(Headline USA) Another State Department official publicly resigned this week over President Joe Biden’s “horrific” continued support for Israel in its war against Hamas.
Annelle Sheline resigned from the department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor on Wednesday, blasting Biden for enabling “a genocide in Gaza” in an op-ed for CNN.
“For the past year, I worked for the office devoted to promoting human rights in the Middle East. I believe strongly in the mission and in the important work of that office. However, as a representative of a government that is directly enabling what the International Court of Justice has said could plausibly be a genocide in Gaza, such work has become almost impossible,” she wrote.
“Unable to serve an administration that enables such atrocities, I have decided to resign from my position at the Department of State.”
In a follow-up interview with CNN, Sheline claimed she was not initially planning to make her resignation public, but that others in the department who also oppose Biden’s policies asked her to.
“I do think that public pressure is why we’re starting to see the administration shifting here,” she claimed.
When asked about Shelline’s resignation, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller downplayed it, saying, “I think everyone can make decisions for themselves about what they’re going to do.”
Shelline is the latest State Department official to publicly break with the administration over its handling of the Gaza conflict. Last October, Josh Paul, a senior official in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, also quit in protest.
Likely fearing continued backlash from the Democratic Party’s left-flank, the Biden administration has stepped up its criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and this week allowed a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza to pass.
In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would continue his offensive against Hamas in the region with or without U.S. support.
(Headline USA) A San Francisco mayoral candidate vowed this week to ask the state to send in the National Guard to help deal with the city’s spiraling drug crisis if he is elected, Politico reported Thursday.
Mark Farrell, a venture capitalist who served as interim mayor of San Francisco for six months in 2018 and is challenging Mayor London Breed, said he would declare a state of emergency and ask for an indefinite military presence to help take down fentanyl rings.
“I will partner w/ state/fed leaders to declare a fentanyl state of emergency, request more armed CA National Guard, & implement a bold recovery plan to save lives & close open-air drug markets,” Farrell posted on X.
I will partner w/ state/fed leaders to declare a fentanyl state of emergency, request more armed CA National Guard, & implement a bold recovery plan to save lives & close open-air drug markets.
My opponents are backing failed approaches – check out the differences for yourself: pic.twitter.com/fKUxGZNeGn
California Gov. Gavin Newsom deployed some National Guard troops and California Highway Patrol officers to the city earlier this year to assist local law enforcement as they try to reign in drug use.
Farrell said he wants armed officers to patrol the city’s notorious Tenderloin district and the area south of the Market, both of which operate as open-air drug markets and where retail theft has spiked.
“I don’t believe that it’s progressive or compassionate to allow a record number of overdose deaths on our streets every single year,” Farrell said.
He said San Francisco’s spiral into rampant drug use, homelessness, and crime motivated him to enter the mayoral race.
“It is really painful to watch the city you love and you grew up in maligned across the globe,” he reportedly explained. “I have watched San Francisco crumble over the last five years since I left City Hall. People don’t feel safe. The condition of our streets has never been worse. And our local economy has collapsed. And we’ve become the butt of jokes across the country.”
Farrell is not the only candidate for mayor who has vowed to get tougher on crime. Daniel Laurie, an heir to the Levi Strauss clothing company, is also challenging Breed, who he said is “asleep at the wheel.”
(Mike Maharrey, Money Metals News Service) Everybody wants to know when the Federal Reserve is going to declare victory over price inflation and begin loosening monetary policy.
The real question is – when are they going to make monetary policy tight again?
Because despite all the worry about high interest rates, monetary policy remains relatively loose.
Sure, hiking rates by 500 basis points is significant, especially in an economy loaded up with debt. And rolling a little over $1.4 trillion off a central bank balance sheet is nothing to sneeze at.
But given the amount of inflation the Federal Reserve created over the last decade-plus, the Fed’s war against inflation amounts to shooting paper wads at a Panzer division.
The Fed Knows Monetary Policy Isn’t Tight
The Fed people know monetary policy isn’t particularly tight. They have their own index that tells them so.
As of March 22, the NFCI stood at –0.56. The negative number tells us that monetary policy conditions are loose from a historical perspective.
As the Chicago Fed explains, “Positive values of the NFCI have been historically associated with tighter-than-average financial conditions, while negative values have been historically associated with looser-than-average financial conditions.”
So, despite its efforts and a lot of jawboning, the Fed still hasn’t pushed monetary policy over the edge too tight. That means this has been a pretty lame inflation fight.
Balance sheet reduction tells the same story.
Yes, the Fed has managed to shrink the balance sheet by almost $1.5 trillion. That sounds impressive until you remember that the Fed added nearly $5 trillion during the pandemic. That was on top of the massive $4 trillion blowup of the balance sheet during the Great Recession that the Fed could never run off as promised.
In effect, the balance sheet runoff is a little like taking a bucket of water out of my pool.
In fact, the balance sheet reduction plan was pretty tepid to begin with.
Based on the central bank’s balance sheet reduction plan announced in March 2022, it would take 7.8 years for the Fed to shrink its balance sheet back to pre-pandemic levels. That doesn’t even begin to touch the trillions added to the balance sheet in the decade after the 2008 financial crisis.
The Gorilla in the Fed’s Meeting Room
I’m not the only one who has noticed this inconvenient truth.
Bloomberg macro strategist Simon White called loose monetary policy the gorilla in the room.
“A famous experiment asks volunteers to watch a video of a basketball game and count the passes. Halfway through, a gorilla strolls through the action. Almost no one spots it, so focused they are on the game. As we count the dots and parse the language at this week’s Fed meeting, it’s easy to miss the fact that policy overall remains very loose despite over 500 bps of rate hikes. The gorilla has gone by largely unnoticed.”
White points out that despite the Fed hiking rates higher and faster than it has since 2000, the effective Fed rate has actually dropped – by more than it has in 30 years!
Let that sink in for a moment. Financial conditions are looser today than they were when the Fed started this so-called inflation fight.
And yet the markets are desperate for rate cuts. They want their easy money liquor back even though their glasses remain half full. The bartenders at the Fed will almost certainly deliver.
As White put it, “The Fed may end up spiking the punch bowl with more booze when the party is already quite tipsy.”
But hasn’t the Fed beaten inflation?
Well, no.
Yes, CPI fell from its high of 9.1 percent in the summer of 2022. But even taking CPI at face value, price inflation remains sticky.
Inflation is worse than the government data suggest. The government revised the CPI formula in the 1990s so that it understates the actual rise in prices. Based on the formula used in the 1970s, CPI is closer to double the official numbers. So, if the BLS was using the old formula, CPI peaked closer to 18 percent. And using an honest formula, it would probably be worse than that.
To beat down price inflation, interest rates need to rise above CPI. Based on a more honest CPI formula, the Fed never got close.
This may explain why cyclical price inflation remains elevated.
The San Francisco Fed splits core PCE (The Fed’s favorite price inflation measure) into two components – cyclical and acyclical. As White explains, the components making up cyclical price inflation are more sensitive to Federal Reserve interest rate policy.
“While acyclical inflation has fallen all the way back to its pre-pandemic average, cyclical PCE remains at its 40-year highs. The Wizard of the Fed has been pulling the rate-hiking levers, but they have done little to directly quell inflation.”
Borrowing costs also reveal Fed monetary policy remains loose. As part of its revision campaign, the BLS removed mortgage costs from the CPI in 1983. It stripped out car repayments in 1998.
Larry Summers and other economists from Harvard and the International Monetary Fund reconstructed the CPI to include these borrowing costs for a paper published in February 2024. According to their calculations, inflation not only peaked higher than it did in the 1970s, but it continues to run around 8 percent – far above the headline 3.2 percent CPI reported in February.
White sums it up this way:
“Gorillas playing basketball is a very odd thing; the Fed cutting rates before the last quarter of this year would be even odder. Before then, though, markets are likely to try to re-impose some sobriety by reducing or eliminating the number of rate cuts priced in.”
The Fed Hasn’t Done Enough to Win the Inflation Fight
White reveals an ugly truth – the Fed hasn’t done enough to win this inflation fight and any declaration of victory is actually a surrender.
Looking at how Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker handled the 1970s and 80s inflation is informative.
Volker went on the warpath in 1980 and raised rates to 20 percent. At the time, CPI was in the 14 percent range. CPI didn’t return to 2 percent until 1986. At that point, the average Fed funds rate was 14.35 percent. Even with that, the CPI spiked back up for several years in the late 80s and early 90s.
You’ll notice that Volker drove rates significantly above the CPI. But Powell is no Volker. You can claim that the Fed drove rates modestly above CPI, but as we’ve seen, it’s all smoke and mirrors.
Monetary policy is still loose.
The problem is raising rates was still enough to pop bubbles and break things. Easy money is the mother’s milk of this debt-riddled economy. And while Fed policy isn’t tight, it is tighter – too tight for the level of debt.
It’s only a matter of time before the crisis manifests.
On the one hand, it can choose to stick to its guns, keep rates higher for longer, and bring down inflation. But that will almost certainly drag the economy into a crisis.
On the other hand, it can pick inflation and maybe rescue the economy.
And the reality is we may get both the rock and the hard place – stagflation.
Mike Maharrey is a journalist and market analyst for MoneyMetals.com with over a decade of experience in precious metals. He holds a BS in accounting from the University of Kentucky and a BA in journalism from the University of South Florida.
“Gold has a key role as a strategic long-term investment and as a mainstay allocation in a well-diversified portfolio. Investors have been able to recognize much of gold’s value over time by maintaining a long-term allocation and taking advantage of its safe-haven status during periods of economic uncertainty.”
The WGC highlights several attributes that make gold an important portfolio diversifier.
“Gold is a highly liquid asset, which is no one’s liability, carries no credit risk, and is scarce, historically preserving its value over time. It also benefits from diverse sources of demand: as an investment, a reserve asset, gold jewelry, and a technology component.”
Here are three key ways gold can enhance your portfolio identified by the World Gold Council Report.
Diversification – Gold tends to be inversely correlated with equities and other risk assets, and this negative correlation tends to increase when these assets sell-off. For example, during the 2008 financial crisis, equities and risk assets plunged. Many of the common portfolio diversifiers fell as well, including many commodities, real estate, and hedge funds. Meanwhile, gold was up 21 percent in dollar terms from December 2007 to February 2009. Since gold is both an investment and a consumer good, the yellow metal also delivers a positive correlation with equities and other risk assets in a positive market.
Returns – Historically, gold has delivered long-term positive returns in both good and bad economic times. According to the WGC, “Its diverse sources of demand give gold a particular resilience and the potential to deliver solid returns in various market conditions.” Since 1971, gold has increased by 8 percent per year on average. Over this period, gold’s long-term return compares favorably to equities, and it is higher than bonds. Gold has also outperformed many other major asset classes over the past 3, 5, 10 and 20 years.
Liquidity – The gold market is massive. The World Gold Council estimates physical gold holdings by central banks and investors come to $5.1 trillion. The sheer size of the gold market makes it extremely liquid. In fact, it is more liquid than the euro/yen markets and the Dow. Trading volumes for gold are comparable to the U.S. T-bill market. And in stark contrast to many financial markets, gold’s liquidity does not dry up, even during times of financial stress. Gold’s liquidity enables investors to meet liabilities when less liquid assets in their portfolio are difficult to sell, or mispriced.
The World Gold Council sums it up this way.
“Combined, these characteristics make gold a clear complement to stocks and bonds and a welcome addition to broad-based portfolios.”
Mike Maharrey is a journalist and market analyst for MoneyMetals.com with over a decade of experience in precious metals. He holds a BS in accounting from the University of Kentucky and a BA in journalism from the University of South Florida.
(Peter St. Onge, Money Metals News Service) In case you thought anybody in Washington was driving this thing, they are not.
It’s official: the Department of Treasury is now issuing debt at pandemic levels. It’s worth noting the pandemic record was double the previous record, which had stood for 231 years.
In raw numbers, the latest numbers for Q4 2023 show Treasury issued $7 trillion in new debt. For the entire year, it came to $23 trillion.
This has bloated the Treasury market to $27 trillion — up 60% since the pandemic. In other words, one-third of Treasuries have fresh ink on them. And it’s up roughly sixfold since the 2008 crisis.
Meaning if we hit another crash, it could be a lot bigger.
At this point, federal debt is rising by $1 trillion every 90 days, and US government spending as a percent of GDP is at World War 2 levels.
Given we’re not in a World War — in theory — nor are we in a pandemic, why so much debt? Easy: it’s buying growth.
Or as Balaji Srinivasan puts it: “The economy isn’t real. It’s propped up by debt. They will fake it till they break it.”
Even the Wall Street Journal, which loves debt, is sounding the alarm, writing that rapid growth in debt often ends badly, and given the enormous size and alleged safety of the Treasury market any “instability” could be catastrophic.
Why catastrophic? Because US treasuries are treated like cash by everything from banks to pension funds to large corporations and individual 401k’s. A treasury is seen as cash that pays interest.
This is false, of course: A Treasury is a promise from Uncle Sam to pay you back someday, perhaps 20 or 30 years in the future.
This means that, unlike cash, any concerns investors might have about Uncle Sam’s ability — or willingness — to pay can crash Treasuries.
If that happens it immediately sends the entire banking system, pension system, and hundreds of corporations into default.
Indeed, it could break the payment plumbing in the entire financial system — you wouldn’t be able to get money.
If that sounds dire, recall that all of these are sustained by the gossamer thin belief that Uncle Sam will pay back every penny with interest.
This is curious given neither voters, who in theory run the government, nor Congress — who actually does run the government — seem to think the debt is real.
You can actually try this at home: tell a voter that student loan bailouts will cost a trillion — meaning $10 grand out of their pocket. Or that another war will cost $30 grand out of pocket. Most don’t care. Because it’s not real.
So the voters don’t think it’s real. Congress doesn’t think it’s real. But literally, everything depends on the illusion that every penny of federal debt will be repaid in full, with interest.
What could go wrong?
Every fiscal trend is in the wrong direction. We’re already at $2 trillion deficit, it will soar by trillions when a recession hits.
And it will keep churning with social security, Medicare, and spending on everything from illegal immigrants to fresh wars.
At this point, there is nothing standing between us and fiscal collapse. The only question is when.
Peter St. Onge writes articles about Economics and Freedom. He’s an economist at the Heritage Foundation, a Fellow at the Mises Institute, and a former professor at Taiwan’s Feng Chia University. His website is www.ProfStOnge.com.
“It goes without saying that she will not be a guest on ‘Morning Joe’ in her capacity as a paid contributor,” Mika Brzezinski huffed.
Rachel Maddow snarled, “I find the decision to put her on the payroll inexplicable.”
After McDaniel’s only appearance as a contributor, Chuck Todd growled at Meet the Press host Kristen Welker: “I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation.”
MSNBC’s anchors gave their brass the bird, turned them into plucked peacocks, and tossed them into the Potomac. Emasculated executives soon took on water.
“No organization, particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned,” gasped NBCUniversal’s Cesar Conde, extolling group think rather than intellectual diversity. “I want to personally apologize to our team members who felt we let them down,” Conde gurgled, just before he sank into the river.
Glug!
MSNBC’s mutiny was the newsroom equivalent of what too often befalls conservative speakers on college campuses.
“Cancel him!”
“Boot her!”
“SHUT UP!”
The only thing missing at MSNBC was a mob of black-clad bookers breaking cameras and setting makeup rooms ablaze.
As a news organization, MSNBC botched a perfect opportunity. Several times each week, in an election year, its hosts could have put cameras in McDaniel’s face and asked her tough questions on live TV:
“Trump faces almost 90 criminal charges. Wouldn’t just one conviction disqualify him among millions of voters?”
“Trump’s black support stood at 23% in a March 3 CBS News/YouGov poll. That nearly doubles his 12% in 2020. Why won’t he campaign in black neighborhoods?”
“How will Trump narrow Biden’s widening fundraising advantage?”
Why focus solely on Trump? MSNBC could have grilled McDaniel like a salmon across GOP-related topics:
“Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., wants House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to stand down. Do you agree?”
“Why did Republicans reverse their 13-year-long ban on earmarks and recently approve a 1,102-page, $1.2 trillion spending bill stuffed with some 1,400 pork-barrel projects?”
“The House Republicans’ five-vote majority will dwindle to just one, thanks to their expelling New York’s George Santos before his corruption trial even began. Also, California’s Kevin McCarthy, Colorado’s Ken Buck, Ohio’s Bill Johnson, and (soon) Wisconsin’s Mike Gallagher fled the ballfield and drove home in the sixth inning. Do Republicans relish defeat or has their gender-affirming care backfired?”
MSNBC staffers could have interrogated McDaniel, and she would have had to take it. Unlike her old job, she could not say, “No comment” and then hide in her office (which was not her style). McDaniel could have fulfilled her contract and faced on-air questions or clammed up and surrendered her reported $300,000 annual salary.
Turn the tables: Imagine that Fox News Channel hired Biden’s former Climate Czar John Kerry. Rather than implode on camera, my Fox News colleagues eagerly would ask Kerry such questions as:
“Why did Joe Biden ignore his military advisors and close Bagram Airport before fleeing Afghanistan?”
“When you repeatedly huddled with Iran’s ayatollahs in the Trump years, weren’t you violating the Logan Act?”
“When the recently departed Henry Kissinger negotiated the Paris Peace Accords in 1972, you advised the North Vietnamese delegation in person on how to out-bargain America’s secretary of state. Why, sir, should you not be arrested for treason the moment you exit this studio?”
Nothing analogous will face the ex-chief of the RNC because NBC = DNC.
John Chancellor and David Brinkley must be revolving in their graves.
Rather than crumple like aluminum foil, NBC’s brass should have sacked their insolent, insubordinate “talent.” Ambitious journalists from newsrooms across America would have leapt to fill their shoes.
Mika Brzezinski, Rachel Maddow, and Chuck Todd are all replaceable.
Especially Chuck Todd.
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor.
(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) House Republicans have extended an invitation to President Joe Biden, requesting his testimony in the impeachment inquiry regarding his involvement in the business dealings of his siblings and Hunter Biden.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., penned a seven-page letter urging Joe Biden to address mounting evidence suggesting his potential role in questionable business transactions, which Republicans allege are part of an illegal influence-peddling scheme.
“The Committee has accounted for over $24 million that has flowed from foreign sources to you, your family, and their business associates. The Committee has identified no legitimate services to merit such lucrative payments,” Comer wrote.
“You have repeatedly denied playing any role in your family’s business activities, but the Committee has amassed evidence—including bank records and witness testimony—that wholly contradicts your position on these matters,” he further elaborated.
Americans deserve to hear directly from President Joe Biden about his participation in his family’s influence peddling schemes. https://t.co/jXqZomYnlC
Despite the mounting evidence casting doubt on the Biden family, both the White House and the president have vehemently denied the accusations. However, such denials occasionally conflict with emerging evidence.
For example, in 2019, Joe Biden, then-Democratic presidential candidate, asserted he had never discussed his business dealings with his son, Hunter Biden. Nevertheless, emails, text messages and whistleblower testimony indicate that Joe Biden had meetings with some of his son’s business partners and maintained regular phone communication while Hunter Biden conducted business.
Amid these revelations, the White House has obstructed the turnover of documents in the impeachment inquiry, a point Comer highighted in his letter to Biden.
“[T]he White House has taken a position hostile to the Committee’s investigation and refuses to release certain information or make available witnesses to testify regarding issues relevant to the ongoing impeachment inquiry currently authorized by the full House of Representatives,” Comer wrote.
Comer proposed April 16 for the hearing. It is unlikely that Joe Biden will agree to appear.
(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) President Joe Biden’s decision to skip the funeral of a slain police officer for a $25 million fundraiser with high-profile Democrats backfired – not once, but twice.
Conservatives swiftly criticized Biden for not attending the wake of NYPD officer Jonathan Diller, a beloved father and decorated public servant who was shot and killed by an alleged unhinged individual with a hefty criminal record.
Instead, Biden opted to attend a multi-million-dollar fundraiser at Radio City Music Hall with prominent Democrats, including late-night host Stephen Colbert and former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
Biden’s fundraiser marked a stark contrast to the actions of former President Donald Trump, who paid tribute to the officer by attending his funeral on Thursday.
Unfortunately for Biden and his high-profile friends, a group of anti-Israel hecklers abruptly disrupted the lavish fundraiser. Tickets for the event reportedly went for up to $500,000, according to the New York Post.
As seen in multiple videos shared on social media, protesters interrupted the event with loud chants and accusations of genocide.
“Shame on you, Joe Biden! Shame on you, Joe Biden!” a woman shouted, as seen in a video shared by podcast host Sebastian Gorka. The woman accused Biden of supporting “genocide” in Palestine. “You’ve got blood on your hands.”
#NYC “Oink Oink Piggy Piggy” – Pro Palestine Protesters chant taunting NYPD officers after shoving clashes break out during the protest outside of Radio City Music Hall for Biden-Obama-Clinton Fundraiser
— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) March 29, 2024
Despite Biden’s arrival in New York City, he has yet to address the death of Diller.
The 31-year-old was fatally shot during a traffic stop. Diller and his colleague approached a vehicle illegally parked on a Queens, New York street.
Despite their pleas for the occupants to move and exit the vehicle, the alleged suspects refused.
The two arrested individuals are 41-year-old Lindy Jones and 34-year-old Guy Rivera, both men with hefty criminal rap sheets.
During the altercation, Rivera allegedly opened fire, hitting Diller, who fell to the ground in pain, as depicted in harrowing video footage. Diller’s partner then retaliated by striking Rivera.
CCTV footage captured officers rushing to aid Diller as he shouted, “Oh, God,” clearly in distress. Diller was transported to a nearby hospital where he was declared dead. He leaves behind a wife and a one-year-old child.
BREAKING: New video footage shows the moment career criminal with 21 prior arrests Guy Rivera m*urdered NYPD officer Jonathan Diller at a traffic stop.
Outside Diller’s wake, GOP presidential nominee Trump criticized what he perceived as a climate of permissiveness toward crime during Biden’s tenure, with incidents of lawlessness seemingly on the rise.
Biden and Trump are in NY today.
Biden is at a fancy celebrity fundraiser.
Trump is at the wake of murdered Officer Jonathan Diller.
“What happened is such a sad event,” Trump said outside the funeral home. “It’s happening all too often and we’re just not going to let it happen.”
He further elaborated added, “This should never happen. I just visited with a very beautiful wife that now doesn’t have her husband. … We have to do a lot of things differently because this is not working. This is happening too often.”
NOW: A tale of two presidents, Donald Trump is grieving with the wife of slain police officer Jonathan Diller as pro-Palestinian protesters swarm President Biden’s ritzy fundraiser. pic.twitter.com/JzCIeP2lMq
Senate Bill 133 stated that it would ensure that the globalist organizations would “have no jurisdiction or power within the state of Louisiana.”
The proposed law that was authored by Republican state Sens. Valarie Hodges and Thomas A. Pressly and state Rep. Kathy Edmonston would further prohibit Louisiana and all governmental entities in the state from implementing or enforcing rules, regulations, fees, tax policies or “mandate[s] of any kind” that are connected to the globalist organizations, Blaze Media reported.
SB133 “comes after years of attempts to secure our state sovereignty from the overreaching hands of the WHO, UN, and WEF,” according to Hodges who represents District 13.
“We have watched a horror story unfold in front of us as time has shown that the ‘recommendations’ and coercive regulations from outside organizations such as the WHO have harmed hundreds of thousands of Americans who took a vaccine that they were told was safe and effective,” Hodges said.
Hodges continued explaining why it was important to pass the bill.
“Now, we are witnessing severe, long-term side effects and countless deaths because the ‘experts’ were wrong. These organizations coerced and strong-armed Americans into medical decisions without clinical trials or long-term studies,” Hodges said.
Hodges also pointed out that it was especially critical to act now since Republicans control the legislature and the governor’s mansion.
The news source reported that the law would go into effect on Aug. 1, 2024, if the House of Representatives passes it and Republican Gov. Jeff Landry ultimately ratifies it.
Pressly responded to the news on social media.
“On to the House! Grateful to my Senate colleagues for recognizing the importance of sovereignty in our decision-making and passing this bill without opposition. State laws should be made by our state’s elected officials, not international organizations,” he said.
On to the House! Grateful to my Senate colleagues for recognizing the importance of sovereignty in our decision making and passing this bill without opposition. State laws should be made by our state’s elected officials not international organizations. https://t.co/cvrGBisLe7
(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) House Republicans have pressured Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to convene the Senate for the impeachment trial of Alejandro Mayorkas, the embattled DHS secretary.
This news follows Senate Democrats’ contemplation of potentially disregarding the House-passed impeachment of Mayorkas, who stands as the only cabinet secretary to achieve such a humiliating distinction since 1876.
However, directly addressing these allegations, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., demanded in a letter to Schumer that the Senate hold a full trial and refrain from dismissing the charges preemptively.
“We call upon you to fulfill your constitutional obligation to hold his trial,” Johnson wrote in a two-page letter sent on Thursday. “The American people demand a secure border, an end to this crisis, and accountability for those responsible.”
Together with the 11 House impeachment managers, I sent a letter to Senator Schumer telling him we’ll deliver the articles of Secretary Mayorkas’ impeachment to the Senate on April 10th and that he must hold a full trial.
Schumer released a statement responding to the impeachment demands, hinting at the next steps.
“As we have said previously, after the House impeachment managers present the articles of impeachment to the Senate, Senators will be sworn in as jurors in the trial the next day,” he said, according to the New York Post.
In the same statement, Schumer announced that Senate President Pro Tempore Patty Murray, D-Wash., will preside over the trial proceedings.
However, this does not necessarily mean that Americans will get to hear a trial, at least not just yet. According to the Post, one of the Democrats sworn in on the case could file a motion to dismiss the impeachment. To do so, Democrats only need a simple majority, which they already have.
Shortly after the impeachment, it wasn’t immediately clear when Schumer would bring the impeachment trial to the Senate as lawmakers grappled with impeding government spending bills seeking to prevent a government shutdown.
Mayorkas was impeached on two counts for his handling of the chaos currently embroiling the southern border.
One of the counts is related to his alleged refusal to uphold federal immigration law and deport illegal aliens from the nation. The second dealt with Mayorkas’s demonstrably false statements to Congress that the border was secure.
Such claims directly contradict the skyrocketing border crossings, encounters, and influx of illegal aliens into cities across the states.
The backlash stemming from the border chaos now threatens the re-election of President Joe Biden, who is also facing an impeachment inquiry on unrelated accusations.
