While the 2019 impeachment effort was underway, Trump’s allies regularly grumbled that their opponents were debasing their constitutional power. Impeachment would simply become another partisan cudgel, we were warned. Trump had faced more impeachment resolutions than anyone since former president Richard Nixon, a marker of how this pattern was progressing. But, of course, no one now questions why Nixon faced impeachment. Sometimes government officials do things that warrant the measure.
Sometimes, it seems, they don’t.
On Tuesday night, the House Republican caucus managed to cobble together enough votes to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. This was not a bipartisan rebuke of Mayorkas; quite the contrary. The impeachment resolution passed by a one-vote margin, with three Republicans joining the Democrats in opposing it. It was also the second such vote this month; the first effort to impeach Mayorkas ended up as a tie. (A Republican who supported impeachment then flipped his vote to allow the measure to be reconsidered.) It was the vote opposing impeachment that was bipartisan.
It’s easy to see why there wasn’t widespread interest in holding Mayorkas to account for, as the articles of impeachment read, “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and “breach of public trust” — both only dubiously aligned with the “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” standard set in the Constitution. The former mostly centered on the government’s decision to release some immigrants from custody, a function primarily of the government’s detention capacity and a standard that Mayorkas’s predecessors would also have failed to meet. (As one legislator pointed out, if Republicans had evidence that Mayorkas violated the law, he’d have been directly impeached for that.) The latter, meanwhile, was mostly centered on Mayorkas’s defenses of the administration’s handling of the border.
The House impeached the DHS secretary. What’s next for Alejandro Mayorkas?
The Democratic-led Senate almost certainly won’t remove Mayorkas from his position, but it would be interesting if it did simply to measure how little the federal response at the border would change. The impeachment articles invoke big numbers of border encounters and drug seizures that are used to impugn Mayorkas. Had any other person been in Mayorkas’s position since 2021, it’s hard to imagine that those numbers would have been different. Even during Trump’s last months in office, apprehensions and drug seizures were climbing.
So why did House Republicans move forward anyway? There are at least three obvious reasons.
The first is that it both reflects and reinforces the idea that impeachment is just something you do to someone you don’t like or want to make an example of. If Republicans truly thought Democrats had railroaded Trump for political reasons, then why not do the same to Mayorkas? If they didn’t really think that, though, the arrow points in the other direction: Why not target Mayorkas for political reasons and therefore suggest that this is how both parties use impeachment? Why not make Trump’s impeachments seem like part of a partisan pattern instead of Nixon-like anomalies?
The second reason is that the overlapping world of right-wing legislators and media personalities has created enormous demand for such an impeachment and, therefore, enormous rewards. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), tapped as an impeachment manager for Mayorkas’s Senate trial, has sent out numerous fundraising emails focused on her involvement in the impeachment effort.
“If you care about the future prosperity of our country,” one message sent Monday read, “then help me hold the line and deliver this impeachment vote by rushing an emergency donation TODAY.”
Mayorkas was the subject of impeachment commentary nearly 700 times on Fox News from February 2023 through January — more often than on CNN and MSNBC combined. His impeachment was positioned as a central element in the Republican Party’s efforts to hold the administration to account on the border and, as such, became self-fulfilling. And, as Greene’s emails suggest, potentially lucrative.
The third reason is that House Republicans still have Joe Biden in their sights. In the right’s politico-media universe, there has been far more investment in a Biden impeachment than a Mayorkas one. The elements of the Mayorkas impeachment — the thin evidence, the obvious pressure from the base and media allies to move forward — are similarly in play as Republicans target the president. Republicans managed to pull the Mayorkas impeachment across the finish line, suggesting that they might be able to do so similarly with a Biden one.
Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) was one of the three Republicans who declined to vote to impeach Mayorkas. He outlined his reasoning in a 10-page letter to his colleagues, in which he criticized the House Homeland Security Committee’s impeachment articles.
“The problem is that they fail to identify an impeachable crime that Mayorkas has committed,” it reads. “In effect, they stretch and distort the Constitution in order to hold the administration accountable for stretching and distorting the law.”
Sure, but how many contributions did that position generate?
Sometimes, it seems, they don’t.
On Tuesday night, the House Republican caucus managed to cobble together enough votes to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. This was not a bipartisan rebuke of Mayorkas; quite the contrary. The impeachment resolution passed by a one-vote margin, with three Republicans joining the Democrats in opposing it. It was also the second such vote this month; the first effort to impeach Mayorkas ended up as a tie. (A Republican who supported impeachment then flipped his vote to allow the measure to be reconsidered.) It was the vote opposing impeachment that was bipartisan.
It’s easy to see why there wasn’t widespread interest in holding Mayorkas to account for, as the articles of impeachment read, “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and “breach of public trust” — both only dubiously aligned with the “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” standard set in the Constitution. The former mostly centered on the government’s decision to release some immigrants from custody, a function primarily of the government’s detention capacity and a standard that Mayorkas’s predecessors would also have failed to meet. (As one legislator pointed out, if Republicans had evidence that Mayorkas violated the law, he’d have been directly impeached for that.) The latter, meanwhile, was mostly centered on Mayorkas’s defenses of the administration’s handling of the border.
The House impeached the DHS secretary. What’s next for Alejandro Mayorkas?
The Democratic-led Senate almost certainly won’t remove Mayorkas from his position, but it would be interesting if it did simply to measure how little the federal response at the border would change. The impeachment articles invoke big numbers of border encounters and drug seizures that are used to impugn Mayorkas. Had any other person been in Mayorkas’s position since 2021, it’s hard to imagine that those numbers would have been different. Even during Trump’s last months in office, apprehensions and drug seizures were climbing.
So why did House Republicans move forward anyway? There are at least three obvious reasons.
The first is that it both reflects and reinforces the idea that impeachment is just something you do to someone you don’t like or want to make an example of. If Republicans truly thought Democrats had railroaded Trump for political reasons, then why not do the same to Mayorkas? If they didn’t really think that, though, the arrow points in the other direction: Why not target Mayorkas for political reasons and therefore suggest that this is how both parties use impeachment? Why not make Trump’s impeachments seem like part of a partisan pattern instead of Nixon-like anomalies?
The second reason is that the overlapping world of right-wing legislators and media personalities has created enormous demand for such an impeachment and, therefore, enormous rewards. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), tapped as an impeachment manager for Mayorkas’s Senate trial, has sent out numerous fundraising emails focused on her involvement in the impeachment effort.
“If you care about the future prosperity of our country,” one message sent Monday read, “then help me hold the line and deliver this impeachment vote by rushing an emergency donation TODAY.”
Mayorkas was the subject of impeachment commentary nearly 700 times on Fox News from February 2023 through January — more often than on CNN and MSNBC combined. His impeachment was positioned as a central element in the Republican Party’s efforts to hold the administration to account on the border and, as such, became self-fulfilling. And, as Greene’s emails suggest, potentially lucrative.
The third reason is that House Republicans still have Joe Biden in their sights. In the right’s politico-media universe, there has been far more investment in a Biden impeachment than a Mayorkas one. The elements of the Mayorkas impeachment — the thin evidence, the obvious pressure from the base and media allies to move forward — are similarly in play as Republicans target the president. Republicans managed to pull the Mayorkas impeachment across the finish line, suggesting that they might be able to do so similarly with a Biden one.
Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) was one of the three Republicans who declined to vote to impeach Mayorkas. He outlined his reasoning in a 10-page letter to his colleagues, in which he criticized the House Homeland Security Committee’s impeachment articles.
“The problem is that they fail to identify an impeachable crime that Mayorkas has committed,” it reads. “In effect, they stretch and distort the Constitution in order to hold the administration accountable for stretching and distorting the law.”
Sure, but how many contributions did that position generate?
