Closing summary
Thanks for following along today, live blog readers. As we close up for the day, here’s a summary of today’s developments in US politics – including the fallout from Alejandro Mayorkas’ impeachment and cryptic warnings about a looming national security threat:
Democrats reacted to the Tuesday vote to impeach Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas – the first time in nearly 150 years that a cabinet secretary has been impeached. “History will not look kindly on House Republicans for their blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship,” said Joe Biden, of the impeachment.
The impeachment effort will almost certainly die in the senate, which would require a supermajority vote to impeach following a trial that begins in two weeks. Democratic senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has called the impeachment a “sham”.
House intelligence committee chair Mike Turner warned in a cryptic statement of a national security threat, calling on Biden to “declassify all information related to this threat”. During a press briefing, the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, declined to directly address the nature of the alleged threat and said he had “scheduled a briefing for House members of the Gang of Eight” on Thursday.
The Washington Post reported that the security threat had been identified using surveillance permitted under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), a controversial provision that allows the government to surveil non-citizens abroad – but has also led to the surveillance of Americans’ phone calls, texts and emails. House Republicans are pushing to enact a version of Fisa that does not include a warrant requirement for the FBI – a reform critics of the legislation have long advocated.
A Republican activist charged for his involvement in the fake elector scheme in Michigan testified today that he didn’t knowingly try to unlawfully subvert the results of the 2020 election. He was charged with creating a false public record.
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Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement on the topic of the alleged national security threat that the “most urgent national security threat facing the American people right now is the possibility that Congress abandons Ukraine and allows Vladimir Putin’s Russia to win”.
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