House Republicans Balk at Boebert’s Impeachment Plans
The White House responded to Ms. Boebert’s plan to force a vote on her article of impeachment, accusing ‘extreme House Republicans’ of ‘staging baseless political stunts.’
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One of the House Republican caucus’s most hardline conservatives, Congresswoman Lauren Bobert, is expected to try and force a vote on two articles of impeachment she’s introduced against President Biden and some of her Republican colleagues aren’t happy about it.
Ms. Boebert’s planned impeachment effort focuses on what she says is President Biden’s failure to secure the Southern border, which she and some of her colleagues argue is an impeachable offense. The House impeached President Trump twice when it was controlled by Democrats, first over his interactions with Ukraine and later over his efforts to overturn the election.
“The American people can no longer be subjected to a President who refuses to secure our borders,” Ms. Boebert said in a tweet. “He is not fit to remain as Commander in Chief.”
Ms. Boebert’s two articles of impeachment allege that Mr. Biden “intentionally facilitated a complete and total invasion at the southern border.”
Specifically, Ms. Boebert alleges that the president “allowed illegal aliens to enter the United States as asylum seekers despite knowing they did not qualify for asylum” and has released some two million migrants into America.
The topic of immigration enforcement has often been a priority for Ms. Boebert. She has previously claimed that creating a path to citizenship for asylum seekers is part of a scheme from the White House to replace Americans in the workplace.
“Yes, there is definitely a replacement theory that’s going on right now,” Ms. Boebert said. “We are killing American jobs and bringing in illegal aliens from all over the world to replace them if Americans will not comply with the tyrannical orders that are coming down from the White House.”
A White House spokesman, Ian Sams, responded to Ms. Boebert’s impeachment claims over Twitter, calling Ms. Boebert’s article of impeachment a political stunt.
“Instead of working with @POTUS on the issues that matter most to Americans, like jobs and inflation and health care, extreme House Republicans are staging baseless political stunts that do nothing to help real people, just to try to get attention for themselves,” Mr. Sams wrote.
Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is also expected to attempt to force a vote on an article of impeachment that she introduced earlier this year, alleging that Mr. Biden has “failed to maintain operational control of the border.”
The Hill reports that Speaker McCarthy asked his members to vote against the impeachment votes when they come to the floor later this week.
Ms. Greene also accused Ms. Boebert of being a “copycat” concerning her own impeachment articles. The two congresswomen, former allies, had a public falling out during the speaker election earlier this year.
“I had already introduced articles of impeachment on Joe Biden for the border, asked her to co-sponsor mine, she didn’t,” Ms. Greene told the Hill. “She basically copied my articles and then introduced them and then changed them to a privileged resolution.”
Some Republicans are cringing at the prospect of voting on an impeachment right now, according to reporting by Politico, and are worried that the impeachment proceedings could distract from their allegations of a “weaponized” justice system.
Despite the focus on the southern border from House Republicans, encounters and border crossing have been trending downward, according to data from Customs and Border Protection.
In May 2023 Border Patrol recorded around 169,000 encounters between ports of entry, more than half of which happened prior to the lifting of the pandemic era mass deportation measure, Title 42, on May 11. This number represents a 25 percent decrease from May 2022.
“As we continue to execute our plans –including delivering strengthened consequences for those who cross unlawfully while expanding access to lawful pathways and processes– we will continue to monitor changes in encounter trends and adjust our response as necessary,” the acting Customs and Border Patrol Commissioner, Troy Miller, said in a statement.