The House failed to impeach Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday night. Not only did all Democrats vote against the measure, but three Republicans joined them: Reps. Ken Buck (CO), Tom McClintock (CA), and Mike Gallagher (WI). Such members weren't the only ones causing such drama, though, as Rep. Al Green (D-TX) was not expected to be present due to surgery, but he came rushing in nevertheless.
Green wheeled onto the House floor wearing scrubs and socks but no shoes to cast his vote. As The New York Times reported:
Then, like a scene out of a political thriller, Representative Al Green, Democrat of Texas, appeared at the last moment to cast a surprise ballot — from a wheelchair, wearing blue hospital clothing and tan socks. He voted no.
Mr. Green’s vote was decisive. It tied up the measure, 215 to 215, and handed a stunning defeat to Speaker Mike Johnson.
“I was determined to cast the vote long before — I had no idea how close it was going to be,” Mr. Green said in an interview on Tuesday night from his hospital bed, where he had returned shortly after voting. “I didn’t come assuming that my vote was going to make a difference. I came because it was personal.”
It was a remarkable save by Mr. Green, who was known around the Capitol for repeatedly defying Democratic leadership to push for the impeachment of Donald J. Trump during his presidency. He had tried three times to impeach Mr. Trump, and failed each time.
But on Tuesday night, Mr. Green, who rushed to the Capitol after undergoing emergency abdominal surgery on Friday, delivered the final blow, at least for now, for partisan impeachment charges that Democrats and constitutional law experts — including several conservatives — have said are based on policy disputes and not on the constitutional standard of high crimes and misdemeanors.
Mr. Green was still in the hospital on Tuesday recovering from surgery when he learned the House would vote on the impeachment charges against Mr. Mayorkas that night. He spoke to his doctors and phoned Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, to let him know that he would take an Uber to the Capitol. Mr. Jeffries did not insist he make the vote, Mr. Green said, but arranged transportation for him.
“I had to cast this vote because this is a good, decent man whose reputation should not be besmirched,” Mr. Green said of Mr. Mayorkas.
He went straight to the attending physician’s office on the first floor of the Capitol, where his blood pressure and temperature were monitored. He insisted on being brought up for the impeachment vote — “not to make a dramatic entrance,” he said, but because “this was a vote that was important to me.”
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Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia and a vocal proponent of the drive for Mr. Mayorkas’s impeachment, accused Democrats of playing a “game” and having Mr. Green withhold his earlier vote to lull Republicans into a false sense of security.
“They hid one of their members, waiting to the last minute, watching to see our votes, trying to throw us off on the numbers that we had versus the numbers they had,” Ms. Greene told reporters on the steps of the Capitol after the vote. “So, yeah, that was a strategy at play tonight.”
Mr. Green denied timing his entrance to trick Republicans, explaining that he assumed that the vote would be tight but that Republicans would prevail since they had chosen to bring the resolution onto the floor.
“Under the Pelosi school of politics, you don’t bring it to the floor if you’re not going to pass it,” Mr. Green said, referring to Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California and the former speaker.
The member has been trending over X for such an entrance. Users on Tuesday night had the Republican defectors trending, and there was also plenty of mockery to go around, just as there now is when it comes to users laughing about the role Green played.
To add insult to injury, Green's entrance was a surprise to House Republicans who were already trying to deal with Gallagher's defection, but not to House Democratic leaders. "It was not a surprise," House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA) revealed to CNN's Manu Raju.
Democrat Al Green surprised Rs when he showed up for the Mayorkas impeachment vote tonight -- and ultimately helped Ds sink sink measure. (It will pass when when Scalise returns.)
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 7, 2024
But Dem leaders were ready. "It was not a surprise," House Minority Whip Katherine Clark told me pic.twitter.com/HpyJbWBt75
As outlandish as Green's stunt sounds, this isn't exactly a surprising move from the Democrat who was responsible for introducing articles of impeachment against then-President Donald Trump less than a year after he had been in office. He would go on to file more articles as well during Trump's presidency.
The New York Times report noted that Green was worried that Mayorkas was "a good, decent man whose reputation should not be besmirched." But that's not what impeaching is about, whether they're "good" or "decent" or you're worried about their "reputation." In Mayorkas' case, it's about failing to secure the southern border, specifically "Willfull and systemic refusal to comply with the law" and "breach of public trust." How Green went about casting his vote also seems to be the very definition of making a "a dramatic entrance," which the congressman denied he was looking to do.
Not only did Democrats change the rules on impeaching, which makes their opposition all the more hypocritical, they are willing to turn to all kinds of stunts to make sure what they want gets passed.
In order to provide Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) with the necessary votes to earn the gavel at the start of the 117th Congress in 2021, Democratic members who had tested positive for COVID-19 came to the Capitol to vote for her.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) was out for cancer treatment, though another vote is expected to happen when he's back. Rep. Blake Moore (R-UT), the vice chairman of the House Republican Caucus, changed his vote to "no" so that the vote could be brought up again as a motion to reconsider. The ultimate vote then, as The New York Times post also later noted, was 214-216.
Green and the three Republicans thus may have denied House Republicans a win on Tuesday night, but that doesn't mean they killed the effort to impeach Mayorkas for good. They may have merely delayed the inevitable.