The Archive

IN THIS EDITION

Homeland impeaches Mayorkas

After long day of negotiations, Johnson bringing tax bill to the floor

Social media CEOs set for Senate grilling

Interest rates in spotlight as progressives call for cuts

THE TOP

Homeland impeaches Mayorkas

Happy Wednesday morning.

After a marathon, 13-hour hearing, the House Homeland Security Committee voted along party lines to impeach DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The vote was 18-15.

Republicans on the panel charged that Mayorkas was guilty of “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” as well as a “breach of public trust.” No Cabinet official has been impeached in nearly 150 years.

The full House is very likely to vote on Mayorkas’ impeachment next week.

The challenge for the GOP leadership is this: If they want to avoid embarrassment on the floor, they need to minimize both Republican defections and absences when the impeachment resolution comes up for a vote. Speaker Mike Johnson has no room for error with just 219 members of the House Republican Conference.

Currently, just two Republicans, Reps. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) and Ken Buck (R-Colo.) are still leaning “no” on the vote to impeach Mayorkas. Buck told us he plans to meet with House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.) later this week.

About Tuesday night: The Homeland Security panel debated numerous amendments into the early morning for two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas. By 9 p.m., the committee had only processed three amendments, but the pace picked up as the night wore on.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) and Lou Correa (D-Calif.) both offered amendments to strike an article of impeachment in its entirety. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) tried to offer an amendment that asserted Republicans were only impeaching Mayorkas because former President Donald Trump wanted it.

“You bend the knee to the Orange Jesus,” Rep. Rob Menendez (D-N.J.) angrily exclaimed at one point. ”We all know what this is about.”

Ranking Member Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) proposed an amendment that would prompt the committee to acknowledge that Mayorkas wasn’t afforded due process, chiefly because he wasn’t allowed to testify. Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) offered an amendment saying that Republicans had failed to meet the constitutional threshold for defining an impeachable offense by Mayorkas.

Yet no amount of stalling tactics changed the final outcome, which was always going to be a straight party-line vote.

“The facts are indisputable — for three years, Secretary Mayorkas has willfully and systematically refused to comply with laws enacted by Congress, and he has breached the public trust,” Green said. “His actions created this unprecedented crisis, turning every state into a border state.”

But the decision to impeach Mayorkas isn’t going over well across the Capitol, where some Senate Republicans and vulnerable red-state Democrats are criticizing the effort as futile. The Senate will have to conduct a full-scale Mayorkas impeachment trial.

Senate Minority Whip John Thune said he prefers to “focus on winning elections and changing the secretary of homeland security.” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said “malfeasance in office is not, the way we read it, a reason for impeachment.” And Sen. Jon Tester (Mont.), a key red-state Democrat, said he “probably” wouldn’t vote to convict Mayorkas. The best way to address the problems at the border, Tester said, is to pass a border security bill.

On that note… Senate leaders in both parties signaled they aren’t giving up on the border security-Ukraine effort amid intensifying criticism from Johnson and Trump about the yet-to-be-released legislation.

But there’s no doubt that the onslaught from the right is making it more difficult for Senate GOP leaders to meet their stated goal of securing support from at least half the conference.

Senate Republican leaders and their allies on Tuesday lamented that Johnson, Trump and other conservatives are dismissing the emerging agreement before even seeing the text. And they’re defending Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), the lead GOP negotiator, from what they say are unfair characterizations of a bill they haven’t even seen.

“That type of misinformation has really hurt the prospects of getting this successfully through with real broad support, without correcting all of that misinformation that’s been put out there,” Rounds said, later suggesting that Johnson and other critics were being duped by a “propaganda” effort from Russia.

Senate Republicans are eager for the legislative text to be released so they can make the case that the bill represents “really good, strong conservative border policy,” Thune said.

“Nobody’s going to want to proceed to something until they’ve seen the text,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said. “Right now, people are operating off rumors.”

For now, Johnson is insisting he won’t take up the Senate bill, although the lead Democratic negotiator suspects Johnson is only saying that because he’s “rooting for this bill to die” so that the House doesn’t have to deal with it.

“Speaker Johnson doesn’t want his bill to pass the Senate because he knows if it does, there will be a lot of pressure to take it up in the House,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said. “If we pass this bill through the Senate, it will have the votes to pass the House.”

It remains to be seen whether a tide of GOP senators will turn against the bill simply because Johnson says he won’t take it up in the House. Murphy said Democrats are watching the public GOP debate and wondering “whether they still want the thing they asked for.”

— Andrew Desiderio, John Bresnahan and Mica Soellner

After long day of negotiations, Johnson bringing tax bill to the floor

Breaking news: Speaker Mike Johnson is finally bringing the nearly $80 billion bipartisan tax bill to the floor today, ending a prolonged negotiation with angry New York Republicans.

The New Yorkers — the House Republicans’ majority makers — pressed Johnson to change the bipartisan, bicameral tax bill to include relief from the $10,000 state-and-local-tax deduction.

But at this juncture, it appears as if Johnson is going ahead with the legislation unamended.

The tax bill was negotiated by House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) and Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) over months of talks. It pairs business tax breaks with an expansion of the child tax credit.

If the bill moves forward as it was written by Smith and Wyden, it is expected to pass the House by a large margin. Since it’s coming up under suspension, it will need a two-thirds majority for passage.

However, nothing is ever a done deal in the 118th Congress. At this juncture, the bill can only be amended by Smith himself.

The larger dynamic: For Johnson, this episode, in many ways, is a preview of what he faces over the next month. On Day 97 of Johnson’s speakership, Johnson had to deal with a test that, in miniature, lays bare the challenges of managing a 219-Republican House majority with a diverse set of lawmakers acting on different incentives.

Johnson was conducting shuttle diplomacy, shifting from his Capitol office to the Homeland Security Committee, trying to balance the political and legislative priorities of one clutch of the caucus with another, all with a key Republican goal in the balance.

This week, it was relatively low stakes. Johnson’s effort on the tax bill was designed to assuage these New Yorkers, who many believe have been used and abused by the leadership.

But during the next month, Johnson will have a far more herculean challenge: threading the needle in the conference on a government funding package that will be heavily skewed toward Democrats.

Tuesday’s drama: In an uncharacteristic episode, four moderate New York Republicans threatened to take down an unrelated rule Tuesday over the latest push to get relief from the SALT cap into the bipartisan tax package. That kicked off a series of meetings for Johnson into the night.

SALT supporters and House Freedom Caucus members met with Johnson, Majority Whip Tom Emmer and Smith Tuesday evening, before additional smaller huddles.

Asked whether there was a solution on SALT that the broader GOP conference could accept, Emmer said after the initial meeting: “There might be.”

One option that came up during that meeting was moving a separate bill in parallel to the tax package that would address New Yorker and HFC concerns together, according to a source familiar with the discussion.

That bill could pair more SALT deductions with something to address HFC complaints about the child tax credit, in particular possibly requiring parents to have a Social Security number to get benefits on top of the current rule that children do, according to the source. That sort of new restriction on access to the family benefit would be unlikely to find support from Democrats, who control the Senate, but this wouldn’t be in the bipartisan tax package itself.

— Laura Weiss and Jake Sherman

WASHINGTON X SILICON VALLEY

Social media CEOs set for Senate grilling

Chief executives from some of the world’s biggest social media companies will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee today about their platforms’ efforts — or lack thereof — to protect children from sexual exploitation.

The committee will hear testimony from the following CEOs: Linda Yaccarino of X, Shou Zi Chew of TikTok, Evan Spiegel of Snap, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and Jason Citron of Discord.

The blockbuster hearing is sure to turn into a high-profile grilling of the tech execs. We expect several of the morning news shows will be broadcasting from the hearing, which shows you how much public attention there is.

Senators on both sides of the aisle have long argued that social media platforms haven’t done enough to shield children from harmful content, contending that they’re often magnets for sexual predators. However, the Senate hasn’t passed major legislation addressing children’s online safety, despite widespread bipartisan agreement and committee-level action on different bills.

In the run-up to the hearing, several companies, including Snapchat and Microsoft, endorsed the Kids Online Safety Act, a bill offered by Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).

“I am sure every member of the Senate has heard from constituents, friends and family members about the harms Big Tech is inflicting on our kids,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Tuesday. “Tomorrow, the Senate Judiciary Committee will demand answers.”

“I can’t believe that in America in 2024, the largest businesses in the history of mankind — social media — are unregulated, there’s not one law on the books protecting consumers, and you can’t sue ‘em,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, told CBS News.

But senators are also signaling that the scope of the hearing could go way beyond that. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), for example, will have his first chance to directly question Chew, the CEO of TikTok, a platform Hawley has tried to ban from the United States.

“They need to come prepared to be held to account for the full spectrum of their behavior,” Hawley said. “I hope [Chew] comes prepared to answer questions more forthrightly than he did last time. His appearance in front of the House was just an embarrassment.”

Hawley is referring to Chew’s testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee last March, during which lawmakers from both parties excoriated Chew over TikTok’s China ties as well as its handling of Americans’ data.

There was a groundswell of support for taking action against TikTok after that hearing, but nothing ever came of it.

— Andrew Desiderio

FED WATCH

Interest rates in spotlight as progressives call for cuts

The Federal Open Market Committee will announce its first interest rate move of 2024 this afternoon. We’re not expecting them to cut rates quite yet — but that won’t make the politics easier to navigate.

The Federal Reserve’s exact approach to interest rates in the coming weeks is already a singular fixation for Wall Street and much of Washington. Investors expect the Fed to hold rates steady at 5.25% and 5.5% after today’s meeting. It’s the next meeting where things get interesting; Fed watchers are roughly split on whether we see rates cut in late March.

We’ve written a lot about whether this year’s election will be about the economy. But what about the Fed itself? The institution’s monetary policy moves act as giant, clunky brakes that can slowly crimp or unleash economic activity.

Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell has been adamant that central bank officials “don’t think about politics.” But even so, these are decisions that could pose massive political consequences.

A roaring economy, particularly one frothed by rate cuts, tends to be pretty good for incumbents’ reelection odds. Former President Donald Trump is clearly aware of that.

But Republicans are skeptical that the Fed’s role in the economy could become a campaign issue this year. “It’s going to be a sideline issue,” Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.) told us. “I don’t think it can be a main issue.”

Democrats have their own worries: Lawmakers including Senate Banking Committee Chair Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Jacky Rosen (Nev.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) and John Hickenlooper (Colo.) called this week for the Fed to cut rates, pointing to the costs of housing.

Warren told us these fired shots are “not about politics.”

“The economic well-being of American families depends in part on what they can afford, and when they can’t afford housing, that is a problem that the Fed, by law, should be paying attention to,” Warren said.

Senate Republicans, meanwhile, are content to stand back and watch for now. “The Federal Reserve needs to stay true to its mission,” NRSC Chair Steve Daines said Tuesday night. “They should not be listening to the politicians.”

— Brendan Pedersen

…AND THERE’S MORE

Nobel Prize push: Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) have nominated Chef José Andrés and World Central Kitchen for the Nobel Peace Prize. Andrés, a D.C.-based restaurateur, and his World Central Kitchen provide meals during natural disasters. Here’s the letter from Pelosi, DeLauro and McGovern to the Nobel committee.

News: A House Democratic fundraiser on Tuesday hosted by partners from lobbying firm Tiber Creek brought in $320,000 for the DCCC. All of House Democratic leadership was present — Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Whip Katherine Clark, Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar and DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene — in addition to Rep. Gabe Amo (D-R.I.).

Lobbying news: Ken Barbic, a former top official in the Department of Agriculture under former President Donald Trump, is joining Invariant as a lobbyist.

— Max Cohen

MOMENTS

CLIPS