WASHINGTON — After a weeklong lengthen, the House of Representatives on Tuesday afternoon will ship its articles of impeachment in opposition to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate, a spokesperson for Speaker Mike Johnson showed.
It will kick off what’s anticipated to be a very brief trial in the higher chamber — one that would wrap up through week’s finish. However, Republicans, who’re challenging a complete Senate trial, are preventing to drag out the procedure in a bid to shine the highlight on what they see as Mayorkas’ failure to curtail migrant crossings and protected the southern border.
As was once achieved for the two Donald Trump impeachments, the impeachment managers will escort a pair of articles from the House chamber, throughout the Rotunda and onto the Senate flooring someday after 2 p.m. ET.
The Senate will obtain the articles, and all 100 senators can be sworn in as jurors in the trial on Wednesday afternoon. It is unclear precisely how lengthy the trial will final, although Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has mentioned the Senate will care for the subject “expeditiously.”
It’s anticipated that Senate Democrats, who keep watch over the chamber, will band in combination and vote to disregard or desk the factor, then transfer on to different industry, together with the chamber’s want to renew a crucial secret agent device sooner than it expires Friday. None of the Senate’s 51 Democrats have mentioned they give a boost to the Mayorkas impeachment, or even a handful of GOP senators have mentioned the impeachment is meritless.
“Impeachment should never be used to settle a policy disagreement; that would set a horrible precedent for the Congress,” Schumer mentioned in a flooring speech Monday. “Nevertheless, the Senate’s plan has not changed since last week. We are ready to go whenever the House sends us the articles. We want to address this issue as expeditiously as possible.”
Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, had at the start deliberate to ship the Mayorkas articles to the Senate on April 10, however Senate conservatives, led through Mike Lee of Utah, effectively lobbied the speaker to delay the motion to save you a rapid dismissal through Democrats at the finish of the week as lawmakers had been making ready to go away Washington.
Mayorkas, Biden’s most sensible border authentic and the first Latino to lead the Homeland Security Department, become most effective the 2nd Cabinet secretary in historical past — and the first since 1876 — to be impeached through the House. Republicans’ first try to impeach him collapsed spectacularly on the House flooring, however they had been a success on the 2nd check out, on Feb. 13, with simply a unmarried vote to spare; the tally was once 214-213, with 3 Republicans becoming a member of all Democrats in vote casting no.
In their two articles, House Republicans charged Mayorkas with “high crimes and misdemeanors” for failing to put in force immigration and border safety regulations, ensuing, they mentioned, in “millions” of undocumented immigrants illegally crossing into the U.S. each and every yr; and for knowingly mendacity below oath to Congress.
Mayorkas’ Democratic allies have lambasted the GOP’s impeachment as a politically motivated “sham” introduced months sooner than the presidential election and argued that Republicans’ complaint of the DHS secretary quantities to coverage variations moderately than impeachable offenses. Several conservatives have argued against impeaching Mayorkas as neatly, blasting the transfer as beside the point. Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., a Trump best friend, referred to as it “the worst, dumbest exercise and use of time.”
The 11 House impeachment managers, the prosecutors appointed through Johnson, are a mixture of senior Republicans and conservative hard-liners.
They are: Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green of Tennessee; the Homeland panel’s vice chair, Michael Guest of Mississippi; Foreign Affairs Chairman Mike McCaul of Texas, who prior to now was once Homeland chairman; Rep. Andrew Garbarino of New York; Rep. August Pfluger of Texas; Rep. Laurel Lee of Florida; 4 conservative Freedom Caucus contributors: Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Clay Higgins of Louisiana, Ben Cline of Virginia and Harriet Hageman of Wyoming; and far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., one among Trump’s most sensible allies on the Hill who led the push to impeach Mayorkas.
Rebecca Kaplan and Frank Thorp V contributed.