Pollsters and political experts have largely predicted that Republicans will retake the House of Representatives in next month’s midterm elections.
House Republicans have already offered presentations of their plans for majority rule, including heavy oversight of the current administration. Members of the conference have introduced 14 impeachment resolutions against President Joe Biden and his Cabinet officials since taking office. That number beats the 13 impeachment resolutions Democrats introduced against former President Donald Trump and his Cabinet during his time in office.
CENTRIST LAWMAKER: GOP FACES ‘A LOT OF PRESSURE’ TO IMPEACH BIDEN NEXT YEAR
Individual GOP lawmakers have been calling for Biden’s impeachment since he was sworn in, and a number of far-right members of the party have fundraised on the idea, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
Greene, one of the most conservative members of the House GOP caucus, has introduced five impeachment resolutions against Biden and one against Attorney General Merrick Garland. None of her efforts had any support from party leadership, and all of those resolutions were introduced in a Democratic-controlled chamber. She has said that she plans to rally public support for impeachment if Republicans retake the body in November.
While Greene was the first big GOP name to back impeachment, she is hardly the only one discussing it.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) said last month that the Republicans are facing “a lot of pressure” to vote to impeach Biden if they control the lower chamber.
“I believe there’s pressure on the Republicans to put that forward and have that vote. I think that’s what some folks are considering,” Mace said on NBC’s Meet the Press.
Her prediction came after outgoing Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), a frequent critic of the former president, warned that Trump-aligned House Republicans would try to impeach the current commander in chief “every week” if they retook the majority. Kinzinger, who is leaving office after this term because state redistricting made his seat reliably blue, was referencing Greene and Reps. Bob Gibbs (R-OH) and Bob Good (R-VA).
For his part, Good told Axios in an interview last month that the party might consider using impeachment threats as leverage in policy negotiations, calling it “a fair trade-off: We won’t pursue impeachment, but you go back to Trump border policies that were working.”
In addition, a large swath of the powerful Republican Study Committee, which boasts 156 members of the House GOP conference, has been vocal in their support for impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
As midterm elections fast approach, however, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is downplaying his party’s calls for impeachment, telling Punchbowl News in an interview on Wednesday: “I think the country doesn’t like impeachment used for political purposes at all. If anyone ever rises to that occasion, you have to, but I think the country wants to heal and … start to see the system that actually works.”
Asked by Axios late last month how he would handle efforts by members to impeach Biden or his top officials, McCarthy replied: “We just put out the Commitment to America, that’s what we’re focused on.”
The position is similar to the one House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) took prior to the 2018 midterm elections, when she led Democratic efforts to retake the House from Republicans. While a number of progressives and first-term Democrats wanted to impeach Trump throughout the first half of his first term, Pelosi declined to support those efforts, mostly out of concern of alienating swing voters.
She shifted her position in late 2019 after a number of centrists in the Democratic conference began backing impeachment. At the time, Democrats were outraged after a whistleblower revealed that Trump had pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch an investigation into Hunter Biden.
While a majority of the House Republican Conference has not publicly come out in favor of impeaching Biden or his top Cabinet members just yet, investigations into the current White House occupants, as well as the first family, are in the works.
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With majority rule, Republicans are certain to demand testimony from Garland, Mayorkas, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken on myriad issues. Blinken, like Garland and Mayorkas, has also had an impeachment resolution filed against him.
Even if House Republicans were successful in their efforts to impeach Biden, Harris, or a top Cabinet official, removal through the Senate would be no guarantee. Polls have said control of the Senate remains a toss-up ahead of the November midterm elections. The Senate is currently split 50-50, and both parties have multiple pathways to control of the body. A vote to remove in the Senate requires a two-thirds majority, or 67 votes.
