America's Talking - U.S. House Votes Against Impeaching Mayorkas

Episode Date: February 10, 2024

The U.S. House of Representatives voted Tuesday against impeaching U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, with four Republicans joining all Democrats in voting against impeachment. The vote was 216 to 214 after one Republican changed his vote from "aye" to "nay," breaking what initially appeared to be a 215-215 tie. After the vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson sought to have a revote, which hasn't happen. Get your Audible Membership today! (As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualified purchases) Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McKalev, Vice President of News and Content at the Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire service. Joining me again today, as he does each it every week, is the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief, Casey, how are you? Doing good, Dan. How are you? I am doing well, thank you. We are recording this on Friday, February 9th.

Casey, it was quite the week for Congress. And not a very good one, I might add. first, Republicans who hold a slight majority in the House and who were eager to hold Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas accountable for the ongoing border crisis, they failed to get the votes they needed to impeach Mayorkas. Later in the week, the Senate failed to pass an immigration bill that also included increased funding for Israel and Ukraine. Let's start with the impeachment vote. Casey, what happened there? Yeah, I mean, as you said, this has been brewing really since Mayorkas took office. Since President Biden took office, we've had more than 10 million illegal immigrants enter the country, and it's evolved into a border crisis. This has been the thorn and the side of the Biden administration.

At the root of this, Democrats in the White House, the White House in particular, has punted to Congress and said, you need to pass a bill so that we can close the border. And on the Republican side, they've rolled their eyes at this and said, the laws are on the books and the money is available. We've already done this. but you've actually made some federal administrative changes that have to asylum policy, for instance, to deportation policy that have rolled out the red carpet for migrants. And it's been a willful, basically a willful welcoming in of the now millions and millions of migrants across the southern border in particular. And so the frustration has been brewing over this.

And the effort to impeach Mayorkas, DHS secretary, really built steam once House Speaker. Mike Johnson took over. And so they finally got the vote this week. But in a very unusual twist, the House Republicans who have the majority in the House force were not able to get the votes needed. And so why that's unusual is usually a vote is not brought to the floor. I like this if they don't have the votes. I mean, you know, House and Senate leadership don't like bringing things to the floor when they have the majority if they know they don't have the votes because it can, it can make them look bad. It can force tough votes for some of the more moderate constituents, and you don't get anything in return for it, right? So they really don't like doing this. And so it was a bit embarrassing for

Johnson. It was embarrassing for the Republican Party. And I think it just shows the level of division and chaos. And really, I mean, you could call it Renaissance, you call it a revolution. I don't know what you want to call it. But the Republican Party is fully divided right now. Members are really doing whatever they want. They don't feel nearly as much a need as in the past to do what leadership is saying. And we saw the same thing in the Senate Dan with the border bill. So Senate leadership, you know, namely McConnell negotiated with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. And they negotiated this very large bill, $118 billion. And it was mostly funding for, you know, Ukraine and Israel and Taiwan. But the Senate leadership of Republicans say, we're not going to vote for this unless you close the

border. So they kind of worked out. They threw a lot of border provisions in there. And then they released this big bill. And it was on Sunday night. And it was immediately criticized. It was just a total failure because it didn't go far enough on the border. But Republicans said that while it did solve a couple of problems, it created more by giving the head of DHS essentially authority to just grant asylum to whoever he wanted to, a power that they really think could be abused. And so why this is interesting, aside from the policy implications and the crisis at the border, is that Senate leadership of the Republican Party negotiated a bill that then the Republican Party was unwilling to vote for. And so that bill died almost immediately. And it just shows that the Republican Party is very divided and very unhappy with the status quo.

And of course, Trump, that really is Trump's message. And he's the front rudder of 2024. So I'm not sure much more of anything is going to get passed in this current Congress stand, especially in this election year. Yeah. Let me return to the Mayorkas vote in the House first case. The final vote was a razor-thin, 216 to 214 against impeachment. But really, the vote was 215 to 215, a straight-up tie with three Republicans in the House defecting from leadership and voting against impeachment. Two we knew ahead of time we're going to vote against because they said so verbally, publicly, et cetera.

U.S. representatives Tom McClintock of California, Ken Buck of Colorado. A bit of a surprise when Mike Gallagher, who didn't indicate in advance, he voted against it of Wisconsin. And that's what made it the tie. And it looked like it was going to remain a tie there for several minutes. But then U.S. Representative Blake Moore of Utah, who was a yes on impeachment, changed his vote to know after it was clear that the vote was not going to pass because you need a majority to pass. But it was more of a procedural change of vote. What that allowed is for the House to maybe persuade. one of these other nay votes, Republicans, to switch their vote and so they can hold a re-vote. So it's very possible that the House will bring the vote to the floor again at some point in the

next few weeks. Not clear if that's going to happen, but they would be able to. And then when it comes to the border bill, Casey, we were fully expecting Democrats to pull out, for example, the Ukraine funding portion of that bill and have a revote. But that hasn't had a vote. But that hasn't happen yet. Again, we're recording this on Friday, February 9th. It hasn't happened as of this moment. What do you think the next steps are there? Yeah, I mean, there has been some procedural movement forward on that standalone forward aid bill, but I think that one is dead in the water because Republicans have made very clear they won't vote on it without closing the border. And the border deal that was reached was not good enough. So, yeah, I mean, it's funny because

I think the Senate has tried to take all of these issues and combine it together. But there seems to be growing desire within Congress to have standalone votes. But then standalone votes on certain issues are much less likely to pass because people have issues with them. The only way to get someone to vote for something sometimes that they don't like is to give them something they do. And so the compromises aren't good enough, but the standalones no one will vote for. And so I think we're kind of going through a new way of doing Congress. I also think, Dan, if you want another Casey prediction, that Mitch McConnell's days are numbered. There really is a, of course, his age is an issue, and it may be because of that. But there's a growing frustration within the Senate Republicans to get

rid of McConnell. And the ousting of Kevin McCarthy really broke the seal on that of, hey, we can get rid of leadership before they're, you know, 90 years old, like the kind of precedent that said has been. So I think McConnell's in real trouble here. He might feel safe, but I think I'd be surprised if he's still in leadership within, you know, the next few years. Of course, Casey, while all of this is going on in Congress, or not going on, maybe more appropriately, still massive amounts of migrants illegally crossing the southern U.S. border. That issue is not going away. Of course, it's not just a border issue. It's a national issue because of a number of these migrants being bused to sanctuary cities throughout the country.

Of course, this is all going on with the stunning news about President Joe. Biden's mental capacity that came out of a special counsel's report yesterday, Thursday, February 8th. I just want to tell listeners, we recorded a separate episode of America in Focus where we talked about President Biden's issues. So if you're enjoying this episode, please look us up at America's Talking.com. Casey, though, we are out of time. Listeners can keep up with all of these stories at the center square.com. For Casey Harbour, I'm Dan McKeelb. Please subscribe, and thank you for listening.

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