If the House follows through on this week’s committee recommendation and impeaches Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, it will be the first time in American history that a sitting cabinet officer has been impeached. But Mr. Mayorkas is not as lonely as all that.
Republicans have also filed articles of impeachment against his boss, President Biden, as well as Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, while threatening them against Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.
Indeed, threats of impeachment have become a favorite pastime for Republicans following the lead of former President Donald J. Trump, who has pressed his allies for payback for his own two impeachments while in office. The chances of Mr. Mayorkas, much less Mr. Biden, ever being convicted in the Senate, absent some shocking revelation, seem to be just about zero, and the others appear in no serious danger even of being formally accused by the House.
But impeachment, once seen as perhaps the most serious check on corruption and abuse of power developed by the founders, now looks in danger of becoming a constitutional dead letter, just another weapon in today’s bitter, tit-for-tat partisan wars. Mr. Trump’s two acquittals made clear that a president could feel assured of keeping his office no matter how serious his transgressions, as long as his party stuck with him, and the impeachment-in-search-of-a-high-crime efforts of the Biden era have been written off as just more politics.
This is written in such an infuriating both-sides-ism way. Trump was impeached twice on real grounds vs the Republicans impeaching everyone they can find for no good reason is so far from the same thing.
Interesting. I disagree. Their argument is that impeachment was taken seriously up to the Trump administration and is being trivialized by Republicans since. This sentence makes it clear that they think Trump’s impeachments were serious:
Mr. Trump’s two acquittals made clear that a president could feel assured of keeping his office no matter how serious his transgressions, as long as his party stuck with him, and the impeachment-in-search-of-a-high-crime efforts of the Biden era have been written off as just more politics.
He’s saying that impeachment should have worked but didn’t because of Republicans. As opposed to Republican attempts to impeach Democrats:
Indeed, to the contrary, several Republicans have derided their party’s zeal for impeachment. Whatever his son Hunter did, they note, there is no evidence that Mr. Biden did anything wrong, and the Mayorkas impeachment centers on a policy dispute, not a criminal accusation.
And:
Michael J. Gerhardt, an impeachment scholar at the University of North Carolina, said Republicans were using impeachment not for accountability but for political damage. The pushes to impeach President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas are plainly attempts to make impeachment just another weapon in the partisan warfare of Washington,” he said.
And:
Indeed, it is that sting that may be driving Mr. Trump, who has made no secret of his desire to impeach Mr. Biden and his team as revenge for his own impeachments. “They did it to me,” he said in a radio interview last fall. “Had they not done it to me,” he added, “perhaps you wouldn’t have it being done to them.”
‘Serious transgressions’ vs ‘no evidence of wrongdoing’, ‘partisan warfare’, and ‘revenge’.
It seems clear to me that, like we do, the author sees a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans. The Republican accusations are actually so frivolous that even the Biden administration themselves aren’t concerned about them.
If anything, I think he’s being too generous to the Republicans that impeached Clinton. I’d argue this is an acceleration of bad faith political theatre that began with Gingrich. It’s something that’s much worse now but not entirely new since Trump.
In an ideal world, voters would recognize that their representatives are being dishonest and partisan for personal gain and vote them out. There’s no check against blatant corruption when the voters support the corruption.
I think people get that impeachment can be abused. The real question is whether a crime was committed. That gets decided in court. Or it all goes away politically like Nixon.
It gets decided in the senate? Impeachment is an inherently political process, but it is technically a conviction. (With a jury composed of the senate).
They can then impose further punishments in accordance with their sentence. Removal and future ineligibility are just the two most common.
Because its a political process, it is about convincing voters that it is valid. We’ll see how these impeachments affect voters in the next election, and the ones to come. My understanding is that with Bill Clinton’s impeachment, which R’s believed was valid, but other wouldn’t, led to Democrats winning seats in the house. Republicans were rather certain it did a lot of damage and would lead to them gain more seats in congress. Similar thing has happened with Trump, he even essentially lost his reelection due to some help of his impeachments. If republicans make a shitty show of their impeachment, people may see through it and still vote for biden.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
But impeachment, once seen as perhaps the most serious check on corruption and abuse of power developed by the founders, now looks in danger of becoming a constitutional dead letter, just another weapon in today’s bitter, tit-for-tat partisan wars.
Mr. Trump’s two acquittals made clear that a president could feel assured of keeping his office no matter how serious his transgressions, as long as his party stuck with him, and the impeachment-in-search-of-a-high-crime efforts of the Biden era have been written off as just more politics.
“Impeachment has become more of a political and public relations tool than a serious mechanism of executive branch accountability,” said Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and a former top Justice Department official under President George W. Bush.
But where impeachment consumed the White House under Richard M. Nixon, Bill Clinton and Mr. Trump, it is barely an afterthought in the Biden West Wing.
The proliferation of impeachment resolutions covers a gamut of supposed offenses, but as in the case of Mr. Mayorkas they mainly stem from Republican criticism of the way officials do their jobs.
In Mr. Mayorkas’s case, Republicans fault him for releasing illegal immigrants pending court dates rather than detaining them, but Congress has not provided enough detention facilities to actually hold all of the migrants coming across the border.
The original article contains 1,444 words, the summary contains 219 words. Saved 85%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
