Good morning! Happy Wednesday to all who celebrate.

For those of you worried, Taylor Swift will definitely be able to fly from her Tokyo concert next Saturday in plenty of time to make the Super Bowl the next day. Because time zones are weird, a plane that takes off from Tokyo at 11:30 PM on Saturday can land in Las Vegas at 5:30 PM…on Saturday.

 CONGRESS 

House pursues impeachment

House Republicans are on the verge of impeaching Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Myorkas. The House Homeland Security Committee debated an impeachment resolution yesterday.

• Any federal official can be impeached. The Constitutional requirement is loosely defined as "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

• Impeachment doesn’t mean someone’s been kicked out of office. If the committee approves the idea, a bare majority of the full House would need to as well. That’s when someone’s been impeached.

• It would then move on to the Senate, where it would likely die. This is (so far) a partisan issue. Republicans have only 49 Senate seats. Removing Mayorkas would need 67 votes.

Pro: The pro-impeachment Republicans here are accusing Mayorkas of “willful and systemic refusal to comply with” immigration law. Mayorkas is in charge of the border, customs, airport security, and more. Border Patrol says the southern border saw a record 2.5 million migrants in 2023.

Anti: Mayorkas calls the accusation “false” and says he’s devoted to law enforcement. Anti-impeachment Democrats say going through with this would create a dangerous precedent of impeaching Cabinet members for partisan reasons.

Only one Cabinet member has ever been impeached — Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876. But the Senate declined to remove him from office.

Biden: ¿Por qué no los dos? House Republicans opened an impeachment inquiry into President Biden himself back in December. They allege he traded policy influence for cash when he was VP from 2009 to 2017. That investigation hasn’t been as fruitful as some would prefer

 BORDER 

Negotiators still negotiating

The Senate’s big bipartisan immigration bill might be DOA if it ever arrives in the House. The bill’s text hasn’t been released, but it would reportedly allow the president to shut down the southern border if illegal crossings hit a certain number. Biden says he’d sign it and shut down the border immediately if Congress passes it.

• Republican Sen. James Lankford said the rumor of a daily threshold of 5,000 is wrong. He’s one of the three senators negotiating the deal.

• House Speaker Mike Johnson said “the goal should be zero” and that, as of now, the bill is going nowhere in the House.

• Additionally, it would speed up the asylum-seeking process from 10 years to six months.

If things go smoothly, the Senate could vote on this thing next week. But, unless something changes, the House is likely to reject the plan. Former President Trump holds a lot of sway among Republican Congressmen. And he doesn’t think an immigration bill is needed at all. Some of his opponents — Nikki Haley included — think Trump’s trying to torpedo the bill to prevent an election-year policy win for President Biden. Trump's campaign obviously denied this.

 POLITICS 

🔵 The Department of Justice (DOJ) is investigating Rep. Cori Bush for allegedly misusing campaign funds. Since 2018, she's spent $756,000 on security. Most members of Congress don't get a security detail and Bush says her life is constantly threatened. Details are scarce, but the issue seems to be not the security itself but that her husband's firm provides it. Hiring family with campaign cash is legal as long as the work is legit and the pay is market rate. Bush says it is.

🔴 The bipartisan Illinois State Board of Elections voted Tuesday against kicking former President Donald Trump off the state’s ballot this year. They said that whether Trump is guilty of insurrection under the Fourteenth Amendment (the provision used to boot him in other states) is a constitutional question they don’t have the power to answer. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on this topic next week.

🔵 New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman, noted puller of fire alarms, once wrote a blog promoting 9/11 conspiracy theories. He pushed the idea (via weird poetry) that the attacks were faked by the government. Bowman now says he regrets the posts. He won his seat after defeating a longtime Congressman in the Democratic primary. That opponent miraculously missed that his challenger (in New York of all places) wrote a 9/11 conspiracy blog.

🔴 Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert recently carpetbagged clear across the state to run in a more Republican area after barely winning reelection in 2022. But that move might not be working out so hot. A new poll has her in second third fourth fifth place among Republican primary voters. Granted, it was an informal straw poll of 89 people who attended a debate. But still, fifth place is a bad look for an incumbent.

 TRIVIA 

The Department of Homeland Security is the newest of the fifteen Cabinet departments. In what year was it created?

 WORLD 

🇮🇱 Israel: Israeli special forces disguised as civilians raided a Palestinian hospital. They killed three alleged militants. They said all three were jihadists and that one of the men was planning an imminent terrorist attack. The hospital said he was a wheelchair-bound patient. The Israel-Hamas war primarily takes place in the Gaza Strip in the west. But this took place in the separate, eastern part of Palestinian territory — the West Bank (…which is actually on the east side of Israel, but on the western bank of the Jordan River).

🇺🇸 USA: An undersea exploration company may have found Amelia Earhart's 1937 wreckage at the bottom of the Pacific. Former Air Force intelligence officer Tony Romeo sold a load of real estate to start a company for this purpose. He funded it with $11 million. His team uses an underwater drone fitted with sonar that maps the ocean floor. Confirmation will require returning to the site to explore further.

🇺🇦 Ukraine: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky might be firing his top general, Valerii Zaluzhny. This would be a big shakeup as Ukraine's defense against the Russian invasion stalls. Reports indicate the general declined a request from Zelensky to step down. Ukraine's government has denied the entire story.

🇺🇳 United Nations: The United States and seven other countries are pulling funding from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Around a dozen UNRWA employees in Gaza reportedly took part in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Nine of them have since been fired. The UNRWA provides aid to countless Palestinians in Gaza and across the Middle East.

 BRIEFS 

• U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland will transfer power temporarily to his deputy while he has back surgery this weekend (CC @ Lloyd Austin).

• Japan will join the 21st century and stop requiring companies to submit documents on floppy disks.

• The IRS contractor who leaked Trump's (and other billionaires’) tax docs will spend five years in prison.

• Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan was given 10 years in prison for leaking diplomatic cables.

• Anchorage, AK just broke a (very on-brand) record and got its 100th inch of snow this season quicker than ever before.

• The Indian Navy rescued two hijacked ships off the coast of Somalia.

• Saudi Arabia is ditching its plan to increase its oil production.

• The U.S. State Department issued a travel advisory for the Bahamas due to a huge spike in murders.

 QUOTE 

 SNACKS 

🤯🧠 Woah: A human received a brain implant from Elon Musk’s brain chip company Nueralink. The FDA approved this plan last fall and Musk says the patient is doing well. Neuralink aims to help people with severe disabilities control computers with their minds.

🍿🎬 Movies: James Gunn has his Supergirl. “House of the Dragon” star Milly Alcock will play the Woman of Tomorrow in Gunn’s upcoming reboot of the DC Comics movie universe.

🥇⛸️ Sports: Better late than never! The 2022 U.S. Olympic figure skating team was just awarded a gold medal. Russia won the competition two years ago but one of their athletes was just disqualified for doping.

 POLL 

 ANSWER 

DHS was created by the Homeland Security Act on November 25, 2002. The first secretary took office in January of 2003. The new department created several new agencies from pieces of others and combined security-related agencies under one umbrella. For example, the Coast Guard is now in DHS. It used to be part of the Department of Transportation.