Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest, holiday pregame edition. The anniversary of the Declaration’s signing is the most sacred time of year for conservatives—so sacred, in fact, that members of the movement are pushing back against Juneteenth as a “woke” federal holiday that distracts from Independence Day—which means that I (Tina), a freedom-loving graduate of Claremont McKenna College, must beg forgiveness: I will be spending the Fourth of July at a wedding in Canada.

Before you flog me for insufficient patriotism—can I make up for it by rereading The Federalist Papers?—a report on the latest push in Congress to sate the bloodlust of the Republican voter base. (Incidentally, it would be good to read Federalist nos. 65, 66, and 69 as impeachment-related food for thought.)

But first…

By Abby Livingston

• More Biden Benghazi: Both chambers let out last week for the annual summertime two-week district work period, meaning senators and representatives are back home getting ready for Fourth of July parades and attending ribbon-cutting ceremonies. But like most congressional recesses, this one has been deceptively quiet. Amid the continued fallout of Hunter Biden’s plea deal with federal prosecutors, Speaker Kevin McCarthy went on Fox News on Wednesday and threatened to launch an impeachment inquiry if any evidence turns up that Attorney General Merrick Garland lied to Congress.

  McCarthy’s commentary followed the enthusiasms of rank-and-file Republicans, specifically Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, who spent much of last month dangling the specter of the impeachments of Joe Biden and also D.H.S. Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Now McCarthy appears ready to either escalate the fervor or, at the very least, placate it.

  If the entire conference is ready to cross that Rubicon, it’s inevitable that the House G.O.P. chaos will then spill over to the Senate side. Based on several interviews with Senate aides and allies, however, few in the upper chamber have gotten their arms around the implications of hosting an impeachment trial, which would inevitably consume floor time and attention, appear politically motivated and potentially be a total waste of time. On some level, tactical Senate Republicans might view this as an effective tool for delaying the confirmations of Democrat-appointed judges. Of course, there are also legitimate fears that, depending on the timing and the rank of the House Republicans’ targets, impeachment fever could explode during the fall appropriations season—Hill-speak for that window every fall when members scurry around trying to avoid a government shutdown.

  Mostly, there is simply upper chamber dread about raising the political temperature. Senate snobbery has always been a thing on the Hill. And now more than ever, there is pride among senators who look down over at the House side’s perpetual Mean Girls drama, and revel in their own relative comity.

  There is some confidence on the Democratic side that most impeachments can be shepherded through quickly. One aide pointed out to me that presidential impeachments are in a league of their own when it comes to how much energy they consume in the chamber; lower level-trials, not so much.

  There is a hope that perhaps none of this comes to pass. But when the party leader and rank-and-file members are increasingly on the same page, it usually means the issue is moving forward. (More on this below from Tina…)

• The Wrath of Khan: And there are yet more House investigations! House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan and House Energy and Commerce Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers wrote a letter to Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan calling her decision to not recuse herself from a probe of Meta “an ethical failure.” (In short, an internal ethics board allegedly advised Khan to recuse herself; she did not; later, Khan told Congress she’d always followed ethics advice.) Khan has clashed before with the parent company of Facebook, but specifically at issue here are critiques of the company she made prior to joining the commission. In not disclosing the recusal guidance during an April hearing, Khan raised “serious questions about [her] commitment to the fair and impartial administration of the F.T.C.’s authorities,” according to the letter.

  Elsewhere on the F.T.C. front, Bloomberg News reported Thursday that Khan is on the verge of launching a long-awaited probe into Amazon’s online marketplace arm. She’s expected to testify before Congress next month.

And now, back to the main event…

The first salvo came earlier this month, when Lauren Boebert attempted to force a snap vote to impeach Biden, himself—a campaign that was derailed by a juvenile side-feud with her MAGA rival Marjorie Taylor Greene. At the moment, her resolution has been referred to two House committees—Homeland Security and Judiciary—and it’s unlikely that her specific line of inquiry will be pursued any further.

In reality, the act of removing an impeached Cabinet member, as several non-hardliner Republicans privately acknowledged to me, is a numerical impossibility. Even if the House Judiciary Committee passes articles of impeachment to a floor vote, it would require a veritable miracle for the fractious House Republican caucus to hold together the simple majority required to formally impeach Garland or Mayorkas (to say nothing of Biden). And there is also no world in which a supermajority of the Democratically-led Senate votes to remove any one of them from office.

Presumably the media spotlight is enough for junior MAGA caucus members like Boebert or Greene, but for more established, serious legislators on the Republican side, the excitement is already wearing thin. “Impeachment becomes a sideshow of the attention-getters,” one Republican told me. “I’m gonna say this: no major initiative of the House originates with Lauren Boebert or M.T.G., except something turned to volume 11.”

At the same time, there is a clear political cost to the impeachment process. First, the House Republican source told me, it’s an automatic oxygen-sucker that would grind almost all House business to a halt. That’s especially problematic for a G.O.P. conference that has already been notoriously unproductive so far this session. Few Republicans, outside of the Freedom Caucus ride-or-diers, have the stomach to repeat another debt ceiling debacle. (Or, for that matter, the post-debt ceiling canceled-votes debacle.) “Impeachment doesn’t raise the pressure,” the congressional source noted. “It ironically can totally short-circuit what you do to leverage the administration.”

Second, it’s entirely unclear whether the House G.O.P. can make the sort of ironclad case they need to justify the I-word, as opposed to some sub-nuclear punitive method to hold them accountable. Observe, for instance, how quickly the threat to impeach Mayorkas was dropped: since the beginning of the 118th Congress, there have already been six House resolutions proposing an investigation into whether Mayorkas committed impeachment-worthy offenses, such as failing to defend the border. But as members of the House Judiciary Committee publicly acknowledged this month, the “reckless abandonment” of his duties, as Rep. Andy Biggs put it, might not constitute an actual crime. “Maladministration, even of this magnitude, is not grounds for impeachment,” Rep. Tom McClintock recently told CNN. “Show me treason, bribery or other high crimes or misdemeanors. And I’m all ears. But at the moment I have not heard it or seen it.”

Third, even if there was some justification that would slake the base’s desire for a Democratic head on a pike, there is the broader electorate to think about: Even if Biden is an unpopular president, can Republicans convince voters that impeaching administration officials is important enough to supersede all other House business in the midst of war, inflation, financial shocks, etcetera. Will they perceive it as a waste of time, or worse, a witch hunt? “If the country doesn’t want Biden impeached,” the House source added matter-of-factly, “then it would not be good for the G.O.P.”

Alas, this all puts Garland at the center of his second political nightmare of the past decade—an unenviable record for an appointed political servant. (Jesus, poor guy.) Unlike the vaporous accusations alleged in most MAGA impeachment resolutions, the sworn testimony is the kind of ostensible proof needed to convince the more senior, less rabble-rousey members of the House Judiciary Committee to begin saying the I-word, too. Rep. Darrell Issa told the Daily Signal, a Heritage Foundation-funded news organization, that impeaching Garland was “not an empty threat,” while McCarthy told Fox and Friends that if the I.R.S. whistleblower’s allegations were true, “we’re going to start impeachment inquiries on the Attorney General.”

With the green-light from McCarthy, on Thursday Reps. Jim Jordan, James Comer, and Jason Smith kicked off the prelude to a potential impeachment by publicly demanding depositions from D.O.J. and F.B.I. officials involved in the Hunter Biden investigation. Of interest: testimonies given by both Weiss and Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf, who allegedly tipped off Hunter’s attorneys that the I.R.S. wanted to search one of his storage lockers.

Perhaps it’s not feasible to actually remove Garland from office, and the path to a successful Biden impeachment is steep. But pursuing Garland is both more easily justifiable to voters outside of the diehard base, and something that would still dirty the Biden administration politically. (It’s always simpler to take out an ally than dethrone the king.) “Politically, I want him to have to answer for his disastrous policies and abuse of power at the ballot box in November of 2024,” said Bruesewitz. “Expunge Trump’s sham impeachments. Impeach Garland. Rally behind Trump in primary, defeat Joe Biden in 2024.”