Another Damn Impeachment

If at first you don't succeed: On their second attempt, House Republicans have successfully impeached Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, in a 214 to 213 vote.

Mayorkas has made history as the first sitting cabinet member to be impeached since 1876. It's unlikely this will progress in the Senate, as members are likely to dismiss the charges.

"Since this Secretary refuses to do the job that the Senate confirmed him to do, the House must act," said Speaker Mike Johnson (R–La.). Republicans have charged Mayorkas with "willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law" as he deals with the influx of migrants at the southern border.

"History will not look kindly on House Republicans for their blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship that has targeted an honorable public servant in order to play petty political games," said President Joe Biden in a statement last night, calling the impeachment a "political stunt."

"House Republicans will be remembered by history for trampling on the Constitution for political gain rather than working to solve the serious challenges at our border," said a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson.

Many constitutional law experts have claimed that House Republicans "presented no evidence that Mr. Mayorkas's conduct rose to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors," which remains the "standard for impeachment laid out in the Constitution," per The New York Times. The three Republicans who broke with their party and refused to vote in favor of impeachment—Colorado's Ken Buck, Wisconsin's Mike Gallagher, and California's Tom McClintock—expressed concerns along those lines.

Santos out, Suozzi in: Though I generally try to ignore Long Island as much as humanly possible, it does seem that a congressional district was flipped there last night. Democrat Tom Suozzi won in the special election that was held after Republican drag queen and former Rep. George Santos' seat was vacated following a fraud scandal.

New York Democrats underperformed in the 2022 midterms, so this win is actually of some significance. Suozzi's opponent, Mazi Pilip, tried to make New York City's migrant influx the headline issue of the race, but it didn't work: the Democrat was perceived as fairly moderate by voters, not a radical or someone who bears any responsibility for New York City governance.

Scenes from New York: The oldest gunmaker in America, Remington, is closing its upstate New York factory and moving operations to Georgia, which the company says is friendlier to gun rights. "When Remington leaves, it's not going to be like a facility leaving, it's going to be like part of your family has moved off," Ilion resident Jim Conover, who started at Remington in 1964, told the Associated Press.

QUICK HITS

• "I daresay that Carlson did, indeed, have a nice time when he visited Moscow," writes National Review's Charles C.W. Cooke in a searing takedown of Tucker Carlson's Moscow fawning. "As a rich foreign tourist who was being carefully minded by the Russian government, he was undoubtedly exposed to the Moscow that its champions wanted him to see. And that city, I'll wager, is pretty swell."
• "C.D.C. Considers Ending 5-Day Isolation Period for Covid," reads a New York Times headline from today, as if anyone was still doing a five-day isolation period.
• Truly:

A thing that is lightly hilarious is weird redpill/trads inventing statistics and then running around yelling about the statistics they invented. The average American woman has had 4 sexual partners. The vast majority of women do not … do any of this. Go outside. pic.twitter.com/znTUMbYqcA

— Jane Coaston (@janecoaston) February 13, 2024

• I always appreciate whenever Paul Ehrlich circulates on Twitter, mostly because it provides an opportunity to talk about how wrong his predictions were:

Note that Paul Ehrlich didn't show remorse for what he spread. "My language would be even more apocalyptic" if he were writing today, he said in 2015. After all, letting families have as many children as they want is like letting them "throw as much of their garbage into their… pic.twitter.com/XETvXd2LbL

— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) February 14, 2024

• A Georgia judge will decide whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis must be taken off her Donald Trump election interference case, given the revelation that Willis had a romantic relationship with the special prosecutor on the case.
• Good thread:

When some people look back fondly on the "Cold War Consensus," what they miss is that said "consensus" is a fairly brief artifact of its time, one shaped by a narrow media and ideological environment that was aggressively policed.https://t.co/QQwNGPvM8R

— Brandan P. Buck (@brandan_buck) February 13, 2024