To a standing-room-only crowd in a Southeast Washington office building on a recent evening, Tonya Fulkerson, a veteran Democratic fundraiser, described the gunfight that erupted in broad daylight on her blocks from the U.S. Capitol last year.

“People were ducking behind cars to avoid being hit by bullets,” she said.

These days, Mrs. Fulkerson told the crowd, she walks around her neighborhood with more vigilance and no longer waits in the car when her husband stops at the local corner store for fear of being hijacked or robbed.

And she has moved in a new direction, using skills and connections she developed over decades in national politics to help steer a campaign to unseat her councilman, Charles Allen, a Democrat who has supported progressive criminal justice reform and whom she holds accountable for the crime plaguing her neighborhood and others across the city.

Joining her at the rally, standing next to signs reading “Recall Charles Allen,” were other prominent Democratic political operatives who call Capitol Hill home and have joined the effort, with resumes that include running for multiple congressional and presidential campaigns.

Moses Mercado, the recall’s field organizer, was a superdelegate for Barack Obama, who has lived in the city for 31 years. Rich Masters, a 28-year-old Capitol Hill resident who was an aide to former Senator Mary Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, is handling communications. Ms. Fulkerson’s clients include Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and majority leader, and the Senate Majority PAC, the party’s main fundraising arm for Senate campaigns.

So far, the recall effort has raised more than $100,000, and volunteers have been rallying around Mr. Allen’s Ward 6 in hopes of collecting the necessary 6,144 signatures — 10 percent of the population — before the mid-August deadline. If achieved, a recall election would take place on October 9.

Most of the organizers of this effort are lifelong Democrats who voted for Mr. Allen in the past, leading him to landslide victories in 2014, 2018 and 2022. Their campaign to depose him is a striking example – in one of the most powerful areas of the world. the country – of how a response to a rise in crime has crossed political and ideological boundaries.

In an interview, Mr. Allen defended his record and said the effort to oust him only played into the hands of Republicans across the country, including former President Donald J. Trump, who have tried to solve Washington’s crime problem as a “political cudgel”. ” to use against liberal cities and Democrats.

He acknowledged that residents had “very legitimate fears and concerns about public safety” that he shared as a husband and father, but said the blame he has received is misplaced.

There has not been a successful recall effort in Washington since the District gained home rule in the 1970s. The action against Mr. Allen and another recall attempt that surfaced last month Councilwoman Brianne K. Nadeau in Ward 1 reflect the depth of residents’ anger over violent crime on their streets.

As a member of the DC Council’s Justice and Public Safety Committee, Mr. Allen was instrumental in cutting $15 million from the 2020 police budget — money that he said would be reinvested in community programs across the District — and wrote a revision to the city’s criminal code, which reduced mandatory minimum sentences for some violent crimes, was ultimately blocked by Congress and rejected by President Biden last year.

“It’s not personal to him at all,” Mr. Masters said. “I think he looked and saw a bumper sticker that said ‘Defund the Police,’ and he decided he was going to turn that into policy.”

The recalls come as residents across the city have expressed fear and frustration over violent crimes increased by 39 percent last yearThe number is down 11 percent so far this year compared to the same period in 2023, according to the Metropolitan Police Department. pointed According to the data, this was 35 percent in 2023 compared to the previous year, while the number of robberies increased by 67 percent. Washington had 958 carjackings or attempted carjackings last year and separately averaged nearly 19 car thefts per day during the same period, an 82 percent increase from the previous year.

In his statement last March explaining his decision not to veto Republican-authored legislation blocking the revised criminal code, Mr. Biden said he declined in part because local law would prohibit mandatory minimum sentences for some violent crimes, such as carjacking, reduced or eliminated. (It also increased penalties for a variety of crimes, including armed robbery, assault, and attempted murder.)

Ward 6, which is relatively affluent and safe compared to much of the city, is an unlikely ground zero for the fight. But it has also experienced its share of crime. Last year, Rep. Angie Craig, Democrat of Minnesota, was attacked in her apartment building while fending off her attacker by throwing her hot coffee at him. Her Democratic colleague, Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, was hijacked at gunpoint in October. And an aide to Sen. Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, was seriously injured last March after being stabbed in broad daylight by a man who had been released from jail the day before.

Residents of Capitol Hill, where one-bedroom apartments often rent for more than $2,000, have witnessed shocking violent crimes, including a shooting captured by a doorbell camera last month.

Mr. Allen was attacked and pistol-whipped a few years ago, he said, by two people who shot a gun right next to his head, and neither was ever caught.

“I have a scar on the back of my head that I carry with me,” he said, adding of the perpetrators: “There was no accountability there.”

None of the acts of violence, Mr. Allen said, were grounds for throwing him out.

The councilman noted that the city was in a recession when he pushed for cuts to the police budget, and that Washington is far from the only city facing officer shortages. He pointed to his work expanding the police cadet pipeline and instituting a $25,000 signing bonus for new recruits.

Mr Allen said reduce crime was the council’s top priority, but argued that merely imposing harsher penalties, as the recall’s proponents have demanded, was shortsighted. He said it was necessary to work with “at-risk communities” to give young people opportunities to pull them away from a life of crime.

“Otherwise you just wait for a crime to happen and respond to it,” he said.

Opponents of the recall are quick to label organizers as carpetbaggers, citing the January campaign finance report that showed a slew of Republican donors living outside Ward 6 contributing.

Ward 6 Democratic President Elizabeth Engel called the effort “a waste of energy, a waste of attention and a waste of taxpayer dollars,” which only served to scapegoat Mr. Allen.

“Crime is a problem in D.C.,” Ms. Engel said. “But the approach to it is complex, and Charles is certainly not personally responsible for this.”

Advocates, however, argue that Mr. Allen has made a bad situation worse by “helping make this argument for Trump” that crime in liberal cities has spiraled out of control, Mr. Masters said.

For April Brown, a real estate agent, third-generation Washingtonian and the treasurer of the recall effort, the bid to remove Mr. Allen is an opportunity for those long ignored to be heard.

Ms. Brown, who is black, said her own experience with crime in Washington — her mother was carjacked by four teenagers, none of whom were ever caught, and she witnessed an attempted carjacking on her street — made her encouraged to speak out.

“Sometimes I feel like we are being silenced,” she said. “Unfortunately, I feel like a lot of politicians do that. They want to speak up the black community, not with the black community.”

Mark Ugoretz, a retired lobby manager who moved to Washington in 1968 during riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and who supports Mr Allen’s recall, said the brutality of crime in the city had resonated with residents across all political and economic sectors. lines.

“This is the first time we’ve had a crime where a kid can stick a Glock in your face and steal your car,” he said.

Republicans in the House of Representatives will try for a second time Tuesday to impeach Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the secretary of Homeland Security, on charges of willfully refusing to enforce border laws and violating the public trust, after their first attempt at the partisan charge ended in a stunning defeat.

Three Republicans joined all Democrats last week in rejecting impeachment charges, leaving the Republican Party, which has a slim margin, just one vote short of a majority, in a humiliating spectacle in the House of Representatives.

The decisive moment came when Representative Al Green, Democrat of Texas, who Republicans had expected to miss the vote, arrived in a hospital gown, fresh from abdominal surgery, to cast his “no” vote. Because Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana and majority leader, was absent while undergoing treatment for blood cancer, the Republican Party was unable to make up the deficit.

Republicans recalled Scalise to Washington this week and expressed confidence Tuesday that their second attempt would be successful. That would put Mr. Mayorkas in the company of former presidents and government officials who have been impeached on charges of personal corruption, election interference and even incitement of insurrection.

But the accusations leveled by Republicans have broken with history by failing to identify such a crime, and instead effectively declaring the Biden administration's policy choices as a constitutional crime. The approach threatened to lower the bar for impeachment proceedings — which has already fallen in recent years — reducing what was once Congress' most powerful tool for removing despots from power to a weapon that could be used in political battles.

Democrats, former Homeland Security secretaries, the nation's largest police union and a chorus of constitutional law experts — including conservatives — have dismissed the impeachment effort as a blatant attempt to resolve a policy dispute with constitutional punishment , without any evidence that the secretary's behavior has increased. to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Last week, only three Republicans in the House of Representatives — Reps. Ken Buck of Colorado, Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin and Tom McClintock of California — agreed and joined Democrats in voting against the impeachment resolution.

“Creating a new, lower standard for impeachment, one without any clear limiting principle, will not secure the border or hold Mr. Biden accountable,” Mr. Gallagher said in a statement at the time, adding that an impeachment was “a dangerous new precedent that will be weaponized against future Republican administrations.”

The Republicans who broke with their party received significant political backlash for their insubordination. Last weekend, Gallagher, who had attracted a primary challenger after his impeachment vote, announced he would not seek re-election.

Although other Republicans had expressed skepticism about the allegations before last week's vote, party leaders managed to keep them contained. To prevail on Tuesday, they must maintain that support.

The vote to impeach Mr. Mayorkas comes amid a broader battle in Congress over how to address border security and national security. Tuesday's vote will come just hours after the Senate passes a bipartisan national security package that would provide $60.1 billion to help Ukraine fight a Russian invasion, $14.1 billion to help Israel in its war against Hamas and nearly $10 billion in humanitarian aid for civilians in Syria. conflict areas, including the Palestinians in Gaza.

Mr. Mayorkas had helped senators negotiate an earlier version of the legislation that tied foreign aid to border crackdowns, something Republicans called for. But Senate Republicans scrapped that measure last week, under pressure from far-right Republicans in the House of Representatives and former President Donald J. Trump, who described it as too weak.

Democrats have argued that the effort to oust Mr. Mayorkas is merely a sign of loyalty by Republicans in Congress to Mr. Trump, who has made clear he wants to make the immigration crackdown a centerpiece of his presidential campaign .

“The truth is that the extreme MAGA Republicans who control the House of Representatives don't want solutions, they want a political issue,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the homeland security panel, during last week's floor debate. He accused Republicans of trying to “twist the Constitution and the Secretary's record to cover up their inability and unwillingness to work with Democrats to strengthen border security.”

But Republicans leading the effort were determined to cast Mr. Mayorkas as the main culprit for the state of the border and the surge of migrants and illegal drugs crossing in recent years.

“He is guilty of aiding and abetting the complete invasion of our country by criminals, gang members, terrorists, murderers, rapists and more than 10 million people from 160 countries in American communities across the United States,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican from Georgia. who led the effort to secure his removal, said during floor debate last week.

The charges against Mr. Mayorkas have no chance of leading to a conviction in the Democratic-led Senate, where he would need two-thirds of the vote and even some Republicans have noted that he will be dead on arrival. It was not clear whether leaders there would move forward with holding a full trial or vote to immediately dismiss the charges against Mr. Mayorkas.

The House of Representatives planned to appoint 11 Republicans to make the case against Mr. Mayorkas as impeachment managers, including Ms. Greene and Representative Mark E. Green, Republican of Tennessee and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, which approved the articles of impeachment last month prepared. They were also producing at the time a report in which they said of the Cuban-born secretary that they were “deporting Secretary Mayorkas from office.”

Republicans have been promising to impeach Mr. Mayorkas for more than a year, but the proceedings were rushed over the course of just a few weeks, in what Democrats labeled a lame attempt to pull off a “sham” impeachment. Republicans have defended the speed of their procedures, arguing that an earlier investigation spent months examining Mr. Mayorkas' policies.

The first of the two charges accuses Mr. Mayorkas of replacing Trump-era policies such as the program commonly called Remain in Mexico, which kept many migrants waiting at the southwestern border for their court hearings, with a “capture” en-release” policy that allowed migrants to move freely in the United States. Republicans allege that Mr. Mayorkas has ignored multiple mandates of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which states that migrants “shall be detained” pending decisions on asylum and removal orders, and that he has acted beyond his authority to allow migrants to enter the country conditionally to let in.

Democrats have pushed back strongly, noting that Mr. Mayorkas has the right to enact policies to control the waves of migrants arriving at the border. That includes temporarily allowing certain migrants into the country on humanitarian grounds and prioritizing which migrants to detain, especially if they operate with limited resources.

The second article accuses Mr. Mayorkas of betraying the public trust by misrepresenting the state of the border and obstructing Congress' efforts to investigate him. Republicans are basing these accusations on a 2022 assertion by Mr. Mayorkas that his department had “operational control” of the border, which a 2006 statute defines as the absence of any unlawful migrant or drug crossings. Mr. Mayorkas has said he was referring instead to a less absolute definition used by the Border Patrol.

They also accuse Mr. Mayorkas of failing to produce documents, including materials he was subpoenaed to give them, during an investigation into his border policies and of blocking their efforts to have him testify as part of their had avoided impeachment proceedings. Administration officials have countered that Mr. Mayorkas produced tens of thousands of pages of documents in accordance with the panel's requests. He offered to testify in person, but Republicans on the panel withdrew their invitation to appear after the two sides faced scheduling issues.

Critics of the case have pointed out that the secretary's resignation is unlikely to lead to a change in the Biden administration's border policy, and that officials will not be given the powers and resources they need to enforce immigration laws more effectively can maintain.

“While Republicans in the House of Representatives waste time playing politics, Secretary Mayorkas is enforcing our laws and working to keep America safe,” Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Mia Ehrenberg said in a statement. “Members of Congress who take these efforts seriously should work with the administration by fixing our nation's broken immigration laws and properly funding the department's vital missions rather than facilitating this farce of an impeachment.”

The only other Cabinet secretary to be removed was William Belknap, the Secretary of War under President Ulysses S. Grant. Belknap resigned in 1876, just before the House of Representatives was accused of corruption after finding evidence that he was involved in rampant misconduct, including accepting bribes. The Senate later acquitted him.

The House of Representatives will vote Tuesday on whether to impeach Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the Homeland Security secretary, on charges that he willfully refused to enforce border laws and betrayed the public trust, while Republicans pursue a partisan charge filing against President Biden's immigration policies.

But with just hours to go before the scheduled vote, it was unclear whether leaders would have enough Republican Party support to indict Mr. Mayorkas. Now that Republicans have control of the House of Representatives by a minuscule margin – and Democrats are firmly against it – they can't afford more than two defections. Two of their members have already said they will vote no, while a few others are still publicly undecided.

On Tuesday morning, Representative Tom McClintock, Republican of California, announced he would vote against the charges, joining Representative Ken Buck of Colorado, who has already pledged to break with his party on the issue. A handful of other Republicans remained on the fence, and at least one of them — Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin — expressed concern about the allegations during a closed-door party meeting Tuesday morning.

Skeptics have privately warned that if the House of Representatives impeaches Mr. Mayorkas now, making him the first sitting Cabinet member to suffer that fate, future Republican Cabinet members could be subjected to the same treatment.

“I respect everyone's opinion on this,” Chairman Mike Johnson told reporters Tuesday as he left the meeting. “I understand the weight that impeachment carries.”

“I don't believe there has ever been a Cabinet Secretary who so blatantly, openly, deliberately and without remorse did the exact opposite of what federal law asked him to do,” Mr. Johnson added, calling impeachment “an extreme measure , but extreme. times call for extreme measures.”

Republicans are pressing ahead despite the assessment of legal experts, including some prominent conservatives, that Mr. Mayorkas has not committed high crimes and misdemeanors, the constitutional threshold for impeachment. In a lengthy statement released Tuesday morning, Mr. McClintock said he agreed with that assessment.

“They fail to identify an impeachable crime that Mayorkas committed,” Mr. McClintock wrote, adding that the charges “stretch and twist the Constitution to hold the government accountable for stretching and twisting the law.”

The move marks an escalation of Republicans' efforts to attack Mr. Biden and Democrats over immigration, as the two parties clash over how best to secure the border during an election year when the issue is expected to will be central to the presidential campaign.

House Republicans are pushing ahead with impeachment as they try to overturn a bipartisan deal brokered in the Senate that would see a new injection of funding for Ukraine paired with a crackdown on borders. They have argued that the measure is too weak and that neither Mr. Biden nor Mr. Mayorkas can be trusted to secure the border.

If Mr. Mayorkas is impeached, the charges will go to the Democratic-led Senate for a trial in which he will almost certainly be acquitted. Leaders have yet to say whether they will hold a full trial, which will require a two-thirds majority to convict the Homeland Security secretary, or seek to dismiss the charges outright without hearing them.

The measure, which will be voted on Tuesday, would also appoint 11 impeachment managers to make the case against Mr. Mayorkas in the Senate, including Representative Mark E. Green, Republican of Tennessee and the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. , Republican of Georgia, who led the charge to charge him with constitutional charges and call for his removal. The group also includes Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ben Cline of Virginia, Clay Higgins of Louisiana, Andrew Garbarino of New York, Michael Guest of Mississippi, Harriet M. Hageman of Wyoming, Laurel Lee of Florida, Michael McCaul of Texas and August Pfluger . of Texas.

House Democrats have roundly rejected the impeachment effort, accusing Republicans of abusing a constitutional tool intended only to be used against officials who have committed crimes or abused their office.

“This sham impeachment effort is not really about border security; it's about Republican politics and subversion of the Constitution,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the senior Democrat on the homeland security panel, accusing Republicans of “taking their marching orders from Donald Trump.”

Mr. Trump's influence as he tries to return to the White House has loomed large in the immigration debate on Capitol Hill, especially when it comes to the Senate border deal, which he has campaigned against. House Republicans have also often cited his immigration legacy in arguing against Mayorkas, whom they accuse of dismantling the former president's border policies for political purposes.

The first article of impeachment accuses Mr. Mayorkas of following Trump-era policies, such as the program commonly called “Remain in Mexico,” which left many migrants waiting at the southwest border for their immigration court appointments. replacing it with a 'catch-and-release' policy that allowed groups of migrants to roam freely in the United States. They accuse him of ignoring multiple mandates of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which states that migrants “shall be detained” pending decisions on asylum and removal orders, and of acting beyond his authority to allow migrants to enter the country conditionally to let.

Democrats have pushed back strongly, noting that Mr. Mayorkas, like previous Homeland Security secretaries, has the right to enact policies to manage the waves of migrants arriving at the border. That includes temporarily allowing certain migrants into the country on humanitarian grounds and prioritizing which migrants to detain, especially if they operate with limited resources.

The second article accuses Mr. Mayorkas of betraying the public trust by misrepresenting the state of the border and obstructing Congress' efforts to investigate him. Republicans are basing these accusations on a 2022 assertion by Mr. Mayorkas that his department had “operational control” of the border, which a 2006 statute defines as the absence of any unlawful migrant or drug crossings. Mr. Mayorkas has said he was referring instead to a less absolute definition used by the Border Patrol.

They also accuse Mr. Mayorkas of failing to produce documents, including materials he was subpoenaed to give them, during an investigation into his border policies and of blocking their efforts to have him testify as part of their had avoided impeachment proceedings. Administration officials have countered that Mr. Mayorkas produced tens of thousands of pages of documents in accordance with the panel's requests. He offered to testify in person, but Republicans on the panel withdrew their invitation to appear after the two sides faced scheduling issues.

Peter Meijer, the one-term Republican congressman who lost his seat after voting to impeach President Donald J. Trump, has announced he is running for Senate in Michigan, entering a crowded primary in a key battleground goes.

“We are in dark and uncertain times, but we have been through worse,” Mr. Meijer said said in a statement announced his candidacy on Monday.

Mr. Meijer, an heir to the Meijer supermarket empire and an Army Reserve veteran who served in Iraq, joins a field that also includes Mike Rogers, another former representative who served seven terms in the House of Representatives and led the House Intelligence Committee, which announced his candidacy in September.

Also active in the Republican primaries James Craigformer chief of the Detroit Police Department; Nikki Snydera member of the State Board of Education; Dr. Sherry O’Donnell, a physician and former 2022 congressional candidate; Sharon Savagea former teacher; Ezra Scotta former Berrien County commissioner; Alexandria Taylora lawyer; J.D. Wilson, a technology consultant; And Michael Hoovera businessman.

The crowded Republican field reflects a party eager to make gains in Michigan after Democrats swept the state in 2022. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer handily won reelection that year, part of a political trifecta as Democrats gained full control of the state government. .

President Biden narrowly won in Michigan in 2020 and the state is considered a battleground in next year’s presidential election.

Mr. Meijer, 35, is vying for the seat of Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat who announced this year that she would not seek another term in 2024. The race for the open seat is competitive, but leans toward the Democratsaccording to a projection by the Cook Political Report.

Ms. Stabenow’s retirement set off a frenzy among ambitious Michigan Democrats who are now seeking to succeed her.

Among them is Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a moderate and former CIA analyst who has earned a national profile and scored victories in several close races for her seat in the House of Representatives. Also in the running Nasser Beydoun, a businessman from Dearborn; Hill Harper, an author and actor; Leslie Lovea former state representative from Detroit; Pamela Pug, the chairman of the State Council of Education; and Zach Burns, an attorney and Ann Arbor resident.

Mr. Meijer was elected in 2020 to represent his Grand Rapids district. Just days after taking office, he was thrust into the national spotlight when he voted to impeach Mr. Trump on January 6, 2021, for incitement of insurrection.

Only two of the ten Republicans in the House of Representatives who voted to impeach Trump survived the retaliation from Republican voters that followed. Mr. Meijer narrowly lost his primary to a Trump-backed opponent, John Gibbs, who was backed by Democrats and who was defeated by his Democratic opponent in the general election.