The White House sent a new memo at noon on Monday pointing out the hypocrisy of House Republicans foisting their unconstitutional impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas while they block the bipartisan border bill they demanded.
“This effort is a complete waste of time that constitutional and legal experts have said is “unconstitutional” and that even Senate Republicans have made clear they don’t want to focus on,” White House spokesman for oversight and investigations Ian Sams said in a memo sent to PoliticusUSA.
“But the worst part is that extreme Republicans have promoted this silly, baseless stunt at the same time they have killed an actual bipartisan border security bill that would have addressed the challenges at the border and delivered needed resources to DHS,” the memo continues.
The memo cites multiple experts who say this impeachment is unconstitutional – from an open letter by 25 constitutional law experts to House Republicans’ own impeachment witness Jonathan Turley.
But it’s University of Missouri professor and constitutional law scholar Frank Bowman who makes the point that sticks out, which is that ultimately Republicans have impeached Mayorkas because they don’t like President Biden’s border policies.
“There’s no suggestion that I’m aware of that Secretary Mayorkas has committed either treason or bribery,” Bowman said. “In the words of the great impeachment scholar Charles Black, ‘Whatever may be the grounds of an impeachment and removal, dislike of a president’s policy is certainly not one of them.’ Impeachment of a cabinet secretary over policy disagreements is not only contrary to long-established constitutional understanding, but useless as a practical matter.”
The big problem here for conservatives and Republicans is that The People elected President Joe Biden, and they are entitled to get the policies they voted for. Not only that, but Democrats gave Republicans approximately 80% of what they asked for in the border bill, so Republicans are already hijacking the government from a position of a minuscule majority in the House, with the Senate and the White House under Democratic control.
HUMANITARIAN BORDER VERSUS DELIBERATE CRUELTY
The big issue Republicans don’t want to talk about, aside from the fact that they refused to pass the border bill that gave them 80% of what they asked for because Donald Trump wants the border to be in chaos so he can run against the chaos his party is making worse, is that they don’t like the humanitarian aspect of President Biden’s border policies.
Biden doesn’t want to shoot migrants who cross the border, unlike Governor Abbott. Biden doesn’t want to deliberately separate families or inflict other kinds of permanent trauma on people who are trying to flee violence and political upset.
Republicans disagree with Biden’s humanitarian priorities regarding U.S. border policies and they are actively trying to make the border worse for political gain. They have admitted that they won’t work on addressing the border because it would help Biden politically.
This puts their unconstitutional impeachment of Mayorkas in starker relief because it shows a craven abuse of humanity for political purposes and an utter disregard for the will of the people.
THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE
It’s frankly disturbing how little regard Republicans show for the will of the majority of Americans, who elected President Biden in the most secure election in modern history, and how the media treats this as the right of Republicans.
Notice that no one in legacy media is tracking down Democrats in a diner in Detroit to ask how they feel about their president being undermined by a House with such a slim majority that they require Democrats to bail them out when it comes down to doing their actual jobs. No, these voters are not of interest and indeed, their votes don’t even seem to matter to too many in legacy media.
Republicans impeached Mayorkas over the border after they refused to fund the border at levels required given that more people are trying to cross the border, many seeking political asylum, and walked away from a bipartisan bill.
REPUBLICAN DEFENSE
The Republican defense for this outrageously undemocratic behavior is that Democrats did it to Trump.
So, yes, Democrats did impeach ex-president Donald Trump. They impeached him first for withholding Congressionally approved funds from Ukraine in an effort to extort the country into manufacturing dirt on Trump’s political opponent, Joe Biden.
Democrats impeached Trump the second time after he incited a deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in an effort to overturn the election he lost.
What do those two impeachments of Trump have to do with Republicans impeaching Mayorkas after wasting endless resources trying to find something over which to impeach Joe Biden? All three of these impeachments are the results of Republicans seizing power not given to them by the voters.
SERIOUS
Republicans are using the impeachment to appear serious about the border:
“Now, they want people to think they are serious on the border by pushing a baseless impeachment stunt that legal scholars say is unconstitutional,” Sams wrote. “Instead of more of these political stunts, congressional Republicans should work with President Biden to actually address this issue in a bipartisan manner. It’s time to stop the silly games.”
NO REAL JOBS
Of course, Republicans won’t stop their political maneuvering because it’s their only purpose. House Republicans have no real jobs anymore. They aren’t there to do the hard work of a budget or negotiate with anyone, especially people with different ideas than them.
House Republicans are being paid by U.S. taxpayers to put on political theater to help Donald Trump, including their seeming efforts to impeach Hunter Biden, who of course is not an elected official and over whom they do not actually have purview to the degree that they’ve taken it.
But it’s not silly at all. In fact, it’s an egregious affront to the voters, too many of whom overcame huge voter suppression efforts to cast their ballot. Voters go to all of this trouble to show up only to have Republicans spit on their choice over and over again, whether it’s trying to overthrow the most secure election in history or holding Impeachment Theater for purely political purposes.
Over and over again, Republicans refuse to work with Democrats and instead undermine the authority voters have given to them, in what appears more and more to be a shadow presidency effort in many regards.
QUIET TREASON?
The behavior of the MAGA caucus in the U.S. House is veering close to a form of underhanded treason. Maybe we’ll call it Quite Treason.
They are overthrowing the government like people quiet quit. They’re simply not allowing the full power the people gave to President Biden, because they don’t want to share power and they do not respect American voters.
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