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House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who hopes to secure a majority vote in January to be the chamber’s next Speaker, is ratcheting up his focus on Alejandro Mayorkas, President Biden’s Homeland Security secretary.
McCarthy visited El Paso, Texas, on Tuesday to tour the border where he called on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) chief to resign or face impeachment proceeding once Republicans take over early next year.
“If Secretary Mayorkas does not resign, House Republicans will investigate every order, every action and every failure” and “determine whether we can begin impeachment inquiry,” McCarthy said.
Fox News’ Bill Melugin reported that McCarthy was visiting the border area “specifically in response to DHS Secretary Mayorkas’s testimony again last week that the border is secure.”
McCarthy, who is hoping to shore up support among Republicans to claim the Speaker’s gavel, has long forecast the move, saying back in April that Mayorkas may be subject to impeachment if the GOP took the House in the midterms.
In October, Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.) sent a letter to Mayorkas saying they had “grounds for impeachment” if the secretary didn’t correct what they called a “gross dereliction of duty.”
In August 2021, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) introduced a resolution to impeach Mayorkas “for high crimes and misdemeanors related to his actions regarding border security and immigration,” with 32 Republicans signing on.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 2.8 million total enforcement actions at the border in fiscal year 2022 (which ended Sept. 30). That was more than twice as many as in 2019, four times as many as in 2020 and a 41 percent increase over 2021’s figure (around 2 million).
In his testimony on “Worldwide Threats to the Homeland” before the House Homeland Security Committee last week, Mayorkas said, “Migration is a hemispheric challenge, one not limited to the United States.”
“The demographics of the population have also changed, with more than triple the number of Venezuelans, Cubans and Nicaraguans than last year, as people flee repressive governments and lack of economic opportunity … We assess that global food and water shortages, poor economic conditions, and other socio-political factors will continue to drive an increase in cross-border migration,” he said.
GovTrack noted that if Biggs’s push succeeded “Mayorkas would be only the second impeached Cabinet official in U.S. history.” (The first, Secretary of War William W. Belknap, was impeached in 1876 and then acquitted by the Senate.)
Some Republicans have urged caution in pursuing politically charged investigations, at least early in the GOP’s new tenure as majority.
Rep.-elect George Santos (R-N.Y.) said last week the new GOP-led House should focus on policy for the first six months and investigations “shouldn’t hold priority over the issues at hand, which are affecting every American’s day-to-day life.”
This is NotedDC, looking at the politics, policy and people behind the stories in Washington. We’re The Hill’s Liz Crisp and Amée LaTour.
???? Have a tip or something you want to share? Email us at ecrisp@thehill.com and alatour@thehill.com.???? More states eye Medicaid expansion
South Dakota just became the latest state to expand Medicaid to cover lower-income people. Expect more states to follow, or at least seriously consider it.
There are fewer than a dozen states that haven’t expanded Medicaid more than a decade after the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare, provided a financial incentive to do so, aiming to boost health care access for the uninsured.
South Dakota, where more than 61 percent of voters backed former President Trump in the 2020 election, became the 39th state to approve expansion after 56 percent of voters backed the measure in the midterm cycle this month.
The American Rescue Act, a nearly $2 trillion stimulus package that Biden signed into law last year, provides two years of financial incentives for states that come into late adoption of expansion. They can get a bonus discount on their existing match for people on Medicaid outside of the new expansion.
“I think that incentive did reignite some of the debate,” Robin Rudowitz, a Medicaid expert with the Kaiser Family Foundation, told NotedDC.
