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WILLIAM BELKNAP is the only cabinet official in American history to have suffered the indignity of a congressional impeachment. In the case of Belknap, the secretary of war to Ulysses S. Grant, it was richly deserved: to maintain his reputation for enormous, raucous parties and well-dressed wives, the war secretary awarded trade monopolies at a military fort to a friend who gave him generous kickbacks. For “basely prostituting his high office to his lust for private gain”, the House of Representatives voted to impeach him in 1876.
Nearly 150 years later, Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, may become the second cabinet official to be impeached—if Republicans were to have their way, that is. Compare the two charge sheets, and the travesty of the latter becomes clear. Mr Mayorkas does not stand accused of grand corruption or treason but of a political crime: he has overseen immigration policy.
It should be noted that there is no chance of Mr Mayorkas actually being ousted from office. Articles of impeachment must first be passed with a majority of the House, which Republicans might even struggle to do because they retain control by the barest of margins. Passing those articles would trigger the spectacle of a trial to be held in the Senate. And the chances of securing a conviction there, which would require a two-thirds majority and so at least 18 Democratic voters, are lower than the odds that Mexico would ever pay for the construction of a border wall. So, why bother at all?
The southern border is indeed in a bad way, as Republicans point out. In December 2023 American immigration authorities reported more than 300,000 encounters with migrants—the most of any month on record. Those who arrive and claim asylum cannot be kept in custody because of a shortage of detention beds and immigration judges; many are released into the country with a court date years into the future, which is sometimes skipped. Even if the severity of the crisis is at its highest level, the problem of illegal migration over the US-Mexico border is decades old. Presidents like Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan struggled with it.
But in their articles of impeachment, the Republicans lay all of the blame at the feet of Mr Mayorkas. “In large part because of his unlawful conduct, millions of aliens have illegally entered the United States on an annual basis with many unlawfully remaining,” they accuse in their first article. The second article says he breached the public trust by testifying to Congress that the border was secure, when, they argue, he should have known that it was not.
On closer inspection, the allegations are even more flimsy than they first appear. One complaint is that Mr Mayorkas overturned the Migration Policy Protocols, put into place by President Donald Trump, requiring asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico while they waited for their cases to be considered. The complaint cites language from a federal appeals court that Mr Mayorkas appears to have ignored. That only looks damning because it omits the fact that the court ruling was appealed to the Supreme Court, which sanctioned the policy change.
Rock and parole
Another gripe is over the administration’s use of “parole authority”, which allows it to grant reprieve from deportation on a case-by-case basis. Republican arguments that this has been applied over-generously (by allowing in 30,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans each month) are certainly plausible. But complaints about governmental inaction do not usually rely on empirical evidence showing increased action. The articles of impeachment, by contrast, argue that Mr Mayorkas has not done enough to curtail the smuggling of fentanyl by pointing to the increasing amounts impounded by the authorities; that he is not doing enough to stop migrants by pointing to increased apprehensions at the border; and that he is not deporting enough illegal migrants by pointing to record-breaking deportation-case backlogs. At their core, the Republican allegations are about competence in office and the appropriate use of executive powers, which are usually addressed through court cases, not impeachment.
The irony is that House Republicans are pursuing this course of action when, on the other side of the Capitol, more serious Senate Republicans are trying to negotiate with Democrats to craft a bill that would alleviate the pressure on the Mexican border. Among the mooted provisions are limits on the president’s parole authority, an increase in the number of border-patrol officers and immigration judges, and tougher criteria for judging whether those seeking asylum actually have credible cases.
The bill matters for more than just the border: Democrats hope that a border deal would placate Republicans enough for them to agree to send more aid to Ukraine as part of a combined spending package. If accomplished, it would be a rare triumph of pragmatism over partisanship. Unsurprisingly, Mr Trump has taken to whipping against any forthcoming border compromise, following the cynical logic that border chaos is better for his election prospects than improvement. Pursuing an impeachment trial to protest about the border, in lieu of the legislation that might actually fix it, would be to prefer empty spectacle over governing. Alas, that seems an apt summary of the House Republicans’ mission statement. ■
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Andersen Ross Photography Inc | Digitalvision | Getty Images
Wall Street is warning that the U.S. Department of Education’s crack down on student loan repayments may take billions of dollars out of consumers’ pockets and hit low income Americans particularly hard.
The department has restarted collections on defaulted student loans under President Donald Trump this month. For first time in around five years, borrowers who haven’t kept up with their bills could see their wages taken or face other punishments.
Using a range of interest rates and lengths of repayment plans, JPMorgan estimated that disposable personal income could be collectively cut by between $3.1 billion and $8.5 billion every month due to collections, according to Murat Tasci, senior U.S. economist at the bank and a Cleveland Federal Reserve alum.
If that all surfaced in one quarter, collections on defaulted and seriously delinquent loans alone would slash between 0.7% and 1.8% from disposable personal income year-over-year, he said.
This policy change may strain consumers who are already stressed out by Trump’s tariff plan and high prices from years of runaway inflation. These factors can help explain why closely followed consumer sentiment data compiled by the University of Michigan has been hitting some of its lowest levels in its seven-decade history in the past two months.
“You have a number of these pressure points rising,” said Jeffrey Roach, chief economist at LPL Financial. “Perhaps in aggregate, it’s enough to quash some of these spending numbers.”
Bank of America said this push to collect could particularly weigh on groups that are on more precarious financial footing. “We believe resumption of student loan payments will have knock-on effects on broader consumer finances, most especially for the subprime consumer segment,” Bank of America analyst Mihir Bhatia wrote to clients.
Economic impact
Student loans account for just 9% of all outstanding consumer debt, according to Bank of America. But when excluding mortgages, that share shoots up to 30%.
Total outstanding student loan debt sat at $1.6 trillion at the end of March, an increase of half a trillion dollars in the last decade.
The New York Fed estimates that nearly one of every four borrowers required to make payments are currently behind. When the federal government began reporting loans as delinquent in the first quarter of this year, the share of debt holders in this boat jumped up to 8% from around 0.5% in the prior three-month period.
To be sure, delinquency is not the same thing as default. Delinquency refers to any loan with a past-due payment, while defaulting is more specific and tied to not making a delayed payment with a period of time set by the provider. The latter is considered more serious and carries consequences such as wage garnishment. If seriously delinquent borrowers also defaulted, JPMorgan projected that almost 25% of all student loans would be in the latter category.
JPMorgan’s Tasci pointed out that not all borrowers have wages or Social Security earnings to take, which can mitigate the firm’s total estimates. Some borrowers may resume payments with collections beginning, though Tasci noted that would likely also eat into discretionary spending.
Trump’s promise to reduce taxes on overtime and tips, if successful, could also help erase some effects of wage garnishment on poorer Americans.
Still, the expected hit to discretionary income is worrisome as Wall Street wonders if the economy can skirt a recession. Much hope has been placed on the ability of consumers to keep spending even if higher tariffs push product prices higher or if the labor market weakens.
LPL’s Roach sees this as less of an issue. He said the postpandemic economy has largely been propped up by high-income earners, who have done the bulk of the spending. This means the tide-change for student loan holders may not hurt the macroeconomic picture too much, he said.
“It’s hard to say if there’s a consensus view on this yet,” Roach said. “But I would say the student loan story is not as important as perhaps some of the other stories, just because those who hold student loans are not necessarily the drivers of the overall economy.”
A woman walks in an aisle of a Walmart supermarket in Houston, Texas, on May 15, 2025.
Ronaldo Schemidt | Afp | Getty Images
U.S. consumers are becoming increasingly worried that tariffs will lead to higher inflation, according to a University of Michigan survey released Friday.
The index of consumer sentiment dropped to 50.8, down from 52.2 in April, in the preliminary reading for May. That is the second-lowest reading on record, behind June 2022.
The outlook for price changes also moved in the wrong direction. Year-ahead inflation expectations rose to 7.3% from 6.5% last month, while long-term inflation expectations ticked up to 4.6% from 4.4%.
However, the majority of the survey was completed before the U.S. and China announced a 90-day pause on most tariffs between the two countries. The trade situation appears to be a key factor weighing on consumer sentiment.
“Tariffs were spontaneously mentioned by nearly three-quarters of consumers, up from almost 60% in April; uncertainty over trade policy continues to dominate consumers’ thinking about the economy,” Surveys of Consumers director Joanne Hsu said in the release.
Inflation expectations are closely watched by investors and policymakers. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has said the central bank wants to make sure long-term inflation expectations do not rise because of tariffs before resuming rate cuts.
A final consumer sentiment index for the month is slated to be released on May 30, and will likely be closely watched to see if the tariff pause led to an improvement in sentiment.
This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates.
Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., speaks during the 2025 National Retirement Summit in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, March 12, 2025.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Wall Street titan Jamie Dimon said Thursday that a recession is still a serious possibility for the United States, even after the recent rollback of tariffs on China.
“If there’s a recession, I don’t know how big it will be or how long it will last. Hopefully we’ll avoid it, but I wouldn’t take it off the table at this point,” the JPMorgan Chase CEO said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.
Specifically, Dimon said he would defer to his bank’s economists, who put recession odds at close to a toss-up. Michael Feroli, the firm’s chief U.S. economist, said in a note to clients on Tuesday that the recession outlook is “still elevated, but now below 50%.”
Dimon’s comments come less than a week after the U.S. and China announced that they were sharply reducing tariffs on one another for 90 days. The U.S. has also implemented a 90-day pause for many tariffs on other nations.
Thursday’s comments mark a change for Dimon, who said last month before the China truce that a recession was likely.
He also said there is still “uncertainty” on the tariff front but the pauses are a positive for the economy and market.
“I think the right thing to do is to back off some of that stuff and engage in conversation,” Dimon said.
However, even with the tariff pauses, the import taxes on goods entering the United States are now sharply higher than they were last year and could cause economic damage, according to Dimon.
“Even at this level, you see people holding back on investment and thinking through what they want to do,” Dimon said.
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