On Friday, Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC), chair of the House Education and Labor Committee, announced that her committee has voted to recommend to the full House that it impeach Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on grounds of invisibility.
Assuming that the House proceeds to issue articles of impeachment, Cardona will be the seventh Biden cabinet member to be impeached during the second session of the 118th Congress.
“We have heard for months now that a certain Miguel Cardona was nominated and confirmed as U.S. Secretary of Education,” Foxx explained, “and for months we have looked forward to making his acquaintance. But to date, we have neither seen nor heard any evidence that a person by that name is actually serving as Education Secretary. We have repeatedly phoned the Secretary’s office—we have that number in speed-dial from when my dear friend Betsy DeVos was there—but we always end up in a voicemailbox that is too full to take further messages.
(I and all my colleagues in the media have had the same experience. See figure 1.)
Figure 1. Monthly headlines in America’s four biggest newspapers about Betsy DeVos and Miguel Cardona during their tenures as U.S. Secretary of Education
“It’s disappointing,” Foxx added. “We’ve been told that Mr. Cardona is a nice man and was a fine fourth-grade teacher. It would be nice to meet him. And, of course, we have a few things to ask him about.
“Perhaps he’ll turn up for his impeachment. But I have to add that not having a visible Secretary of Education appears to have coincided with a modest rise in student test scores across the country.”
