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Republicans are deeply divided over impeaching President Biden, with newly energized lawmakers on the far right applying pressure to do so and leaders and rank-and-file members concerned they have undertaken a politically risky battle that they cannot win.

A vote last month to send impeachment articles against Mr. Biden for his border policies to the Homeland Security Committee alongside the Judiciary Committee amounted to a stalling tactic by Speaker Kevin McCarthy to quell the urgent calls for action from the hard right. But it has also highlighted the rifts in the House G.O.P. over moving forward and complicating a separate monthslong drive by the panel to prepare an impeachment case against Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, for the same offenses.

Neither pursuit appears to have the votes to proceed, and many Republicans are worried that without a stronger case against the president, even trying the move could be disastrous for their party.

Several rank-and-file Republicans from politically competitive districts had balked at the idea of impeaching Mr. Mayorkas, even after Mr. McCarthy endorsed that push. Few believe that the new investigation of Mr. Biden a hastily arranged effort designed to halt a right-wing attempt to impeach the president outright with no investigation will yield anything that could persuade them to oust him.

Were supposed to impeach on high crimes and misdemeanors, said Representative Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska and a moderate who previously stated he opposed impeaching Mr. Mayorkas over a policy disagreement. When asked whether he was any more inclined to support impeaching Mr. Biden for the same reason, he answered, Not really.

Even among Republicans who support removing Mr. Biden, there is deep skepticism about whether focusing on his border policies is the best place to build an impeachment case against him.

To be frank with you, I think that our issue is a side issue its not the main issue here, said Representative Carlos Gimenez, Republican of Florida and a member of the homeland security panel. He said accusations of financial impropriety involving the presidents son, Hunter Biden, which are being investigated by the House Oversight Committee, are where the president really is going to have the majority of his problems.

But that panel has yet to produce any evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Biden despite months of scrutiny and the frequent public claims by top Republicans that he has engaged in corrupt and potentially criminal behavior.

The push to impeach Mr. Biden comes amid a fierce struggle between Mr. McCarthy and a right-wing faction of his party that has been in open revolt ever since he struck a debt ceiling deal with the president. That faction includes Representative Lauren Boebert, Republican of Colorado, who forced a vote in June demanding that Mr. Biden be investigated on allegations of having intentionally facilitated a complete and total invasion at the southern border. Her resolution made no mention of Mr. Mayorkas.

The measure thrust Mr. McCarthy into an awkward position. Despite his frequent criticism of Mr. Biden for having failed the country with open-border policies, the speaker has pushed back on efforts to impeach the president, arguing Republicans had yet to articulate a good reason for doing so.

The move also forced the House Homeland Security Committee to abruptly pivot barely a week after Representative Mark Green, Republican of Tennessee and the chairman of the panel, presented a 55-page report detailing why Secretary Mayorkas must be investigated for his border crisis the preliminary findings of an inquiry he has been heralding for months.

Since early spring, Mr. Green has been laying out a sprawling case against Mr. Mayorkas. The representative took his panel to visit points along the U.S.-Mexico border as he tried to back up his assertion that the secretary is to blame for rising unlawful entries, drugs and cartel-related crime and a drop in morale among border patrol officials.

He recently suggested to reporters that the mandate to investigate Mr. Biden could be an extension of his current plans for scrutinizing Mr. Mayorkas, which he has said will take place in five phases, beginning with a look at whether the homeland security secretary was derelict in his duty.

Weve been looking into the complete failures, the Biden administrations complete failures at the southwest border, Mr. Green told reporters, adding that when it comes to Mr. Bidens personal actions, we will dig deeply into it.

What exactly he meant was not clear. While Mr. Green has frequently claimed Mr. Mayorkas is culpable for carrying out the Biden administrations border plans, he has also argued that the case against the secretary is more egregious than mere policy disagreements. He has accused him of having either violated or subverted at least 10 laws and having blatantly lied to the United States Congress under oath on multiple occasions and lied to the American people at least 58 times charges the Department of Homeland Security denies.

Mr. Green has also avoided describing the goal of his panels work as impeachment, saying it would be up to the Judiciary Committee to make such determinations. That stance now clashes with the Houses explicit instruction to his committee to investigate Mr. Biden on impeachment charges.

The Judiciary Committee traditionally writes and approves articles of impeachment before they are sent for a vote by the full House. The recent vote on Ms. Boeberts measure sent the articles against Mr. Biden to both panels.

In the absence of clear direction, Republicans on the homeland security panel are struggling to figure out how to prioritize their new Biden-focused charge without undermining their ongoing inquiry into Mr. Mayorkas. Some suggested that the new priority would prolong the committees work on Mr. Mayorkas, which Mr. Green had predicted would wrap up in early fall.

It might change timing, said Representative August Pfluger, Republican of Texas, adding that while it was probably important to continue on both tracks, the referral for Mr. Biden made that line of inquiry really important.

Others suggested that completing a case against Mr. Mayorkas would only help them to build an argument against Mr. Biden, who set the policies Mr. Mayorkas has carried out.

Our focus on Secretary Mayorkas has been squarely over enforcement of immigration law and border policy, but I think the subject matter was limited, said Representative Dan Bishop, Republican of North Carolina. This inevitably opens it up to other questions.

Luke Broadwater contributed reporting.

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Republicans Are Divided on Impeaching Biden as Panel Begins ... - The New York Times

Donald Trump Jr. looks on as Donald Trump, then a Republican presidential candidate, speaks in Las Vegas, Nevada, in February 2016.Ethan Miller/Getty Images

A new poll from Politico/Ipsos details how American adults said they feel about former President Donald Trump's ongoing legal cases.

According to the poll, most American adults said they want his sensitive documents trial to happen before the GOP primaries begin.

Additionally, nearly a quarter of Republican adults said a conviction in the sensitive documents case would make them more likely to support him.

Nearly a quarter of Republican adults said they'd be more likely to support former President Donald Trump if he gets convicted in his federal sensitive documents case, according to a new poll from Politico/Ipsos.

According to the poll, which was conducted between June 27-28 and has a margin of error of 3.8 percentage points, 24% of Republican adults said a conviction would strengthen their desire to vote for Trump in November 2024.

At the same time, however, just a few percentage points more of Republican adults 28% said the opposite: that a conviction in the sensitive documents case would make themless likely to support the embattled former president.

If Trump, who was indicted in June by a federal grand jury and charged with 37 felony counts, is ultimately convicted, the poll shows that Republicans are split as to what his punishment should be.

According to the poll, if the former president gets convicted during the trial, only 16% of Republican adults said he should face imprisonment. Additionally, if convicted, 39% or more than one in three GOP adults said Trump shouldn't be punished at all.

And while Trump previously called the case a "witch hunt," an audio recording obtained and aired by CNN that's a part of the investigation against the former president, reveals him showing off a secret Pentagon documents related to a potential attack on Iran.

"This was done by the military and given to me," Trump can be heard saying in the recording. "See as president I could have declassified it. Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret."

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A trial date in the sensitive documents case is set for mid-August, however, the date is tentative at best as both sides will likely need more time to prepare, which may not sit well with most.

According to the Politico/Ipsos poll, the majority of American adults want Trump's sensitive documents trial to take place before election and even before the GOP primaries begin in early 2024.

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Nearly a quarter of Republicans said Trump getting convicted would make them more likely to support the embattled former president: Politico/Ipsos...

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and taxpayer groups warned homeowners will see higher property taxes after Gov. Tony Evers used his veto pen to allow school districts to annually increase per pupil spending limits for the next four centuries.

The move was among the 51 partial vetoes Evers issued Wednesday to the roughly $98.7 billion two-year spending plan GOP lawmakers sent him last week.

Evers veto extends an annual increase of $325 per pupil from two years to through 2425, though future legislatures and guvs will still have the opportunity to change that number up or down in coming budgets. The original two-year increase was part of a deal GOP lawmakers reached with the guv on state aid to local governments that also increased the size of state-funded vouchers for private schools.

Vos predicted the burden of the increased resources for schools would fall on homeowners.

By allowing this level into the future, homeowners will experience massive property tax increases in the coming years, the Rochester Republican said in a statement.

Evers wrote in his veto message that he has repeatedly recommended restoring inflationary increases to the per pupil revenue limit, which was in place before the 2009-10 fiscal year.

In the years since, districts saw a 5.5 percent cut in the 2011-12 school year and six years in which there was no increase. The other years ranged from $50 to $179.

Wisconsin Property Taxpayer Association Public Affairs Director John Jacobson told WisPolitics the move will bring massive property tax increases across the state.

Its critical to fund our local schools, Jacobson said. But we need to find a more reasonable solution, or potentially even a new structure for taxation, in Wisconsin that takes the burden off of property taxpayers.

He added his group is pushing to have the state cover a larger portion of the increase, shifting the burden away from property owners.

The state is again covering two-thirds of the costs of K-12 education in Wisconsin, and Evers said today the budget he signed would continue that.

There has to be a better way, Jacobson said.

Department of Public Instruction Secretary Jill Underly in a statement applauded the decision.

Any increase in spending authority for public schools is better than none, especially given that past budgets failed to provide that investment, she said.

Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August accused Evers of breaking a deal on school funding with his veto on the per pupil spending limit.

After months of good faith negotiations on major budget items, it is unacceptable that he went back on his word and broke our agreement, August, R-Lake Geneva, said. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to ever negotiate with this governor again in the future.

But Evers spokesperson Britt Cudaback countered August was never part of any conversation the governor had with Republican leaders. If he had been, hed know that the governor upheld every part of the bipartisan compromise reached with Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu.

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Republicans, taxpayer groups slam Evers move to allow 400 years ... - WisPolitics.com

When then-President Donald Trump proposed shooting migrants in the legs and firing missiles into Mexico to destroy drug labs, he did so in private.

Republican politicians are now expressing their bloodlust in public. As Build the Wall loses its edge, Bomb the Mexicans is becoming mainstream in the GOP.

Recently, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Trumps top challenger for the Republican presidential nomination promised to deploy the U.S. military against transnational cartels in Mexico and advocated for executing people crossing the border who are carrying drugs. You absolutely can use deadly force, he said.

All of the partys top presidential contenders endorse a counterterrorism operation against cartels in Mexico, in some cases regardless of Mexicos desires. Trump has called for battle plans targeting drug traffickers just like we took down ISIS.

The idea exploits the grief of tens of thousands of Americans whove lost loved ones to fentanyl, sometimes made in Mexico with chemicals from China. Republican bills in Congress seek to authorize military force in Mexico. Other legislation would designate cartels in Mexico as foreign terrorist organizations or classify fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.

No politician has proposed bombing the U.S. corporations behind thousands of opioid-related deaths, but why would they? To rally American support for state violence, bloodmongers need racism.

A new NBC News poll found that military force against cartels, at least at the border, was popular. About 86% of Republican primary voters and 55% of all voters favored using troops at the border to stop drugs.

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) has been sounding the alarm about Republican proposals that lay the groundwork for an invasion of Mexico. During a House Foreign Affairs committee meeting about a bill to classify fentanyl under the chemical weapons convention, he argued that it gave victims families false hope.

Theres literally a black hole in this piece of public policy that doesnt address the American side at all, Castro said. He was referring to the U.S. demand for drugs and government data showing U.S. citizens represent the vast majority of drug traffickers, despite the popular perception of cartels as Mexican.

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Republican legislation also ignores the fact that cartels in Mexico operate almost exclusively with guns smuggled in from the U.S. in defiance of Mexicos gun laws, some of the most stringent in the world.

If we really want to fight criminal organizations and drug traffickers, we need to decrease their firepower, Alejandro Celorio Alcntara, legal advisor for Mexicos ministry of foreign affairs, told me.

Castro has introduced a bill that would curb gun trafficking to Latin America and the Caribbean, the Americas Regional Monitoring of Arms Sales (ARMAS) Act. So far, it has no Republican co-sponsors. GOP leaders seem to prefer a strategy that will create more war-torn regions from which people are displaced and help transnational cartels to expand their territory.

Mexicos President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador has scoffed at Republicans proposals, saying the use of U.S. military force in Mexico would violate Mexicos sovereignty. Even if Republicans could coerce Mexico into accepting some form of military intervention, the result would almost certainly be greater harm.

If Americans understood the economic realities of what drives drug trafficking and migration from the region including the role U.S. corporations play in propping up corrupt local elites they wouldnt be advocating for more bloodshed. But Republican politicians arent interested in finding solutions for reducing migrants or for families harmed by opioid addiction. Theyre into political gain, by any means necessary.

A few months ago, I spoke to a 52-year-old white woman whose son died in 2021 from a fentanyl overdose. Id met this woman while reporting on Trump voters. She agreed to speak to me about her grief on condition of anonymity.

She had thoroughly internalized the GOPs scapegoating of Mexicans. If it stops the drugs from coming across the border, I will bring a gun down there and I will start shooting, she told me. She broke into sobs. Ive never felt that way, she said, its not because I hate I dont hate immigrants. I dont hate them as people. But I hate what theyre doing to our country. Theyre invading our country, stealing our livelihoods, murdering our children.

If President Joe Biden doesnt stop the drugs, she said, its only a matter of time before private citizens organize an offensive at the border. Me, my family, my husband, and everybody I know is ready to do it, she said.

The danger of her fantasies is real. But she isnt the villain, and seeing her that way would only increase our political polarization and the potential for civil war.

We can recognize the real threat behind her views while understanding that people like her have been victimized by a failure of drug policies, coupled with corporate powers that profit from addiction and armed conflict.

Neither she nor the migrants whove been made scapegoats are the real enemies. Our nemeses are the right-wing demagogues who want us to destroy one another.

Jean Guerrero is an opinion columnist at the Los Angeles Times.

2023 Los Angeles Times

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For Republicans like DeSantis, Bomb the Mexicans is the new Build the Wall | Opinion - Yahoo Canada Shine On

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