Hegseth Impeachment Bid Blocked By House Republicans
The vote sends Massie’s charges to a committee, where he says they will die. But 11 Democrats did not vote, and enough of them could have changed the result.
WASHINGTON, Nov 11 – The Hegseth impeachment push hit a wall on Tuesday. Republicans in the House of Representatives voted it down, giving Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth a reprieve.
But it may not last long. Democrats take control of Congress in January, and they could try again.
The vote was 211 to 204. It was on a procedural motion to send the eight articles of impeachment to the House Judiciary Committee, which Republicans run. Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican who brought the charges, had warned that such a move would kill them.
Massie had hoped other Republicans would join him. Some are unhappy with Hegseth. Some are worried about the war in Iran which is unpopular. But in the end, not one other Republican voted with him.
Democrats backed the charges. Still, 11 of them did not vote, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California. If eight of them had voted, the motion would have failed. That would have opened the way to a full vote on impeachment.
A spokesman for Pelosi said she had flown home to San Francisco for a yearly event to honor veterans. He said she would have voted against the motion.
The charges accuse Hegseth of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” They say he broke the law by ordering the military to fight in Iran and Yemen. They also cover strikes on boats in the Caribbean and the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January. Congress never approved the war with Iran. Under the Constitution, only Congress can declare war.
Massie was not happy with the result. He compared his fellow Republicans to people on the Titanic.
“They know it’s a sinking ship but committed to stay on board,” he said.
President Donald Trump cheered the vote. In a Social media post, he said the push to impeach Hegseth “has miserably failed.” He praised Hegseth’s work on Iran, Venezuela and other issues. He called him a great American patriot.
Just hours before the vote, Hegseth had hit back hard. He held his first news briefing at the Pentagon in six months. He called the impeachment push a farce. He said his orders to the troops were lawful. And he said Iran’s military was now in ruins.
“History will judge the Iran war quite differently than the conventional wisdom right now,” Hegseth said.
Vice President JD Vance also spoke up for him. Vance publicly has raised doubts about the war. He has even blamed it for the party’s losses in last week’s elections. But on Tuesday he said the fight over Hegseth was about something else. He said Hegseth was being targeted for taking on the Pentagon’s bureaucracy.
“This isn’t about Iran,” Vance wrote on social media.
Democrats see it very differently. On Monday, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said Hegseth had abused his power and harmed the country’s security. He called the Iran war reckless and costly.
So what comes next is up to Jeffries and his party. He said he would talk to his members about a new push in the next Congress.
“We’ll have that conversation at the appropriate time,” Jeffries said.
A push led by Democrats could be much tougher. They could call top military officers to testify. That could include the generals and admirals Hegseth has fired, who have stayed quiet so far. Among them are the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Navy’s top admiral. Democrats could also raise the Pentagon’s policy on Ukraine and the strikes on suspected drug boats.
Anger over the Iran war helped Democrats win both houses of Congress last week. The war has now settled into a stalemate, with both sides on keeping the Strait of Hormuz open.
A Reuters and Ipsos poll out on Tuesday found that most Americans want the new Congress to act to end the war for good. Some Republicans also worry about Hegseth’s poor ties with Congress. They say it could hurt the push to raise the military’s budget from $950 billion to $1.5 trillion.
Hegseth would have been the first defense secretary ever to be impeached. The last civilian head of the military to be impeached was William Belknap, the Secretary of War, in 1876.
Hegseth now calls himself secretary of war too. It is part of his push to remake a military he called too weak and “woke” when he took office. But only Congress can change the name of the Defense Department.
