Since Tuesday’s
Home vote, Mayorkas has been making ready for his journey to Germany for the Munich Safety Convention. He delivered keynote remarks on Friday, and thru the weekend, he’ll take part in a number of panel discussions and maintain a collection of bilateral conferences on a spread of nationwide safety points. On Sunday, he’ll head to Vienna, Austria, to fulfill with China’s state councilor and minister of public well being to debate the nation’s work to fight the circulation of fentanyl. Mayorkas has not but addressed questions in regards to the profitable vote.
Administration officers aren’t disengaged from the impeachment combat. President Joe Biden slammed the impeachment as “
petty partisan games.” And aides are monitoring it carefully, usually elevating Republicans who’ve questioned the deserves of impeachment.
However the administration can be leaning on allied exterior teams to poke holes within the GOP’s case in opposition to Mayorkas and echo the message coming from Pennsylvania Avenue. They imagine the Mayorkas impeachment — and his public nonchalance about it — will assist additional the narrative carrying over from the bipartisan Senate border deal battle: that Republicans are usually not invested in fixing the disaster on the border a lot as perpetuating it as a political cudgel.
“Home Republicans shall be remembered by historical past for trampling on the Structure for political achieve fairly than working to unravel the intense challenges at our border. Whereas Secretary Mayorkas was serving to a bunch of Republican and Democratic Senators develop bipartisan options to strengthen border safety and get wanted sources for enforcement, Home Republicans have wasted months with this baseless, unconstitutional impeachment,” stated DHS spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg in response to Tuesday’s impeachment vote.
There are dangers to the method. The White Home has been underwater on the difficulty of immigration and migration nearly for the reason that second Biden took workplace. And whereas nobody sees a Senate trial for Mayorkas ending in conviction, it can permit Republicans in that chamber the possibility to position a vivid highlight on the lack of the Biden administration to stem the tide of migrants. Mayorkas’ tenure will come beneath intense scrutiny, in methods it has not so far.
However Democrats and Biden allies imagine the political tide is altering. They view
Tom Suozzi’s victory in New York, the place the Democrat leaned into immigration and went on offense in opposition to Republicans, as additional proof that their new messaging technique round GOP indifference to the issue is already working. A Mayorkas impeachment, they imagine, might be utilized in the identical approach.
“Voters are watching because the Home GOP chaos convention places Trump’s political needs forward of actual options to enhance border safety,” stated DNC fast response director Alex Floyd, noting Dems’ victory within the New York particular election. “Trump and his MAGA minions can take a break from their clown present, however they may pay the value this November for placing Trump first and the American individuals final.”
For a White Home that has repeatedly struggled to nail a constant message on immigration, the administration in current weeks has delivered forceful assaults in opposition to Home Republicans. Because the venue quickly shifts to an impeachment trial, the White Home has been largely content material to again channel with allied exterior teams engaged within the combat.
The
Congressional Integrity Venture has led the cost externally. The group launched in late 2022 — forward of Republicans taking on the Home — with the aim of combatting the investigative onslaught into the Biden administration. The group has been monitoring the focusing on of Mayorkas carefully, however as impeachment appeared more and more seemingly, it ramped up that aspect of its operations.
Over the past six weeks, the Congressional Integrity Venture has labored carefully with advocates within the immigration coverage area to defend Mayorkas and to color the GOP effort as a “shameful” and unfounded partisan act tied to fringe conservatives, akin to Georgia Rep. Majorie Taylor Inexperienced and Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs.
The teams, together with America’s Voice and the American Immigration Attorneys Affiliation, have stayed in contact over a shared chat the place they coordinate technique, stated Douglas Rivlin, communications director at America’s Voice. They’ve pushed varied constituencies to talk out in opposition to the impeachment effort they’ve sought to border as “unconstitutional.”
They’ve elevated criticism from Cuban American leaders, in addition to former DHS secretaries like Michael Chertoff and conservative authorized students akin to Laurence Tribe and Alan Dershowitz, former President Donald Trump’s impeachment lawyer.
The Home Homeland Safety Committee, which filed the articles of impeachment in opposition to Mayorkas, didn’t reply to a request for remark. On the day of the vote, Chair Mark Inexperienced (R-Tenn.)
said Congress took “decisive motion to defend our structure order and maintain accountable a public official who has violated his oath of workplace,” urging the Senate to take away Mayorkas from workplace.
Amongst a number of the most aggressive counter-attacks amplified by the teams got here from Jewish leaders who argued that the impeachment of Mayorkas, who can be Jewish, carries antisemitic undertones. The leaders blasted “excessive” members of the GOP caucus who’ve used “anti-immigrant, conspiracy-driven” rhetoric, warning that mass shooters in El Paso, Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Poway, California, echoed phrases akin to “substitute” and “invasion.”
Due to the timing of the Republican impeachment — occurring because the border deal collapsed — it was straightforward for the teams to coalesce round a unified message, Rivlin stated, together with immigration advocates, who’ve usually clashed with the Biden administration over its border coverage.
“There are many insurance policies that we don’t like — that Biden and Mayorkas have been engaged in,” Rivlin stated. “However on the identical time, Republicans had been displaying so a lot of their playing cards that illustrated the factors that we’ve been making about them. They’re not fascinated about making coverage. They’re fascinated about dividing individuals.”
