On Second Try, House Impeaches Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas

Photo by Joe Mabel, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

After a chaotic and embarrassing failure to do so last week, the House GOP got the one extra vote they needed to impeach Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

Washington Post:

House Republicans moved in historic fashion and impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas by a single vote on Tuesday night, succeeding on their second try in punishing the steward of President Biden’s immigration policy.

The unprecedented and partisan resolution — which cleared the House over opposition from Democrats and three GOP members — may not go very far in the Senate, as some Republicans in the upper chamber do not believe that Mayorkas’s actions clear the bar as the “high crimes and misdemeanors” necessary for conviction. But Mayorkas is the first sitting Cabinet secretary to be impeached, and some bipartisan and legal observers worry that the most serious tool the U.S. Constitution provides to rein in a public official is being misused as partisan weapon.

There was some uncertainty before the vote began Tuesday evening, with House GOP leaders prepared to punt the two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas if they didn’t have a majority. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) instead avoided another embarrassing spectacle, scoring a narrow win after enough lawmakers appeared in the chamber following their return to Washington amid worries about a major snowstorm blanketing the Northeast.

Reps. Mike Gallagher (Wis.), Ken Buck (Colo.) and Tom McClintock (Calif.), the same trio of Republicans who opposed impeaching Mayorkas last week, once again voted to oppose their party’s measure.

Johnson released a statement following the vote that emphasized Congress’s “constitutional obligation” to impeach Mayorkas and said that Republicans, who have called for the secretary’s impeachment since he assumed office, treated the process seriously. But despite the historic nature of Tuesday’s vote, senators have cast doubt on the charges.

Mia Ehrenberg, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, criticized House Republicans, saying in a statement that they were “trampling on the Constitution for political gain rather than working to solve the serious challenges at our border.”

“Without a shred of evidence or legitimate Constitutional grounds, and despite bipartisan opposition, House Republicans have falsely smeared a dedicated public servant who has spent more than 20 years enforcing our laws and serving our country,” Ehrenberg added.

The office of Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced in a statement that the House GOP’s impeachment managers will present the articles of impeachment to the Senate once senators return to Washington at the end of the month.

Senate President Pro Tempore Patty Murray (D-Wash.) will preside over the trial, and 11 appointed GOP members will serve as impeachment managers.

Speaker Johnson had to win this vote. Pressure on Johnson has mounted as embarrassing floor vote failures keep happening, accompanied by reports and grumbling the Louisiana Republican’s leadership is marred by indecisiveness, outright hostility towards his senate Republican colleagues, and a lack of communication to the caucus. Driving home the tedious situation Speaker Johnson finds himself in, the imminent arrival of Tom Souzzi back into his NY-3 seat that was occupied by the now-expelled George Santos means this vote would not have passed had it waited.

But what does winning this impeachment vote mean? Not much, other than a popcorn headline that the GOP House majority finally impeached someone, which the base had been howling for since President Biden took office. While Senate Majority Leader Schumer is probably going to allow the formalities of the impeachment trial in the US Senate to proceed, there is no chance of a conviction, and a dismissal vote might come as early as after the presentation of the articles. Whenever the vote does come, the Senate is going to leave Secretary Mayorkas right where he is.

Meanwhile, Speaker Johnson already has some of his own members openly talking about yet another motion to vacate the chair, the same chaos grenade that removed former-Speaker Kevin McCarthy and gave Johnson the gavel in the first place. With a series of tough votes coming, the pressure of an election year, Cocaine Mitch openly at war with him, and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries playing coy on how his lockstep caucus would vote on a vacate motion, Speaker Johnson increasingly looks like the coyote out over the cliff but yet to look down.

Secretary Mayorkas is now the first cabinet official to be impeached since the Grant administration. But the Homeland Security head will still have his position after this latest act of congressional failure theater is played out. Whether Speaker Johnson still has his position as spring comes, turns to summer, and rolls into an election season fall remains to be seen.