Republicans Forge Ahead to Impeach Mayorkas

Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian today. On today's show, we're going to hear some, let's say, unappetizing news. The health department released data that show the food safety violations in hundreds of city school cafeterias. WNYC and Gothamist reporter Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky will share what she found in the data and tell you how you can look up your kid's school.

Plus, later in the show, longtime NPR science reporter Nell Greenfieldboyce will share a bit about her new book of essays that weaves her own major life moments with scientific events or discoveries like tornadoes and black holes. We'll wrap up today's show with one of the perennial problems of city living. Noise. We want to hear your hacks on how you cope with noisy neighbors, loud bars, honking horns, and other sonic annoyances.

First, history was made again at the US Capitol this week. For the first time in nearly 150 years, House members advanced articles of impeachment against a sitting cabinet member. In a marathon hearing that stretched from Tuesday morning until early Wednesday, the House Committee on Homeland Security voted down party lines on two articles of impeachment against Alejandro Mayorkas. The Homeland Security secretary has been widely criticized by Republican lawmakers over the agency's handling of security at the southern border. Here's Committee Chair Congressman Mark Green of Tennessee during his opening statement at the hearing on Tuesday.

Congressman Mark Green: We're here because our oath and duty compel us to be here. The actions and decisions of Secretary Mayorkas have left us with no other option than to proceed with articles of impeachment. To quote Madison once again, "Perhaps the greatest danger of abuse in the executive power lies in the improper continuance of bad men in office." We cannot allow this man to remain in office any longer. The time for accountability is now.

Brigid Bergin: Given the deep partisan divide that has come to dominate politics in Washington and across the country, it's no surprise that Democrats framed this hearing very differently. Here's Ranking Committee Member Congressman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi.

Congressman Bennie Thompson: The sham impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas is a baseless political stunt by extreme MAGA Republicans. Chairman Green, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, and others have pushed for and even fundraised based on this pre-planned, pre-determined scapegoating of the secretary.

Brigid Bergin: What is going on? What's the substance of the charges facing Secretary Mayorkas? What are the politics at play and how does this connect to the biggest political event of the year, the upcoming presidential election? Joining us now to unpack all those questions and more is Jacqueline Alemany, congressional investigations reporter for The Washington Post. Jacqueline, welcome back to the show.

Jacqueline Alemany: Hey, good morning. Thanks so much for having me.

Brigid Bergin: Jacqueline, I mentioned that this was a marathon hearing, but can you set the scene for us a bit? Who were the key players and why did this go on so long?

Jacqueline Alemany: Yes, this has been ongoing for about a year now, really ever since Republicans took back the House majority in the 117th Congress when you just all heard those vows from people like Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and others who, even before any impeachment investigation or proceedings began, promised voters that they were going to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas.

The main players that we're seeing lead this charge forward and finally execute this impeachment right now is the chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, Congressman Mark Green of Tennessee, who is leading the committee and, this week, introduced two articles of impeachment against Alejandro Mayorkas. One, a betrayal of public trust, and the other really boils down to the allegation that he's broken the law by refusing to enforce immigration statutes that would prevent migrants from entering the United States.

Obviously, right now, there have been record numbers of migrants that have been crossing the border, but the issue at play here is essentially that what Green is charging Mayorkas for does not actually arise to high crimes and misdemeanors. Ultimately, the migrant crisis won't be addressed by impeachment at all. Rather, the proceedings and negotiations taking place in the upper chamber with regards to the border deal that's being negotiated on a bipartisan basis by lawmakers is what could address that crisis. We're seeing a split screen in Congress right now.

Brigid Bergin: Absolutely. Listeners, we want to know, what are your questions? What questions do you have about the impeachment charges against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas? For voters across the political spectrum, what do you think about impeachment being used to address issues at the border, or would you prefer, as Jacqueline just was referring to, the House and Senate come up with a bipartisan agreement, a policy solution?

What questions do you have for our guest, Jacqueline Alemany, of The Washington Post? You can call 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692 or you can text or tweet @BrianLehrer. Jacqueline, you started to get into this. We know that the issues at the US-Mexico border are the backdrop for this hearing with a record number of migrants entering the country. We even heard President Biden say this recently that if a bipartisan immigration deal was passed, he would do this.

President Joe Biden: It'll also give me, as president, the emergency authority to shut down the border until it could get back under control. If that bill were the law today, I'd shut down the border right now and fix it quickly.

Brigid Bergin: Why do we hear this new hard line from President Biden and how does it connect to the hearing that happened this week?

Jacqueline Alemany: Yes, I think that there's a two-fold reason. There's obviously a political calculus here. This is something that Biden has not gotten very good reviews on as border crossings has caused a major strain to federal, state, and local governments and resources. It has become a very overheated conversation on the right and that has further been inflamed by the, essentially, de facto nominee of the Republican Party for the 2024 election, former President Trump, and House Republicans who have mimicked his language.

You've seen the Biden administration finally try to address this head-on and get ahead of some of the messaging battles that they've previously been losing. Secondly, this deal actually does address a lot of the policy issues that have been under discussion, policy issues that actually Republican lawmakers have been saying and clamoring for Congress to address for years now. One of my colleagues has a really good layout of all of the things that Republican lawmakers have said over the past few years about what needs to happen on the border.

Just a few years ago, Trump had wanted Congress to work on changing asylum laws and basically taking legislative action. Now, you've seen in this election cycle as we get closer to November, people like House Speaker Mike Johnson, people like Senator Ted Cruz, who obviously represents a border state, claim now that Congress isn't needed to address the crisis at the border and that, actually, the President has enough powers to do this himself. Really, a 180 on what they were previously arguing about.

How this all relates to the hearing this week is that as the House has been trying to impeach Mayorkas and blame him for what a lot of people, constitutional experts, even Republican constitutional scholars have argued amounts to a policy difference, which they have claimed is an impeachable offense, the upper chamber has been working on addressing these policy differences.

It's been hard to reconcile, as you can imagine, in one chamber, Alejandro Mayorkas, being criticized as the cause of the surge at the border. While in the other chamber, he's been someone who's been integral to the negotiations taking place between lawmakers for months now. Over the Christmas break during recess, he was spotted back and forth on the Hill sitting in the room and trying to get this deal past the stalemate and finalized.

Brigid Bergin: I'm speaking with Jacqueline Alemany, Washington Post congressional investigations reporter. We're talking about the hearing this week to advance impeachment charges against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. We're taking your calls about your questions about this process and other things happening on the Hill. We're going to start with David in Queens. David, thanks for calling The Brian Lehrer Show.

David: Good morning. Thank you for taking the call. It's really a matter of policy because what we need is a solution, not grandstanding. That's number one. If the people in Washington can get together and decide how best to arrange it, whether Mr. Biden and the Democrats have to bend a little bit, certainly, the Republicans have to bend a little bit. That's what made the country great.

Of course, Ms. Greene will have to admit that she's basically grandstanding and looking perhaps for a slot as a vice-presidential candidate with the presumed frontrunner for the Republican Party. The other thing is that the attempted use of this impeachment is trying to set up a situation whereby, in the future, anybody can be pulled out of there by Congress for supposed infractions for which this is not a tool to be used, rather the motion that we should get together and solve the problem, not try and pull somebody out of office.

Brigid Bergin: David, thank you so much. You gave us a lot to unpack there. Jacqueline, let's start with some of the politics you raised in that question. Certainly, the membership of the Homeland Security Committee includes Congress member Marjorie Taylor Greene. She was also referenced in Congressman Thompson's opening remarks as someone who has made this an issue since the start of this Congress and has also potentially fundraised off this issue and may also be angling for a political future in 2024. What is your reaction to that piece of this equation?

Jacqueline Alemany: Well, at the end of the day, it's not just Marjorie Taylor Greene in the House GOP conference that wants to impeach Mayorkas. Overall, the House is dramatically more conservative than the Senate. There is this growing unanimous consent amongst Republican members that impeaching Mayorkas is the most politically expedient thing to do for them, especially with such a slim majority where it's really hard to push things through legislatively.

This is a welcome distraction, something that even vulnerable members are in agreement about, especially as base voters have been clamoring for accountability. Oversight is obviously a big responsibility for a majority in any Congress and this would be the first promise that I think lawmakers have made to constituents about impeachments that have been going on for several years now that would actually be executed.

It's highly unlikely that the Senate would ultimately vote to impeach Mayorkas. You've heard Republican senators say that they're not in favor of it, that they feel like the House needs to get a grip and actually get something done legislatively. There is some agreement that this is good politics, especially as you have people like Donald Trump explicitly saying that, at the end of the day, the House should not give President Biden a win on the border and not to pass this bill.

Brigid Bergin: Jacqueline, just to underscore this, and I know you've said it already, but what are the specific crimes Republicans are accusing Mayorkas of? What makes up these two articles of impeachment?

Jacqueline Alemany: Yes, that's a really good question, and it's definitely under debate right now. They have charged that Mayorkas was lying under oath about the state of the border. This is under the charge of the betrayal of the public trust. This surrounds this term that he used when he testified before Congress in 2022 when he said that the Department of Homeland Security had "operational control."

The definition of this according to Mayorkas, as employed by the Border Patrol, is the ability to detect, respond, and intercede border penetrations in areas deemed as high priority. There was a 2006 law that was called the Secure Fence Act. That defines the term a bit differently as the absence of any unlawful crossings of migrants or drugs. They've tried to nail Mayorkas on that. They've also said that he has been obstructing their investigation.

They listed 31 different requests that have been partially or completely unsatisfied by Homeland Security. Mayorkas, as the department has noted, has actually been one of the most cooperative cabinet members appearing before Congress dozens of times. The primary charge though is that he's broken the law by refusing to enforce immigration statutes. This means that he's failed to uphold certain aspects of immigration law, which they believe is a constitutional crime.

Policy experts and, again, constitutional scholars and past secretaries of Homeland Security, and there have been some former legal advisors too, former President Trump, who noted that they do not agree with this assessment of it rising to high crimes and misdemeanors as laid out by the Constitution. At the end of the day, the presidential administration does have wide latitude in how to control the border and that they do not feel like Mayorkas has exceeded those authorities that have been given to the executive branch.

Brigid Bergin: I want to go to Jesse in Washington Heights. Jesse, thanks for calling The Brian Lehrer Show.

Jesse: Oh, hi. Thank you. I love this discussion. What's being overlooked is that this is really a global crisis among many other global crises that are all becoming completely out of control and unmanageable. They're not the fault of an individual cabinet secretary. What we've been doing is letting finance reward us for very nice things while multiplying our impacts on the earth and ignoring that. Ignoring what are so-called externalities like nature and societies, which were being wildly disrupted by our economic intrusions, interfering with very smoothly working uncontrolled systems with our very unbalanced and blind controlled systems is the underlying problem. I'm a system scientist, so I say things like that.

Brigid Bergin: [laughs] Jesse, thank you so much for your call and for that perspective. Jacqueline, another take on what's happening certainly on the border and elsewhere. I want to pick up on something that you mentioned before that caller, which was Mayorkas' willingness to respond to this committee having appeared before this committee many times before, but he was not there on Tuesday. What happened and how is he defending himself in this context?

Jacqueline Alemany: I just want to respond to something Jesse said because he is absolutely right. Actually, this border deal that is being negotiated by bipartisan lawmakers does really just address a very narrow slice of the issue, which is the actual border and our immigration system and the way that we detain, deport, and process individuals who are seeking, at times, asylum in our country or economic opportunity.

I urge everyone to go and read some of the coverage from my Washington Post colleagues about all of the other global factors that have caused this crisis more from a systemic issue. Things like climate migration, economic crises, war, all of these things that are pushing and contributing to the mass migration of entire populations as the head of the United Nations warned actually last year at a biblical scale.

As for Mayorkas, there was this feeling last week actually that the obstruction charge that was included under the "betrayal of trust" article of impeachment was a bit manufactured. They invited him to testify before the committee during their second impeachment hearing that began at the beginning of January. A few days prior to the scheduled hearing, Mayorkas responded that he actually had a scheduling issue, was going to be preparing for meetings with Mexican officials to discuss how Mexico could better address the migrant crisis from their side of the border, and also was actually spotted that day during the second impeachment hearing negotiating with lawmakers in the Senate on the border deal.

Mayorkas wrote back that he would be happy to appear and that they should find an alternative date. Lawmakers in the House, Mark Green, quickly responded that they would give him the opportunity to submit written testimony but that they were going ahead with the hearing without him. Shortly thereafter, they introduced articles of impeachment without really a single fact witness appearing before the hearing or a single subpoena and without hearing testimony from Mayorkas himself.

Generally, in these sorts of proceedings, we see fact witnesses, people who can attest to the behavior or the charges that are being alleged by those who are doing the impeachment, which makes this impeachment historic in a number of ways, not just the fact that it's the first cabinet secretary, as you noted at the beginning of the program, for the first 148 years to be indicted by Congress, but perhaps the first impeachment proceeding that is likely to make it through the House that is essentially based on no evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Brigid Bergin: If you're just joining us, I'm Brigid Bergin in for Brian Lehrer today. We're going to take a quick break. More with my guest, Washington Post congressional investigations reporter Jacqueline Alemany, on the substance and the politics of the impeachment hearing of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas coming up.

[MUSIC - Marden Hill: Hijack]

Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin in for Brian today. My guest is Washington Post congressional investigations reporter Jacqueline Alemany. We're talking about this week's hearing for the House Homeland Security Committee looking at impeachment charges against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Jacqueline, I'm going to play a little bit more tape from that hearing this week. We know Republicans have taken a very hard line on this issue, making Mayorkas their target. While Democrats say Republicans are just taking a cue from former President Trump, who has made it clear that he wants to make the border and immigration central to his campaign this year, here is Texas Republican Congressman Tony Gonzales at the hearing on Tuesday.

Congressman Tony Gonzales: One of the most difficult things about Congress is it's filled with nothing but lawyers. They'll talk all day about this, that, or the other, which is, I think, frustrating to many Americans. This is what's going to happen. The House of Representatives is going to impeach Secretary Mayorkas and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to stop it.

Brigid Bergin: Then a response from New York Democrat Congressman Dan Goldman.

Congressman Dan Goldman: You are sitting here right now trying to impeach a secretary of Homeland Security for neglecting his duties literally while he is trying to perform his duties and negotiate legislation. Now, the real reason we are here, as we all know, is because Donald Trump wants to run on immigration as his number one issue in the November 2024 election. You don't have to take my word for it because he said it himself.

Brigid Bergin: Jacqueline, we know that both of these members are really appealing to their own basis, their own constituencies. Let's translate a little bit of what we heard there first from Gonzales. You mentioned, we know that this impeachment proceeding has made it out of committee, but what's the timeline that we're talking about and what happens next here potentially?

Jacqueline Alemany: I just want to say that all of those things that were just said by those two members all can be true. This is why, I think, that we are seeing such a stalemate in the House. As for the timeline, I think Congressman Gonzales is absolutely right. This is likely going to make it through the House. It's already made it out of the hearing after the markup on Tuesday. It's likely to be brought to the House floor for a vote next week.

There are two members who have expressed a bit of reticence about supporting this vote. With such a slim majority, Speaker Johnson needs those two members in order for this to make it out of the House. That's Congressman Ken Buck and Congressman Tom McClintock. These are people who have previously expressed reluctance or concern about voting for things that they did not think were constitutionally sound.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, when they were tested on it for a vote, they ended up voting on party line. I don't think that there is much concern from the whip's office and the speaker's office about whether or not they have the votes to get this through. It's just a matter of procedure and time. Again, then this would make it to the Senate. Actually, in a potential hypothetical Senate trial, it would work a little bit differently than what we've previously seen with impeachment trials because this is a cabinet member.

There's actually a little bit of leeway in terms of the reading of the Constitution. The Senate is not required to hold a trial. The chamber can instead just refer the articles of impeachment to a smaller committee or Senator and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer can just move to vote on a motion to dismiss the charges right off the bat. Obviously, Democrats have the majority in the Senate. That's a factor that's at play here. Again, at the end of the day, Mayorkas is very unlikely to be convicted by the Senate.

Brigid Bergin: Then let's just, for a moment, underscore the point that Congressman Goldman is making, who really is framing this as an issue of the politics of 2024 and reinforcing the fact that, as you said, former President Trump has said that they don't want to give a win to Democrats or to President Biden on this particular issue. That leads me to my next question, which is also the status of this bill that has been talked about for months, a deal to address immigration and border security. You talked about how it lays out some specific responses to some of the biggest issues. Dare I ask what the status of that bill is at this point? Is there any chance of it seeing the light of day, given the rhetoric that we're hearing now?

Jacqueline Alemany: Well, as of this week, that bill is languishing. We still have not seen the border text. As negotiations have continued and Trump has thrown cold water on it and urged members not to support it, you have seen some Republican senators in the House who were previously behind getting something through start to question whether or not they should take a hard vote on something that is destined to fail in the House. We have seen dribs and drabs of some of the more specific provisions included in this bipartisan deal that Mayorkas has been intimately involved with negotiating along with Republican Senator James Lankford.

There is a provision that would kick in when to shut down the border when unauthorized crossings surpassed 5,000 migrants a day over a five-day average. There is also additional resources for more beds and detention centers and immigration courts to process migrants who do come in through port of entry. There is going to be a new way to change the US asylum process to reduce the average time of an asylum claim that would be resolved from several years down to six months.

It raises the standards for migrants to be able to make asylum claims in the first place. The one thing that is still under a bit of negotiation is these humanitarian parole towers and whether or not the bill will ultimately dramatically curtail Biden's use of the parole towers for certain categories of migrants. That's not yet in the final deal. Again, we have not seen the final text. We're hoping to see that this week as lawmakers have promised.

Brigid Bergin: We know that the new House speaker, Mike Johnson, gave his first floor speech yesterday with immigration being a central issue. Even if there is an agreement reached, what are the obstacles that it faces in the House?

Jacqueline Alemany: Herein lies the problem with such a slim majority. There are people on both the far left and the hard right who oppose the deal, which is why it faces such slim chances of ultimately getting made into law. The other fact of the matter, there's the obvious opposition from hard-line Republicans that this bill isn't strong enough on the border. There's obviously the pressure from Donald Trump not to give Joe Biden a win.

There's concern from the far left that this is not what their base or their constituents want. They feel like some of these provisions are inhumane and that this is not the way to address the crisis at the border. There are some Democratic members who represent border districts who are not in favor of this bill. The other issue at play is that this is also tied into additional funding for Ukraine, which is something that Republicans in the House especially still largely oppose.

There are a lot of different components tied in here. That's why you're starting to hear some talk crop up about separating this bill and kind of forcing the hand of Republicans to make it as difficult as possible from a messaging perspective for them to vote against it. Democrats have been discussing this potential lately. If there is no Ukraine attached to it, it gives them less of a reason to vote against it, especially when they've been asking for changes to address the migrant crisis. Democrats feel that this bill does just that.

Brigid Bergin: I want to go to Gary in Little Ferry, New Jersey. Gary, thanks for holding. Welcome to The Brian Lehrer Show.

Gary: Thank you for taking my call. I'm going to surprise people. I'm just about a lifelong Republican. I have been involved in Republican politics in Bergen County and actually ran for office in Fort Lee, which [unintelligible 00:30:12] town, as a Republican. This impeachment is a disgrace. If we're going to impeach people over policy, we should become a parliamentary system and how it's been green talking about an evil man, a bad man. How about Donald Trump? He should be in prison right now waiting execution. That's what they do to traitors. That's what happened on January 6th. My fellow Republicans, shame on you. You have no--

Brigid Bergin: Gary, thank you for your very impassioned perspective on both the hearing and certainly on our former president. I will note, Jacqueline, in maybe more subdued terms, The Wall Street Journal editorial page, another bastion of conservative thinking, had a lead editorial yesterday with the headline, "Impeaching Mayorkas achieves nothing." There is certainly a sentiment on the right that concerns that this is potentially a losing strategy for Republicans, correct?

Jacqueline Alemany: Yes, I was just about to note that same thing that there are other Republicans who agree with you, Gary. Someone like Michael Chertoff, the Republican-appointed Homeland Security secretary, who said that the evidence put forth did not meet the bar for impeachment and that he did not agree with the argument that Mayorkas has been derelict in his duty. There's people like Jonathan Turley.

He is a go-to conservative scholar who testified as a witness on behalf of Trump to defend him during the Trump impeachment trial, the first one in 2019, who wrote an op-ed that said that you can't impeach someone for simply being bad at their job. There's a lot of concern across the board that this is an abuse of a tool that has historically been designed by the founders to address despotic leaders not to, again, take a punitive political statement against a cabinet member who is trying to carry out the policy of the sitting president.

Brigid Bergin: Sure. Then, of course, you also have people writing on the other side of the spectrum, David Leonhardt for The New York Times, who had a piece that was headlined, "Democrats are out of step with public opinion when it comes to immigration." It sounds like there are concerns there too that there needs to be some sort of response that meets the minds and the hearts of where voters are on the left as well and not necessarily just the progressives, but maybe more moderates. What's your sense of that?

Jacqueline Alemany: It's spot-on. That's why you're seeing Biden himself put some skin in the game here and get behind this bill and start to message it a little bit differently. Democrats have historically been panned for losing the messaging game when it comes to some of these tougher issues that do anger the progressive flank of the party.

If you look at all of the polling, as we discussed earlier, Biden is viewed more unfavorably with regards to his handling of US immigration policy and the migrant crisis than Republicans and former President Donald Trump. We have hit record numbers in recent months of illegal crossings at the border. Whether or not Democrats can now successfully try to turn the tables and paint Republicans as now being derelict in their duties by not passing this piece of bipartisan legislation that we all have yet to see, that remains to be seen.

Brigid Bergin: Jacqueline, your colleague, Philip Bump, wrote that this Mayorkas impeachment should be viewed as a dry run for targeting Biden. Are we seeing a new Republican playbook for impeachment in this Mayorkas case?

Jacqueline Alemany: I'm not sure I agree with that assessment. I think that this is actually a substitute for impeaching Biden at the moment. As I previously mentioned, there is a desire for accountability, especially from base voters who have been hearing from House Republicans across conservative media that they have been going to impeach a Biden official since they took the majority. These voters have not yet seen that. They've been frustrated with that.

This is viewed as a piece of red meat to throw to them and something that isn't a challenging decision for the vulnerable Republicans who are in purple districts, whose voters might not like the idea of using impeachment to impeach a president in an impeachment process that has yet to find any evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors. That inquiry, for those who aren't totally in the loop, that's a whole other impeachment inquiry that's being led by the House Oversight Ways and Means and judiciary committees.

It's investigating whether or not Joe Biden accepted any foreign money or was involved in his son's business dealings. The chairman and the investigators running that investigation have yet to unearth any really substantive evidence that directly links Biden to his son's business dealings despite some of the allegations that have been unsubstantiated out there from Republicans that Biden has been involved in bribery and corruption.

Brigid Bergin: Right. We're going to slip one more caller in before we let you go, Jacqueline. We're going to go to Maria in Redding, Connecticut. Maria, thanks for calling WNYC.

Maria: Thanks for taking my call. I'm not in favor of abusing executive orders. Since the Republicans seems intent on preventing and, of course, at the orders of Donald Trump, preventing Biden and Congress from passing this legislation, how much can Biden do before the elections by executive order to address these border issues in case their legislation doesn't pass?

Brigid Bergin: Maria, thanks for that question. Any sense of that, Jacqueline?

Jacqueline Alemany: Yes, so that's a really good question. There is definitely a role for executive orders. I'm not sure if the administration or the White House has gone down that road yet. I think they're still hoping that there can be a legislative prescription here, but I imagine with this being such a politically contentious and prescient point of contention right now that it could be discussed down the road if nothing makes it through the upper and lower chambers and onto the President's desk. It wouldn't solve all of the problems certainly, but there could be a role for executive action here.

Brigid Bergin: We're going to leave it there for now. My guest has been Jacqueline Alemany, the congressional investigations reporter for The Washington Post. Jacqueline, thank you so much.

Jacqueline Alemany: Thank you for having me. Really appreciate it.

 

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