The 49 Senate Republicans spent Wednesday afternoon furiously sputtering that they weren’t allowed to debate if Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, duly and formally impeached by the House, should be tried in the upper chamber.
It’s their own fault, having blocked a chance to engage in several hours of debate, so they have nothing to complain about.
Under the normal workings of the Constitution’s impeachment provisions, the House, by a majority vote, impeaches (which means charges or indicts) the incumbent or former official in question, and the Senate holds a trial, which requires a two-thirds majority for conviction.
But that is if the impeachment itself is valid and in the case of the Mayorkas, it is not. The Republicans and their puppet master, Donald Trump, are ginning up the machine against immigration and making Mayorkas their whipping boy for chaos at the border.
Forget that it was Trump who spoiled a bipartisan immigration bill that would have tightened up the border. The Republicans want their political disagreements with President Biden and Mayorkas to go the impeachment route (which also gets back at the Dems, who quite correctly impeached Trump twice).