WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. House voted Tuesday to question Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, with the Republican majority decided to punish the Biden administration over its dealing with of the U.S-Mexico border after failing final week in a politically embarrassing setback.
The night roll name proved tight, with Speaker Mike Johnson’s threadbare GOP majority unable to deal with many defectors or absences within the face of staunch Democratic opposition to impeaching Mayorkas, the primary Cabinet secretary charged in practically 150 years.
In a historic rebuke, the House impeached Mayorkas 214-213. With the return of Majority Leader Steve Scalise to bolster the GOP’s numbers after being away from Washington for most cancers care and a Northeastern storm impacting some others, Republicans recouped — regardless of dissent from their very own ranks.
President Joe Biden known as it a “blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship that has targeted an honorable public servant in order to play petty political games.”
The expenses towards Mayorkas subsequent go to the Senate for a trial, however neither Democratic nor even some Republican senators have proven curiosity within the matter and it could be indefinitely shelved to a committee. The Senate is predicted to obtain the articles of impeachment from the House after returning to session Feb. 26.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., known as the case towards Mayorkas a “sham impeachment” and a “new low for House Republicans.”
In a frantic scene of vote-tallying on the House ground, the GOP effort to question Mayorkas over his dealing with of the southern border took on an air of political desperation as Republicans battle to make good on their priorities.
Mayorkas confronted two articles of impeachment filed by the Homeland Security Committee arguing that he “willfully and systematically” refused to implement present immigration legal guidelines and that he breached the general public belief by mendacity to Congress and saying the border was safe.
But critics of the impeachment effort mentioned the fees towards Mayorkas quantity to a coverage dispute over Biden’s border technique, hardly rising to the Constitution’s bar of excessive crimes and misdemeanors.
The House had initially launched an impeachment inquiry into Biden over his son’s enterprise dealings, however as a substitute turned its consideration to Mayorkas after Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, an ally of former President Donald Trump, pushed the controversy ahead following the panel’s months-long investigation.
Greene, who will function an impeachment supervisor in a possible Senate trial, hugged Scalise afterward and posed for photographs with different lawmakers. She mentioned senators “better pay attention to the American people and how they feel, and then they need to read our articles of impeachment.”
Border safety has shot to the highest of marketing campaign points, with Trump, the Republican front-runner for the presidential nomination, insisting he’ll launch “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” if he retakes the White House.
Various House Republicans have ready laws to start deporting migrants who had been briefly allowed into the U.S. beneath the Biden administration’s insurance policies, many as they await adjudication of asylum claims.
“We have no choice,” Trump mentioned in stark language at a weekend rally in South Carolina.
At the identical time, Johnson rejected a bipartisan Senate border safety package deal Mayorkas had spent weeks negotiating. But the speaker has been unable to advance his Republicans’ personal proposal, which is a nonstarter within the Senate.
“Congress needs to act,” Biden mentioned in a press release after the vote, “to give me, Secretary Mayorkas, and my administration the tools and resources needed to address the situation at the border.”
Three Republican representatives who broke ranks final week over the Mayorkas impeachment — Ken Buck of Colorado, Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin and Tom McClintock of California — all did so once more Tuesday. With a 219-212 majority, Johnson had few votes to spare. His margin bought even smaller later Tuesday night time when New York Democrat Thomas Suozzi received a particular election to the seat as soon as held by Republican George Santos earlier than his expulsion from Congress.
Several main conservative students together with former Homeland Security secretaries from each Republican and Democratic administrations have dismissed the Mayorkas impeachment as unwarranted or a waste of time.
Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland mentioned what the Republicans “have succeeded in doing is degrading and tarnishing the constitutional meaning of impeachment.”
But Scalise instructed reporters after the vote, “It sends a message that we’re not just going to sit by while the secretary of homeland security fails to do his job at keeping our homeland safe.”
Mayorkas shouldn’t be the one Biden administration official the House Republicans need to impeach. They have filed laws to question an extended listing together with Vice President Kamala Harris, Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
Never earlier than has a sitting Cabinet secretary been impeached, and it was practically 150 years in the past that the House voted to question President Ulysses S. Grant’s secretary of battle, William Belknap, over a kickback scheme in authorities contracts. He resigned earlier than the vote.
Mayorkas, who didn’t seem to testify earlier than the impeachment proceedings, put the border disaster squarely on Congress for failing to replace immigration legal guidelines throughout a time of worldwide migration.
“There is no question that we have a challenge, a crisis at the border,” Mayorkas mentioned over the weekend on NBC. “And there is no question that Congress needs to fix it.”
Johnson and the Republicans have pushed again, arguing that the Biden administration may take government actions, as Trump did, to cease the variety of crossings — although the courts have questioned and turned again a few of these efforts.
“We always explore what options are available to us that are permissible under the law,” Mayorkas mentioned.
Last week’s failed vote to question Mayorkas — a shock consequence hardly ever seen on such a high-profile concern — was a surprising show within the chamber that has been churning by means of months of GOP chaos for the reason that ouster of the earlier House speaker.
At the time, Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, who had been hospitalized for emergency stomach surgical procedure, made a shock arrival, wheeled into the chamber in scrubs and socks to vote towards it — leaving the vote tied and resulting in its failure.
“Obviously, you feel good when you can make a difference,” mentioned Green, describing his painstaking route from hospital mattress to the House ground. “All I did was what I was elected to do, and that was to cast my vote on the issues of our time, using the best judgment available to me.”
Republican holdout Gallagher, who had served as a Marine, introduced over the weekend he wouldn’t be searching for reelection within the fall, becoming a member of a rising listing of serious-minded Republican lawmakers heading for the exits.
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Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana and Kevin Freking contributed to this report.
