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Key events
The GOP’s move to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas comes after months of vilifying the homeland security chief for the surge of migrants crossing the souther border, the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino reports:
House Republicans are barreling ahead with their effort to impeach homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, part of a broader effort to make immigration and border security a defining issue of this year’s presidential election.
The House homeland security committee will hold its first impeachment hearing on Wednesday, after more than a year of intensifying attacks by Republicans, who have accused Mayorkas of being derelict in his duty to secure the US-Mexico border. If Republicans are successful, Mayorkas would be the first cabinet secretary impeached in nearly 150 years.
Thousands of migrants are arriving at the southern US border each day, straining border patrol resources and causing strain to the authorities and services in many cities and towns across the country. The situation is an acute political vulnerability for the president, who has been unable to stem the record number of migrants from across the western hemisphere traveling north to escape violence, political upheaval, poverty and natural disasters.
The inquiry into Mayorkas’s handling of the nation’s borders is being led by the House homeland security committee, as opposed to the House judiciary committee, which typically oversees impeachment proceedings but is focused on the separate impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.
Constitutional law experts say GOP allegations against Mayorkas ‘come nowhere close’ to justifying impeachment
A group of constitutional law experts has written an open letter saying that impeaching Alejandro Mayorkas simply because Republicans disagree with his policies is unjustifiable.
“Simply put, the Constitution forbids impeachment based on policy disagreements between the House and the Executive Branch, no matter how intense or high stakes those differences of opinion,” the group writes in the letter published by Just Security.
“Yet that is exactly what House Republicans appear poised to undertake. The charges they have publicly described come nowhere close to meeting the constitutional threshold for impeachment. Their proposed grounds for impeaching Secretary Mayorkas are the stuff of ordinary (albeit impassioned) policy disagreement in the field of immigration enforcement. If allegations like this were sufficient to justify impeachment, the separation of powers would be permanently destabilized.”
Among the signatories is Donald Ayer, who served as deputy attorney general during Republican George HW Bush’s presidency.
House GOP trains sights on Mayorkas, Hunter Biden as right wing revolts over spending plan
Good morning, US politics blog readers. House Republicans are today making their latest moves in their campaign to use the chamber’s powers against Joe Biden’s allies, but the real drama may be latest bout of infighting between lawmakers over government spending. Rightwing Republicans are upset about a preliminary government funding agreement speaker Mike Johnson agreed to with Democrats over the weekend, and the tension may heighten further today, when the GOP holds a behind-closed-doors conference meeting.
In public, the party will be busy taking the Biden administration, and the president’s family, to task. At 10am eastern time, the House homeland security committee will hold a hearing into the failures of Alejandro Mayorkas, as part of their effort to impeach the secretary for what they say is his failure to stop the surge of migrants crossing the southern border. The oversight committee will convene at the same time to begin contempt proceedings against the president’s son Hunter Biden for not appearing for a deposition. We’ll give you the highlights of all these events.
Here’s what else we are watching today:
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White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and national security council spokesman John Kirby will brief reporters at 1pm eastern time. Expect them to be pressed for more details on defense secretary Lloyd Austin’s hospitalization.
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Ron DeSantis will campaign in Des Moines, Iowa at 11am, with five days to go until the state’s first-in-the-nation Republican presidential caucus.
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An appeals court could rule on Donald Trump’s claim that he is immune from prosecution for trying to overturn the 2020 election. A three-judge panel in Washington DC heard arguments yesterday, and sounded skeptical of the former president’s defense.
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