Clerk of the House Cheryl Johnson announced she will resign at the end of the month, after serving in her post since 2019.
“It has been a distinct privilege to serve as clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives during three Congresses and an honor to have been first nominated by Speaker Pelosi and then renominated by you to serve in the 118th Congress,” Johnson said Thursday in the House chamber, addressing Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
McCarthy accepted her resignation and announced his appointment of Kevin McCumber to act and exercise the duties of the clerk. McCarthy then administered McCumber’s oath of office.
Johnson’s resignation will be effective at the end of day June 30, and McCumber will assume the post July 1.
After she delivered her announcement, members of the House stood to applaud Johnson, whose tenure as House Clerk has included two impeachment proceedings, the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and the tumultuous weeklong Speaker vote this January.
Despite already serving for several years, Johnson particularly gained national attention during the weeklong Speaker vote series. As House Republicans struggled to elect a Speaker, Johnson presided over the chamber and was tasked with keeping order while the House had no leader.
The House also had not passed rules yet for the session, so Johnson had flexibility to enforce order as she saw fit — and frequently had to prevent members from descending into chaos while tensions only increased throughout the week.
She was the fourth woman and second Black person in the role. She earned a law degree from Howard University before working for the Smithsonian Institution for a decade.
In January, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) called Johnson “a historic figure in her own right” and said she was “doing a very good job under difficult circumstances.”
The House voted Thursday to send articles of impeachment against President Biden to two committees, after Speaker Kevin McCarthy headed off an immediate floor vote to impeach the president.
The ability of single lawmaker, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., to push forward the impeachment resolution caught Republicans off guard by the unscripted move this week. Many viewed it as a political distraction from other priorities.
The attempted impeachment of President Joe Biden is now a thing House Republicans will have to spend actual time on, thanks to Colorado wingnut Rep. Lauren Boebert. Whatever procedural moves leadership takes now to get the issue off the floor won’t matter because the Freedom Caucus and other hardliners have decided this is how they will hijack the House. That’s a big headache for Speaker Kevin McCarthy, one that the would-be moderates could exploit to the benefit of the country, if only they could be bothered.
Those so-called moderates are talking big about their few “accomplishments” thus far. For instance, last week they voted against some amendments to legislation intended to make it harder for the federal government to regulate stuff. It’s a dangerous and ridiculous bill that every single Republican voted for, but these guys are crowing to Politico about how they voted against Freedom Caucus amendments to it. “We were sending a signal,” one of them said, calling it their strategy to hold the MAGA wing “accountable” but not hurt leadership.
The lawmaker, who insisted on anonymity to discuss how tough they were, bragged about how they told Rep. Bob Good, a Virginia congressman who thinks the Republican-appointed FBI director should be impeached over the Trump classified documents case: “You want Good bills passed, [then] put another name on it.” So, so anonymously brave. They’re admitting that they don’t have a problem with the content of any Freedom Caucus bill, just the sponsor, with one exception: Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick said his votes against the amendments were policy-based. As for the rest of them? Their claims of moderation are about as valid as their claim on family values or being pro-life.
They disproved that again Wednesday when nearly all of them voted to censure Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff for his role in Intelligence Committee investigations and the impeachments of Donald Trump. This group voted against the first censure vote last week because it came with a ridiculous $16 million fine. Once that was dropped, they were happy to pile on in this proxy vote for Trump. Because that’s what this is. They’re all still mad about both Trump impeachments, the Jan. 6 investigations conducted by House Democrats, and the ongoing investigations surrounding Trump. Schiff is their scapegoat.
There’s a lot these not-Freedom Caucus Republicans could do to force McCarthy to throw over the extremists. There’s a hell of a lot more of them. If they acted as a bloc, they could take over the House the same way 11 assholes did a few weeks ago, when they shut the House down with a procedural vote. Will they muster the courage?
Probably not, Main Street Caucus Chair Dusty Johnson of South Dakota says. “I’ve heard people talk about that tactic, you know, out of frustration,” he told Politico, but suggested it’s not likely. He said that, in his group, “people understand that the best way—the most productive way—to move forward is try to stick together.” In other words, seeking safety in numbers, cowering in fear while their feral colleagues take all of them down in a spiral of nonsense.
Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff’s Republican opponent in his California Senate bid slammed the congressman’s claim that being censured by Congress is a "badge of honor."
"Every time Schiff opens his mouth, he lies," attorney and Republican Senate candidate Eric Early told Fox News Digital on Thursday. "At this point, he’s like a cornered animal who is just flailing around and saying one ridiculous thing after another."
After becoming only the 25th member of Congress in American history to be censured, Schiff told Fox News that he takes it as a "badge of honor because this says that I'm effective."
"They go after people that they think are effective, I exposed the corruption of a former president," Schiff said. "I led the first impeachment trial of the former president to the first bipartisan vote to remove a president in U.S. history."
Censure is the second-most serious form of discipline a representative can face in Congress, topped only by expulsion.
"Wear your badge of honor well, Schiff, because this is obviously no badge of honor and frankly, once the lights go out, and once Schiff is finally out of our government, he's going to be forever remembered as one of the worst to ever grace the halls of Congress," Early told Fox News Digital.
The censure vote against Schiff, which ultimately passed by a party line vote of 213-209 with six Republicans voting present, was launched by Republican Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna. The censure bill said that Schiff’s peddling of the debunked collusion narrative between Russia and former President Donald Trump was unbecoming of a member.
"As chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff launched an all-out political campaign built on baseless distortions against a sitting U.S. president, at the expense of every single citizen in this country and the honor of the House of Representatives," Luna said before the vote.
"With access to sensitive information unavailable to most members of Congress and certainly not accessible to the American people, Schiff abused his privileges, claiming to know the truth while leaving Americans in the dark about his web of lies... lies so severe that they altered the course of the country forever," she said.
Early, who a recent Berkeley IGS Poll shows leads a crowded field in the race to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein with 31% of California voters still undecided, told Fox News Digital that he agrees with Luna that Schiff did tremendous damage to the country.
"The damage he did is incalculable," Early, who unsuccessfully ran against Schiff for his seat in Congress in 2020, said. "For years, he went on TV and in the press virtually every day lying to Americans, and what made it so much worse was that he was the head of the House Intelligence Committee, and so he made all Americans believe he had seen classified information that supported all of his lies about Russia collusion of the Trump campaign."
"He really was one of the leaders of a soft coup of a president, and he damaged the presidency tremendously," Early continued. "He divided the nation tremendously, and he continues to do all of that to this very day. He is a national disgrace of the highest magnitude, and yesterday, censure was so well-deserved."
The House voted Thursday to pass a rule sending a resolution offered by Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado to committee, effectively pausing a move to bring a privileged motion to the floor that would have forced members to vote on whether to impeach President Joe Biden.
House Republicans on Thursday neutered an effort to impeach President Biden, punting the resolution to a pair of committees and avoiding — for now — a politically perilous vote that threatened to split the GOP and undermine the party’s various investigations into the White House.
The 219-208 party-line vote ends a two-day clash between GOP leaders and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), a conservative firebrand who stunned Washington on Tuesday by introducing a procedural measure to force a floor vote on her impeachment articles despite the objection of Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
The articles, which accuse Biden of overseeing “a complete and total invasion at the southern border,” triggered an outcry from some of Boebert’s GOP colleagues, who were caught by surprise and quickly condemned any impeachment vote as premature.
The sides ultimately reached an agreement late Wednesday to sidestep an impeachment vote by sending her articles to both the Judiciary and Homeland Security committees, which have jurisdiction over impeachment and immigration policy, respectively.
The deal avoids — at least temporarily — what might have been an embarrassing internal fight on the House floor.
But Boebert is already warning that if the two committees don’t move on impeachment quickly enough to satisfy her sense of urgency, she intends to reintroduce the “privileged” resolution to force the issue to the House floor once again.
“That is my commitment, that if nothing happens in committee like I’m promised that it will, yes, I will bring a privileged resolution every day for the rest of my time here in Congress,” Boebert told reporters Wednesday night.
Asked how much time she is willing to give the committee process before moving to force another vote, Boebert said, “The chairman is working on those details,” adding that he's planned "a few months of work" and that "there’s a little bit of grace there."
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) speaks to reporters following vote series at the Capitol on Thursday, June 22, 2023.
"But, I mean, that’s tentative,” she qualified.
The push to impeach Biden is nothing new for House Republicans. In the last Congress, when Democrats still controlled the chamber, GOP lawmakers introduced no fewer than 10 impeachment resolutions against the president, targeting his policies on issues as diverse as immigration, the response to the COVID pandemic and the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The new Congress, under GOP control, has already featured the introduction of four similar resolutions.
Yet Boebert’s strategy this week stood out as an enormous escalation in the effort to oust Biden — one that threatened to turn a behind-the-scenes messaging strategy into a front-and-center floor vote that would have put many Republicans in an uncomfortable spot.
Vulnerable moderate lawmakers have hoped to avoid going on the record on impeachment, for fear of blowback in their purple districts. And GOP leaders have sought to finalize their investigations into Biden at the committee level before charging ahead with anything as aggressive as impeachment.
“This is one of the most serious things you can do as a member of Congress. I think you’ve got to go through the process. You’ve got to have the investigation,” McCarthy said. “Throwing something on the floor actually harms the investigation that we’re doing right now.”
Adding to the Republicans’ reluctance is the simple fact that any impeachment resolution would almost certainly fail on the House floor, creating an embarrassing political situation for GOP leaders who have accused Biden of being unfit for office.
Their move to defuse the impeachment push came the same week that another Republican — Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) — used the same procedural gambit as Boebert to force a vote on censuring Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a highly unusual disciplinary action approved by GOP lawmakers Wednesday.
The successful vote, however, came only after a band of Republicans joined Democrats in defeating the effort last week, which brought threats of retaliation from former President Trump and forced Luna to revise the resolution and force another vote.
Both votes have highlighted the difficulties facing McCarthy and other GOP leaders as they fight to manage a restive conference with a razor-thin majority. McCarthy struggled to obtain the Speakership in January in the face of opposition from 20 GOP detractors — including Boebert — who continue to question his conservative bona fides.
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., speaks during the stamp unveiling ceremony in honor of Rep. John Lewis on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, June 21, 2023, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Eleven of those conservatives shut down all activity on the House floor earlier this month to protest McCarthy’s handling of the debt ceiling negotiations with Biden. And they’re threatening to do it again if the Speaker doesn’t get behind deeper spending cuts in the upcoming fight over government funding, which expires Oct. 1.
Democrats sought to highlight that internal discord Thursday, arguing that the vote on Biden’s impeachment resolution was a product of McCarthy’s weak leadership.
“We all know the truth: The real emergency here was that the Georgia wing and the Colorado wing of the MAGA caucus got into a fight right over there on the House floor about who gets to impeach the president first,” Rep. Jim McGovern (Mass.), the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, said during debate.
He was referring to a spat between Boebert and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) one day earlier about the impeachment articles.
“The truth is that Speaker McCarthy has lost control of this House, and it is being run by the MAGA fringe. This is nuts,” he continued. “Kids get shot in their classrooms, nothing. Environmental disasters destroy entire communities, nothing. Our air is clogged with smoke because half the Northern Hemisphere is on fire due to climate change, nothing. But when the MAGA wing nuts say, 'Jump,' Speaker McCarthy says, 'How high?'”
Democrats also argued that Republicans were attempting to distract from the legal troubles surrounding former President Trump, following his federal indictment earlier this month and state charges in March.
“This resolution is simply the latest attempt by extreme MAGA republicans to distract from the legal peril facing their twice-impeached, twice-indicted party leader,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who chaired the Jan. 6 select committee. “This cynical resolution has nothing to do with border security. It does nothing to stop fentanyl deaths. And it has nothing to do with the constitutional law.”
Republicans, however, disagreed, asserting that their effort against Biden was squarely focused on his response to the situation at the southern border.
“Let’s be very clear: The issue that is happening at our southern border — not the name-calling or talking about former President Trump — what is happening at our southern border today and for the last two years under President Biden has been a dereliction of duty with respect to immigration law in the United States,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) said on the House floor Thursday.
While Thursday’s vote punted the question of whether Biden should be impeached, some of the president’s fiercest critics are vowing that the referral to committees marks just the beginning of their latest effort against the president.
“Our job in the House of Representatives is, in fact, to deter the overreach and abuse of authority by the President of the United States refusing to carry out the laws of the United States in detriment to the well-being, security, and lives of the people of this country,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said on the House floor Thursday.
“That is our job in the House of Representatives. That is why we are here, that is why I support this rule and that is why I support this resolution. That is why I support this inquiry,” he continued. “And we are just beginning.”
The House voted Thursday to send an impeachment resolution against President Biden back to two House committees, a move that allowed GOP leaders to sidestep a push from Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., to hold an immediate vote on impeachment.
Lawmakers voted 219-208 in favor of shipping the issue back to committee – every "yes" vote came from Republicans.
Boebert filed a privileged resolution on the House floor Tuesday evening aimed at impeaching Biden over the border crisis, and it appeared to catch members of her own party off guard. A privileged resolution allows lawmakers to force a vote on the House floor without going through the committee, a move that key Republicans opposed because it skirts the regular process.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy called the move "flippant" in comments to reporters on Wednesday. Oversight Committee Chair James Comer told Fox News Digital, "I wish she’d gone about it a different way."
But Boebert and McCarthy managed to strike a deal and the House Rules Committee, which sets procedural guardrails for every bill, drafted a rule to put the question of impeachment into the hands of the House Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees.
The last-minute workaround reflects the continued tensions between House GOP leadership and a small group of hardliners who have managed to use McCarthy’s slim majority to advance their agenda and throw regular floor proceedings into chaos when their demands are not met.
The speaker can only afford to lose four Republicans to pass legislation assuming all Democrats oppose it.
Boebert called the resulting compromise with McCarthy to advance impeachment procedurally "historic" during remarks on the House floor before the vote.
"For the first time in 24 years, a House Republican-led majority is moving forward with impeachment proceedings against a current president. This bill allows impeachment proceedings to proceed through the traditional institutional channels by building a body of evidence at the committee level, through the Committees on Homeland Security and the Judiciary," she said.
"Biden's lawless disregard for our federal laws has incentivized more than 5.5 illegal aliens to attempt to cross the border, overwhelming Border Patrol and allowing an invasion to take place that is causing real harm to the American people," Boebert added. "The Biden border crisis and massive wave of illegal immigration has fueled a record breaking fentanyl crisis since President Biden has taken office."
Democrats accused Republicans of weaponizing the impeachment process against the president. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pa., said the move "should disturb every patriotic American."
"I cannot overstate the solemness and sadness that I feel right now, to see the House so debased by the invocation of our most grave constitutional duty, impeachment of a president," she said. "Common sense is revolted by the political grandstanding and petty stunts allowed by the House majority. Days on end, wasted catering to the whims of an extremist minority."
Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, said on the House floor, "They have a policy disagreement with President Biden. And their first impulse isn't, ‘Let's pass an immigration bill.’ Their first impulse is to impeach him. Our founding fathers must be rolling over in their graves."
