Republicans Fixin' To Impeach DHS Secretary Mayorkas For Seizing Too Much Fentanyl ... Or Something?
Are they mad he won't share?
After that little hiccup electing a leader — 15th time's a charm! — Republicans are wasting no time in getting down to the people's business now that they're back in control of the House of Representatives. Unfortunately it's the literal dumbest people's business that they're concerned with, so if you've got a crazy uncle who believes all that shit about MIGRANT CARAVAN and OPEN BORDERS and IMMIGRANT CRIME WAVE, then maybe steer clear for a couple weeks.
Texas Rep. Pat Fallon has introduced articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for the grave crime of havin' a funny name.
Well, no, not literally, but it's almost that dumb. Fallon cites to a 2006 statute known as the Secure Fence Act which he says obliges the DHS secretary to seal the border and not let any undocumented immigrants in. If it ain't water tight, excepting of course the Rio Grande, then you must impeach! Millions of undocumented migrants crossed the border under Donald Trump, of course, but that was different, see, because, he was unbelievably cruel and broke up families, so you know his heart was in the right place.
The gist of these impeachment articles is that the law imposes an obligation to "take all actions the Secretary determines necessary and appropriate to achieve and maintain operational control over the entire international land and maritime borders of the United States." And it defines operational control as "the prevention of all unlawful entries into the United States, including entries by terrorists, other unlawful aliens, instruments of terrorism, narcotics, and other contraband." So if one fentanyl pill gets through, then it is INPEACH for you, Mister Secretary! Or perhaps it should be Señor Mayorkas!
And one time Secretary Mayorkas said under oath that he had operational control of the border, and so it is PERJURY MOST FOUL.
Naturally Fallon did that weird GOP thing of trotting out statistics about apprehensions of migrants and drugs at the border as if it somehow proves that Biden is letting an uninterrupted flow of migrants and contraband in, rather than the exact opposite.
In fiscal year 2022, 98 individuals on the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) were apprehended at the southern border, more than during the previous 5 years combined. In total, more than 100 individuals on the TSDB have been apprehended under Secretary Mayorkas.
Is he suggesting that DHS should ... let the terrorists in? This is most confusing!
Plus, in addition to seizing all that fentanyl and not letting it in for Americans to OD on, Mayorkas did evil slanders when he looked at that picture that appeared to show a border patrol agent whipping a Haitian migrant, and said it was a "horrifying" example of "systemic racism." But when the report came out, it said the agent didn't even whip the migrants at all, so AT LONG LAST HAVE YOU NO SHAME, SIR?
Fallon left out the part of the report which found that the agents used "unnecessary force." Probably an oversight!
The motion was referred to the Judiciary Committee, which is now controlled by Rep. Jim Jordan. Presumably he'll be more interested in it than in the systemic molestation of students under his care. And if Ol' Gym doesn't bite at this one, there'll be a hundred more right behind it, since the GOP has telegraphed its intent to begin its impeachment efforts with Mayorkas, consistent with their plan to govern by shouting BORDER CRISIS over and over again until the earth falls into the sun.
And PS, Rep. Andy Biggs is also claiming to be the first congressman to introduce articles of impeachment against Secretary Mayorkas. Because OMG these people are ridiculous.
Dumbest fuckin' timeline ...
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Supreme Court Tells Joe Biden Only Trump Can Do That
Immigration edition.
The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Title 42, the Trump administration policy that allows for rapid deportation of most undocumented immigrants even before they can request asylum, will stay in place while the Court considers a lawsuit brought by Republican states. The Biden administration has been trying to wind down Title 42 for much of the year.
Most recently, the program was supposed to end on December 21, but then Arizona and 18 other red states sued to keep it in place. The Supremes poked their heads out of their burrows yesterday, saw Stephen Miller's shadow, and voila, we have six more months of Title 42. The Court will hear arguments in the case in February, and isn't likely to change its order blocking the end of Title 42 until it issues a final decision in June, or ever.
As is his occasional wont, Neil Gorsuch voted with the three liberals on the Court to reject the states' appeal, but the other five Republican appointees voted to hear the case. The Court won't even be ruling on the constitutionality of Trump's use of Title 42 to exclude immigrants during the COVID-19 pandemic that no Republicans take seriously.
Rather, the justices will be considering whether states can appeal a lower court's ruling that ordered the Biden administration to end the policy. Yes, the case really is about whether states can demand in federal court that a former president's executive orders must remain active two years into the succeeding presidency, on the principle that Republican presidents have nearly limitless executive authority while Democratic presidents must be reined in from abusing their power.
The Texas Tribune has the deets on the backgroud to the lawsuit:
The request from the coalition of states for the Supreme Court to weigh in came after Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., ruled last month that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s use of the order — which removes migrants from the U.S. without allowing them to access the asylum process — is “arbitrary and capricious” and a violation of the law because it was not implemented properly.
Sullivan ordered the Biden administration to immediately lift Title 42, then later agreed to give the federal government until Dec. 21 to prepare for the change.
Sullivan’s ruling stems from a lawsuit filed in January 2021 by the ACLU and two Texas-based immigrant rights groups that argued Title 42 violated U.S. asylum laws and that the Trump administration used the pandemic as a pretext to invoke Title 42 and use it as an immigration tool.
But Republicans really like that pretext, so it must stay in effect forever because it's such a handy tool to turn back people who might otherwise qualify for asylum, which Republicans all know is never justified because there is no oppression anywhere in the world that the US needs to acknowledge, and asylum seekers are all universally lying. Please do not remind them of the unaccompanied minors who were deported to Honduras back in 2014 and ended up being murdered there. Crime is a shame but it's not political oppression, silly.
Read Moar:
Congratulations, Deport-The-Kids Patriots! Kids Returned To Honduras, Killed.
Greg Abbott Will Bus Asylum Seekers To DC, Dump Them For Laughs
Can't Fix The Border, Because How Would Republicans Scare All The Old People?
Gorsuch issued a dissent that may have too loudly acknowledged what's going on here, suggesting that the alleged legal issues in the case are pretextual, a matter of keeping out migrants for reasons other than the public health order the states are allegedly defending. He noted that the states “do not seriously dispute that the public-health justification undergirding the Title 42 orders has lapsed,” and added that while the border is a serious issue, "the current border crisis is not a COVID crisis." We'd add it's also not really much of a "crisis," either, but Gorsuch wouldn't go that far. He added that
[Courts] should not be in the business of perpetuating administrative edicts designed for one emergency only because elected officials have failed to address a different emergency. We are a court of law, not a policymaker of last resort.
So there's your rightwing judicial stopped clock moment for this week.
In any case, it looks like the cruelty is in place until at least June, by which time we'll be well into the 2024 election campaign and immigration will once again be too valuable an issue for Republicans to actually do anything about — apart from cruel stunts aimed at "calling attention" to the "crisis," of course.
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Did Greg Abbott Send Those Busloads Of Migrants To Kamala Harris's House? It Is A War On Christmas Mystery!
We guess there was no room at any Texas inns.
Saturday, on Christmas Eve, several buses containing about 130 immigrants were dropped off outside Vice President Kamala Harris’s residence. It was about 18 degrees, and the asylum seekers from Ecuador, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Peru and Colombia were hardly dressed for the weather. Some had little more than the T-shirt on their backs or at best a light blanket.
CNN reports that after the first couple busloads were taken to local shelters, more buses arrived outside Harris’s house later Saturday night. Amy Fischer, a volunteer with the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network, told CNN her organization was prepared for the Christmas Eve delivery after receiving a tip from a nongovernmental organization working on the Texas border. They were expected to arrive in New York but were diverted to Washington DC because of the horrific weather. this
It was a grim sight, unsuitable for caroling.
\u201cAnother bus just arrived outside @VP residence. One man tells me that traveled 2 days from Texas and he came from Ecuador. He said he was happy to be here. Bus includes children and women- moved to another bus by aid workers on ground after standing outside briefly in 14 degrees\u201d— Noah Gray (@Noah Gray) 1671937920
The mutual aid group claimed the Texas Division of Emergency Management sent the buses, presumably under the direction of GOP Gov. Greg Abbott. The governor has not confirmed this, possibly because he was too busy enjoying the Christmas holiday in his warm home. However, the White House condemned Abbott by name.
Abdullah Hasan, a White House spokesman, said, "Governor Abbott abandoned children on the side of the road in below-freezing temperatures on Christmas Eve without coordinating with any federal or local authorities. This was a cruel, dangerous and shameful stunt.”
Abbott has sent thousands of migrants to DC, as well as New York, since this spring, as part of his supposed “busing policy." He has provided little to no advance notice, nor bothered to coordinate with Democratic leaders in the destination cities. It’s the same cruel stunt Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis has pulled.
PREVIOUSLY:
Greg Abbott Will Bus Asylum Seekers To DC, Dump Them For Laughs
Ron DeSantis Sticks It To Martha's Vineyard Libs, By Throwing Terrified Migrant People At Them
This is supposedly a performative “protest” against President Joe Biden’s border policies. Just last week, Abbott sent Biden a letter denouncing this “catastrophe of your own making,” and claimed, “with cold temperatures gripping Texas, your inaction to secure the southern border is putting the lives of migrants at risk, particularly in the City of El Paso.”
El Paso reached a high of 45 degrees on Christmas Eve, dipping as low as 21. That’s significantly warmer than DC, which experienced its coldest Christmas Eve on record with a high of just 22 degrees, lows between 10 and 18, and a brutal wind chill in the single digits. New York City was worse with a high of just 14 degrees.
If Abbott was genuinely worried that these migrants were "at risk of freezing to death on city streets,” he wouldn’t have sent them to much colder areas. Abbott is reportedly pissed that the Biden administration might successfully lift the Title 42 border expulsion policy that the Trump administration instituted to rapidly expel migrants over health concerns when the pandemic first began.
The irony here is that Abbott has pretty much operated as if the pandemic doesn’t exist, opposing vaccine and mask mandates. He just wants to keep Trump’s inhumane immigration policies in place. The Biden administration has repeatedly expressed a willingness to work with both parties on border security and immigration reform, but Republicans like Abbott would rather accuse Biden of having an “open border policy” (he doesn’t) and demand he visit the border so they can yell at him. They seem to prefer to use human beings as props in publicity stunts.
Fischer’s mutual aid group found churches and synagogues willing to open their doors for the migrants, many of whom were happy to get closer to family members in New York. During an interview with NPR, Fischer said, “While we know that Governor Abbott's intentions behind the bussing is really rooted in racism and xenophobia .... at the end of the day, everybody that arrived here last night was able to get free transportation on a charter bus that got them closer to their final destination.”
Abbott might’ve played Scrooge on Christmas Eve, but at least there are groups at there willing to demonstrate the true Christmas spirit.
[New York Times / CNN / NPR]
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Aw Darn, No Government Shutdown For Christmas!
No expanded child tax credit, either. But they've fixed the Electoral Count Act!
The House has passed a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill, after the Senate passed its version of the great big government funding bill yesterday. It will keep the federal government funded through most of next year — that is, through the end of September 2023, when the fiscal year ends. They had an incentive to get it done and get out before the winter storm completely buries DC in snow. No, we don't think "Congress buried in snow" would make either a good disaster OR Lifetime Christmas movie, sorry.
The omnibus bill will keep all government agencies funded for the rest of the fiscal year, and also includes two very big priorities for the Biden administration: It includes another $45 billion in aid to Ukraine, as well as reforming the Electoral Count Act. The latter will close the loophole that Donald Trump tried to exploit by ordering Mike Pence to reject electoral votes in four key states.
Unfortunately, Democratic negotiators in the Senate weren't able to round up the 60 votes needed to expand the child tax credit in exchange for a package of business tax goodies Republicans wanted, so the final bill won't include either. Bastards. The one upside there is that Republicans also weren't able to jam through the corporate tax benefits they wanted, so there remains the extremely slim chance for another shot at that deal next year. Realistically, that's probably a non-starter. House Republicans are even less likely than their Senate counterparts to do anything that would help kids get out of poverty, even to reach a deal that would gladden the icy hearts of Republican donors.
Read Moar:
Let's Cut Child Poverty Again. Expanding The Child Tax Credit Works!
Can't Fix The Border, Because How Would Republicans Scare All The Old People?
Also too, the whole thing might have been passed and over with Thursday if not for far-right Republican senators led by Mike Lee (R-Utah), who absolutely insisted on a vote on his amendment to keep Donald Trump's pandemic border restriction, Title 42, in place. The negotiations around that vote, and a compromise amendment that would have added the much better Tillis-Sinema immigration reform bill, ate up a bunch of time. Ultimately, neither passed, so Republicans can keep complaining that nobody will fix immigration. Possibly while gazing forlornly at a "Departures" sign at Reagan National that lists nothing but cancellations.
So what's in this sucker? Per the Washington Post, there's about $773 billion for domestic spending on healthcare, labor, environmental, educational, and economic programs, roughly nine percent more than in last year's budget. Recipients of Pell Grants will see a $500 increase in the maximum annual grant. The Department of Homeland Security gets $800 million for better shelter and emergency services, as well as funding to improve refugee processing. There's also a $3.5 billion increase in funding for the Food and Drug Administration, aimed at improving the supply chain for infant formula to prevent another shortage of the stuff. The bill will also include funds to implement the Infrastructure law passed last year, with money to improve water systems, hooray.
Also good, as the Post explainers, are some changes to Medicaid that will help new mothers and kids in poverty:
Starting in April, state officials can begin reevaluating who is still eligible for Medicaid — a priority for Republicans — with some guardrails around the process. But that’s coupled with long-sought Democratic priorities, including allowing states to permanently extend Medicaid coverage to new mothers for 12 months and prohibiting children from losing Medicaid or Children’s Health Insurance Program coverage for a continuous 12 months, even if their family’s income fluctuates.
The omnibus also includes a couple of quality-of-life measures that have been a long time coming: One, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, provides workplace protections for pregnant workers, requiring reasonable accommodations and prohibiting discrimination against pregnant workers. Wait, you mean that wasn't already the law? Maybe it was only a labor regulation before; it's Friday before a holiday and I'm not looking it up. Also too, the "PUMP Act," finally requires that employers provide time and a location for breastfeeding workers to pump breast milk. (Presumably it prohibits designating a janitor's closet as a pumping area.) Only five senators voted against it, they are Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, and three other dicks.
Good luck getting out of DC, everybody!
[WaPo / Government Executive / Politico / Image created using DreamStudio Lite AI]
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