Jennifer Bendery is a senior politics reporter for HuffPost. She has covered Congress and the White House for HuffPost since April 2011. She previously reported on Congress for four years for Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, and spent four years covering the Texas Legislature for GalleryWatch in Austin, TX.
In a stunning blow to Republican leaders, the House rejected an effort to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday after a number of Republicans joined Democrats in opposing it.
The vote was incredibly dramatic. It was tied 215 to 215 for several minutes, with every Democrat voting no along with three: Reps. Ken Buck , Tom McClintock and Mike Gallagher . A tied vote meant the effort would fail, soRepublicans were furiously prodding Gallagher to change his vote, but he wouldn’t. In the end, Rep. Blake Moore voted no, not because he opposed it but because it allows the House to bring up the bill again another day. That bumped the final tally to 214-216. GOP leaders appeared to be counting on one Democrat to be absent in order to squeak through the vote: Rep. Al Green of Texas. He had been out following surgery. But he unexpectedly showed up for Tuesday’s vote. “I always intended to be here,” Green told reporters after the vote. “I had surgery. I’m recovering, but this was important.” Surprise! Rep. Al Green caught GOP leaders off guard by showing up to vote against impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. He provided Democrats with the extra vote they needed to tank the effort.Johnson is already signaling he’ll try again when he’s certain he has the votes. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise missed the vote for medical reasons, so he could give the GOP that one extra vote it needs when he returns. “House Republicans fully intend to bring Articles of Impeachment against Secretary Mayorkas back to the floor when we have the votes for passage,” his spokesman Raj Shah Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene , the sponsor of the impeachment resolution, downplayed the failed vote. She repeatedly said that Scalise, who is recovering from cancer treatment, could return as soon as next week to be the GOP’s “solid yes.”Still, Tuesday’s vote was an epic fail for GOP leaders, who have been angling to impeach Mayorkas for months. The entire effort is a stuntthat Mayorkas had committed crimes ― let alone crimes that meet the threshold for impeachable offenses. The Constitution spells out that impeachment is reserved for rare instances of “In the case of Mayorkas, a Cabinet secretary charged with carrying out immigration laws, the GOP was essentially attacking him for policies it doesn’t like. In the lead-up to the vote, Johnson, who is a constitutional lawyer, touted his legal credentials and said he had no choice but to impeach. “In my review and my understanding and everything I’ve known and read and studied over the years, I don’t believe there’s ever been a Cabinet secretary who was so blatantly, openly, willfully and without remorse did exactly the opposite of what the federal law requires him to do,” Johnson said in a press conference. “It’s an extreme measure, but extreme times call for extreme measures.” But a number of Republicans found Johnson’s rhetoric unpersuasive, saying that while they may not agree with the Biden administration’s policies, it would be pointless and unconstitutional to impeach Mayorkas. “The problem is that they fail to identify an impeachable crime that Mayorkas has committed,” McClintock said early Tuesday in“In effect, they stretch and distort the Constitution in order to hold the administration accountable for stretching and distorting the law,” he said. McClintock echoed the previous sentiments of Buck, who was the first Republican to announce his opposition to impeachment.House Republicans could change immigration policies they don’t like by passing bipartisan legislation through Congress. They’ve spent months screaming about the need to address border security, and in the Senate, some Republicans actually put in the work andnot to pass any bipartisan border bills, because they would give President Joe Biden a win ahead of the November presidential election. Torn between angering Trump and looking pathetic by not tackling the border problems they‘ve been vowing to address, House Republicans settled on going after Mayorkas. Even if they had been successful in impeaching Mayorkas, the impeachment articles would have gone nowhere in the Senate. “There have already been many shameful and embarrassing moments in this Republican House majority,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said last week. “But abusing the Constitution by pursuing this sham impeachment effort is a new, ignominious low.” “And let this be clear: This unserious spectacle by House Republicans does nothing ― nothing ― to secure our border,” he said.Republican senators didn’t want anything to do with the House’s impeachment effort, either.“What’s rich to me is the speaker says the bill in the Senate is ... dead on arrival,” CramerRealness delivered to your inbox By entering your email and clicking Sign Up, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. You are also agreeing to our
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