House Republican wants to have attorney general arrested just because

Posted on June 17, 2024 by Walter Einenkel

GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, best known for fabricating her entire life story, told Fox News that she has a plan to get the sergeant-at-arms to arrest Attorney General Merrick Garland.

“Several months ago, I introduced a resolution for something called inherent contempt of Congress. This is something that Congress has the authority to do, and it hasn’t been done since the early 1900’s,” she told host Maria Bartiromo on Monday.

Luna was responding to questions about the Justice Department’s announcement that it would not prosecute Garland for not turning over audio of President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur.

“And what that allows Congress to do is really be the punitive arm and really hold Garland accountable by using the sergeant-at-arms to essentially go and get him,” Luna went on, “as well as the tapes, bring him to the well of the house and really be a check-and-balance on the Department of Justice.”

Like most of what Luna says, there are all kinds of facts being misrepresented here. For one, her assertion that she introduced her inherent contempt of Congress resolution “several months ago” is belied by the fact that she actually announced it on May 7. And while that is technically more than one month, it is far less than several months. Though, to be fair, her announcement could have been missed, since it came the same day that Stormy Daniels was testifying … in Trump’s criminal trial.

The sergeant-at-arms is "the chamber’s primary law enforcement official and protocol officer, responsible for maintaining security on the House floor and the House side of the U.S. Capitol complex.”

The case from the “early 1900’s” that Luna is referring to is something some legal scholars felt was more apropos to the unwillingness to comply with requests from Congress by the Trump administration.

The Teapot Dome scandal, which involved President Warren G. Harding’s Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall’s no-bid contract to lease federal oil fields in Teapot Dome, Wyoming, happened in 1922. Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty was heavily criticized at the time for not more thoroughly investigating Fall, who was later convicted of taking a $100,000 bribe.

The scandal escalated to the Senate committee subpoenaing Mally S. Daugherty, the attorney general’s brother.

When Mally Daugherty refused to show up to testify before Congress, the Senate Sergeant at Arms David S. Barry deputized John J. McGrain to arrest him and bring him to Washington to testify.

The Republicans’ fixation on getting audio, despite having already received the entire transcript of Hur’s interview with Biden, has been a transparently political endeavor. Hur, a Republican, released a 375-page report in February saying that no charges were warranted and that Biden had likely kept the documents as a private citizen by “mistake.”

Since then, House Republicans voted to hold Garland in contempt. Speaker Mike Johnson vowed to take the Garland contempt case to court after the DOJ announced it planned no further action. But whether Johnson will bring Luna’s resolution to a vote remains to be seen.

There has been very little tangible action that has come out of the GOP’s neverending political theater. This past year it spent an inordinate amount of time attacking Biden’s border security while trying to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas—a stunt that failed miserably.

Luna’s newest resolution is the GOP’s latest political stunt to create a cloud of doubt over Biden’s reelection campaign against convicted felon Trump.

Hopium Chronicles' Simon Rosenberg joins Markos to discuss the “red wave-ification” of the economy and how prepared Democrats are for November. There is still work to do but we have a better candidate—and we have the edge.

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Donald Trump says he’d consider Ken Paxton for US attorney general

Posted on May 20, 2024 by Texas Tribune

Trump told a reporter in Texas this weekend that Paxton is “a very talented guy.”

By Jasper Scherer, The Texas Tribune

Former President Donald Trump said he would consider tapping Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for U.S. attorney general if he wins a second term in the White House, calling his longtime ally “a very talented guy” and praising his tenure as Texas’ chief legal officer.

“I would, actually,” Trump said Saturday when asked by a KDFW-TV reporter if he would consider Paxton for the national post. “He’s very, very talented. I mean, we have a lot of people that want that one and will be very good at it. But he’s a very talented guy.”

Paxton has long been a close ally of Trump, famously waging an unsuccessful legal challenge to Trump’s 2020 election loss in four battleground states. He also spoke at the pro-Trump rally that preceded the deadly U.S. Capitol riot in January 2021.

Paxton’s loyalty was rewarded with an endorsement from Trump in the 2022 primary, which helped the attorney general fend off three prominent GOP challengers.

Trump also came to Paxton’s defense when he was impeached last year for allegedly accepting bribes and abusing the power of his office to help a wealthy friend and campaign donor. After Paxton was acquitted in the Texas Senate, Trump claimed credit, citing his “intervention” on his Truth Social platform, where he denounced the proceedings and threatened political retribution for Republicans who backed the impeachment.

“I fought for him when he had the difficulty and we won,” he told KDFW. “He had some people really after him, and I thought it was really unfair.”

Trump’s latest comments, delivered at the National Rifle Association’s annual convention in Dallas, come after a series of recent polls have shown the presumptive Republican nominee leading President Joe Biden in a handful of key battleground states.

Paxton has also seen his political prospects rise in recent months, after prosecutors agreed in March to drop three felony counts of securities fraud that had loomed over Paxton for nearly his entire tenure as attorney general. The resolution of the nine-year-old case, along with Paxton’s impeachment acquittal in the Senate last fall, has brought him closer than ever to a political career devoid of legal drama.

Still, Paxton’s critics say he is far from vindicated. He remains under federal investigation for the same allegations that formed the basis of his impeachment, and he continues to face a whistleblower lawsuit from former deputies who said they were illegally fired for reporting Paxton to law enforcement. A separate lawsuit from the state bar seeks to penalize Paxton for his 2020 election challenge, which relied on discredited claims of election fraud.

If nominated, Paxton would need to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The chamber is narrowly divided along party lines, with Democrats holding a 51-49 majority. One of the most prominent Republican members, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, has been an outspoken critic of Paxton, while Paxton has openly entertained the idea of challenging Cornyn in 2026.

Paxton is not the only Texan Trump has floated for a high-profile spot in his potential administration. In February, he said Gov. Greg Abbott is “absolutely” on his short list of potential vice presidential candidates. Abbott has since downplayed his interest in the job.

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Tracking URL: https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/20/donald-trump-ken-paxton-attorney-general/

House GOP targets attorney general after failing to dig up dirt on Biden

Posted on May 15, 2024 by Joan McCarter

The House Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight and Accountability Committee are holding hearings Thursday to consider holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress. The Department of Justice has refused to provide recordings of special counsel Robert Hur’s interviews with President Joe Biden and his ghostwriter in the classified documents probe, having already provided the transcripts of those interviews.

The outcome of these meetings isn’t in question; committee chairs Jim Jordan and James Comer will push the contempt vote to the House floor. They remain intent on finding anything that they can use to impeach Biden and/or members of his administration, and they won’t let the fact that their efforts so far have been ridiculous stop them.

It took them two tries to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, only for the Senate to swat it away. The star witness in their Biden impeachment case turned out to be a Russian mole. And they’ve already been down the road of trying to use Hur’s report to prove Biden unfit for office—a game that Hur refused to play in Jordan’s disastrous hearing. But no embarrassing defeat is going to stop them.

“These audio recordings are important to our investigation of President Biden’s willful retention of classified documents and his fitness to be President of the United States,” Comer said in a press release.

The DOJ has in fact been providing information to Comer and Jordan. In February, it even gave them access to two of the classified documents Biden had from his time as vice president, which Comer insisted were critical to his investigations.

But Comer “has not yet taken us up on our offer,” DOJ Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte wrote in refusing the team’s subpoena for more information.

Uriarte detailed all of the information they had provided in response to their demands and subpoenas in his initial letter to Jordan and Comer in April and concluded “we are therefore concerned that the Committees are disappointed not because you didn’t receive information, but because you did.”

In his second letter to the chairs, Uriarte reiterated that point.

“It seems that the more information you receive, the less satisfied you are, and the less justification you have for contempt, the more you rush towards it,” he wrote. “[T]he Committees’ inability to identify a need for these audio files grounded in legislative or impeachment purposes raises concerns about what other purposes they might serve.”

The purpose, of course, is having audio and video that they can chop up to show Biden unfavorably in their televised hearings. They got the transcripts for their hearing with Hur, but they didn’t find anything, so of course they’re doubling down. It’s Jordan and Comer—what else are they going to do?

But this latest sham does at least give Democrats on the committees yet another opportunity to own Republicans in the hearings.

The Biden impeachment is a huge failure. The GOP is looking for a way out

House GOP manufactures new fight after Biden impeachment fails

Ian Bassin is the former associate White House counsel and co-founder and executive director of Protect Democracy. Protect Democracy is a nonprofit, nonpartisan group focused on anti-authoritarianism, how to protect our democracy, and safeguarding our free and fair elections.

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House GOP manufactures new fight after Biden impeachment fails

Posted on April 26, 2024 by Joan McCarter

House Republicans’ attempt to impeach President Joe Biden has fizzled out. But the two members tasked with the job, Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan and Oversight Chair James Comer, needing to atone for their failure, have picked another fight: threatening to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt over the Department of Justice’s refusal to provide the audio recordings of Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur in the classified documents probe.

Garland is refusing to play their game.

On Thursday, the DOJ refused for a second time to provide that audio, arguing that it has complied in full with the committees’ subpoenas for information. It provided both the transcription of the Biden interview as well as Hur’s interview with Biden’s ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer for Jordan’s big disaster of a hearing. Two months ago, it even gave Jordan and Comer access to two of the classified documents, which Comer insisted were critical to his investigations.

But Comer “has not yet taken us up on our offer,” DOJ Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte wrote.

In Uriarte’s first letter to Jordan and Comer earlier this month, he detailed all of the information they had provided in response to their demands and subpoenas.

“The Committees’ reaction is difficult to explain in terms of any lack of information or frustration of any informational or investigative imperative, given the Department’s actual conduct,” Uriarte wrote. “We are therefore concerned that the Committees are disappointed not because you didn’t receive information, but because you did.”

Uriarte reiterated that point Thursday.

Those purposes are clearly political. They need to keep up the fight against Biden and are scrambling for whatever they can get. They also probably believe that the audio of the interview could be damaging to Biden. Hur’s report included gratuitous hits about Biden’s age and mental acuity, so Jordan and Comer want to play it during their hearings, knowing that the media would eat that up.

Uriarte outlined the DOJ’s concern about that, writing that it would impinge on Biden’s privacy and that “courts have recognized the privacy interest in one’s voice—including tone, pauses, emotional reactions, and cues—is distinct from the privacy interest in a written transcript of one’s conversation.”

He also implied that Comer and Jordan can’t be trusted with the audio, writing that it could be manipulated by “cutting, erasing, and splicing.”

That’s a safe assumption on Uriarte’s part.

After basically crying “uncle” on impeaching Biden on influence peddling, being humiliated over their Alejandro Mayorkas impeachment stunt, and losing on Ukraine and government funding, Jordan and Comer are itching for revenge.

But the DOJ has called them on it.

“The Committees have demanded information you know we have principled reasons to protect, and then accused us of obstruction for upholding those principles,” Uriarte wrote. “This deepens our concern that the Committees may be seeking conflict for conflict’s sake.”

House GOP to launch critical investigation into just how old Biden is

The New York Times is determined to make 'but his age' the new 'but her emails'

Here's one way to avoid dealing with election results you don't like: just wipe them from the record books. It's not Orwell—it's Arizona, and we're talking all about it on this week's episode of "The Downballot." This fall, voters have the chance to deny new terms to two conservative Supreme Court justices, but a Republican amendment would retroactively declare those elections null and void—and all but eliminate the system Arizona has used to evaluate judges for 50 years. We're going to guess voters won't like this one bit … if it even makes it to the ballot in the first place.

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Texas congressman openly blasts fellow Republicans as ‘scumbags’ and klansmen

Posted on April 23, 2024 by Texas Tribune

Gonzales’ interview on CNN infuriated members of the House Freedom Caucus, causing one to endorse his primary opponent.

By Matthew Choi, The Texas Tribune

U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio, ripped into his party’s right flank for voting against billions in foreign aid for U.S. allies last week, castigating his ultraconservative peers as “scumbags” and klansmen.

“These people used to walk around with white hoods at night. Now they're walking around with white hoods in the daytime,” Gonzales told CNN’s Dana Bash in an interview Sunday. “It didn't surprise me that some of these folks voted against aid to Israel.”

Gonazales, a rare flame-throwing centrist who is battling it out against YouTube gun enthusiast Brandon Herrera in the first serious primary challenge, singled out two sitting Republicans by name who have endorsed against him.

“It's my absolute honor to be in Congress, but I serve with some real scumbags like [Florida Congressman] Matt Gaetz. He paid minors to have sex with them at drunk parties,” Gonzales said, before calling out Rep. Bob Good for earlier this month endorsing Herrera, whom he called a “known neo-Nazi.”

Federal prosecutors declined to charge Gaetz after investigating allegations of sex trafficking, though the House Ethics Committee is continuing to investigate the matter.

Gonzales made the remarks in reaction to several Republican members voting against their party’s leadership on Saturday on military and civilian aid packages for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. The hardline House Freedom Caucus asserted Congress should not pass the bills, which would include over $90 billion in assistance to the U.S. allies, before more securing aggressive measures on the U.S.-Mexico border. The foreign aid packages passed the House with large bipartisan support.

Gonzales has a history of clashing with the right wing of the House Republican conference. He criticized hardline border proposals by U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Austin, as anti-American and un-Christian and was the only Republican to vote against a set of rules for the House negotiated between former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and hardline Republicans. Roy’s border bill eventually became a foundation for sweeping border security legislation the House passed with full Republican support last year.

Gonzales’ attack on Good, who is the chair of the House Freedom Caucus, attracted swift rebuttal from the group’s members. U.S. Rep. Eli Crane, R-Arizona, said on social media it was “pathetic” to “insinuate that other members are klansmen.” Crane endorsed Herrera’s run in the same post.

"It is not surprising that one of the most liberal RINOs in Congress, who has egregiously fought against real border security, and votes like a Democrat, would also resort to the Democrat playbook in screaming ‘racism’ against those exposing him,” Good said in a statement. “Thankfully, the good people of the Texas 23rd District have the opportunity to vote for change and an America First patriot, in Brandon Herrera."

Herrera said Gonzales’ comments were an act of desperation as he gains momentum.

“This is the death spiral ladies and gentlemen,” Herrera said on social media.

Gaetz denied Gonzales’ claims about him as “lies,” saying on social media that “one of the final phases a politician goes through prior to defeat.”

Gaetz supported Herrera before the primary election, appearing at a campaign rally with him in San Antonio in March.

Roy, who also represents parts of San Antonio and has previously kept any personal animus out of the public eye, railed against Gonzales in a Tuesday radio interview in San Antonio.

"I'm being attacked. Conservatives are being attacked," Roy said on KTSA. "Bob Good, the chairman of the Freedom Caucus, is being attacked by Tony. He said that he's a Klansman. Yeah, I cannot tolerate what's happening to the people that I think are standing up for this country."

The Texas Republican Party censured Gonzales last year, citing his opposition to Roy’s border bill and the rules package, as well as his support for gun safety legislation after the Robb Elementary shooting in his district. The party also cited his support for legislation protecting same-sex marriage.

The censure invited a lively, five-way primary field, including Herrera and Julie Clark, the former Medina County GOP chair who started the censure motion. Backed by an army of online fans donating small-dollar donations, Herrera was able to secure a place against Gonzales in the runoff, which will be on May 28.

Attacking a fellow Republican member, including endorsing a primary challenger, was historically rare in the party. Gaetz’s support for Herrera was a provocative move, but the censure motion from the Texas GOP gave some cover for other Republicans to endorse Gonzales’ challengers.

Herrera has disquieted many of his fellow Republicans for his edgy humor on his YouTube channel and podcast appearances. He has made quips about veteran suicide, the Holocaust and child abuse that many moderate Republicans viewed as flippant.

He has defended his comments as being in jest to lighten heavy topics. He says in one video he’s “not really a big fan of fascism.”

Despite the pile ons from the right, Gonzales remains a competitive candidate with a formidable fundraising operation. He raised more than twice as much as Herrera in the first quarter of the year and maintains strong relationships with Republican leadership, corporate interests, moderate Republican donors and bipartisan interest groups. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which supports members of both parties to advance Israel-related issues, has steadily supported Gonzales.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, also backs Gonzales. He traveled to San Antonio on Tuesday to fundraise for him.

Roy criticized Johnson for passing the foreign aid bills without securing more for the border — a move Roy viewed as a betrayal. He said the speaker campaigning for Gonzales rubbed salt into the wound.

"To have the speaker be in San Antonio, campaigning for Tony … when we had them both voting to fund this atrocity this last weekend. I'm just beside myself that that's where things are," Roy said on KTSA.

Gonzales has also shown a willingness to entertain more partisan priorities, including the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Gonzales helped U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, garner support for her move to impeach the secretary. The Democrat-controlled Senate voted to dismiss the impeachment.

"Tony Gonzales openly blasts fellow Republicans as “scumbags” and klansmen" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

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New poll shows it’s the greedflation, stupid

Posted on February 15, 2024 by Kerry Eleveld

Even as post-pandemic inflation continues to fall, many Americans still feel the sting of high prices for basic goods, such as groceries. And Republicans are desperate to blame voter unease on President Joe Biden, particularly as consumer confidence improves and people feel increasingly bullish about their personal finances.

But new polling on inflation suggests Democrats have an opening to reframe the issue as a discussion about corporate greed—an issue Democrats can turn to their advantage.

In a newly released survey, the progressive consortium Navigator Research found that 85% of voters now view corporate greed as a cause of inflation, with 59% calling it a "major" factor—a 15-percentage-point increase since January 2022.

"The fact that so many Americans now say that corporate greed is a root cause of inflation is an important turning point," Maryann Cousens, polling and analytics associate for Navigator Research, told Daily Kos.

The feeling among Americans has become so pervasive that Dictionary.com just added the term "greedflation" to its entries, describing it as a rise in prices "caused by corporate executives or boards of directors, property owners, etc., solely to increase profits that are already healthy or excessive."

It's not that voter concerns about inflation are new; it's that voters’ sense that corporations are profiting at the expense of average Americans by spiking prices is at an all-time high in Navigator's polling.

In fact, voters’ belief that corporate greed is a "major" driver of inflation has jumped 17 points in the past two years among both independents (from 45% to 62%) and Democrats (55% to 72%).

Cousens told Daily Kos that voters are also clamoring for Congress to take action on the issue. Navigator's 2022 midterm survey showed that Congress addressing inflation was "the top priority for midterm voters by a large margin," according to Cousens.

And while Republicans sought to tag government spending as the biggest cause of inflation in the midterm, some Democrats successfully pointed to corporate greed as the main culprit for soaring prices.

One of them was Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, who narrowly won her hard-fought 2022 reelection bid in the swing state, where gas prices had spiked to $5.67 per gallon amid the campaign.

According to reporting from The Nevada Independent, Cortez Masto staffers said she frequently mentioned pocketbook issues, like the prices of prescription drugs, housing, and gasoline.

“[She would] say, ‘yeah, I don't like the gas prices either,’ instead of just trying to sweep it under the rug,” Frank Hawk, president of the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters, told the Independent's Gabby Birenbaum. “And then [she] really pointed out what's a little more true, [which] is that you have oil companies and pharmaceutical companies and Big Corporate America making record profits on a daily basis, and we as the middle class are struggling to fill our gas tanks. And that should make us angry. And I think her passion came through, along with her sincerity.”

In other words, there's precedent for Democratic lawmakers to successfully empathize with voters and highlight their work to ease the cost of living. For example, President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, which cleared Congress on a party-line vote, has forced a $35 monthly cap on insulin for Medicare beneficiaries. And that price is quickly becoming available to a much wider swath of Americans as drug companies cap their own price or offer savings programs.

Democrats have plenty to use to contrast themselves with Republicans. The Inflation Reduction Act also empowers Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices, and Biden has put forward practical steps to raise taxes on billionaires. In the meantime, Donald Trump is vowing to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which, if successful, could strip health insurance from tens of millions of Americans. Trump is also floating the implementation of 10% tariffs on nearly all imports to the U.S, which would functionally raise taxes for U.S. consumers by more than $300 billion a year, according to the conservative Tax Foundation think tank.

Last month, Navigator released polling of likely general election voters in 61 battleground districts, showing that congressional Republicans still hold a 10-point trust advantage on the issue of "fighting inflation." However, once Navigator actually named the lawmakers, Democratic legislators in those districts edged out Republican lawmakers. Forty-five percent of voters said they trust their Democratic representative "a lot" or "some" to fight inflation, while 42% said the same of their GOP representative.

Navigator's most recent poll found the most persuasive messages on price increases focus on corporate profits and CEO salaries being “at an all-time high, outpacing inflation” while corporations are “raising prices for families and small businesses.” It's a message the White House and Democrats should be pushing proactively, particularly given the fact that the economy is overall on much stronger footing than it was during the 2022 midterms.

The country’s economic upswing, coupled with Americans increasing belief in greedflation, suggests voters are ripe for an argument that the high price of consumer goods is a product of corporate greed, not economic missteps. And Democrats have a plan for that.

Republicans demanded border security, worked on a compromise deal with Democrats, and now want to blow the whole thing up. Biden is promising to remind Americans every day that the Republican Party is at fault for the lack of solutions to the problems they claim are most important.

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House GOP votes to impeach Mayorkas, after failing first attempt

Posted on February 14, 2024 by Associated Press

The U.S. House voted Tuesday to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, with the Republican majority determined to punish the Biden administration over its handling of the U.S-Mexico border after failing last week in a politically embarrassing setback.

The evening roll call proved tight, with Speaker Mike Johnson’s threadbare GOP majority unable to handle many defectors or absences in the face of staunch Democratic opposition to impeaching Mayorkas, the first Cabinet secretary facing charges in nearly 150 years.

In a historic rebuke, the House impeached Mayorkas 214-213. With the return of Majority Leader Steve Scalise to bolster the GOP's numbers after being away from Washington for cancer care and a Northeastern storm impacting some others, Republicans recouped — despite dissent from their own ranks.

Johnson had posted a fists-clenched photo with Scalise, announcing his remission from cancer, saying, “looking forward to having him back in the trenches this week!”

The GOP effort to impeach Mayorkas over his handling of the southern border has taken on an air of political desperation as Republicans struggle to make good on their priorities.

Mayorkas faced two articles of impeachment filed by the Homeland Security Committee arguing that he “willfully and systematically” refused to enforce existing immigration laws and that he breached the public trust by lying to Congress and saying the border was secure.

But critics of the impeachment effort said the charges against Mayorkas amount to a policy dispute over Biden's border policy, hardly rising to the Constitution's bar of high crimes and misdemeanors.

The House had initially launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden over his son’s business dealings, but instead turned its attention to Mayorkas after Trump ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia pushed the debate forward following the panel’s months-long investigation.

The charges against Mayorkas would next go to the Senate for a trial, but neither Democratic nor Republican senators have shown interest in the matter and it may be indefinitely shelved to a committee.

Border security has shot to the top of campaign issues, with Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner for the presidential nomination, insisting he will launch “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” if he retakes the White House.

Various House Republicans have prepared legislation to begin deporting migrants who were temporarily allowed into the U.S. under the Biden administration’s policies, many as they await adjudication of asylum claims.

“We have no choice,” Trump said in stark language at a weekend rally in South Carolina.

At the same time, Johnson rejected a bipartisan Senate border security package but has been unable to advance Republicans’ own proposal which is a nonstarter in the Senate.

Three Republican representatives broke ranks last week over the Mayorkas impeachment, which several leading conservative scholars have dismissed as unwarranted and a waste of time. With a 219-212 majority, Johnson had few votes to spare.

Mayorkas is not the only Biden administration official the House Republicans want to impeach. They have filed legislation to impeach a long list including Vice President Kamala Harris, Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Never before has a sitting Cabinet secretary been impeached, and it was nearly 150 years ago that the House voted to impeach President Ulysses S. Grant’s secretary of war, William Belknap, over a kickback scheme in government contracts. He resigned before the vote.

Mayorkas, who did not appear to testify before the impeachment proceedings, put the border crisis squarely on Congress for failing to update immigration laws during a time of global migration.

“There is no question that we have a challenge, a crisis at the border,” Mayorkas said over the weekend on NBC. “And there is no question that Congress needs to fix it.”

Johnson and the Republicans have pushed back, arguing that the Biden administration could take executive actions, as Trump did, to stop the number of crossings — though the courts have questioned and turned back some of those efforts.

“We always explore what options are available to us that are permissible under the law,” Mayorkas said.

Last week's failed vote to impeach Mayorkas — a surprise outcome rarely seen on such a high-profile issue — was a stunning display in the chamber that has been churning through months of GOP chaos since the ouster of the previous House speaker.

One of the Republican holdouts, Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, who had served as a Marine, announced over the weekend he would not be seeking reelection in the fall, joining a growing list of serious-minded Republican lawmakers heading for the exits.

At the time, Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, who had been hospitalized for emergency abdominal surgery, made a surprise arrival, wheeled into the chamber in scrubs and socks to vote against it — leaving the vote tied, and failed.

“Obviously, you feel good when you can make a difference,” said Green, describing his painstaking route from hospital bed to the House floor. “All I did was what I was elected to do, and that was to cast my vote on the issues of our time, using the best judgment available to me.”

Republicans are hopeful the New York special election will boost their ranks further, but the outcome of that race is uncertain.

WATCH LIVE: House begins debate for vote on GOP resolution authorizing Biden impeachment inquiry

Posted on December 13, 2023 by Farnoush Amiri, Associated Press

The House is pushing toward a vote Wednesday to formally authorize the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden as Republicans rally behind the charged process despite lingering concerns among some in the party that the investigation has yet to produce evidence of misconduct by the president.

Are the handful of GOP impeachment holdouts ‘centrists’?

Posted on December 12, 2023 by Hunter

A new Politico story gives a sliver of fresh information on House Republicans' push to impeach Joe Biden: Not only has just one Republican member announced he will vote “no” on a planned vote to formally authorize the so-far unofficial impeachment inquiry, but of the entire caucus, all except "about a half-dozen" members are now supporting the vote.

The opposing vote is from Rep. Ken Buck. He is nobody's idea of a moderate, but he has expressed repeated unwillingness to support efforts by his own party to nullify an American election and propagate hoaxes meant to delegitimize it. (Buck is also retiring from Congress at the end of his term.)

It's Politico's framing of the half-dozen holdouts that's a bit galling.

"House GOP chips away at centrist resistance on Biden impeachment inquiry," says the Politico headline.

Not sure how you can call the half-an-egg-carton of holdouts "centrists" on this one, Politico. Those six or so representatives hail from swing districts, the site reports, so the more appropriate designation might be "cowards."

It's not centrist to be undecided on whether or not an impeachment inquiry based on not even a shred of evidence of actual wrongdoing (but a whole lot of unhinged and provably false conspiracy theories) should go forward solely because the coup-attempting Donald Trump, now indicted in four separate jurisdictions, was impeached twice and Trump's also-coup-supporting admirers have been obsessed with inflicting revenge on everyone who ever caught Trump committing alleged crimes. No, it's just cowardice. The undecided members are trying to gauge which will cost them more votes: supporting a clearly spurious and revenge-based impeachment and infuriating swing voters, or not supporting impeachment, which will infuriate the far-right elements of their base.

It's a tough call for sure, but it's not centrist. It's just a craven attempt to govern based not on principle but instead on what will best boost their own personal interests. By the same token, you could call a pickpocket who made off with their wallets a "centrist" because they ignored laws and morality to squarely focus on "What should I do if I want to have more money?"

And this bit is just maddening:

But some moderate Republicans argue that a lack of cooperation from Hunter Biden and other family members has forced the GOP’s hand. Formalizing the investigation would boost the GOP’s leverage in its pursuit of documents and witnesses, they say, and represents just one step in the process.

Come again? Hunter Biden is showing a "lack of cooperation" in disproving an ever-shifting range of conspiracy theories, most of them disprovable by even the most basic fact-checking?

How is he supposed to "cooperate" to disprove theories that have no supporting evidence to begin with? Republican hearings have brought forward "evidence," like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's public display of Hunter nudes almost certainly obtained through criminal hacking efforts in attempts to prove who-knows-what.

How is Hunter supposed to more fully "cooperate" with that probe? Do Republicans believe he must now strip naked in front of them, live and in person?

Well, Rep. Jim Jordan probably does.

The coverage of the Republican "impeachment" drive continues to be risible because journalists continue to note the utter lack of evidence as an aside or afterthought in stories that otherwise treat the Republican effort as a credible political process simply by virtue of Republicans willing it to be.

The story here is that despite a lack of evidence that the sitting president has done even a single untoward thing in relation to his son and despite increasingly circus-like efforts to promote hoaxes after Republican investigators could find nothing else, all but seven or so House Republicans support opening an impeachment inquiry anyway in a brazenly dishonest, politically crooked attempt to redirect attention from the unequivocal crookedness of their own coup-attempting, indicted, and openly fascist party leader.

The six or so possible holdouts aren't the story. The uniform corruption that has strangled nearly the entire Republican caucus, though, continues to be the story that will best predict the possible demise of American democracy itself.

Comer's latest bombshell may be his worst dud yet

Hunter Biden asks to testify publicly. House Republicans scurry away in a panic

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Markos and Kerry give their thoughts on what the country is facing in 2024. The Republican Party is running on losing issues like abortion and repealing the ACA—with no explanation of what they plan on replacing it with. Trump has a lot of criming to atone for, and the Republican platform remains set on destroying democracy.

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Instead of working on keeping government open, Marjorie Taylor Greene tries to impeach head of DHS

Posted on November 9, 2023 by Walter Einenkel

On Thursday, the Republican-led House decided that after having wasted weeks arguing about who should be their next speaker, they needed to take a nice long weekend. With eight days left to fund our government, the Republican Party still can’t get its act together long enough to pass anything.

Mere days before Veterans Day, while some House members used their time to commemorate U.S. veterans, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene stood up and spoke for a very long time—and introduced articles of impeachment against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

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This is nothing new for Greene, who has authored about a half-dozen articles of impeachment against Biden and others in his administration. On Tuesday, instead of working toward a Republican consensus to keep the government open, Greene passed an amendment to have Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg’s salary reduced to $1.

Greene is not alone. Targeting Mayorkas has been a way for conservatives to pretend the Biden administration has failed to secure America’s borders. Xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment appear to be the only things resembling policy for Republicans. The logic of how dismantling the U.S. government’s ability to operate will help improve … its operation … remains a mystery.

Did the Republicans vote on anything else?

Yesterday, 106 Republicans voted to eliminate all staff in the Office of the Vice President. Today, 165 Republicans voted to reduce the salary of the White House Press Secretary to $1 pic.twitter.com/o3pttAUr7w
— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) November 9, 2023

With a Republican shutdown looming, the GOP seems able to produce only political theater aimed at hampering the government’s ability to serve the American people. This week’s election results suggest the American people have noticed.

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The band is back together, and it is a glorious day as Markos and Kerry’s hot takes over the past year came true—again! Republicans continue to lose at the ballot box and we are here for it!

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