AMAC Exclusive – By Seamus Brennan
After two years of radicalism and failed policies under unified Democrat control in Washington, the American people are ready and eager for change. As the nation prepares for the commencement of the new Congress on January 3, here are five urgent priorities for House Republicans.
End the Border Catastrophe
Though most GOP Congressional candidates rightly elevated the border crisis as a top campaign issue during the election cycle, that rhetoric means nothing if it is not followed by concrete, meaningful action. In 2021 alone, U.S. Border Patrol encountered nearly two million illegal aliens—the most in recorded history. Between April and August of 2021, illegal border encounters rose by 945 percent, 674 percent, 471 percent, 413 percent, and 319 percent, respectively, compared to the same months in 2020.
Some solutions to the border predicament are obvious—like reinstating Trump-era policies such as Remain in Mexico, asylum reform, and expedited deportations. But the new House GOP must be willing to take it a step further. They must, for instance, be willing to shut down the U.S. government and freeze the federal budget until border security measures are included. Come January, Republicans in Congress should also be prepared to block any component of the Biden legislative agenda from passing without first forcing the White House to address the border catastrophe.
These measures represent the bare minimum of what the GOP should do in the next Congress—and what they must do to prove they’re serious about securing the border.
Get to the Bottom of What Really Happened on January 6
For much of this year, House Democrats have flooded the airwaves with false narratives surrounding the events of January 6, 2021. Using the pulpit of primetime TV to not-so-subtly smear half the country as violent insurrectionists, the January 6 Committee politicized the investigative process and transgressed the traditional roles ascribed to congressional committees.
Fortunately, some Republicans have already discussed the prospect of investigating the Committee itself—and issuing subpoenas to Republican members of the Committee like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger—when the next Congress arrives in Washington. House Republicans must not only follow through on investigating the Committee, but should also not hesitate to promote their own hearings just as vigorously as House Democrats did earlier this year.
Moreover, House Republicans must promptly address each of the pressing questions the January 6 Committee refused to investigate—including the role of covert federal agents in participating in and potentially even helping to instigate the event, the lapse in Capitol security protocols, why the Committee never mentioned the attempted pipe bombings of the DNC and RNC, and the cruel and unusual treatment of January 6 prisoners.
Under GOP leadership, the nation deserves to finally learn the real story of what precipitated the January 6 riots.
Expose the Depths of the “Misinformation” Apparatus
Just weeks ago, the Foundation for Freedom Online published a report detailing that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) actively worked in the months leading up to the 2020 presidential election to “pre-censor” all speech that “cast doubt” on any public perception of illegitimacy surrounding the apparent “red mirage, blue shift” scenario, in which Democrats would appear to lose on election night, but then win the day after. The report found that as a consequence of DHS’s censorship campaign, nearly 22 million tweets were labeled as “misinformation” on Twitter, 859 million tweets were collected for “misinformation” analysis, and hundreds of social media posts were “impacted” by “‘misinformation’ Terms of Service policy changes.”
One of the foremost priorities of the GOP House majority must be to investigate and expose the magnitude of the censorship of American citizens by federal bureaucrats—not only on information regarding the 2020 election, but also on COVID-19, immigration, foreign policy, and any other area the censorship regime might have interest in regulating.
Investigate the Mar-a-Lago Raid
For many Americans, this summer’s raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate served as a “crossing the Rubicon” moment that reveals the disturbing extent to which the progressive ruling class will go to harm its political adversaries and solidify its power in the public square. With the clear lack of any solid legal basis for the raid (as well as the fact that the left has been targeting Trump with bogus investigations from the very moment he entered the political landscape in 2015), Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Biden administration have demonstrated that they see the federal government as a weapon with which to punish their political opponents.
With the November appointment of a special counsel to investigate Trump—who is now a declared presidential candidate for 2024 and Joe Biden’s chief political rival—the House GOP must take swift action to get to the bottom of why the raid on Mar-a-Lago took place. They also have a responsibility to expose and resist any attempt by Biden’s highly politicized Department of Justice (DOJ) to launch more politically-motivated persecutions against the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Impeach Mayorkas, Garland
Following Democrats’ cheapening of the impeachment process during Donald Trump’s first term, House Republicans have every reason to target top-level officials in the Biden administration—particularly those who have deliberately violated the constitutional oaths they swore. Among the GOP’s top targets should be DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who has overseen the worst border crisis in recorded history, and Attorney General Merrick Garland, who has used the DOJ to target Democrats’ political opponents—as well as ordinary Americans.
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy has already publicly flirted with the idea of filing articles of impeachment against Mayorkas—but he should by no means stop there. In addition to overseeing and signing off on the Mar-a-Lago raid, in 2021, Garland issued an alarming memorandum at the behest of national teachers’ unions indicating that he was prepared to use the power of the DOJ to spy on, intimidate, and ultimately silence parents who spoke out at school board meetings. Last fall, a DOJ whistleblower revealed that Garland went so far as to use counterterrorism “threat tags” against these parents. If actions like these from our nation’s top law enforcement official fail to warrant an impeachment inquiry, few other actions could—and Republicans must unhesitatingly hold his feet to the fire.
For far too long, elements of the Republican establishment have paid lip service to the issues their constituents most care about, only to sit on their hands and neglect any meaningful action once they arrive in Washington. In order to lay the groundwork for a successful general election cycle in 2024, the GOP must prove that it is capable not only of winning congressional power, but also wielding it.