Key events
Alejandro Mayorkas is not expected to attend the House homeland security committee’s markup today of the article of impeachment against him.
The hearing appears set to be a debate over the allegations among the panel’s Republican majority and Democratic minority. Mayorkas nonetheless sent the committee’s chair Mark Green a letter this morning, in which he aired a number of grievances about the process. Among them, the homeland security says the panel’s lawmakers have already made up their minds about the charges, and turned down an offer from him to testify:
On January 5, 2024, you sent a letter to me requesting that I again appear before the House Homeland Security Committee to provide testimony. I have testified before this Committee seven times. I agreed to testify again and asked to work with your staff to identify a mutually agreeable date. You did not respond to my request, changed course, and instead invited me to submit written testimony. Two days later, you issued a statement representing that every member of the Committee’s majority already had rendered their decision. I respectfully submit this letter in response.
Green released his own statement this morning, where he said: “Secretary Mayorkas’ 11th-hour response to the Committee is inadequate and unbecoming of a Cabinet secretary. Our investigation has established that Secretary Mayorkas has willfully and systemically refused to comply with the laws of the United States and breached the public trust.”
Mayorkas not the only target of House impeachment campaign
It’s not just the homeland security chief Alejandro Mayorkas that House Republicans are going after.
The party is also considering impeaching Joe Biden for alleged corruption, but that effort appears to be on the backburner at the moment, perhaps because lawmakers have not turned up any proof of their allegations. Last month, Republicans held a vote on the House floor to authorize the investigation, months after a disastrous hearing in which their own witnesses said they did not know if the president broke the law. It’s unclear when the House GOP’s next move will occur.
Both the Biden and Mayorkas impeachments suffer from the same problem: uncertainty over whether the GOP has the votes in the House to impeach both men. Regardless, any impeachment article sent to the Senate are expected to quickly be rejected by the chamber’s Democratic majority, which has shown no sign of wanting to convict their own president, or his deputies.
Homeland security chief Mayorkas decries ‘false accusations’ as Republicans kick off impeachment bid
Good morning, US politics blog readers. House Republicans are finally following through on their much-discussed push to impeach the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, who they blame for mishandling security on the southern border. Beginning at 10am ET, the House homeland security committee will consider two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas, and, assuming they approve them, a vote by the full House of Representatives could come next week.
This is unlikely to be a process that results in Mayorkas losing his job. Impeachments of cabinet secretaries are rare, and even if the House approves the charges, the Democratic-controlled Senate has shown no interest in pursuing his conviction. In a seven-page letter to the committee’s Republican chair, Mark Green, released today, Mayorkas defended his handling of the surge in migrants arriving from Mexico, and told Green that his “false accusations do not rattle me”. Meanwhile, we are still waiting for the details of a legislative compromise to tighten immigration policy in a way that would reduce the number of migrants entering the country, which Republicans say they want passed in exchange for their votes for aid to Ukraine and Israel, though it’s unclear if even that will be enough.
Here’s what else is going on today:
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Joe Biden is heading to Miami and Jupiter, Florida, for two campaign events in what Democrats once regarded as a swing state, but where the party has been ailing for the past few years.
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Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state under Donald Trump, and Leon Panetta, the former defense secretary under Barack Obama, will testify before a House committee investigating the Chinese Communist party.
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A mysterious subpoena announced yesterday by the House clerk concerns a Democratic lawmaker who allegedly misused government money, Punchbowl News reports. They did not say who the lawmaker is.