There are conversations regarding the moment
Rep. Mike Johnson says he can’t impeach a white house officials: The failure of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
House Republicans failed to pass articles of impeachment for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, scuttling an effort that was widely seen as an opportunity to deliver on a key promise to GOP base voters.
The vote was stuck in a tie for several minutes as leaders scrambled, but in the end, four Republicans voted against the measure and the final vote was 214 to 216.
If Steve Scalise of Louisiana is able to come back then they may get another chance. His vote, though, could be canceled out if Tom Suozzi, a Democrat, wins a special election in New York next week and is quickly sworn in. But a better move is for Republican leaders to tell their loudest members that they’ve been embarrassed enough, and to drop the whole thing.
The Republican base and conservative media figures called for impeachment of multiple Biden administration officials – including Mayorkas, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and President Biden himself – after the party retook the House in the 2022 midterms.
There are Republicans in Congress who want to deliver on their demands from their base, and they have focused on investigations and oversight in order to do so. But with a razor-thin majority, Republicans were unable to unite their conference and maintain a majority on the Mayorkas impeachment measure.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said the chamber did not take the move “lightly.” He accused Mayorkas of failing to obey the law and of not being remorseful.
Rep. Tom McClintock, one of the Republicans who voted against impeaching, said on the House Floor Tuesday that “Sec. Mayorkas is guilty of maladministration of our immigration laws on a cosmic scale. The American founders specifically rejected it, so we know it’s not grounds for impeachment.
The separation of powers between the president and the congress would be shattered by political disputes, and they didn’t want that to happen.
The 216-to-214 vote will quickly be described as an embarrassment for Speaker Mike Johnson and his inability to rally his troops or even count them, but it’s really an embarrassment for the 215 Republican members who voted to abuse their constitutional impeachment power because they disagreed with someone’s boss’s policies.
It looks like four Republicans voted against impeachment, but one changed his vote just before the vote so that Republicans could try again down the road.
Three Republicans, Ken Buck of Colorado, Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, and Tom McClintock of California, are the only members in their own party who understand how the Constitution works. McClintock dislikes Mayorkas and accuses him of having too many immigrants into the country.
He said last year that these are not impeachable offenses. The founders, he said, set a high bar for impeachment — treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors — and if Republicans make a crime out of a disagreement, they “will have signed off on this new and unconstitutional abuse of power.”
There is no doubt about it; many in his party are still angry about the two impeachments of Donald Trump, having never heard of the depraved and criminal actions that led to them. They were looking for a way to level the playing field against Democrats.
