For only the second time in American history — and the first time since 1876 — a cabinet secretary has been impeached. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was impeached by a House vote of 214-213 for “willful and systemic refusal to comply” with U.S. immigration law as Joe Biden’s point man for such a policy.

You’d think this would be the top story everywhere, but the home pages of The Washington Post, CNN, ABC News, and NBC News (at least) instead featured the story about a Democrat winning a special House election to replace the disgraced George Santos in a district Biden carried by eight points. Earth-shattering stuff.

Notably, the House failed to impeach Mayorkas last week, in part because of the absence of Majority Leader Steve Scalise. But the Louisiana Republican made it back to DC this time to cast the deciding vote. He recently underwent a stem-cell transplant that he says has put his cancer in remission, as if being shot and nearly killed by a deranged Bernie Sanders fan in 2017 wasn’t enough. We wish him all the best.

For his part, Mayorkas said: “I’ve done nothing that could possibly warrant impeachment. I have done literally nothing at all.”

Just kidding! That was The Babylon Bee. Sometimes, it’s hard to distinguish between satire and reality.

In all seriousness, the Mayorkas impeachment obviously dies in the Senate. It may not even reach a vote, which would be unprecedented. But the symbolism and the historical record are important.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t reason for debate. As our Douglas Andrews put it this morning, “A purist Madisonian case can be — and was — made by Mike Gallagher, one of the three GOP ‘No’ votes, that Mayorkas didn’t commit any high crimes or misdemeanors.”

Representative Ken Buck, another of the three “No” votes, took to the pages of National Review to argue the same thing. “Secretary Mayorkas’s poor job performance is not an impeachable offense,” he asserts. Worse, he says, “Convicting a Biden-cabinet official might be a powerful way to satisfy the base, but the long-term consequences of undermining the Constitution are unacceptable.”

Naturally, Biden also made sure to bluster about impeachment being a “blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship that has targeted an honorable public servant in order to play petty political games.” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called it a “sham impeachment” (thank goodness Democrats have never done that) and a “new low for House Republicans.”

Given the Democrats’ routine trampling of the Constitution, we’ll take their complaints under advisement.

Ultimately, we see a compelling case for impeachment in the articles drawn up by House Republicans. Broadly speaking, when your job is to secure the border against illegal immigration (especially by criminals, terrorists, and agents of foreign governments) and you actively refuse to do it, instead allowing more than nine million illegal crossings in three years, it’s most certainly arguable that your actions are treasonous and impeachable.

The Constitution doesn’t give the president power to forgive student loans, mandate vaccines or electric cars, change contracts between landlords and tenants, or a host of other things that Biden and other modern presidents do with their phones and pens. It does task the president to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” Yet Biden and Mayorkas have, as a matter of policy, refused to do that with immigration laws.

Unfortunately, by working on that compromise legislation in the first place, Republicans also created an opening for Biden and Mayorkas to claim their dereliction is actually the fault of Congress. Even the non compos mentis president isn’t missing the opportunity to drive the Biden 2024 Express through that gaping hole.

After the bipartisan “border” bill crashed and burned, Biden said, “Congress needs to act to give me, Secretary Mayorkas, and my administration the tools and resources needed to address the situation at the border.”

Mayorkas said the same thing: “There is no question that we have a challenge, a crisis at the border, and there is no question that Congress needs to fix it.”

They already have the tools and resources needed to fix it without Congress doing anything.

And that’s why impeachment makes a lot more sense than foolhardy legislative compromises with a derelict administration — compromises that do nothing but allow Biden and Mayorkas to pass the buck in an election year.

As if to illustrate the impeachable offense, The Washington Post reports today on what DHS is up to while the secretary is being impeached: “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has drafted plans to release thousands of immigrants and slash its capacity to hold detainees after the failure of a Senate border bill that would have erased a $700 million budget shortfall, according to four officials at ICE and the Department of Homeland Security.”

Biden opened the border, and he’s opening it even more in a tantrum against Republicans.