Republican Tiffany Smiley Enters Race to Oust Trump Impeacher From Congress

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‘Happily, the 10 Impeachers are just about gone,’ former President Donald Trump said.

Tiffany Smiley, a veterans’ advocate and former triage nurse, has entered the race for Washington’s 4th Congressional District, which is currently represented by Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.)—one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach President Donald Trump in January 2021.

Ms. Smiley, a Republican, announced the launch of her campaign in a video posted on X on May 6, in which she mentioned her experience of taking on government dysfunction while fighting on behalf of veterans as a Washington outsider. She said she now hopes to change the system from within, while vowing to tackle deficit-fueled government spending and to fight for border security.

“We’re spending money that we don’t have while our border is wide open, bringing more crime and drugs into our cities,” she said in the campaign video. “Families are struggling with increases in prices, while homeless veterans sleep on our streets. We can do better.”

While she made no mention in her campaign video about Mr. Newhouse or his vote to impeach President Trump, she has made critical remarks about it in the past. She told the National Review that, given Mr. Newhouse’s history with President Trump, she doesn’t believe he’s the best person for the job.

For his part, President Trump has thrown his weight behind U.S. Navy veteran Jerrod Sessler to oust Mr. Newhouse in Washington’s Aug. 6, 2024, primary, meaning Ms. Smiley must contend with a Trump-endorsed candidate in the primary.

Of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach President Trump for the second time, the only ones still left in office are Mr. Newhouse and Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.).

‘Referendum On The Border’

In her campaign announcement video, Ms. Smiley highlighted border security as a key issue in the 2024 election.

While she did not lay out her policy proposal for bolstering border security in the brief video, she did elaborate on the matter in an op-ed in the Tri-City Herald at the end of March. In it, she argued that Washington state may be far from the U.S.-Mexico border but that doesn’t mean it’s immune from the problems associated with illegal immigration.

“Thanks to the policies of the Biden administration, every state is now a border state and Washington is no exception,” she wrote. “The drugs that used to seem so far away are now in our neighborhoods, in our schools and on our streets.”

Besides deadly drugs like fentanyl pouring across the border and into U.S. communities, she said there are other problems associated with a porous border, including U.S. citizen deaths at the hands of illegal immigrants.

“This year must be a referendum on the border and the failures of those we elected to fix it,” she wrote, while calling for a combination of electronic barriers and physical border wall. Ms. Smiley also called for reinstating the Trump-era Remain in Mexico policy and said that the United States should consider imposing tariffs on Mexico to encourage Mexican cooperation in stemming the influx.

“The border is no longer just a problem for southern states. It’s touching every state in our nation, and any candidate unwilling to do the hard work of securing our homeland is a candidate undeserving of your vote,” she wrote.

Mr. Sessler, her Trump-endorsed rival in the primary race to oust Mr. Newhouse, has also pledged to fight for border security, along with tackling bloated government bureaucracy and taking on the excesses of the progressive left in education and elsewhere, such as critical race theory.

Border Wall Support

The latest data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows that another 137,480 illegal immigrants were caught entering the United States between ports of entry in March.

This brings the total number of people (excluding gotaways) who entered the country illegally under President Joe Biden to over 9 million—though many believe the true number is far higher.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said in mid-April that he believes the 9 million is a vast undercount and that the true number is closer to 16 million.

“Since Joe Biden went into the Oval Office, it began on day one, they began to open that border wide,” the speaker said during an April 10 press conference, while noting that the Biden administration had taken over 60 specific executive actions and agency actions to “open the border wide.”

Illegal immigration has become a key concern of voters this election year, with a recent Monmouth poll showing that, for the first time in the survey’s history, a majority of Americans support building a wall along the U.S.–Mexico border.

Public concern about the border crisis is higher during President Biden’s term than under the prior two administrations, according to the poll, which was released at the end of February.

More than six in 10 Americans think illegal immigration is a “very serious” problem, a sharp increase from 2015 and 2019, when Monmouth polls found that 43 percent and 49 percent, respectively, held that view.

When adding people who think illegal immigration is a somewhat serious problem (23 percent), the percentage of Americans who are concerned about the border crisis stands at 84 percent.

“Illegal immigration has taken center stage as a defining issue this presidential election year,” Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said in a statement.

Although concern about illegal immigration has risen the most among Republicans (91 percent said it’s very serious), all voter groups have grown more worried about the border crisis, the Monmouth poll showed.

In a potential blow to President Biden’s chances at reelection, 58 percent of independents said illegal immigration is a very serious problem, up from a little more than 40 percent who said the same thing in 2015 and 2019.