Another Damn Impeachment

Plus: Suozzimentum, gun factories, body-count discourse, and more…

LIZ WOLFE

Mayorkas has made history as the first sitting cabinet member to be impeached since 1876. It’s unlikely this will progress in the Senate, as members are likely to dismiss the charges.

“Since this Secretary refuses to do the job that the Senate confirmed him to do, the House must act,” said Speaker Mike Johnson (R–La.). Republicans have charged Mayorkas with “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” as he deals with the influx of migrants at the southern border.

“House Republicans will be remembered by history for trampling on the Constitution for political gain rather than working to solve the serious challenges at our border,” said a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson.

Many constitutional law experts have claimed that House Republicans “presented no evidence that Mr. Mayorkas’s conduct rose to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors,” which remains the “standard for impeachment laid out in the Constitution,” per The New York Times. The three Republicans who broke with their party and refused to vote in favor of impeachment—Colorado’s Ken Buck, Wisconsin’s Mike Gallagher, and California’s Tom McClintock—expressed concerns along those lines.

Santos out, Suozzi in:  Though I generally try to ignore Long Island as much as humanly possible, it does seem that a congressional district was flipped there last night. Democrat Tom Suozzi won in the special election that was held after Republican drag queen and former Rep. George Santos’ seat was vacated following a fraud scandal.

New York Democrats underperformed in the 2022 midterms, so this win is actually of some significance. Suozzi’s opponent, Mazi Pilip, tried to make New York City’s migrant influx the headline issue of the race, but it didn’t work: the Democrat was perceived as fairly moderate by voters, not a radical or someone who bears any responsibility for New York City governance.

Scenes from New York:

QUICK HITS

• “I daresay that Carlson did, indeed, have a nice time when he visited Moscow,” writes National Review‘s Charles C.W. Cooke in a searing takedown of Tucker Carlson’s Moscow fawning. “As a rich foreign tourist who was being carefully minded by the Russian government, he was undoubtedly exposed to the Moscow that its champions wanted him to see. And that city, I’ll wager, is pretty swell.”
• “C.D.C. Considers Ending 5-Day Isolation Period for Covid,” reads a  New York Times headline from today, as if anyone was still doing a five-day isolation period.
• Truly:

• I always appreciate whenever Paul Ehrlich circulates on Twitter, mostly because it provides an opportunity to talk about how wrong his predictions were:

• A Georgia judge will decide  whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis must be taken off her Donald Trump election interference case, given the revelation that Willis had a romantic relationship with the special prosecutor on the case.
• Good thread:

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