House committee holds first impeachment hearing for DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas

Table Of Content

• House committee holds first impeachment hearing for DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
• Speaker Johnson is moving forward with foreign aid bills despite threat to oust him
• McCarthy battled through four days and 14 failed ballots before finally winning the speaker's gavel
• This is the first impeachment trial of a sitting Cabinet member
• Senate declares second impeachment article unconstitutional
• Fetterman thanks GOP for bringing 'Jerry Springer Show' to the Senate

That article had charged Mayorkas with "willfully and systemically" refusing to comply with federal immigration laws. Republicans had planned to force Democrats to take tough votes, like on the constitutionality of not holding a trial. But because Schmitt objected to a debate agreement, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., immediately moved to question the constitutionality of the articles of impeachment.

House committee holds first impeachment hearing for DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas

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.

Speaker Johnson is moving forward with foreign aid bills despite threat to oust him

Attorneys general from Montana, Oklahoma and Missouri testified at Wednesday's hearing to highlight the impact of migration on their states under Mayorkas' leadership. The Department of Homeland Security called the impeachment effort "baseless and pointless" and called on Congress to reform the nation's immigration laws. After voting that both articles of impeachment against Mayorkas were unconstitutional, the Senate voted to adjourn the trial, with all Senate Democrats voting in favor and all Senate Republicans voting against. The House sent two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas to the Senate on Tuesday, forcing a trial on allegations that he has “willfully and systematically” refused to enforce immigration laws. WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans voted along party lines early Wednesday to move toward impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for a “willful and systematic” refusal to enforce immigration laws as border security becomes a top 2024 election issue. The articles charged Mayorkas with willfully ignoring the law and breaching the public's trust.

McCarthy battled through four days and 14 failed ballots before finally winning the speaker's gavel

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.

This is the first impeachment trial of a sitting Cabinet member

For example, Republicans are doing away with the proxy voting that Democrats under former Speaker Nancy Pelosi put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic. That means McCarthy must demand greater attendance and participation on every vote with almost no absences allowed for family emergencies or other circumstances. McCarthy commands a slim 222-seat Republican majority, which means on any given vote he can only lose four GOP detractors or the legislation will fail, if all Democrats are opposed. On Monday, Roy praised the new rules he helped craft, saying he could file a motion “right now” to demand a vote on the speaker — as it has been through much of House history. But it's an open question whether the changes being approved will make the House more transparent in its operations or grind it to a halt, as happened last week when McCarthy battled through four days and 14 failed ballots before finally winning the speaker's gavel. There are other provisions the conservatives extracted from McCarthy that weaken the power of the speaker's office and turn over more control of the legislative business to rank-and-file lawmakers, particularly those far-right lawmakers who won concessions.

Senate declares second impeachment article unconstitutional

List of GOP Senators Who Didn't Sign a Call for Mayorkas Impeachment Trial - Newsweek

List of GOP Senators Who Didn't Sign a Call for Mayorkas Impeachment Trial.

Posted: Fri, 12 Apr 2024 07:00:00 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.

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.

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.

Because Mayorkas is a Cabinet member, Senate President Pro Tempore Patty Murray, D-Wash., will preside. After a floor debate over whether the House could impeach an official who had resigned, the House ended up doing just that by voting unanimously to impeach Belknap. “THE DISGRACED SECRETARY,” read The New York Times headline the following day.

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.

"We had no evidence, no procedure. This is a day — it’s not a proud day in the history of the Senate." The Senate vote "proves definitively that there was no evidence or Constitutional grounds to justify impeachment," DHS spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg said in a statement. The effort is all but certain to crash in the Senate, where Democrats have control and a two-thirds majority would be needed to convict and remove him from office. The Tuesday vote timing is notable because it comes ahead of a special election to fill the seat vacated by Rep. George Santos, which could reduce the GOP’s thin margins even further if Democrats flip the seat. Given the narrow margins, Republicans could only afford to lose a handful of votes – and a surprise move by Democratic Rep. Al Green of Texas to return from surgery to vote changed the margins at the 11th hour to make it impossible for Republicans to garner enough support. House Homeland Security chairman Mark Green framed the failed vote as merely a delay in the process and said the House would vote when Majority Leader Steve Scalise returns from receiving cancer treatments.

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.