House Republicans laughably fail to impeach DHS Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas

An attempt by Repub­li­cans to use the peo­ple’s House as a venue for bring­ing base­less accu­sa­tions of mis­con­duct against a mem­ber of Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s cab­i­net fell apart spec­tac­u­lar­ly today when Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Al Green showed up to tor­pe­do Speak­er Mike John­son’s vote on impeach­ing Ale­jan­dro N. May­orkas, the cur­rent Sec­re­tary of the Depart­ment of Home­land Security.

Green, D‑Texas, arrived in a wheel­chair and still wear­ing a hos­pi­tal gown, hav­ing just under­gone abdom­i­nal surgery, and cast the deci­sive vote to block the impeach­ment motion, stun­ning and infu­ri­at­ing Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene, Mike John­son, and oth­er top House Repub­li­cans, who had failed to keep their cau­cus uni­fied, with three defec­tors, and were thus at risk of los­ing the vote.

Democ­rats made sure they failed, in what Kay­la Guo of The New York Times dubbed “like a scene out of a polit­i­cal thriller.”

“I was deter­mined to cast the vote long before — I had no idea how close it was going to be,” Mr. Green told Guo from his hos­pi­tal bed, which he returned to after ruin­ing House Repub­li­cans’ day. “I didn’t come assum­ing that my vote was going to make a dif­fer­ence. I came because it was personal.”

With the vote tied at 215–215 fol­low­ing Green’s hero­ics, Repub­li­cans were forced to throw in the tow­el. A fourth Repub­li­can, Blake Moore of Utah, switched his vote to allow him to make a motion to bring the impeach­ment back up lat­er, per­haps when Major­i­ty Leader Steve Scalise is back at the Capitol.

A glum John­son then announced the result of the vote.

Democ­rats cheered.

“I’ve seen a lot of embar­rass­ing days for dif­fer­ent House Repub­li­can lead­er­ship teams. This one is pret­ty high on the list,” tweet­ed Punch­bowl’s Jake Sher­man.

“The failed vote was a stun­ning rebuke of a months-long inves­ti­ga­tion into May­orkas that legal experts and even some Repub­li­cans had raised con­cerns about,” wrote a team of four Wash­ing­ton Post polit­i­cal reporters.

The New York Times declared it “A Day of Dys­func­tion for House Republicans.”

“Repub­li­cans in Con­gress suf­fered a humil­i­at­ing series of set­backs on Tues­day on crit­i­cal ele­ments of their agen­da, turn­ing the Capi­tol into a den of dys­func­tion that has left sev­er­al major issues, includ­ing U.S. mil­i­tary aid to Ukraine and Israel, in lim­bo amid polit­i­cal feud­ing,” report­ed Catie Edmond­son, who observed that in the span of one day, Repub­li­cans had nixed the bor­der deal they had demand­ed, failed to impeach May­orkas, and whiffed on an effort to send aid to Israel.

“The high-pro­file defeat came hours after John­son pre­dict­ed to reporters that he believed they would have the votes, even as he faced grow­ing skep­ti­cism from with­in own ranks and mul­ti­ple hold­outs refused to sign on,” not­ed Politi­co.

“The fail­ure of the vote to impeach May­orkas is very impor­tant in its own right, but even more because a group of Repub­li­cans bucked Speak­er John­son to exer­cise san­i­ty, exact­ly what needs to start hap­pen­ing gen­er­al­ly,” tweet­ed Los Ange­les Times Senior Legal Affairs Colum­nist Har­ry Lit­man.

U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Marie Glue­senkamp Perez, who vot­ed no, said she want­ed to see bipar­ti­san coop­er­a­tion on immi­gra­tion instead of par­ti­san gamesmanship.

“As the num­ber of migrants unlaw­ful­ly cross­ing our south­ern bor­der reached a record high in Decem­ber, it’s evi­dent the Biden admin­is­tra­tion has failed to get a han­dle on this unsus­tain­able human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis. Our gov­ern­ment has an oblig­a­tion to main­tain a secure bor­der, yet it’s been unable to even keep track of who’s trav­el­ing in and out – the Amer­i­can peo­ple deserve bet­ter,” she said.

“The cri­sis at our South­ern Bor­der is an urgent issue that requires seri­ous, bipar­ti­san action by Con­gress. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the House Major­i­ty decid­ed to waste valu­able time on this failed polit­i­cal stunt, instead of on find­ing a bipar­ti­san solu­tion to this cri­sis. Impeach­ment pow­er was nev­er intend­ed to be used to sanc­tion office­hold­ers over pol­i­cy dif­fer­ences, and today’s bor­der pol­i­cy fail­ures are not high crimes and misdemeanors.”

“Our immi­gra­tion sys­tem has been bro­ken for decades, while the num­ber of migrants arriv­ing at our south­ern bor­der con­tin­ues to grow.”

“In absence of fur­ther action from the Biden Admin­is­tra­tion, it’s up to Con­gress to find a bipar­ti­san com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion solu­tion that deliv­ers for our com­mu­ni­ties’ safe­ty, migrants seek­ing legal path­ways to cit­i­zen­ship, and our small busi­ness­es and farms fac­ing acute labor shortages.”

“It’s also crit­i­cal that Con­gress stop the flow of illic­it fen­tanyl across the South­ern Bor­der, and I hope any immi­gra­tion reform pack­age will include solu­tions like the FEND off Fen­tanyl Act to fur­ther tar­get opi­oid traffickers.

“We don’t need more polit­i­cal grand­stand­ing – we need a bipar­ti­san com­pro­mise that reflects our val­ues and keeps us safe. I’m ready to work with Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats to get it done.”

But Repub­li­cans don’t share her goals. With the excep­tion of the three defec­tors, they all seem bent on fin­ish­ing what they start­ed as soon as possible.

House Demo­c­ra­t­ic Leader Hakeem Jef­fries offered a strong con­dem­na­tion of their incom­pe­tent polit­i­cal the­atrics in a floor speech pre­ced­ing the vote.

“Sec­re­tary May­orkas is a good man, a patri­ot­ic man and a hard­work­ing man doing the best he can under very dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances,” said Jef­fries.

“That’s not an impeach­able offense.”

“Extreme MAGA Repub­li­cans have pro­duced no evi­dence that Sec­re­tary May­orkas has engaged in a high crime or mis­de­meanor, no evi­dence that Sec­re­tary May­orkas has engaged in an impeach­able offense and no evi­dence that Sec­re­tary May­orkas has bro­ken the law or vio­lat­ed the Con­sti­tu­tion. Not a shred of evi­dence, not a scin­til­la of evi­dence. Noth­ing but extreme MAGA Repub­li­can chaos and con­fu­sion, and the effort to avoid doing the hard work nec­es­sary to find com­mon ground to actu­al­ly address the chal­lenges at the border.”

The vote in the Pacif­ic North­west on the May­orkas impeach­ment was along par­ty lines. As men­tioned, there were three Repub­li­can defec­tions, but none of them were from the Pacif­ic North­west. The three were Ken Buck of Col­orado, Mike Gal­lagher of Wis­con­sin, and Tom McClin­tock of California.

Ore­gon’s Lori Chavez DeRe­mer, who some­times cross­es par­ty lines to vote with Democ­rats, was a yes vote, along with Ida­ho’s Mike Simp­son (the more rea­son­able of Ida­ho’s two Repub­li­can U.S. rep­re­sen­ta­tives) and Wash­ing­ton’s Dan New­house, who vot­ed to impeach Don­ald Trump.