Impeachment misfire is House GOP's latest fiasco
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, left, and House Speaker Mike Johnson. Credit: AP / Alex Brandon, Mark Schiefelbein
The failure of the House on Tuesday to bring an impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas fizzled into an instant embarrassment for Speaker Mike Johnson and his threadbare GOP majority caucus.
Any time a legislative leader puts a measure on the floor without having the votes in hand, it risks signaling weakness and division, especially now. This misfire resumes the internal GOP chaos that led to Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s ouster by extremists in the caucus only four months ago.
Legal experts who argued against former President Donald Trump’s two impeachments see no constitutional grounds for this move. Not that the legal bar for success matters in practical terms; there’s no reason to believe the Senate would follow through and convict Mayorkas after a trial.
Rep. Anthony Garbarino, the most senior of Long Island’s three-member House delegation, is knee-deep in the impeachment effort. Garbarino is expected to become one of the impeachment managers at a Senate trial if the House eventually clears it.
Reps. Nick LaLota and Anthony D’Esposito loyally registered their “yes” votes on the losing side Tuesday. The 214-216 fiasco even drew a social-media barb from the expelled and indicted ex-Rep. George Santos, who was a co-sponsor of the impeachment bill, and whose successor will be elected next week.
Santos tauntingly tweeted on X after the vote: “Miss me yet?”
The allegation that Mayorkas failed to carry out the requirements of his job belongs to a broader Republican attack against President Joe Biden's administration for its failure to control the big influx of migrants and asylum-seekers across the southern border from Mexico. Indeed, the crisis has blossomed on Biden’s watch, the response in Washington has fallen short, and the GOP will try hard to capitalize at the polls.
In dickering over foreign aid for Ukraine and Israel, Johnson initially demanded that those issues be linked to a border crackdown. A bipartisan team in the Senate proposed a fix. Among other steps, the president could order the border closed when the numbers of those seeking to enter reach certain levels. But Johnson isn’t taking the Democrats' “yes” for an answer.
The GOP seems unwilling to give Biden an “out” by being part of an immediate solution. The strategic logic is clear. But a risk comes when skeptics ask why, if this is such an emergency, all changes in immigration laws and border processes must be delayed.
Are Republicans in Congress waiting for their party boss Trump's return to the White House so he can tell them what to do?
Biden noted that the bill was jammed up in the Senate, and said: “Why? A simple reason: Donald Trump. Because Donald Trump thinks it’s bad for him politically. He’d rather weaponize this issue than actually solve it.”
Plausible as that may be, Biden, after three-plus years as president, also surely knows our basic governance problems didn't start with Trump.
For decades, Congress has repeatedly failed to reform immigration laws, to impose a sensible process for legal arrivals. There is an ever-deeper, partisan-based alienation and refusal to negotiate policy in earnest. It runs through not just the Capitol but the state houses, challenging their very ability to function.
Less showmanship and more wrestling with hard facts would help — and the sooner the better.
Columnist Dan Janison's opinions are his own.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
