Santos in 2020. His ire is particularly reserved for the New York Republicans who led the way for his expulsion. “To my former colleagues in the house GOP please make these idiots pay you guys $10 million back,” he wrote, tagging eight of his former colleagues.
Heading into November, the race is also a warning with regards to the GOP’s increased aversion to voting by mail. In the hours leading up to Election Day, the airwaves were filled with warnings of a snowstorm that potentially made a few voters stay home. Given the large margin of defeat, though, it’s unlikely that the weather made much of a difference, especially because there didn’t end up being that much snow on the ground.
It didn’t stop the GOP’s biggest super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, from renting snow plows to pave the way for voters, though. Innovative thinking like that will be required to figure out a way to get Republicans voting early and by mail in November.
–Matthew Foldi
Bernie group turns on Biden
The left-wing advocacy group started out of Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign is urging a protest vote against President Biden in Michigan’s upcoming Democratic primary. The organization, Our Revolution, says that Democrats should vote Uncommitted to register their discontent with the president’s stance on the war between Israel and Hamas. Our Revolution, which boasts 87,000 members in Michigan, hopes their actions will “push Biden to change course on Gaza now.”
Biden’s pro-Israel policy has proved a point of alienation for key voting blocs in the Democratic base, namely Arab Americans and young adults. Democrats rely on Dearborn, the city with the highest percentage of Arab Americans in the country, to remain competitive in Michigan in the general election. To that end, Governor Gretchen Whitmer is warning against Our Revolution’s campaign, predicting that it might backfire by sowing division on the left amid the larger goal of defeating Donald Trump.
–Cockburn
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