Republicans’ new impeachment target

Tuesday, January 9, 2024

Good afternoon!

Li here for another Sentences guest stint.

UP FIRST: Impeachment frenzy

CATCH UP: The hottest year on record

—Li Zhou, senior reporter

UP FIRST

House Republicans catch the impeachment bug, again

Lit by a camera flash, Jeffrey Epstein, in a navy suit jacket and blue collared shit, holds Ghislaine Maxwell, in a shimmery taupe sweater, close and kisses her forehead at a party.

John Moore/Getty Images

One month after voting on an impeachment inquiry for President Joe Biden, House Republicans have set their sights on another member of the administration: Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

This Wednesday, the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing on a potential impeachment inquiry of Mayorkas. Their justification? Republicans argue his policies have contributed to a record number of apprehensions at the border in 2023, and exacerbated what they describe as a crisis in the region.

Democrats have countered that such policy disagreements don't amount to the "high crimes and misdemeanors" that warrant impeachment, noting that this is simply the latest in a string of GOP political stunts.

It's all about the border: The Mayorkas impeachment push is just one of many tactics Republicans are employing to keep the focus on immigration. Historically, this subject has proven to be a politically useful flash point for Republicans, and for former President Donald Trump, with the GOP seen as slightly more trustworthy on the issue than Democrats.
As House members press for a Mayorkas impeachment, far-right members have also argued that Congress needs to pass more restrictive border policies — including those making it harder for people to seek asylum — in order to secure their votes on other areas like government funding and Ukraine aid.

Getting mods on board: Although Republicans were able to get enough votes to approve a Biden impeachment inquiry in December, starting one on Mayorkas puts some moderates in a tough position again. All told, there are 18 House Republicans who hail from districts that Biden also won in 2020.
Why Republicans are so into impeachment: It's a big chance to generate negative attention on the Biden administration ahead of November. Even if the impeachment pushes aren't warranted, the more time that Congress spends on hearings about executive branch misconduct, the lower the president's approval rating becomes, as research from political scientists Douglas Kriner and Eric Schickler has found.
In the past, Republican investigations on subjects like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Benghazi have also stumbled upon findings — like information about her private email server — that they've been able to weaponize.
Furthermore, touting the impeachment of Biden administration officials gives Republicans an opportunity to distract from Trump's own legal troubles, which range from federal and state criminal indictments to a civil suit over business fraud.

CATCH UP

So hot you're hurting the Earth

A Palestinian man dressed in all black stands in the ruins of a bombed room, pointing towards the missing exterior walls; all around him are pieces of broken household goods.

Faisal Bashir/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

Last year — 2023 — was the hottest year on record, according to a new report from the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service. On average, the temperature was 0.17 degrees Celsius higher than 2016, the last record year.

That jump is significant and the byproduct of both climate change, which is driven by greenhouse gas emissions, and a powerful El Niño weather event.

The average temperature in 2023 was also 1.48 degrees Celsius higher than preindustrial times, signaling that the Earth is soon likely to breach the 1.5 degree Celsius benchmark countries previously set in the Paris Climate Accords.

The idea was that limiting the Earth's temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than preindustrial temperatures was an ideal goal to minimize extreme weather events and other climate change-exacerbated catastrophes. The scientists at Copernicus now believe the Earth could hit that threshold in 2024.

What a hotter Earth means: 2023 provided a preview of what these higher temperatures might entail, including the prevalence of more extreme weather events such as massive wildfires in Canada, devastating flooding in Libya, and a deadly heat wave in South Africa.

Read Vox's Umair Irfan on how climate scientists are responding to the record-breaking temperatures of 2023.

VERBATIM

🗣️ "Once the pandemic hit, we started to see chronic absence rates escalate everywhere."

—Kari Sullivan Custer, an education consultant for attendance and engagement at the Connecticut State Department of Education, on kids missing school and how things changed during the pandemic. [Vox]

AROUND THE WEB

France's youngest and first openly gay prime minister: French President Emanuel Macron has named 34-year-old Gabriel Attal, the country's centrist education minister, as its new prime minister. [CNN]
A hotel explosion in Fort Worth: A gas leak may have caused an explosion at a Fort Worth, Texas, hotel that injured 21 people. [NBC News]
Skepticism about Trump's immunity argument: A panel of DC Circuit Court judges had lots of questions about Trump's claims of immunity from criminal prosecution. [NYT]