The NYT reports.
Good. As I wrote on January 28th, "What's the 'high crime'/'misdemeanor' bringing this policy disagreement within the constitutional power to impeach?"
February 6, 2024
"The United States House of Representatives rejected impeachment charges against Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary..."
"... on Tuesday after a small group of Republicans broke with their party and refused to support what amounted to a partisan indictment of President Biden’s immigration policies. The 216-214 vote dealt a stunning defeat to Speaker Mike Johnson, who had expressed confidence that he had the votes to charge Mr. Mayorkas with high crimes and misdemeanors for failing to lock down the United States border with Mexico amid a migrant surge, a move that Republicans have been promising for more than a year."
The NYT reports.
The NYT reports.
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52 comments:
The Swamp rejected impeachment charges against The Swamp?
Okay- I didn't see that one coming.
3 sell-outs.
Refusing to uphold the law is hardly a "policy disagreement"
Only the NYTimes would say this is a stunning defeat.
More likely Common Sense ruling.
And here's hoping that Buck, Gallagher, and McClintock pay a real price for their treachery
I suppose that handful of Republicans will face down voters at some point. Is this tacit approval of current immigration policy or am I missing something?
Just imagine if Republicans were like Democrats.
It's politically stupid to engage in useless theatrics. Stupid when you do it to Trump. Stupid when you do it to Mayorkas. Stupid when you do it to Biden. It's what pols do when they have little of substance to offer, and want to distract from their own pettiness and ineffectiveness.
They should follow the precedents set during Watergate impeachment, with WaPo et al reporting, Democratic indictments, etc, and push public opinion until someone takes a knee.
The crime of allowing illegal immigration to occur.
We have laws.
the Articles were for the Secretary’s failure to execute the laws. It wasn’t a policy difference.
After progressive indoctrination in schools, nightly news, NYT publishing, Google steering, etc, will anyone remember? Pass the bennies, it's over is a familiar refrain. It's an American Spring.
I can see some sense in which failure to uphold the law is not the same as breaking it, even though the consequences may be the same. Still if ever there would seem to be a just purpose for impeachment as a remedy, the profound failure of an appointed official to uphold his oath of office would seem to fit tailor made.
I don't understand officials just refusing to enforce laws they don't personally like isn't a violation of their oaths of office and therefore sufficient reason to impeach them. That's not a rhetorical "I don't understand." I don't understand. How does the whole system continue to work if laws passed by legislatures are nullified by the executive branch?
How exactly did "prosecutorial discretion," which for all of U.S. history has been about judgment in individual (usually very difficult) cases, get turned into giving a single official discretion to decide that "Shoplifting is now legal in Suffolk County, MA" despite the legislature having long-ago made shoplifting a crime?
I would be grateful is Ann and anyone else with deep legal knowledge could weigh in on this. It seems to me that the next step has to be either to eliminate prosecutorial discretion entirely (which many people are already ready to do--though I see the dangers there) or at least abolish it when there is a complaint by a victim (but there are dangers there, also). But how does the country continue to function when the legislature's laws, which supposedly represent the will of the people, are ignored?
There's something wrong with McClintok from Calf. This guy almost became Governor. Now, he's covering for Biden. Buck is just been bought off. cried when he announced he wasn't running for re-election because y'know he was just too wise and brilliant for the voters.
Dont know about Gallagher (winsconsin). WHy is he popping up and voting for Myorkas. Is he a squishy friend of Biden and illegal immigration?
Now the baby is viable? What prompted them to change their Choice... uh, choice? Green deals? Democratic gerrymandering? Redistributive change? Charges of diversity? Alien emoluments... in Spring? Martha has a Vineyard?
These Repubs obviously thought that their election prospects were better by voting no.
“War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.”
― William Tecumseh Sherman
No, these folx are our friends who have to win in close races, let them do what they must.
We now have Abortion vs the Border, Abortion is waning.
Dereliction of duty is a 'high crime or misdemeanor'.. his job is to protect the border. His title is "Secretary of Homeland Security." What part of that title do people not understand? He is failing to protect the homeland.
Flooding 10 MILLION illegals into the USA, where they can do great harm and cost great treasure, is a crime.
I'd much prefer these losers would stop trying to keep up with the Joneses (impeachment-happy Progressive Democrats) by imitating their incompetence, and instead start figuring out ways to write legislation that does something constructive while painting the Progressives into the corner they seem to prefer anyway. It's not that hard, guys. We asked for Leadership, not leader's sh*t.
No chance of anything happening in the Senate anyway. So just theater.
T
Begley,
Given that you characterize him as a RINO, surely you weren't planning to vote for him in the primary anyway, were you?
No immigration laws, no civil rights, party like it's 2024, it's Spring time in America.
The ethic of this handmade tale is that life, the universe, and everything are discretionary constructs subject to the rule of force, with bennie incentives, in secular societies.
"What's the 'high crime'/'misdemeanor' bringing this policy disagreement within the constitutional power to impeach?"
What is the constitutional or legislative definition of a high crime or misdemeanor?
I consider today a great success for the GOP.
Everyone knew the Mayorkas impeachment vote would fail because....GOPe.
However, I put the odds of the GOPe joining the dems to impeach Trump again for no reason at 85% so I was pleasantly surprised that did not occur.
Great, by not impeaching him they have approved him.
Johnson, you seem smart, but WTF? Am i going to give my vote to you or should I just buy a Malibu shack and let my descendants be harem mates for the Palestinians?
I can't see impeachment as the remedy for a person doing what his boss wants him to do. The solution to this problem has to occur at the ballot box.
The guy from Utah who changed his vote from Yea to Nay kept this baby in the bath water. Scalise wasn’t there to vote today but he’ll be back next week. Stay tuned.
I would prefer if neither impeachment nor lawfare were used to attack political opponents. But that ship has sailed.
The Democrats will keep applying these tactics as long as there are no consequences for doing so.
Demanding that one side maintain the norms that the other side constantly violates is a recipe for defeat.
What an incompetent clown show.
The Know Nothings.
Prof M Drout,
I will step forward to answer, though I have absolutely no legal training or experience. I have great confidence in my response, however, since this is not in any way a legal question -- it's a political one!
It belongs in the same tradition as "John Marshall has made this decision; now let him enforce it", and "I won", and "I have a pan and a phone"... If we the people don't turn miscreants like this out of office then we will just continue to suffer from unconstitutional legislation, ultra vires actions from the executive, and preposterous rulings from the courts.
You can’t win, just make sure you don’t loose, ok?
"What's the 'high crime'/'misdemeanor' bringing this policy disagreement within the constitutional power to impeach?"
Didn't that ship sail when they brought an impeachment against Trump for a phone call? Where was that high crime/misdemeanor? At least in this case they have a man refusing to enforce laws he swore to uphold, no? I mean isn't that the core of his job? enforcing current immigration laws? Or is this [being a Dem admin] like those union "no show" jobs?
Time to send them hundreds of buses. If they are fine with Mayorkis, they should be fine with the illegals he is letting invade the country....so they need busloads in THEIR districts to show them what they just voted against.
"Refusing to uphold the law" Kirk Parker the first of several to hit the nail on the head.
@hawkeyedjb -- when an Administration has reached new lows of lawlessness, what is the opposition's move? Impeachment is the only possibility left. It puts a focus on the lawless behavior; it puts the case against the lawlessness out there in public attention; it is the best the opponents can do until there is a new election that can change the conditions.
That assumes that partisanship precludes honesty, honor and public service. Doesn't that sound quaint.
Impeachment could affect the Dept. of Justice in a legally legitimate government. That used to be our state, two generations back.
To describe this situation as merely a policy dispute is blindness of an extraordinary degree.
Do it again. But first chat with the turncoat republicans.
MAGA Clown Car driving erratically...the House GOP members are so incompetent it's amazing they can pass water.
You have to wonder if Christopher Wray would like to see Mayorkas gone. How could those two peacefully sit in the same room? Those NYC cop attackers are just the tip of the iceberg of lawlessness that Biden-Mayorkas let in.
Olly olly in-come-free
Hard to count those accurately. Biden has created a new Los Angeles, at a minimum, or a new NYC by some estimates. Cool! He and Obama and the DNC want to get a whole nother NYC in here before anyone can do anything about it.
That's a lot of robberies, rapes and murders that are going to have to be absorbed by the dumb American citizens whose lives Biden/Obama/DNC couldn't care less about. When it comes, the terrorism will be icing on the cake.
It took NYC 160 years to get from its first million to its current 8-mil-plus. Biden might have accomplished that very same in just three years. Yay, America! Who says this guy is ineffective? He is achieving their goals very well; give him more stock options. And, of course, Four More Years.
It is more than just his refusal to enforce the law. He is actively facilitating the breaking of the law. Just ask Texas.
I wonder if the only way to resolve some of this is to elect Trump and put the shoe on the other foot. What if Trump refuses to collect corporate taxes? What if his administration refuses to enforce civil rights laws? I know there is some case law on “rescission”, where a President refuses to spend money authorized by Congress. But I think my examples are something different.
"Refusing to uphold the law is hardly a "policy disagreement""
Having a different opinion about the way to enforce the law is a policy disagreement.
Even if you don't like my use of the expression "policy disagreement," it does not make Mayorkas's failure to enforce the law into a crime.
"Didn't that ship sail when they brought an impeachment against Trump for a phone call? Where was that high crime/misdemeanor?"
I didn't support that impeachment either. I reject this overuse of the impeachment power. You don't double down on constitutional violations. They did it, so we do it.
I understand the desire for revenge, but it's a low desire. Do better.
In your opinion, Ann Althouse.
You say it is legal behavior, to open the borders and let in millions of unvetted foreigners.
And you are an honorable woman.
Mayorkas is the head of Homeland Security, and his behaviors are putting many American citizens' lives at risk. These would be violations of his oath of office, to many. But you say that is not illegal behavior; not a high crime or misdemeanor; not grounds for an impeachment, even if all other remedies have failed.
And Althouse is an honorable woman.
The governor of Texas calls out the National Guard to fight off this invasion. An invasion caused by the encouragement and determination of the Biden administration to cheat American immigration law and make millions of new potential votes for their party, no matter what other costs to life and property and the nation as a whole. But Althouse says it is only a policy dispute, nothing more.
And Althouse is an honorable woman.
I write not to disprove what Althouse wrote, but only to state what I do know and believe.
Oh judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.
Characterizing a complete refusal to enforce the law -- worse than that, it's actually a facilitation of those breaking the law, combined with an attempt to *prevent* anyone else from enforcing the law -- as a "policy disagreement" is like characterizing the Holomodor as a disagreement about "proper nutrition".
Ann said?
"Having a different opinion about the way to enforce the law is a policy disagreement."
OMG - what the f?
I wonder if the only way to resolve some of this is to elect Trump and put the shoe on the other foot.
@H, you could be right, but I suspect you lost Althouse at “elect Trump.”
This was a useless gesture that makes Mayorkas stronger. Congratulations. Virtue signaling is not much of a strategy, whether used by the left or the right.
"it does not make Mayorkas's failure to enforce the law into a crime."
--
"Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
When you look at the crime and danger that comes with obviously intentional disregard for border security, it's in there.
Dunno Hawkeye,
It raises awareness of what's going on. Seems a positive to me.
Explain how it makes Mayorkas stronger.
I understand the desire for revenge, but it's a low desire. Do better.
It is MUCH less about revenge and much more about demonstrating that actions have consequences. How do you stop "them" from continuing to act like spoiled little kids and return to reasonable "rules of engagement" if they NEVER pay a price for their actions?
Are the Republicans expected to continue to "turn the other cheek" until the Democrats arms get tired and decide not to play dirty any more? The Democrats are ANTIFA, running around burning everything normal to the ground and the Republicans are supposed to get them to stop simply by continuing to follow the "old rules"?
It is not revenge. It is demonstrating to them what being on the other side of their "new rules" is like in an attempt to get them to return to some form of normalcy. Or do you have a better suggestion for getting back to there?
Biden-Mayorkas is enabling hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to be brutalized, victimized or even killed, accounting for those on both sides - the invaders and the invadees. How this is not impeachable is beyond me.
A policy difference example would be no abortion vs anytime abortion. We are working that out using debate. No one has put forth a bill that we have open borders and we’re debating that. They’ve just gone ahead and done it, despite the fact that our current laws forbid it. We’re well beyond the policy difference phase.
Aside - I think “Do better” is demeaning here. We have a very reasonable fear of the mortal consequences of open borders on our families, our communities and our country. Doing whatever we can to curtail it is imperative.
Having a different opinion about the way to enforce the law is a policy disagreement.
If I drive 35 in a 25 zone is that a policy disagreement? I just have a different view ?
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