What happens next in the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas?

But just like the Senate’s regular standing rules, the body’s impeachment trial rules are not “self-enforcing.”

“That means that if the Senate doesn’t move to consider the impeachment resolution and have a trial, if they just ignore it, a senator could raise a point of order to enforce them and then the Senate would have a vote on that point of order to decide whether or not they were going to honor their rules,” said James Wallner, senior fellow at the R Street Institute and and political science lecturer at Clemson University in South Carolina.

“But if a senator didn’t raise a point of order, and they all just ignored it, then the Senate could just ignore the rules. Of course, in a situation like this, that’s unlikely to happen,” said Wallner, who writes a helpful blog on what happens inside the halls of Congress.

Wallner was the executive director of the Senate Steering Committee during the chairmanships of GOP Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and the now retired Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

“The takeaway is … they have to act in some way,” Wallner said…

Circumstances aside, impeachment and Senate trials are overall rare, Wallner said.

“They’ve only impeached a handful of people in the House. They’ve only had trials for a handful of people in the Senate. It’s just this is a rare power to begin with,” Wallner said.

“… And I mean, I think to the extent that it is becoming more common today, I think that’s the more interesting story, not so much (that it’s happening) to a Cabinet official, but more to how we conduct our politics.”