House committee holds final impeachment hearing for DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas

Table Of Content

• House impeaches Alejandro Mayorkas in historic vote, punishing DHS chief over handling of U.S.-Mexico border
• Rwanda’s Hope Hostel once housed genocide survivors. Now it awaits migrants from Britain
• House Republicans barely impeached Mayorkas
• Editorial: President Biden is using Title 42 against Venezuelans. That’s cowardly policymaking

The Senate trial process has begun, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., announced. Then Schumer said that Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, would administer the oath to her. Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., objected to a timing agreement on debate and holding votes that Schumer proposed. "And by doing what we just did, we have, in effect, ignored the directions of the House, which were to have a trial," he continued.

House impeaches Alejandro Mayorkas in historic vote, punishing DHS chief over handling of U.S.-Mexico border

If the Republicans win both chambers they would continue symbolic actions, "but I think there are two other categories of things they would consider doing and one is pushing legislation that they would dare Biden to veto," Kosar said. In this scenario, even though Democrats are losing the House, keeping control of the Senate means they would be able to continue approving Biden’s picks for the federal courts. The Jan. 6 committee’s mandate expires at the end of the current Congress and it would need to be re-convened to continue. The committee on Oct. 21 subpoenaed testimony and documents from Trump, but if Republicans win the House they could be expected to disband the committee and end the investigation into the attack on the Capitol.

Rwanda’s Hope Hostel once housed genocide survivors. Now it awaits migrants from Britain

A number of GOP senators laughed and Sens. Tom Cotton, Ark., and Rand Paul, Ky., banged on the table. In a statement released at the end of the Senate trial process, Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., said that "what’s happening at our southern border is completely unacceptable" and "the Biden Administration must do more to keep Montana and our country safe." Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., joked with reporters that the impeachment trial was "awesome," calling it "the apex of civil life right now. … It was a miracle." “By voting unanimously to bypass their constitutional responsibility, every single Senate Democrat has issued their full endorsement of the Biden Administration’s dangerous open border policies," House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and his leadership team wrote. The Department of Homeland Security said Democrats were right to reject the impeachment articles.

House Republicans barely impeached Mayorkas

When confronted by Republicans in congressional hearings, Mayorkas has maintained that the U.S. does have operational control of the country’s borders — a stance that has only further enraged critics and further fueled calls for impeachment, with Republicans accusing him of lying to Congress. WASHINGTON — Members of the House Homeland Security Committee are meeting Tuesday to discuss the Republican-led impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. "For the sake of the Senate's integrity, and to protect impeachment for those rare cases we truly need it, senators should dismiss today's charges," he said on the floor. Talks to get an agreement on how long senators will debate the impeachment and a deal on a number of votes on points of order were blocked last night after Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., objected to the proposal, a Senate source said. In January 2021, 45 Senate Republicans voted to dismiss Donald Trump’s Jan. 6-related impeachment without a trial. That trial only occurred because they lacked the majority vote needed to block it, with five Republicans joining all Democrats against dismissing it.

"Next to a declaration of war, impeachment is arguably the most serious authority given to the House and we have treated this matter accordingly," Johnson said in a statement after the vote. "Since this Secretary refuses to do the job that the Senate confirmed him to do, the House must act." A fourth Republican also switched his vote at the last minute to give GOP leaders the opportunity to bring up the vote again, making the final vote 214 in favor to 216 against. Legal experts on both sides of the aisle have also criticized the effort, saying Mayorkas' actions fail to meet the threshold for impeachment. Republicans vowed they would try again once House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who had been undergoing cancer treatment, returned to Washington.

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

The House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy instead threatened telecommunications companies that complied with subpoenas of phone records. Alternately Republicans could keep the committee but redirect its focus, perhaps to try to blame Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They have accused her of failing to call for help, a claim contradicted by video released by the Jan. 6 committee. Elsewhere in the country, Republican J.D. Vance defeated Democrat Tim Ryan for an open House seat in Ohio. In New Hampshire, Trump-styled Republican Don Bolduc lost a bid to oust Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan and Democratic Reps. Abigail Spanberger and Jennifer Wexton held off spirited Republican challengers in Virginia districts the GOP had hoped to flip. In North Carolina, the Trump-backed Republican Rep. Ted Budd beat Democratic candidate Cheri Beasley, the former chief justice of the state Supreme Court.

The GOP leader said the president is now trying to turn the blame back on Congress for failing to update immigration laws. If approved, the charges would go to the Senate for a trial, though senators may first convene a special committee for consideration. “The problems with our broken and outdated immigration system are not new. … Our immigration laws were simply not built for 21st century migration patterns,” Mayorkas wrote, noting that he is involved in bipartisan talks with senators to come to an agreement on changes to immigration and asylum laws.

Senate adjourns impeachment trial

House Republicans move to impeach homeland security secretary - The Guardian US

House Republicans move to impeach homeland security secretary.

Posted: Wed, 31 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

After he entered evidence into the record, Clymer moved for a vote on impeachment. Just hours earlier, Belknap had raced to the White House and begged Grant to accept his resignation, which the president did. The Senate voted 51-49, along party lines, against Sen. Ted Cruz's motion to go into closed session. Republican Leader Mitch McConnell called a vote to try to table it but that failed, on the third party-line vote of the afternoon. He called for the Senate to adjourn until Nov. 6, which is the day after the election.

In any case, Republicans would not be able to win the support of the two-thirds of the Senate that is needed to convict and remove Mayorkas from office. Democrats control the Senate, 51 to 49, and they appear to be united against the impeachment effort. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said last week he wasn’t sure what he would do if there were a move to dismiss the trial. “I think it’s virtually certain that there will not be the conviction of someone when the constitutional test has not been met,” he said. House Speaker Mike Johnson will send articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate after Congress returns. House Republicans have released two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Democrats are expected to try to dismiss or table the charges later this week before the full arguments get underway. Last year, eight House Republicans voted to shelve the impeachment resolution proposed by Greene, though many of them have since signaled being open to it. The package being negotiated by the senators with Mayorkas could emerge as the most consequential bipartisan immigration proposal in a decade. Or it could collapse in political failure as Republicans, and some Democrats, run from the effort.

The vote is happening on the same night that New York is holding a special election to replace expelled former Republican Rep. George Santos, giving Democrats the opportunity to make the GOP’s razor-thin majority in the House even tighter. Earlier, CNN reported that Republican leaders are confident that they will have the votes to pass the resolution, according to sources. This comes after House Republicans failed to impeach Mayorkas in a vote last week.

Homeland Security spokeswoman Mia Ehrenberg accused Republicans of playing “political games” and highlighted Mayorkas’s work on a bipartisan border bill in the Senate that the House GOP blocked. Republicans allege that Mayorkas willfully failed to enforce southern border laws, which they claim led to millions of illegal border crossings. Senate Democrats hope to quickly dismiss the House’s articles of impeachment against Mayorkas this week and move on to other matters. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said that Democrats and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer ought to hold a full impeachment trial, accusing Schumer of trying to "sweep it under the rug." Schumer added, however, that he hopes to get an agreement with Republicans on timing, giving them the chance to offer votes on points of order before Democrats move to dismiss the charges. Chief Justice John Roberts will not preside over the impeachment trial — that’s only for sitting presidents.

The Senate is now voting on a motion from Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., to move to executive session. "This is a different process than we would run other impeachments," he said. "I judge the danger of normalizing the House impeachment process as much graver than the 'dangerous setting of the process/precedent in the Senate.' There was nothing close to high crime or misdemeanor. ... Everyone knows it. It would be irresponsible for us to treat it as serious exercise." Schumer said afterward that Republicans were not “prepared” after they “denied our fair and reasonable offer and didn’t seem to know what to do." "History will judge what Republicans did tonight, and it won't be favorably. They threw the integrity of the House, the Constitution, as well as any glimmer of hope of working together, under the bus," he said in a statement. "The problems with our broken and outdated immigration system are not new," Mayorkas wrote last month in a letter to the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee.