When Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was mulling whether to vote last week for the debt limit deal, which was widely panned on the right, she wasn’t shy about articulating her price: “Somebody needs to be impeached,” the Georgia Republican declared, singling out Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Now the bill is apparently coming due for House GOP leaders. On Wednesday, the Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing about immigration, and witnesses that Republicans intend to call — including a conservative author who has targeted Mayorkas — suggest they are starting down the road toward impeaching Mayorkas, just as Greene wants.
This will blow back on the GOP. Greene’s linking of Mayorkas to the unrelated debt limit vote has handed Democrats a weapon against the coming impeachment circus. For vulnerable House Republicans who want to tout their support for the bipartisan debt deal, the last thing they need is a nakedly partisan charade led by Greene.
Greene carefully developed a plan for impeaching Mayorkas. She and other Republicans were giddily anticipating a large spike in migrant arrivals at the southern border when a covid-era restriction on asylum-seeking, known as Title 42, was lifted last month. Greene even advised House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) that this would be a good hook for impeachment.
But on Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that average daily unlawful border crossings are down sharply, relative to the period before Title 42 ended. This is the latest sign that border crossings after the restriction expired have been lower than expected because of President Biden’s draconian legal limits on asylum-seeking at the border paired with expanding pathways to apply from abroad.
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Amusingly, the failure of this border surge to materialize has apparently intensified the GOP drive to impeach Mayorkas. Wednesday’s Judiciary Committee hearing will feature testimony from Chad Wolf, the acting homeland security chief under Donald Trump, and Steven Bradbury of the Heritage Foundation, who has argued for Mayorkas’s impeachment.
The truth is that Republicans like Greene want to impeach Mayorkas because of policy differences, which aren’t impeachable offenses. Republicans regularly rage at Biden for reversing Trump policies such as expelling undocumented migrant kids and forcing migrants to wait in Mexico for hearings, which led to awful humanitarian outcomes.
In fact, some moderate Republicans have admitted the case for impeaching Mayorkas is weak. Earlier this year, the last time an impeachment boomlet took flight, moderates also forthrightly said it would be terrible politics for the GOP.
That’s only truer today. Many Republicans from districts Biden carried in 2020 are aggressively showcasing their bipartisan bona fides after the debt limit vote. Do these moderates really want to vote on an impeachment that has Greene as its public face?
GOP pollster Whit Ayres, who has long urged his party to moderate on immigration, says it remains unclear whether Republicans can produce evidence of impeachable offenses. If not, Ayres suggests, impeachment will backfire.
“If they’ve got no hard evidence,” Ayres told me, “it will just drive an image of the Republican Party that is very much at odds with the kind of party that can win elections in swing states or win a majority of the electorate in a presidential campaign.”
What’s more, Greene’s suggestion that this impeachment push was necessary to keep McCarthy in the good graces of the far right is revealing: it’s another sign that McCarthy and the GOP are beholden to extremists. Democrats will highlight this throughout any impeachment proceedings.
“We need to hammer this home,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, told me. Speaking of Greene, Swalwell added: “The only reason she voted for paying America’s bills is that she was going to get this chaos journey of impeaching Mayorkas that she always wanted.”
All this carries risks for Democrats. The relatively flat border numbers are linked to Biden policies restricting asylum-seeking at the border that renege on our international commitments, which isn’t easy for Democrats to defend. The administration admits those numbers could rise again, depending on conditions throughout the Americas — which could fuel impeachment.
Swalwell acknowledged this possibility, but he insisted Democrats can make such a development stick to Republicans by citing their refusal to pursue congressional reform of our asylum system. “They want the crisis,” he said.
For the House GOP, the border debate often unfolds in a land of right-wing make-believe. One Republican depicted the post-Title 42 migrant-surge-that-wasn’t by posting video of migrants from months earlier. Republicans run computer-animated ads painting the border as something out of the “Call of Duty” video game. Freshman Republicans actually attend “border boot camp” photo ops.
The spectacle of Greene leading an impeachment of Mayorkas — in part over a border surge that hasn’t happened — will perfectly underscore the ludicrousness of this never-ending clown show. It’s hard to imagine this is something McCarthy and vulnerable Republicans want, but given right-wing anger over the debt limit deal, they might have no choice but to offer it as a consolation prize.
Now the bill is apparently coming due for House GOP leaders. On Wednesday, the Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing about immigration, and witnesses that Republicans intend to call — including a conservative author who has targeted Mayorkas — suggest they are starting down the road toward impeaching Mayorkas, just as Greene wants.
This will blow back on the GOP. Greene’s linking of Mayorkas to the unrelated debt limit vote has handed Democrats a weapon against the coming impeachment circus. For vulnerable House Republicans who want to tout their support for the bipartisan debt deal, the last thing they need is a nakedly partisan charade led by Greene.
Greene carefully developed a plan for impeaching Mayorkas. She and other Republicans were giddily anticipating a large spike in migrant arrivals at the southern border when a covid-era restriction on asylum-seeking, known as Title 42, was lifted last month. Greene even advised House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) that this would be a good hook for impeachment.
But on Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that average daily unlawful border crossings are down sharply, relative to the period before Title 42 ended. This is the latest sign that border crossings after the restriction expired have been lower than expected because of President Biden’s draconian legal limits on asylum-seeking at the border paired with expanding pathways to apply from abroad.
Press Enter to skip to end of carousel
Amusingly, the failure of this border surge to materialize has apparently intensified the GOP drive to impeach Mayorkas. Wednesday’s Judiciary Committee hearing will feature testimony from Chad Wolf, the acting homeland security chief under Donald Trump, and Steven Bradbury of the Heritage Foundation, who has argued for Mayorkas’s impeachment.
The truth is that Republicans like Greene want to impeach Mayorkas because of policy differences, which aren’t impeachable offenses. Republicans regularly rage at Biden for reversing Trump policies such as expelling undocumented migrant kids and forcing migrants to wait in Mexico for hearings, which led to awful humanitarian outcomes.
In fact, some moderate Republicans have admitted the case for impeaching Mayorkas is weak. Earlier this year, the last time an impeachment boomlet took flight, moderates also forthrightly said it would be terrible politics for the GOP.
That’s only truer today. Many Republicans from districts Biden carried in 2020 are aggressively showcasing their bipartisan bona fides after the debt limit vote. Do these moderates really want to vote on an impeachment that has Greene as its public face?
GOP pollster Whit Ayres, who has long urged his party to moderate on immigration, says it remains unclear whether Republicans can produce evidence of impeachable offenses. If not, Ayres suggests, impeachment will backfire.
“If they’ve got no hard evidence,” Ayres told me, “it will just drive an image of the Republican Party that is very much at odds with the kind of party that can win elections in swing states or win a majority of the electorate in a presidential campaign.”
What’s more, Greene’s suggestion that this impeachment push was necessary to keep McCarthy in the good graces of the far right is revealing: it’s another sign that McCarthy and the GOP are beholden to extremists. Democrats will highlight this throughout any impeachment proceedings.
“We need to hammer this home,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, told me. Speaking of Greene, Swalwell added: “The only reason she voted for paying America’s bills is that she was going to get this chaos journey of impeaching Mayorkas that she always wanted.”
All this carries risks for Democrats. The relatively flat border numbers are linked to Biden policies restricting asylum-seeking at the border that renege on our international commitments, which isn’t easy for Democrats to defend. The administration admits those numbers could rise again, depending on conditions throughout the Americas — which could fuel impeachment.
Swalwell acknowledged this possibility, but he insisted Democrats can make such a development stick to Republicans by citing their refusal to pursue congressional reform of our asylum system. “They want the crisis,” he said.
For the House GOP, the border debate often unfolds in a land of right-wing make-believe. One Republican depicted the post-Title 42 migrant-surge-that-wasn’t by posting video of migrants from months earlier. Republicans run computer-animated ads painting the border as something out of the “Call of Duty” video game. Freshman Republicans actually attend “border boot camp” photo ops.
The spectacle of Greene leading an impeachment of Mayorkas — in part over a border surge that hasn’t happened — will perfectly underscore the ludicrousness of this never-ending clown show. It’s hard to imagine this is something McCarthy and vulnerable Republicans want, but given right-wing anger over the debt limit deal, they might have no choice but to offer it as a consolation prize.
