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House Republicans Rush Toward Unprecedented Impeachment of Biden Cabinet Secretary

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House Republicans, who will have a tiny two-vote margin in less than three weeks, are still on their winter break despite two impending budget crises that could lead to government shutdowns as soon as January 19. Speaker Mike Johnson allowed the House to go into recess on December 14, ignoring urging from the White House and the Senate for aid packages for Ukraine and Israel. Members are not expected to return until next week.

But dozens of House Republicans, including Speaker Johnson, are headed to Texas Wednesday, betting their focus on the southern border will help them win the November elections. They’re kicking off the year by trying to do something Congress hasn’t done in almost 150 years: impeach a presidential cabinet secretary.

Republicans have been gunning for the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, since President Joe Biden nominated him three years ago. Born in Havana to Cuban Jewish parents, including a mother whose family fled the Holocaust, Mayorkas is the first Latino, the first immigrant, and the first Cuban American to lead DHS. He was confirmed despite tremendous pushback by Senate Republicans in a 56-43 vote on February 2, 2021, after U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) took the rare step of putting a hold on his nomination.

RELATED: ‘Despicable’: Mayorkas Decimates Hawley

Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green (R-TN) announced Tuesday the House will begin impeachment proceedings against Secretary Mayorkas next week, Punchbowl News was first to report, calling it “a major escalation in Green’s nearly year-long probe into Mayorkas.”

The last time Congress impeached a cabinet secretary was in 1876, when they impeached President Ulysses S. Grant’s Secretary of War, William Worth Belknap. He was not convicted by the Senate.

“Our investigation made clear that this crisis finds its foundation in Secretary Mayorkas’ decision-making and refusal to enforce the laws passed by Congress, and that his failure to fulfill his oath of office demands accountability,” Green told Punchbowl News in a statement. “The bipartisan House vote in November to refer articles of impeachment to my Committee only served to highlight the importance of our taking up the impeachment process – which is what we will begin doing next Wednesday.”

Punchbowl News reports “the migrant crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border has arguably been House Republicans’ biggest rallying cry heading into a critical election year. The issue is widely seen as a huge political problem for Democrats and Biden. The president’s poll numbers on this issue are terrible.

READ MORE: ‘Have to Assume’: GOP Senator Again Claims Without Proof Iranian ‘Sleeper Cells’ May Be in US

The White House is pushing back against Republicans’ framing of the issue at the southern border.

“Actions speak louder than words,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement, Politico reports. “House Republicans’ anti-border security record is defined by attempting to cut Customs and Border Protection personnel, opposing President Biden’s record-breaking border security funding, and refusing to take up the President’s supplemental funding request.”

“After voting in 2023 to eliminate over 2,000 Border Patrol agents and erode our capacity to seize fentanyl earlier in 2023, House Republicans left Washington in mid-December even as President Biden and Republicans and Democrats in the Senate remained to forge ahead on a bipartisan agreement,” Bates added.

White House Communications Director Ben LaBolt on social media added, “President Biden has requested $13.6 billion for border enforcement & migration management, increasing the Border Patrol by 1,300, judge teams by 375 and asylum officers by 1600 to expedite the screening process, and critical drug detection technology.”

House Republicans will be at the border Wednesday, “calling for solutions” to the “border crisis,” as Texas CBS affiliate KENS5 reports.

They’re also pushing for the Senate to pass HR2, legislation American Immigration Council policy director Aaron Reichlin-Melnick calls “hardline.”

“Mandates the indefinite detention of toddlers,” “Makes it a federal crime to violate a visa, even unknowingly,” “Empowers DHS to waive every single other law on the books to build, maintain, and operate border infrastructure,” and “Ends 99.9% of asylum,” he says.

READ MORE: ‘Outlandish and Feral’: Trump Plans to Turn DC Trial Into Conspiracy-Fueled Reality TV Show

Meanwhile, several far-right Republicans got an early start in Texas, meeting up with a Fox News reporter, telling him, “shut the border down, or we’ll shut the government down. We control the money.”

Wednesday morning Secretary Mayorkas responded to news the House is moving to impeach him.

Watch his remarks below or at this link.

 

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‘On Day One’: Trump Vows to End Protections for LGBTQ Students

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Donald Trump says the day he enters the Oval Office for a second term he will end anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ students implemented by the Biden administration.

Serving up a scattershot series of complaints with the hosts from the Philadelphia-based right-wing talk radio show “Kayal and Company” on Friday, Trump compared LGBTQ+ protections to a “cuckoo’s nest.”

“A lot of things don’t make sense, having to do with what they’re doing, from the border to all of the men playing in women’s sports. I mean, the world is like a cuckoo’s nest right now with what they do,” Trump declared.

One of the hosts alleged President Joe Biden has engaged in “manipulation” of Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools that receive federal funding. She claimed parents now have to “pinch some pennies” to be able to afford private Christian schools for their children, to remove them from the enhancements that go into effect this summer.

“Many schools are grappling with what they’re going to do,” she said, “because as of August 1, as you know, because of Biden’s manipulation of Title IX, these kids, the school boards, have no choice, they’re meeting right now they, many of them perplexed, and they don’t know what to do, Mr. President, because they’re so upset over this that at August 1 a biological boy can change in a locker room.”

READ MORE: ‘Rejection of Trump’: 1 in 5 Indiana GOP Voters Just Cast Their Ballot for Nikki Haley

Trump replied, “It’s crazy. Crazy.”

“We’re going to end it on day one,” Trump vowed. “We’re going to change it on day one. It’s going to be changed. We’re going to end it. That’s right.”

“The whole thing is crazy. Look, it’s like men playing in women’s sports. It’s like open borders for the world to come in. Send all their prisoners. We’ll take as many as you can give us. Send all their people from mental institutions.”

“We’ll get that changed. Tell your people not to worry about it. It’ll be signed on day one. It will be terminated,” Trump promised, vowing to end the LGBTQ+ protections which include protections for sexual orientation and gender identity.

On his first day in office, President Biden implemented “the most far-reaching of any federal protections yet” for LGBTQ+ people, according to NPR.

In an explainer on the new expanded rules, Ms. Magazine reports “The 2024 regulations prohibit discrimination not only on the basis of sex, but also on the basis of sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”

According to GLAAD, which is tracking “the Biden administration’s executive orders, legislative support, speeches and nominations that affect LGBTQ people and rights,” President Biden has made 337 “moves” in 1206 days.

Listen to a short clip below or at this link.

READ MORE: Bannon Will Be ‘Going to Prison’ After Criminal Contempt Conviction Upheld, Experts Predict

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Ari Fleischer Offers Donald Trump Advice Attorney Says ‘Effectively’ Violates Gag Order

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A Fox News panel discussing the Trump New York criminal trial debated whether or not the indicted ex-president could attack the judge’s daughter, with former Bush 43 press secretary Ari Fleischer insisting he should, and claiming doing so would not violate the terms of the gag order.

“President Trump needs to stop calling the judge ‘conflicted.’ He needs to explain why he’s conflicted,” Fleischer said Friday to a panel that included former Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. “Every day of the trial he goes in there, he says, ‘the judge is conflicted, conflicted bigger than I’ve ever seen anywhere in my life.’ He doesn’t explain how or why. He needs to say that the judge’s daughter works for a Democratic political consulting firm that does anti-Trump business. He needs to explain it. Otherwise, it’s just an assertion with no proof. And the President if he’s going to say it, back it up. Explain.”

“I think that’s a violation of the gag order, is it not?” a Fox panelist replied.

“No, he can criticize the judge,” McEnany responded.

READ MORE: Bannon Will Be ‘Going to Prison’ After Criminal Contempt Conviction Upheld, Experts Predict

“Not the judge but the family,” the panelist added.

“But when he says the judge is conflicted, you can still explain how and why, and I think comply with a gag,” Fleischer insisted.

The panelists then agreed Donald Trump has been “measured” in his remarks.

National security attorney Brad Moss weighed in on social media, posting the relevant portion of the gag order and writing that Fleischer “effectively recommends Trump violate the terms of the gag order.”

The gag order in part reads: “Defendant is directed to refrain from” … “Making or directing others to make public statements about (1) counsel in the case other than the District Attorney, (2) members of the court’s staff and the District Attorney’s staff, or (3) the family members of any counsel, staff member, the Court or the District Attorney, if those statements are made with the intent to materially interfere with, or to cause others to materially interfere with, counsel’s or staffs work in this criminal case, or with the knowledge that such interference is likely to result.”

Despite Trump’s repeated attacks, an ethics panel last year cleared Judge Juan Merchan of any issues surrounding his daughter’s work.

On Monday, Judge Merchan warned Trump he may throw him in jail if he violates the gag order again.

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Undisguised Corruption’: Critics Slam Trump for ‘Selling the White House’ to Big Oil

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Bannon Will Be ‘Going to Prison’ After Criminal Contempt Conviction Upheld, Experts Predict

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A federal appeals court panel of three judges has upheld the criminal contempt of Congress conviction of Steve Bannon, the far-right provocateur and former Trump chief strategist and senior White House advisor. Legal experts say he can appeal but ultimately he will he headed to prison.

Bannon had refused to comply with a subpoena lawfully-issued by the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.

“Bannon was sentenced to four months in jail in 2022 by U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols after a jury convicted him of two counts of contempt of Congress,” Politico reports Friday. “But Nichols, a Trump appointee, agreed to postpone the jail term while Bannon appealed the decision, agreeing that the complex mix of laws that govern executive privilege and testimonial immunity for White House aides could be overturned by higher courts.”

The appeals court panel includes judges appointed by President Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, according to CNN’s Zachary Cohen.

In their ruling the judges wrote: “Public accounts indicated that Bannon had predicted on a January 5, 2021 podcast that ‘all hell [wa]s going to break loose’ the next day,” and noted, “In addition to the podcast prediction, Bannon had reportedly participated in discussions in late 2020 and early 2021 about efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.”

READ MORE: House Ethics Committee Extends Investigation Into ‘Ultra MAGA’ Congressman

Politico noted the “three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Bannon’s argument, saying the former aide and prominent podcaster had no legal rationale for his blanket refusal to appeal before the Jan. 6 committee — and that long-standing case law.”

Bannon is a peddler of conspiracy theories whose podcast “was crowned the top peddler of false, misleading and unsubstantiated statements among political podcasts,” according to The New York Times, citing a Brookings study.

“Bannon is unlikely to have to report to prison immediately,” NBC News reports.

Legal experts weighed in on the question of prison for Bannon.

READ MORE: ‘Undisguised Corruption’: Critics Slam Trump for ‘Selling the White House’ to Big Oil

“And now it’s time for Bannon to be given a date to report to the federal Bureau of Prisons to begin serving his sentence,” remarked MSNBC and NBC News legal analyst Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor.

“Bannon is effectively out of appeals,” observed professor of law and MSNBC legal analyst Joyce Vance, former U.S. Attorney. “He can delay a little bit longer, asking for the full court to review the decision en banc & asking SCOTUS to hear his case on cert, but neither one of those things will happen. Bannon is going to prison.”

Professor of law and former chief White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter remarked, “it’s slammer time.”

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