Fails to impeach

House GOP fails to impeach Mayorkas over border handling

Republican lawmakers quickly predicted they will bring it back up once Majority Leader Steve Scalise returns from his undergoing treatment for blood cancer.

By JORDAIN CARNEY and OLIVIA 

House Republicans’ high-stakes gamble to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas just barely failed on Tuesday, an embarrassing political setback for an already embattled majority.

The articles of impeachment against the Homeland Security secretary failed in an 214-216 vote, after four Republicans sided with Democrats to oppose recommending Mayorkas be booted from office. But Republican lawmakers quickly predicted they will bring it back up once Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who is undergoing treatment for blood cancer, returns.

“We’ll bring it back. The guy deserves to be impeached," said Homeland Security Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.), who has led the effort against Mayorkas.

The count was initially tied after Reps. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) voted with Democrats against impeaching Mayorkas. Republicans, including Green, spent spent several minutes huddled with Gallagher on the floor, in an apparent effort to change his vote. One person close to the conversation, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said members argued to Gallagher that he would be inviting strong blowback from the base.

Instead, Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah), the vice chair of the conference, flipped his vote to “no” — a procedural step that will let Republicans revive the impeachment articles, which some indicated could happen next week if Scalise returns. Johnson's spokesman, Raj Shah, said in a post on X that the GOP "fully intends" to bring them back up "when we have the votes for passage."

The high-profile defeat came hours after Johnson predicted to reporters that he believed they would have the votes, even as he faced growing skepticism from within own ranks and multiple holdouts refused to sign on.

The setback, even if its temporary, sparked immediate backlash from multiple corners of the conference. In addition to the failed Mayorkas impeachment, Johnson's plan for a standalone Israel aid bill also failed on Tuesday night.

“We need to know exactly where we are and we need to be careful not to get out ahead of our skis," Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), a typical leadership ally, said about leaders putting bills on the floor without knowing the outcome.

Republicans have been building their case to impeach Mayorkas for months, advancing articles last week that accused him of breach of public trust and refusing to comply with the law. If they’d been successful, it would’ve been the first impeachment of a Cabinet official since 1876.

A frustrated conservative Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said: "Ken Buck is leaving. I don't understand that. He could have done it just for the Republican party." He noted Democrats seem to stick together and "we don't."

Mayorkas dismissed the charges in a recent letter, calling them “false,” “baseless” and “inaccurate.” Even some GOP-allied constitutional experts have publicly warned that House Republicans’ accusations don’t meet the bar for impeachment. DHS spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg reiterated those points in a statement after the vote.

"This baseless impeachment should never have moved forward; it faces bipartisan opposition and legal experts resoundingly say it is unconstitutional," she said. "If House Republicans are serious about border security, they should abandon these political games, and instead support the bipartisan national security agreement in the Senate to get DHS the enforcement resources we need."

The public setback on the House floor underscores the deep divisions within the conference, exacerbated by their thin majority. With Scalise missing, Republicans could only afford to lose two votes. Absences injected an extra dose of last-minute uncertainty into the outcome, as one Democrat, Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), rushed to the floor at the last second.

“They played a good game,” Rep. Andy Biggs said of the Democrats getting full attendance at the last minute. “I don't like that we lost, but we haven't lost yet. Because we're ready to come back as soon as we get Mr. Scalise back.“

GOP leadership pushed ahead with the vote anyway, effectively forcing their on-the-fence members into a decision that could expose them to political attacks either way. And many of them, including Reps. David Joyce (R-Ohio), Maria Salazar (R-Fla.) and Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) each declined on Tuesday to say how they would vote ahead of time.

Gallagher, who ultimately voted no, signaled his concerns during a closed-door conference meeting earlier Tuesday when he said that the Mayorkas impeachment effort hadn’t met the constitutional bar for impeachment, according to four Republicans in the meeting.

Tuesday’s failure also raises fresh questions about whether Republicans can take on their bigger impeachment goal: President Joe Biden. There were multiple signs of trouble heading into the Mayorkas vote that could be relevant for any effort against Biden as well.

Buck and McClintock have been signaling for weeks that they were not sold on impeaching Mayorkas, concerned that the GOP charges didn’t reach the bar of a high crime or misdemeanor as outlined in the Constitution. Buck made his opposition official late last week, while McClintock came out as a “no” on Tuesday morning. Buck has also been critical of the effort to impeach Biden.

McClintock’s opposition sparked pushback from conservatives, who have been eager to see House Republicans try to boot someone from office, after former President Donald Trump was twice impeached (though ultimately acquitted by the Senate).

“Clearly he’s not paying attention to the American people. He’s failing his oath office. I would say he needs to grow some courage,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said of McClintock. “The American people are fed up.”