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- House Republicans are fighting to be the first to bash Biden at border security-related hearings.
- Judiciary is rushing to hold a meeting next week, with Oversight scheduled to follow a week later.
- The investigatory overlap will likely spiral as the GOP takes Biden to task about everything.
The new House Republican majority is set to hold not one, but two separate hearings on border security in the first two weeks of February.
The House Committee on the Judiciary, chaired by Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, is set to hold a hearing on border security next week on Wednesday, February 1, according to an official notice obtained by Insider.
But Republicans had already announced another hearing on "Biden's Border Crisis" for the following week, set to be led by Republican Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.
"President [Joe] Biden's radical open borders agenda has ignited the worst border crisis in American history," said Comer in a statement last week announcing his own hearing. " Republicans will hold the Biden Administration accountable for this ongoing humanitarian, national security, and public health crisis that has turned every town into a border town."
Comer invited four border patrol agents to the Oversight hearing and sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas requesting documents on various border-related programs.
Both committees have jurisdiction over Homeland Security matters and the power to investigate the administration and its agencies.
But the dueling hearings also underscore the competitive nature of those investigations — and the potential for Republicans eager to investigate Biden to step on each other's toes — in a period of divided government where legislating is difficult.
Don Goldberg, a former House staffer for both the House Judiciary and Oversight panels who also served in the Clinton administration, called the GOP's rush to skewer Biden "predictable."
"If this were a serious Republican Congress, they would have a concerted strategy to find real solutions on immigration, rather than getting caught up in their idiotic grandstanding," Goldberg told Insider.
Instead, they're pursuing a 'no-policy agenda" that's "all about making noise," Goldberg added.
The newly empowered House GOP has mapped out plans to put Biden administration officials and the president's family members under a microscope. Several congressional committees are committed to launching respective probes. Republican leaders have even created new committees to hammer away at the Biden White House, including one tasked with delving into the "weaponization of the federal government," and have committed to poking around on US competitiveness with China and the origins of COVID-19.
Border security and immigration continue to be an area of key concern for Republicans in particular. Shortly after the November midterm elections, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy called on Mayorkas to resign, suggesting he could be impeached if he did not.
The Judiciary-Oversight jockeying to neutralize Mayorkas isn't surprising, given that nearly a dozen of the newly minted Oversight panelists have already co-sponsored articles of impeachment against him before holding a single hearing.