Senate kills articles of impeachment against Mayorkas

The Senate killed the articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday as the historic trial of the Cabinet secretary barely got underway.

The blink-and-you-missed-it trial marked the culmination of a mostly failed political gambit hatched by House Republicans seeking to cast the limelight on the Biden administration’s handling of the southern border ahead of the general election. 

Here's a recap of what happened:

Historic impeachment: Mayorkas is the first Cabinet secretary to be impeached in almost 150 years. House Republicans voted to impeach Mayorkas in February over his handling of the southern border by a narrow margin after failing to do so on their first try. Democrats have slammed the impeachment as a political stunt, saying that Republicans had no valid basis for the move.

Elsewhere on Capitol Hill: Conservative hardliners are fuming at House Speaker Mike Johnson decision's to move ahead with a vote on billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine — and are loudly warning him it could cost him his job. He said the House would vote on three separate foreign aid bills on Saturday, including for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. The bills are expected to be lumped together as one big package that will be sent to the Senate, according to sources.

The Senate ended the impeachment case against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, bypassing with procedural votes the first attempt by Congress to oust a Cabinet secretary in more than a century and a half.

The pair of votes, which split along partisan lines, swiftly killed a Senate trial that had only just begun, with Democrats and three independents voting to stop the process. 

The senators voted 51-48 against considering the first article of impeachment, with one Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voting present.

The vote to kill the second article split 51-49, with Murkowski siding with her party. Three independent senators — Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Angus King of Maine and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — sided with the Democrats on both votes.

Click here to see how individual senators voted on each article.

House Speaker Mike Johnson defended his approach to the supplemental foreign aid funding in an interview with CNN on Wednesday after the bill text showed a strong similarity to the bipartisan Senate measure.

Johnson had announced Monday that the House will take up separate bills to provide aid for Israel and Ukraine, heeding demands from the far right to keep the issues separate.

But he also had left open the possibility that the bills could ultimately be packaged together, and Republican leaders could still take procedural steps to send all those pieces as one package to the Senate, which could enrage the right wing of the House GOP conference.

Johnson later confirmed he would combine the foreign aid bills to send to the Senate.

Johnson also addressed the threats to oust him, insisting he doesn’t “walk around thinking about the motion to vacate."

GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham almost sided with the Democrats on the vote to kill the second article of impeachment — before he caught himself, to laughs in the chamber.

His GOP colleagues jokingly pointed to Booker, asking if he had made Graham change his mind. Booker put his hands up, laughing and proclaiming his innocence.  

In the House, lawmakers will consider several separate bills that include aid for Israel and Ukraine this weekend.

Lawmakers are expected to vote on four bills on Saturday — aid for Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and a forthcoming bill that includes a potential ban on TikTok. But, the final product is expected to be lumped together as one big package that will be sent to the Senate, according to sources familiar.

The House can do this through an arcane procedure, something that is enraging the right wing of the party but is what Democrats have been insisting on as a condition of their support. 

The border security bill Speaker Mike Johnson released is not expected to be part of that big bill, further angering the right, and will be considered separately, the sources said.

The three-part supplemental aid package — which all together adds up to about $95 billion in aid — looks strikingly similar to a bill that previously passed the Senate but that Johnson refused to bring to the floor. The new House package includes a little more than $9 billion in humanitarian aid for Gaza and other conflict zones around the world, which had been a red line for Democrats. 

Biden said in a statement Wednesday that he "strongly supports" the package of bills, his first explicit endorsement of Johnson's plan.

Here's what lawmakers on Capitol Hill are saying after the Democratic-controlled Senate voted to kill both articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

House GOP leadership: House Speaker Mike Johnson, Leader Steve Scalise, Whip Tom Emmer and Chairwoman Elise Stefanik said that Democrats have "issued their full endorsement of the Biden Administration’s dangerous open border policies" through this vote. "Secretary Mayorkas alongside President Biden has used nearly every tool at his disposal to engineer the greatest humanitarian and national security catastrophe at our borders in American history," the statement said.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer: The trial was "frivolous and political," he said, adding that “impeachment should never be used to settle policy disagreements."

Vulnerable Democratic Sen. Jon Tester: "Montanans want real solutions that secure the border, not partisan games from D.C. politicians," he said. "It’s time for President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas to use their remaining executive authorities to help secure our border, and for Congress to pass bipartisan border security legislation to give law enforcement the resources and policy changes they have said they need to get the job done.”

Sen. Steve Daines: The chair of the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm warned that the GOP will use vulnerable Senate Democrats’ votes in the impeachment trial against them.“I don’t think this is the last time that voters in these key states have heard about this,” Daines told CNN.

CNN's Haley Talbot and Morgan Rimmer contributed to the report.

This post was updated with Schumer's statement.

The Department of Homeland Security praised the Senate move to end the impeachment of Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday.

Spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg called the impeachment articles against the secretary "baseless attacks."

The White House also applauded the conclusion of what it called a "baseless impeachment."

Ian Sams, the White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations, said President Joe Biden and Mayorkas will "continue doing their jobs to keep America safe and pursue action solutions at the border."

He was the first Cabinet secretary to be impeached in almost 150 years. House Republicans voted to impeach Mayorkas in February over his handling of the southern border by a narrow margin after failing to do so on their first try.

This post has been updated with the reaction from the White House.

The Senate voted to end Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas' impeachment trial on a party-line vote of 51-49.  

How we got here: House Republicans voted to impeach Mayorkas in February over his handling of the southern border by a narrow margin after failing on the first try. He became the first Cabinet secretary to be impeached in nearly 150 years. 

The Senate voted to kill the second and final article of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Lawmakers voted 51 to 49 on party lines. The chamber voted to kill the first article of impeachment earlier today.

This post was updated with a graphic on how every senator voted.