Several Republican lawmakers have begun to cast doubt on the party’s ability to carry out an impeachment against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Previously serving as deputy secretary for the department under former President Barack Obama, Mayorkas was appointed to lead DHS by President Joe Biden in the early days of his term in office. As Republicans have increasingly made border security issues their primary talking point and key grievance with the Biden administration for its alleged failures on the matter, Mayorkas has become the target of considerable GOP scorn for his department’s role in managing the border.
To this end, GOP members in the House of Representatives have recently been gearing up to launch an impeachment vote against Mayorkas, set to take place on Tuesday. Such proceedings against cabinet members are exceedingly rare in U.S. history, having last been successful in 1875 against Secretary of War William Belknap. Republicans and their supporters have deemed the move necessary, alleging Mayorkas’s failure to adequately address what the GOP has frequently characterized as an “invasion” of migrants at the southern border, while opponents have criticized it as political theater and claimed that a disagreement over the secretary’s performance does not rise to the level of “high crimes or misdemeanors.”
The sense that the vote may not be successful has begun to emerge among Republicans, with numerous House GOP members claiming that they will vote against impeachment or predicting that the party’s razor-thin-and-shrinking majority in the chamber will not be enough. During an MSNBC appearance on Thursday, outgoing Colorado Representative Ken Buck said that he was a “no” on impeachment and warned of the repercussions it could have going forward.
Drew Angerer
“We are opening a door as Republicans that we don’t want to open,” Buck said. “The next president who is a Republican will face the same scrutiny from Democrats. It’s wrong, and we should not set this precedent…This is not a high crime or misdemeanor. It’s not an impeachable offense. This is a policy difference. Let me say there is a crisis on the border. The law needs to be enforced.”
As reported by Jake Sherman on Tuesday, Wisconsin Representative Mike Gallagher warned during a closed-door GOP meeting that impeaching Mayorkas might open the door for similar proceedings against Republican cabinet members in the future. He also likened the current proceedings to those leveled against Donald Trump twice before, which most Republicans opposed strongly. Sherman also reported that California Representative Tom McClintock also advised against impeaching the secretary during the same meeting.
“I think that it lowers the grounds of impeachment to a point where we can expect it to be leveled against every conservative Supreme Court justice and future Republican president and Cabinet member the moment the Democrats take control,” McClintock told CNN’s Manu Raju on Tuesday. “And there’ll be nobody there to stop them, because we will have been complicit in redefining the fundamental definition of impeachment that the American founders placed in our Constitution.”
Raju surmised in a post to X on Tuesday that with the declared “no” votes and concern expressed by some in the GOP, the Mayorkas impeachment “now hinges on absences and whether there are any more GOP defections.”
Republicans hold the House 219-212, and so could only lose three GOP votes on impeachment before the measure would fail, if every Democrat voted “no,” as is expected. Mayorkas would, however, likely not be removed from office if impeached, as the Senate is controlled by Democrats, 51-49.
Newsweek reached out to House GOP leadership via email for comment.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.