If at first you don’t succeed: On the second try, House Republicans succeeded in impeaching Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of Homeland Security, by a vote of 214 to 213.
Mayorkas made history as the first sitting Cabinet member to be impeached since 1876. This is unlikely to happen in the Senate, as members are likely to reject the charges.
“Because this secretary refuses to do the job the Senate confirmed him to do, the House must act,” said Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). Republicans have accused Mayorkas of “willful and systematic refusal to uphold the law” as he deals with the influx of migrants at the southern border.
“History will frown upon House Republicans for their blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship in targeting an honorable public official to play petty political games,” President Joe Biden said in a statement last night, calling the Impeachment is a “political stunt.” “
“House Republicans will be remembered by history for trampling the Constitution for political gain rather than working to resolve serious challenges at our border,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said.
Many constitutional law experts said House Republicans “presented no evidence that Mr. Mayorkas’ conduct rose to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors,” which remains the “standard for impeachment under the Constitution,” according to The New York Times. The three Republicans who broke with their party and refused to vote in favor of impeachment — Ken Buck of Colorado, Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin and Tom McClintock of California — have expressed concerns along these lines.
Santos out, Suozzi in: While I generally try to ignore Long Island as much as humanly possible, it appears that a congressional district was flipped there last night. Democrat Tom Suozzi won the special election that was held after the seat of Republican drag queen and former congressman George Santos was vacated following a fraud scandal.
New York Democrats underperformed in the 2022 midterm elections, so this victory is actually of some importance. Suozzi’s opponent, Mazi Pilip, tried to make the influx of migrants into New York the main issue of the race, but it didn’t work: the Democrat was perceived by voters as quite moderate, not a radical or someone who no liability to New York. City government.
Scenes from New York: America’s oldest gun maker, Remington, is closing its factory in upstate New York and moving operations to Georgia, which the company says is more gun-rights friendly. “When Remington goes, it won’t be like a facility goes away, it’ll be like a part of your family goes away,” Ilion resident Jim Conover, who started at Remington in 1964.
QUICK SHOTS
- “I dare say that Carlson really enjoyed himself when he visited Moscow,” he writes National reviewCharles CW Cooke in a searing takedown of Tucker Carlson’s Moscow flattery. “As a wealthy foreign tourist carefully looked after by the Russian government, he was no doubt exposed to the Moscow his supporters wanted him to see. And that city, I bet, is quite beautiful.”
- “CDC Considers End of 5-Day Isolation Period for Covid,” reads a New York Times headline today, as if someone is still doing a five-day isolation period.
- Truly:
One mildly hilarious thing is the weird redpill/trads who make up stats and then run around screaming about the stats they made up. The average American woman has had 4 sexual partners. The vast majority of women don’t… do any of this. Go out. pic.twitter.com/znTUMBYqcA
— Jane Coaston (@janecoaston) February 13, 2024
- I always appreciate whenever Paul Ehrlich circulates on Twitter, especially because it provides an opportunity to talk about how wrong his predictions were:
Of note, Paul Ehrlich has shown no remorse for what he spread. “My language would be even more apocalyptic” if he wrote today, he said in 2015. After all, letting families have as many children as they want is like letting them “throw as much trash in their… pic.twitter.com/XETvXd2LbL
— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) February 14, 2024
- A Georgia judge will decide whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be barred from her Donald Trump election interference case, given the revelation that Willis was in a romantic relationship with the special prosecutor in charge of the case.
- Good thread:
When some people look back fondly on the “Cold War Consensus,” what they don’t see is that said “consensus” is a rather short-lived artifact of its time, shaped by a narrow media and ideological environment that has been aggressively controlled.https ://t.co/QQwNGPvM8R
— Brandan P. Buck (@brandan_buck) February 13, 2024