Morning Report — Dems win special election; Mayorkas impeached  

The border security ball is officially in the House’s court. 

After Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) last week tanked a bipartisan Senate border agreement that would have slowed the flow of immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border, House Republicans on Tuesday voted to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in a 214-213 party-line vote. Two Republicans and two Democrats were not in attendance.  

The vote marked the House GOP’s second attempt to impeach Mayorkas — who has been a key player in negotiations for the upper chamber’s border security bill — after a failed vote last week. Tuesday’s vote was threatened by the snowstorm affecting much of the Northeast, but Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s (R-La.) attendance clinched the GOP win. While Mayorkas is the first Cabinet secretary to be impeached in 150 years, his conviction in the Senate is exceedingly unlikely, as several Republicans in the upper chamber oppose the House’s actions (The Hill). 

President Biden was quick to criticize the vote Tuesday evening, calling it “baseless” in a statement. 

“History will not look kindly on House Republicans for their blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship that has targeted an honorable public servant in order to play petty political games,” Biden said. “Instead of staging political stunts like this, Republicans with genuine concerns about the border should want Congress to deliver more border resources and stronger border security.” 

House Republicans’ moves leave the fate of border security legislation unclear. The Senate’s border package faced trouble in the House when former President Trump criticized its contents, and with Tuesday’s impeachment of Mayorkas likely to be tabled or rejected in the Senate, it represents a political move rather than policy. 

The impeachment vote came on the heels of Johnson vowing not to take up the Senate’s $95 billion national security supplemental because it does not include provisions to secure the U.S.-Mexico border. Previously, Johnson and other conservatives had criticized the Senate’s bipartisan border-international aid deal because they said it didn’t go far enough to stem the flow of migrants across the border. 

Senators passed their own package — which includes money for Ukraine, Israel, the Indo-Pacific and humanitarian aid — in the early hours of Tuesday morning, sending the legislation over to the House, where it now sits in limbo (The New York Times). 

Johnson said in a statement late Monday that “In the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters.” But his comments did not land well with some of his Republican colleagues in the Senate, writes The Hill’s Alexander Bolton, especially after Johnson rebuked their own border security bill.    

Politico: After facing off with the Senate “Freedom Caucus,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) urges Johnson on Ukraine. 

SOME DEMOCRATS are weighing a potential path around Johnson, known as a discharge petition, to move Ukraine aid through the House. As The Hill’s Mike Lillis and Mychael Schnell report, such petitions are rarely successful — the last one to work occurred almost a decade ago — but the deteriorating condition of Ukraine’s military forces has triggered a new urgency among Kyiv’s allies on Capitol Hill, who are racing to get the assistance passed by any means necessary. 

“We’ve had those conversations before, but they will begin to happen,” Rep. Adam Smith (Wash.), the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said last week. “Now that we’ve vectored our way down to ‘either you’re abandoning Ukraine or you’re not,’ there’s no sort of other — forgive me — bulls— [option]. No, this is it. You’re either in or you’re out.” 

AS LAWMAKERS FEUD over the border, experts argue policies targeting immigration could come with a cost, write The Hill’s Rafael Bernal and Aris Folley. 

“The vast majority of population growth that we have in the U.S. right now is from immigration,” Wendy Edelberg, director of The Hamilton Project and a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, told The Hill. “This is a key reason why our labor force grew in the past couple of years, and if it continues, it will be a key reason why our labor force continues to grow.” 

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 LEADING THE DAY 

POLITICS   

Former New York Rep. Tom Suozzi (D) flipped a House seat in Tuesday’s special election to help Democrats narrow the GOP’s majority in Washington in the state’s 3rd Congressional District. Suozzi defeated Republican Mazi Pilip, a county legislator. 

The result was 53.9 percent to 46.1 percent with 93 percent of the vote tallied as of this writing. The Associated Press called the race at 10:03 p.m. ET, not long after polls closed at 9 p.m. 

“This race was centered on immigration and the economy—much like the issues all across our country,” Suozzi told supporters Tuesday night. “We, you, won this race, because we addressed the issues and we found a way to bind our divisions.” 

The Democratic Party outspent Republicans more than 2-to-1 to back the former congressman who had previously represented the district.  

SNOWFALL proved to be a messy twist in a special election that attracted $15 million in outside spending to fill a seat vacated by Republican former Rep. George Santos, who was expelled last year while facing criminal charges.  

Biden handily won in the district in 2020 but Republicans including Santos picked up seats in New York in the 2022 midterms. Democrats recognize that Suozzi ran as a centrist in the special election, basically challenging the party’s brand. On Tuesday night, the president phoned the House representative-elect with his congratulations, according to the White House. 

SUOZZI’S UNFLINCHING CHALLENGE to Biden’s handling of immigration will be studied within his party ahead of November. He told voters the president should close the U.S. southern border and deport migrants accused of assaulting police in New York City. The result in a suburban district reflected decades of experience and perhaps fortuitous early and absentee voting by Democrats when nearly snow accumulation diminished turnout on Election Day. 

Will Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) seek reelection? She hasn’t said. Arizona’s filing deadline is April 8 for an already heated contest that includes Republican Kari Lake and Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego. If Sinema seeks another term — in what could be a historic three-way race — Arizona leaps to the top of the 2024 list of battleground Senate contests with high stakes and plenty of drama.  

Sinema changed parties in 2022 and spent weeks since January burrowed in Capitol hideaways and basement conference rooms with colleagues and staffers to fashion a bipartisan border security accord (which some conservative colleagues blew up this month after Trump lobbied against the proposed bill). Sinema raised just $595,000 in campaign contributions in the final three months of 2023, trailing behind Gallego’s war chest and Lake’s huge haul. 

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ZOOM IN 

INTERNATIONAL 

ISRAEL AND HAMAS TALKS entered a second day as both parties work toward an extended truce and hostage release deal. A senior Egyptian official said mediators have achieved “relatively significant” progress in the negotiations in Cairo shortly before Israeli and Egyptian intelligence officials, CIA Director William Burns and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al Thani met Tuesday. 

The Egyptian official said the meeting would focus on “crafting a final draft” of a six-week humanitarian pause, with guarantees that the parties would continue negotiations toward a permanent cease-fire (The Times of Israel). Palestinians in Rafah, the southern city in Gaza where Israel plans to launch a ground offensive, said they were disappointed that Tuesday’s talks did not yield an agreement (Reuters). 

“The news was disappointing, we hoped there could be a deal reached in Cairo. We are now counting down the days before Israel sends in tanks. We hope they don’t but who can prevent them?” said Said Jaber, a Gaza businessman who is sheltering in Rafah with his family. “We’ve lost our homes, our jobs. Isn’t that enough? We’ve had enough of this war, and we will need decades to rebuild Gaza and regain our lives. When will the world stop Israel’s slaughter of our people?” 

Biden discussed the deal with Jordan’s King Abdullah II on Monday at the White House, in his first meeting in Washington with an Arab leader since Oct. 7. Both leaders criticized Israel’s plan to launch a ground offensive in Rafah. State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said that despite growing tensions between Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the U.S. would not withhold millions in military aid to Israel over humanitarian concerns about the Gaza offensive (NBC News). 

HUMANITARIAN GROUPS expressed alarm as Israel’s top officials reiterated the country’s plans for a significant military operation in Rafah, where more than half of the enclave’s population has crowded to flee fierce fighting. 

“More than half of Gaza’s population — well over 1 million people — are crammed in Rafah, staring death in the face,” warned Martin Griffiths, the U.N. humanitarian aid chief, in a statement. “Military operations in Rafah could lead to a slaughter in Gaza. They could also leave an already fragile humanitarian operation at death’s door.” 

At least 67 people were killed Monday after Israeli bombardments on the city, the Gaza Health Ministry said. Israel’s army described the attacks as cover for a special forces mission to rescue two hostages (The Washington Post). 

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ELSEWHERE 

TRUMP WORLD 

THE IMMUNITY QUESTION: The Supreme Court on Tuesday gave special counsel Jack Smith a week to respond to Trump’s assertion that he has immunity from criminal prosecution for actions and decisions he made as president, an idea unanimously rejected by a lower court. Trump filed an emergency motion Monday urging the high court to block the lower court ruling. The former president, battling legal jeopardy in state and federal courts, seeks to delay his trial dates until after the election (The Hill). 

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HEALTH & WELLBEING 

COVID-19 GUIDANCE: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aims to update COVID-19 isolation guidance by April, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. Americans who test positive for the coronavirus would no longer be urged to routinely stay home from work and school for five days. Easing isolation recommendations would align with guidance tied to flu and RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, and take into account the population’s immunity from COVID-19 vaccinations and from previous infections. 

SKIN CANCER: A new study concludes that what is considered the most deadly form of skin cancer, melanoma, is overdiagnosed by clinicians. An estimated 49.7 percent of melanomas diagnosed in 2018 in white men and 64.6 percent of melanomas diagnosed in white women were overdiagnosed, researchers found. The takeaways: Medical interventions and treatment for the skin cancer could be less intense in some patients, plus more research is needed. 

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OPINION 

■ The Senate rejects American retreat, by The Wall Street Journal editorial board. 

■ It’s not time for our troops to leave the Middle East, by Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., opinion contributor, The New York Times. 

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THE CLOSER 

And finally … 🧑‍🚀 Flashback: The U.S. space program went to the moon multiple times, put a dozen astronauts on the surface, returned with lunar rocks, left behind buggies and TV junk, human waste and some American flags and then ended its feats with Apollo 17 in 1972. U.S. explorers and scientists turned their attention to unmanned missions and interstellar challenges. 

What’s past, however, is present: Amid new international interest in the moon for potential water and commercial and military purposes, it’s worth a look over our shoulders at the men (and they were all men) who flew to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s and returned with a splash. 

SpaceX delayed sending a privately built lunar lander back to the future, postponing by at least a day a schedule to reach the surface next week to deliver experiments for NASA and commercial customers under a $118 million contract with NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. If the mission misses its February launch window, the next opportunity shifts to March. 

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