Looks Like Republicans Have Gone and Opened the “Pandora’s Box of Impeachment”

This is Totally Normal Quote of the Day, a feature highlighting a statement from the news that exemplifies just how extremely normal everything has become.

“Who said it was gonna fix the problem?” —Republican Rep. Ralph Norman, when an MSNBC reporter asked him how impeaching DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas would solve the problems at the U.S. southern border

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. That’s how House Republicans managed—barely—to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday night, in their second attempt this month.

In a 214–213 vote, House Republicans made history by impeaching the first sitting Cabinet official in 148 years. (Secretary of War William Belknap was impeached most recently, in 1876.) House Majority Leader Steve Scalise came back to Capitol Hill to vote for impeachment after receiving a round of treatment for blood cancer. Meanwhile, two Democrats—Reps. Lois Frankel and Judy Chu—were absent, and presumably if either one had been present to vote, Mayorkas would not have been impeached.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Speaker Mike Johnson said in a press conference Wednesday morning. “We had to do that.”

Did they really have to, though? As recently as one week ago, House Republicans were not so sure impeachment was necessary, and fell one vote short in impeaching Mayorkas. Shortly before the first vote, Rep. Mike Gallagher, who crossed party lines and voted no, criticized the party’s motivations for pursuing impeachment in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, noting that there were no actual criminal offenses cited, only underenforcement of current immigration policies. “If we are to make underenforcement of the law, even egregious underenforcement, impeachable, almost every cabinet secretary would be subject to impeachment,” wrote Gallagher, who also just announced he’s not seeking reelection.

“Creating a new, lower standard for impeachment, one without any clear limiting principle, wouldn’t secure the border or hold Mr. Biden accountable,” Gallagher added. “It would only pry open the Pandora’s box of perpetual impeachment.”

And in the same week of the first Mayorkas impeachment vote, Republicans blew up their very own immigration bill, legislation that would have beefed up border security and sent more aid to Ukraine. Why? Largely because presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump declared he needed chaos at the southern border to continue for the sake of his campaign.

Mayorkas’ impeachment is now in the hands of the Senate, which will most likely dismiss the charges against him, allowing the homeland security secretary to resume his regular duties. Then what was all this for? Well, Norman might have just admitted the quiet part out loud.