Stability or chaos: The turnover rate in the Biden vs. Trump Cabinets speaks for itself

Posted on January 28, 2024 by Charles Jay

The success or failure of a presidency can often depend on the people chosen for Cabinet-level posts. President Joe Biden has just passed the three-year mark of his first term. His administration has been a model of stability and competence. This follows the four years of chaos and incompetence that marked Donald Trump’s miserable administration.

And that point is clear when you look at the turnover rate in both administrations among the 15 Cabinet members in the line of succession for the presidency as well as the nine additional Cabinet-level positions.

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a visiting fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, has written detailed analyses on overall staff turnover in the Trump administration and the Biden administration. There’s Biden, who kept his promise to make his Cabinet the most diverse in U.S. history with more women and members of color, all of whom had considerable political experience. His Cabinet includes Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay person to be a Cabinet-level secretary, and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American to serve in a president’s Cabinet.

And so far only one Cabinet member has resigned—Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, the former Boston mayor, who stepped down in March 2023. A longtime Boston Bruins fan, Walsh accepted an offer to become executive director of the NHL Players’ Association. Julie Su is serving as acting labor secretary because the Senate has yet to confirm her nomination.

And just two of the nine additional Cabinet-level positions have seen change. Longtime Biden aide Ron Klain stepped down as White House chief of staff at the mid-point of Biden’s term, and was immediately replaced by Jeff Zients, who effectively ran Biden’s COVID-19 response operation. He remains in the post.

The second is Cecilia Rouse, the first Black woman to serve as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, resigned in March 2023 to return to Princeton University and resume her work as a professor of economics and public affairs. She was replaced by longtime Biden economic adviser Jared Bernstein.

That means that 21 of 24 of Biden’s original appointees remain in their positions heading into the fourth year of his term. National Journal White House correspondent George E. Condon Jr. wrote:

In his three years in office, the president has been determined to keep his top team mostly intact, and that team in turn has been determined to avoid the leaks, backstabbing, and controversy that have led to purges and makeovers in almost all the nine presidencies Biden has witnessed in his half century in Washington.

A National Journal review of past administrations found that one has to go back 171 years to find a more stable first-term administration.”

Condon wrote that Biden’s 87.5% retention rate in these top positions is topped in U.S. presidential history only by Franklin Pierce, elected in 1852, whose seven-member Cabinet remained intact during his four-year term. Condon added:

The contrast is particularly sharp compared with Biden's predecessor, Donald Trump, whose Cabinet chaos was matched by no president in almost two centuries. By the end of his term in office, only four of Trump’s original 15 Cabinet members remained and only one of nine Cabinet-level appointees had survived. His retention rate of 20.8 percent exceeded only the president whose picture he brought to the Oval Office—Andrew Jackson, who had only one of six Cabinet members remaining at the end of his first term.

In January 2023, midway through Biden’s term. Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware told NBC News, “Not one single member of the Cabinet has left in disgrace, is writing a tell-all book or has bad-mouthed the president. There are no leaks, no backbiting, nothing.”

Only recently has there been a major controversy surrounding a member of Biden’s Cabinet which is under investigation: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was criticized for his failure to notify the White House, Congress, and the media about his hospitalization resulting from complications related to a procedure to treat prostate cancer.

And House Republicans have scheduled a Homeland Security Committee meeting for Jan. 30 to mark up articles of impeachment for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for his handling of border policy. Democrats have accused House Republicans of launching a “baseless political attack” instead of focusing on a bipartisan solution to the immigration crisis, Axios reported.

Presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky, author of “The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution,” told National Journal:

“Trump’s Cabinet chaos reflected the broader chaos in government. It’s a reason why most people elected Biden. It was because they felt like he would bring calmness and stability back to government and back to the nation.”

She added that this stability is one of the reasons why Biden “has been able to be effective.”

“Up to now, he’s not spending political capital or time on having to get new candidates appointed or finding replacements. It frees up mental space and bandwidth and political capital to get things done,” she said.

Trump promised to bring “the best and the brightest” to his administration. He also said he would run his administration like his business. Unfortunately, as shown in a New York civil lawsuit in which Trump faces up to $370 million in penalties, there was persistent fraud in his business dealings.

And, as The New York Times noted, Trump “created a cabinet of mostly wealthy, white men with limited experience in government, mirroring himself.”

Vox wrote in May 2017:

CEOs don’t persuade people; they dictate. And they fire those who refuse to carry out their demands. Even more importantly, a CEO of a privately held company (like the Trump organization) operates like a king over his personal fiefdom. His employees work for him; they have no higher obligation to shareholders.

And three years later, during the 2020 campaign, The Hill wrote about just how tumultuous the Trump administration had been:

Trump operates like the federal government is just a backdrop for a never-ending episode of “The Apprentice,” except that he dominates every scene. And, just like “The Apprentice,” Trump is constantly trying to make every scene more outrageous than the one before. After all, dull is death in the TV business.

Trump fired some Cabinet members he considered disloyal or incompetent by his standards. Others resigned because of differences over policy issues.

The turnover in the Trump administration began less than a month after his inauguration when national security adviser Michael Flynn was forced to resign following claims he misled the administration over his communications with Russia’s ambassador. In December 2020, Trump pardoned Flynn, who had twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

Trump then ran through three more national security advisers—H.R. McMaster, John Bolton, and Robert O’ Brien. Bolton, who was fired over policy differences, has warned that Trump could do “irreparable” damage to the country if elected president again.

There were four White House chiefs of staff under Trump: Reince Priebus, John Kelly, Mick Mulvaney, and Mark Meadows.

Meadows was among the 19 people indicted with Trump in the criminal racketeering case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for allegedly conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.

Kelly became an outspoken critic of Trump. CNN reported that Kelly told friends this about Trump:

“The depths of his (Trump’s) dishonesty is just astounding to me. The dishonesty, the transactional nature of every relationship, though it’s more pathetic than anything else. He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life,” the retired Marine general has told friends, CNN has learned.

Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former Exxon CEO, after he called the president “a moron.” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin called Trump “an idiot,” while Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said the president had “the understanding of a fifth or six grader,” according to Bob Woodward’s book “Fear: Trump in the White House.” Mnuchin was one of the few Cabinet members to survive four years in the Trump administration.

Three of Trump’s Cabinet members left after being linked to scandals involving misuse of government funds for personal purposes: Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, and Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin. Zinke, of Montana, is now a member of the House GOP caucus.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions was forced out in November 2018, because he recused himself and appointed a special counsel, Robert Mueller, to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. His successor, William Barr, resigned in December 2020 after debunking Trump’s baseless claims of widespread fraud in the presidential election.

And then, with just weeks left in Trump’s term, two more Cabinet members—Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos—were among the administration officials who resigned after the mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. Trump has since derisively referred to Chao, the wife of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, in social media posts as “Coco Chow,” which she criticized as an anti-Asian slur.

In July 2023, NBC News reached out to 44 of the dozens of people who served in Cabinet-level positions during Trump’s term, not all of whom responded. A total of four publicly said they support his reelection bid. Several were coy about where they stood. And there were some who “outright oppose his bid for the GOP nomination or are adamant that they don’t want him back in power.”

“I have made clear that I strongly oppose Trump for the nomination and will not endorse Trump,” former Attorney General Bill Barr told NBC News. Asked how he would vote if the general election pits Trump against President Joe Biden, a Democrat, Barr said: “I’ll jump off that bridge when I get to it.”

At the time, some former Cabinet members told NBC that they were supporting other candidates in the Republican primary. Former Vice President Mike Pence and Nikki Haley, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, challenged Trump for the nomination. Haley is hanging on in the primary race by a thread.

It’s not clear how many of these former Cabinet members will join the stampede within the GOP to endorse Trump now that he’s won the first two nominating contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, especially since he’s been acting like a Mafia don in threatening Republicans who oppose him.

But on the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who was fired by Trump on Nov. 9, 2020, issued this warning about the former president in an interview on CNN.

“I do regard him as a threat to democracy, democracy as we know it, our institutions, our political culture, all those things that make America great and have defined us as, you know, the oldest democracy on this planet,” Esper said.

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Live coverage: House GOP’s latest impeachment stunt

Posted on January 10, 2024 by Joan McCarter

The Republican House Homeland Security Committee will kick off the new year in a complete waste of time and energy with its first hearing in its impeachment of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The charges are ”failed leadership and his refusal to enforce the laws passed by Congress,” and are not real. This is, as New York Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman told reporters Tuesday, “an embarrassment to the impeachment clause of the Constitution.”

It will not be taken up by the Senate, but will give Republicans on the committee (like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene) some camera time. That’s what matters most to them. You can follow along here and on C-SPAN.

UPDATE: Wednesday, Jan 10, 2024 · 3:36:43 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Thompson: "This impeachment sham is not about facts. It's not about the law. It's about politics."

UPDATE: Wednesday, Jan 10, 2024 · 3:34:00 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

“You can not impeach a cabinet secretary because you do not like the president’s policies,” Thompson said, saying Republicans are just mad that President Biden is not “taking babies away from their mothers and putting kids in cages” like his predecessor.

UPDATE: Wednesday, Jan 10, 2024 · 3:32:34 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Thompson making a good argument—with quotes from border control chiefs—that they need the funding and additional resources that Republicans have refused to provide. “Democrats want to give agents the resources they need to secure the border. Republicans do not.”

UPDATE: Wednesday, Jan 10, 2024 · 3:30:54 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Thompson (that’s Bennie—forgive the typo in previous update) is listing the massive failures of the House GOP in 2023, arguing that this is all a political stunt for them to distract.

UPDATE: Wednesday, Jan 10, 2024 · 3:28:25 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Rep. Benny Thompson, the ranking Democrat on the committee, opens. He starts with a recording of Green promising big political donors at a campaign event that he would impeach Mayorkas. This is a “preplanned political stunt,” to “keep that campaign cash coming.”

UPDATE: Wednesday, Jan 10, 2024 · 3:26:19 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Chairman Green justifying this impeachment by insisting that what his calls Mayorkas’ incompetence is grounds, and the constitution doesn’t actually require “high crimes and misdemeanors” to impeach. Expect Democrats to come back hard on that point.

UPDATE: Wednesday, Jan 10, 2024 · 3:21:36 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

This is a long, but not exactly explosive, opening statement from Chairman Mark Green. He is showing a snippet from a previous hearing that he says is a smoking gun for Mayorkas lying to Congress which is pretty contorted and also mostly demonstrates that Republicans refused to allow him to actually answer the questions.

UPDATE: Wednesday, Jan 10, 2024 · 3:14:15 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Chairman Green now focusing on humanitarian parole which the White House can use to allow immigration, saying that Mayorkas has abused it. This has emerged as a key fight in the Senate’s negotiations on immigration, the hostage Senate Republicans have taken in exchange for their votes on Ukraine aid. This hearing is probably also intended to give the Senate Republicans more (baseless) fodder for their fight.

UPDATE: Wednesday, Jan 10, 2024 · 3:09:17 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Green showing video of news reports from Fox News and other right-wing outlets on “chaos” at the border, in case you were wondering if this was going to be a serious venture.

House GOP kicks off a new year of dysfunction with another impeachment

Posted on January 3, 2024 by Joan McCarter

Trust the Republican House to make a difficult situation exponentially worse. Not content with establishing a new record of dysfunction and ineffectiveness in the first session of the 118th Congress, they’re kicking off the second year with another waste of precious time: a second baseless impeachment, this time against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. It’s basically the first thing on their agenda when they return to work next week, with the first hearing scheduled for Jan. 10.

Never mind that the first deadline for a partial government shutdown is Jan. 19, and the House has made zero progress in meeting it. Instead, Republican leadership has chosen to start impeachment proceedings against Mayorkas for his “decision-making and refusal to enforce the laws passed by Congress, and that his failure to fulfill his oath of office demands accountability,” according to Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green of Tennessee.

Mayorkas’ team at DHS slapped back. “The House majority is wasting valuable time and taxpayer dollars pursuing a baseless political exercise that has been rejected by members of both parties and already failed on a bipartisan vote,” spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg said in a statement.

The White House was equally scathing. “Actions speak louder than words,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement. “House Republicans’ anti-border security record is defined by attempting to cut Customs and Border Protection personnel, opposing President Biden’s record-breaking border security funding, and refusing to take up the President’s supplemental funding request.”

“After voting in 2023 to eliminate over 2,000 Border Patrol agents and erode our capacity to seize fentanyl earlier in 2023, House Republicans left Washington in mid-December even as President Biden and Republicans and Democrats in the Senate remained to forge ahead on a bipartisan agreement,” Bates said.

That Senate effort—which aims to find a compromise on immigration that will get enough Republican votes to allow aid to Ukraine to continue—is ongoing, though its success is far from certain since the House GOP is working to poison it. Senate Republicans will point to the House GOP’s opposition to justify their refusal to support any agreement. To that end, House Speaker Mike Johnson is spearheading another stunt, leading a delegation of about 60 Republican House members to visit a border facility near Eagle Pass, Texas, on Wednesday.

Johnson’s trip is fueling the hard-line stance on immigration, but he’s also painting himself into a corner with the House extremists. Catering to the hard right on immigration is extremely unlikely to help him avert a government shutdown—since a government shutdown is what the Freedom Caucus wants.

Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, a prominent member of the caucus, made that clear enough in a letter Tuesday, writing that he was skipping this trip to the border because it is not enough. "Our people—law enforcement, ranchers, local leaders—are tired of meetings, speeches, and press conferences,” he said, adding that the House should be “withholding funding for the vast majority of the federal government until it performs its basic duty to defend the borders of a supposedly sovereign nation."

The more Johnson bends to extremists on immigration, the more emboldened they will be to force a shutdown over the issue. He’s setting himself up for failure, for the very same trap that every Republican speaker since John Boehner has fallen into. Either Johnson bucks the Freedom Caucus and risks being ousted like former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, or he allows a disastrous shutdown.

Meanwhile, there’s reality: In the past week, illegal border crossings have decreased. But reality isn’t likely to make any difference to Republicans; it rarely does.

It's official: GOP House did a whole lot of nothing this year

White House engages on Ukraine/immigration stalemate

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Impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas failed, no thanks to GOP ‘moderates’

Posted on November 14, 2023 by Joan McCarter

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was not impeached by the House of Representatives Monday—barely. Georgia’s contribution to the debasement of Congress, namely Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, filed the privileged resolution against Mayorkas last week on the charge that he has violated his oath of office by, in part, “allowing the invasion of approximately 10,000,000 illegals across our borders.” (Greene apparently wrote this one up all by herself.)

Eight Republicans voted with Democrats to punt on the resolution, essentially killing it (for now) by referring it to the House Homeland Security Committee. Yes, a mere eight Republicans, despite the fact that there have been no impeachment hearings held about Mayorkas and his job performance. There has been no evidence presented to any committee that he has committed high crimes and misdemeanors. But 201 Republicans—including 17 of the 18 GOP members representing districts that Joe Biden won in 2020—didn’t care about any of that.

The only one of the “Biden 18” to vote against the impeachment was California Rep. John Duarte. Eleven other Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, did not vote.

Those supposed GOP “moderates,” like Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, love to bitch about having to cast hard votes for amendments on appropriations bills that will never become law. “So they make us take votes that don’t make sense, right?” Bacon complained just last week, whining about how extreme his party has become.

Meanwhile, he—and the rest of them—lined up with the repugnant Greene on this absolutely bogus impeachment resolution. This is what they endorsed Monday night:

Darrell Issa is right, I am a hardworking member of Congress who puts the American people first. But we all know what Darrell Issa lacks… 🏈🏀⚾️🎾🎱 https://t.co/j4YX9Gc5Fp
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) November 14, 2023

And this:

https://t.co/BKnV2GaR6x pic.twitter.com/V4IMVNW82i
— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) November 14, 2023

Once more, they proved the conventional wisdom: The GOP’s so-called “moderates” will always cave to the extreme right.

Here's a fix for Biden's 2024 messaging issues: Remind voters how repulsive Trump is

Ignore Speaker Johnson's positions, Republicans say. The important thing is he doesn't shout

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Just one word explains why Democrats had such a massive election night on Tuesday: abortion. On the newest episode of The Downballot, co-hosts David Nir and David Beard recap all the top races through the lens of reproductive rights, which continue to motivate Democrats and even win over a key swath of Republican voters. Nowhere was that more evident than in Ohio, which voted to enshrine the right to an abortion into the state constitution by a double-digit margin, despite countless GOP attempts to derail the effort.

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No reason given for CBP commissioner’s resignation, but internal hostilities may have played role

Posted on November 14, 2022 by Gabe Ortiz

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Chris Magnus resigned this past weekend, days after he had apparently been asked by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to step down but refused to do so. On Saturday, Magnus said he would be leaving, various news outlets reported.

In a statement, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden had accepted the resignation “and appreciates Commissioner Magnus’ nearly forty years of service and the contributions he made to police reform during his tenure as police chief in three U.S. cities.”

Magnus, a former Tucson police chief and the agency’s first openly gay commissioner, served just under a year and had been confirmed in a nearly party line vote. While no reason was given for the resignation, speculation that Magnus may have been pushed out by internal hostility wouldn’t be totally out of the question.

The Border Patrol’s union made its first ever endorsement in 2016 for the insurrectionist president, and endorsed him again in 2020. The union’s president, Brandon Judd, is an active border agent who has promoted racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, and is a fervent GOP operative, appearing in numerous campaign ads for Republicans. People within the government have also been leaking stuff to right-wing rags like Breitbart from the start of the administration.

“On Twitter, [Magnus] has been vocal on about immigration issues, writing that Title 42, a measure instituted during the Trump administration that allows border agents to quickly turn back migrants, ‘comes at a heavy cost to many asylum seekers,’” The Los Angeles Times reported. “After criticism about offensive humor within the ranks, including Facebook posts that made fun of dead migrants and lawmakers, Magnus has clamped down on social media activity.”

Following a push from immigrant and human rights advocates, Magnus also signed the May 2022 memo eliminating the corrupt units that have for years colluded to cover up horrific abuses committed by Border Patrol agents. Following a surge of deaths related to vehicle pursuits by border agents, Magnus also said updated policy would be released, but nothing has been made public so far. CBP this past summer also completed its probe into the abuses of Haitian migrants at Del Rio, but many were outraged after the report revealed that not one single victim was interviewed by investigators.

“@CBPChrisMagnus and I may not see eye-to-eye on everything, but I know this: he is one of few actually attempting to reform #BorderPatrol,” tweeted Alliance San Diego Executive Director Andrea Guerrero following initial reports that he’d been asked to leave. “Calls for his resignation from the @AliMayorkas and @POTUS to protect BP is deeply concerning.” Jenn Budd, a former senior Border Patrol agent turned whistleblower, tweeted that “[w]atching @SecMayorkas get railroaded by @BPUnion is frightening. Magnus was the only official trying to bring accountability.”

In a tweet, the Border Patrol union said Magnus “deserved to be fired. As a crisis rages at our border he focused on imaginary BP ‘culture’ problems instead of enforcing our laws.” Ah, so abusive agents who want to starve brown babies (remember that?), who mock the deaths of migrant children in U.S. custody, and who share Stephen Miller’s world views are an “imaginary” problem. Got that, folks?

Republicans had already made it clear that Mayorkas is at the top of the list of Biden administration officials they’ve targeted should they take control of the U.S. House, which continues to hang in the air following the 2022 midterms. These Republicans repeatedly cite people arriving at the southern border in search of safety. But what they never cite is how the anti-asylum Title 42 has actually created a rise in apprehensions.

CBP to issue new vehicle pursuit policy, after 22 killed in 2021 due to Border Patrol's chases

President Biden announces nominations for key positions at Homeland Security

Jordan is pushing for Mayorkas impeachment based on ridiculous lie that ‘we no longer have a border’

Posted on October 7, 2022 by Gabe Ortiz

Some of the worst of the worst of House Republicans are endorsing the impeachment of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) secretary should they take the chamber this November, CNN reports.

It needs to be stated first and foremost that these Republicans haven’t laid out any legitimate claims to justify the removal of Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, because there are none. Yet Jim Jordan has falsely claimed that he should be impeached by the chamber “because we no longer have a border.” That’s news to all of us. Jordan could possibly chair the committee that would be tasked with impeachment proceedings should the GOP take the House.

CNN reports that while Jordan and fellow extremists say impeachment should go forward, “Kevin McCarthy supposedly hasn’t really taken a side yet.” His allies claim, at least right now, that there’s “little appetite” for the idea. But that’s a ridiculous thought. McCarthy has already gone in with the extremists, and he’s made it clear extremism controls the agenda.

CNN reports that “Democrats argue the talk is politically motivated,” but that’s exactly what it is. While the insurrectionist president was legitimately impeached (twice) for abuse of power, obstruction of Congress, and inciting a deadly insurrection, the CNN report itself plainly states the political nature of the push. Some Republicans “believe they’ll have an easier time convincing McCarthy and their GOP colleagues to go along with impeaching a Biden political appointee versus a President who was elected to his position, a more politically tenable move that still would throw red meat to the base,” the report said.

So, Mayorkas appears to be the likeliest target. While the GOP bill targeting him has just 31 signatures from the 200 plus Republican caucus, it’s the most out of the other impeachment bills they’ve pushed, CNN said. Plus, targeting him falls in line with their sloppy campaign lying about immigrants rather than talking about their extremist anti-abortion agenda.

Any impeachment in the House requires conviction in the Senate for full removal, but in that chamber, just two senators are supportive of the idea—and it’s two of the ones you’d expect. The Texas Tribune reports that Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham wrote a letter that claimed the number of apprehensions at the border were “grounds for impeachment.”

But if they really believe that (and they don’t), both Cruz and Graham would’ve sent that letter to Chad Wolf, who was the unlawfully appointed acting DHS secretary under the insurrectionist president. On Wolf’s corrupt watch, the anti-asylum Title 42 policy that was pushed by noted white supremacist Stephen Miller and that used the novel coronavirus as an excuse to quickly deport asylum-seekers in violation of their rights led to increased encounters from April 2020 on, American Immigration Council said.

But we didn’t see either Cruz or Graham calling on Wolf to resign after he was found by a nonpartisan government watchdog to have been illegally installed in office, did we? Nor did we see Cruz or Graham call on Wolf to resign when he presided over a blatantly political event that was later deemed illegal by the Office of Special Counsel. It’s almost like they’re just full of it. Shrugs.

Former aides of then-President Donald Trump say GOP lawmakers sought presidential pardons after the attack on the U.S. Capitol during Day 5 of the Jan. 6 committee hearings. https://t.co/BgG7aQdkrG pic.twitter.com/sC0qto0toY
— The Associated Press (@AP) June 23, 2022

“I believe Mayorkas has committed high crimes and misdemeanors,” House Republican Andy Biggs claimed to CNN. “You might see some (impeachment pushes) on Biden, but certainly Mayorkas, what he has done, has just been unconscionable. I’m pushing hard.” Do you think he’ll push as hard as when he suggested to the insurrectionist president’s chief of staff some ways to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 election? Or maybe as hard as when he sought a pardon from the insurrectionist president, according to Jan. 6 testimony. When Republicans scream about lawlessness, it always so much more about their own behavior than anything else.

Republicans plot a wave of impeachments if they take the House

Posted on April 27, 2022 by Laura Clawson

Republicans are teeing up their next move toward making the U.S. government completely unable to function. If they take control of the House, as they are favored to do, they will come in already having laid the groundwork to begin impeaching Cabinet officials, starting with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandra Mayorkas.

On Monday, 133 Republican House members sent Mayorkas a letter accusing him of “disregard for the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws” and actions that have “willingly endangered American citizens and undermined the rule of law and our nation’s sovereignty.” Basically, Mayorkas has not kept every single one of Donald Trump’s hateful immigration policies in place.

Though the letter doesn’t use the word “impeach,” it makes a not very veiled threat: “Your failure to secure the border and enforce the laws passed by Congress raises grave questions about your suitability for office.”

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House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy made the threat explicit in the Monday border visit he used to try to distract from having been caught in a set of big lies about his attitude toward Trump and Jan. 6. “This is his moment in time to do his job,” McCarthy said of Mayorkas. “But at any time if someone is derelict in their job, there is always the option of impeaching somebody.”

Mayorkas is supposedly “derelict,” while Republicans have nothing bad to say about expensive and useless theater conducted at the border by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

But a move to impeach Mayorkas probably wouldn’t be the end of Republican efforts to hobble President Biden's administration and make being a Cabinet official from one party punishable by impeachment if the other party held the House. The reporting at Axios can be faulted on many fronts, but the outlet has excellent Republican sourcing. Here’s what it takes from its sources: “For the first year of President Biden's term, it was mostly the hard right of the GOP who entertained impeaching the president and his Cabinet secretaries. But those deliberations are now happening among a much larger group — even with virtually no precedent or legal justification.”

One Cabinet official has ever been impeached in U.S. history. Republicans are getting ready to make that commonplace, not because Cabinet officials suddenly magically got worse, but because the Republican Party is committed to sabotaging not just a Democratic administration but voters’ faith that the government can function effectively.

Far-right Freedom Caucus is poised to have serious sway if Republicans take the House