The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
The GOP seeks state of disunion
When House Speaker Mike Johnson invited President Joe Biden to give his State of the Union address on the unusually late date of March 7, people were puzzled. The mystery can be revealed. House Republicans delayed the State of the Union for time to foment a state of disunion.
After the Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration in a dispute with Texas over border barriers, Rep. Chip Roy R-Texas, asserted that the high court’s order “is unconscionable and Texas should ignore it.” Never mind that two conservative justices joined in the order. Roy suggested that an appropriate response would be to “tell the court to go to hell.”
Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., sounded a call to arms, posting on social media that “the feds are staging a civil war, and Texas should stand their ground.”
And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., nearing the oneyear anniversary of her secessionist call for “a national divorce,” announced: “Now the Biden [administration] is at WAR with Texas.”
House Republicans continued the disunion theme last week, staging a news conference and a hearing to encourage Texas to fight the administration
These dime-store confederates are sabotaging the government they serve — by blocking it from mounting an effective response to the surge of migrants along the southern border.
In October, Biden requested $13.6 billion in emergency funding for border protection, including the hiring of 1,300 additional Border Patrol agents and 1,600 asylum officers, as well as more funds to counter fentanyl smuggling. Because of Republicans’ objections, Congress still hasn’t approved a penny of it.
And now, even as House Republicans wail about a “crisis” and an “invasion,” they are mobilizing to kill a bipartisan deal emerging in the Senate to reform asylum claims and to beef up border security — regarded as the toughest immigration legislation in decades. Biden says he would “shut down the border right now” if given the authorities in the proposal.
Instead of declaring victory and embracing the legislation they have long demanded, House Republicans are moving to impeach the administration’s lead negotiator on the proposal — Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas — on charges so flimsy they do not identify a crime of any kind.
In lieu of allegations of high crimes or misdemeanors, the impeachment articles charge that Mayorkas “terminated asylum cooperative agreements” with Central American countries. There’s just one problem: Secretary of State Antony Blinken is the one who terminated those.
The articles further charge that Mayorkas “willfully refused to comply with the detention mandate” in the Immigration and Nationality Act. In fact, that standard has never been met in the decades it has existed — because Congress has never provided the funds.
And the articles propose impeachment because Mayorkas “terminated contracts” for President Donald Trump’s border wall. Congress’s own investigative arm blessed the legality of the border wall pause, which was Biden’s policy, not Mayorkas’.
Underlying the slipshod articles is this fundamental absurdity: House Republicans plan to impeach Mayorkas for “failure to enforce the law” at the border — while loudly encouraging Texas to ignore the law at the border, as well as our highest court.
House Republicans’ usual legal allies have turned against them in their capricious attempt to impeach a Cabinet secretary for the first time in 148 years. Alan Dershowitz, Michael Chertoff and editorial page have all criticized the Mayorkas impeachment, and even Jonathan Turley, House Republicans’ all-purpose witness, has said there is no “cognizable basis here for impeachment.”
In fact, there is only one, noncognizable basis for impeachment, and that is Taylor Greene. She has been calling for it for 2½ years. Republican leaders guarantee her that they would schedule Mayorkas’ impeachment.
This produced two hearings by the Homeland Security Committee to fabricate a rationale for impeachment. At the first, Rep. Morgan Luttrell, R-Texas, asked law professor Frank Bowman whether selling fentanyl that kills a lot of people could be considered a high crime.
“I’m unaware that the secretary has sold any fentanyl,” the professor replied.
The congressman then asked whether Bowman would consider slavery a high crime.
“Is there any evidence that Secretary Mayorkas has enslaved anyone?” Bownam replied.
Thwarted, Luttrell abandoned his line of questioning. “This is getting a little bit more complicated than I thought it was going to be,” he said.
It became clear that despite their protests to the contrary, Republicans were impeaching Mayorkas because they disagreed with Biden’s border policies.
Even if Mayorkas is impeached by the House, there is zero possibility he would be removed by the Senate.
As with the border security bill that House Republicans are killing, the purpose isn’t to fix a problem. It’s to exploit one.