The Week: Israel Confronts Iran

• The president suggests his uncle was eaten by cannibals. Finally, a palatable Biden.

• Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is only the second cabinet member ever to be impeached, and the first since 1876. Rightly so. He has ignored federal statutes requiring that illegal immigrants be detained until they are removed, given asylum, or otherwise legally adjudicated. He has twisted the definitions of legal status, extended “temporary” protected status to 700,000 Venezuelan migrants in response to their home country’s long-running misgovernment, and handed out meaningless court dates, sometimes a decade in the future, as a substitute for enforcement today. The House charged him with “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” in disregard of seven enumerated statutory requirements, and with a “breach of the public trust” for false statements to Congress and obstruction of congressional oversight. The Framers did not intend mere “maladministration,” in the sense of bad policy or incompetence, to be impeachable, but this goes well beyond that: It is flagrant, deliberate nullification of Congress’s power to make law. Mayorkas took an oath to uphold the Constitution and discharge the duties of his office, and he has violated that oath. Yet every Senate Democrat voted to dismiss the charges without a trial. That will only embolden this administration’s view that laws are just suggestions to the executive branch.

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• The president suggests his uncle was eaten by cannibals. Finally, a palatable Biden.

• Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is only the second cabinet member ever to be impeached, and the first since 1876. Rightly so. He has ignored federal statutes requiring that illegal immigrants be detained until they are removed, given asylum, or otherwise legally adjudicated. He has twisted the definitions of legal status, extended “temporary” protected status to 700,000 Venezuelan migrants in response to their home country’s long-running misgovernment, and handed out meaningless court dates, sometimes a decade in the future, as a substitute for enforcement today. The House charged him with “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” in disregard of seven enumerated statutory requirements, and with a “breach of the public trust” for false statements to Congress and obstruction of congressional oversight. The Framers did not intend mere “maladministration,” in the sense of bad policy or incompetence, to be impeachable, but this goes well beyond that: It is flagrant, deliberate nullification of Congress’s power to make law. Mayorkas took an oath to uphold the Constitution and discharge the duties of his office, and he has violated that oath. Yet every Senate Democrat voted to dismiss the charges without a trial. That will only embolden this administration’s view that laws are just suggestions to the executive branch.