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The Leader’s Floor Lookout: Week of February 12, 2024

Washington, February 12, 2024
Here’s what to watch for on the House Floor this week:

Impeaching Secretary Mayorkas for Violating Immigration Laws and Failing the American People

As the Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas has one core obligation: To protect our homeland. Unfortunately, throughout his tenure, Secretary Mayorkas has failed miserably at his job of keeping our country safe and our border secure.

Since President Biden assumed office and appointed Secretary Mayorkas, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have reported around 8.5 million illegal immigrant encounters, in addition to roughly 1.7 million gotaways, and migrants from over 100 countries were arrested in the past year. Furthermore, over 169 people on the terrorist watch list illegally entered the United States. 

In spite of these disastrous numbers and the obvious crisis occurring at our borders, Secretary Mayorkas testified to Congress on November 15, 2022, and on July 26, 2023, that the border is “secure” and “not open” – this is a flagrant lie. 

Let’s be clear: These numbers do not indicate a secure border, unless your name is Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or Alejandro Mayorkas. 

If Secretary Mayorkas truly wished to do his duty by the American people, he would start enforcing our laws and demand the Biden Administration take the actions House Republicans have clearly laid out to secure the border in H.R. 2. As it stands, Secretary Mayorkas has demonstrated no intention to begin complying with our laws and defending our communities.

H. Res. 863, introduced by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, impeaches Alejandro Nicholas Mayorkas, Secretary of Homeland Security, for high crimes and misdemeanors due to violating immigration and border security laws enacted by Congress and threatening the safety of the American people.

House Republicans remain resilient in our fight to secure our border, protect communities across the nation, and hold accountable those who threaten our national security. We passed our solution, H.R. 2, over eight months ago – when will the Senate and President Biden finally take action to end this disaster?
 

Stopping Biden’s Dangerous LNG Export Ban

Once again, President Biden has put the radical agenda of politically aligned climate activists above the energy security and economic prosperity of the American people.

In January, the Biden Administration announced they would be halting approvals for liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, despite previous studies showing that American LNG exports create net public benefits, protect global energy security, create American jobs, and reduce emissions. 

This disastrous decision from President Biden is a blatant political ploy to satisfy radical climate activists that are dead set on shutting down American energy production, but it won’t protect the environment – banning LNG exports will only increase our dependency on China, the biggest climate polluter in the world.

It also severely harms our national security, discouraging foreign investment in American LNG production and empowering foreign adversaries like Russia or Iran to control LNG prices on the global stage.
 

American families are already struggling under high energy costs: This will only make things worse. 

We should be unleashing American energy production and providing our allies with a secure energy source, not making it harder to produce by adding permitting red tape, threatening our energy and national security, and killing American jobs.

House Republicans are bringing legislation to end Biden’s LNG exports ban, unleash American energy, and protect our national security. 
 

Rep. Pfluger’s legislation, H.R. 7176, the Unlocking our Domestic LNG Potential Act of 2024, puts a stop to the Biden Administration’s ban on LNG exports and streamlines the permitting process by getting rid of the requirement for the Department of Energy to authorize exports and giving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission total authority over the approval process.

Will Democrats continue to put their faulty political agenda ahead of the American people, or will they finally join us on the side of hardworking Americans and start working to unleash energy made here at home? 
 
 
Reforming and Reauthorizing FISA Section 702

In response to widespread Intelligence Community misconduct revealed by the Church Committee and others, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978 to create a process allowing the government to collect foreign intelligence on U.S. soil with court approval and congressional oversight. 

In 2008, Congress added Section 702 to FISA to enable the targeting of foreigners outside the U.S. who use U.S.-based services – for example, American telephone companies and email providers – to communicate. This helps us eavesdrop on foreign spies, break up WMD proliferation rings, and ensures we don’t re-live the pre-9/11 failures to ‘connect the dots’ between terrorists plotting overseas and threats here at home. 

FISA Section 702 is vital to our national security amid the rising threats we’re seeing from foreign adversaries like Hamas, China, Russia, and fentanyl-trafficking cartels – however, due to numerous abuses of FISA, the entire program is also in desperate need of reforms before reauthorization. 

In an outrageous abuse of trust, senior FBI agents misled the courts and relied on political opposition research to conduct surveillance on a Trump campaign official. Additionally, the FBI in particular has repeatedly failed to follow their own procedures for when they can appropriately search these sensitive foreign intelligence databases using the names or other personal information of Americans. 

To address these egregious problems while preserving this important national security tool, House Republicans organized a working group consisting of a diverse group of Members, including representatives from the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, that agreed to the reforms in the bill we will consider this week.

H.R. ___, the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act, introduced by Rep. Laurel Lee, reforms the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to increase transparency and oversight and protect Americans’ privacy rights while preserving FISA Section 702 as a critical national security tool. The House will also consider amendments to the bill to address significant issues raised by Members.

House Republicans are working to ensure that our Intelligence Community has the tools they need to protect our nation from foreign threats while also reigning in abuses of FISA against American citizens.