Republican Massie forces vote to impeach Defense Secretary Hegseth

Rep. Thomas Massie introduced eight articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday, forcing a House vote by Wednesday.

Massie, an outgoing Republican from Kentucky, accused Hegseth from the House floor of “high crimes and misdemeanors” and of executing “unlawful orders” in office, the Guardian reported. The resolution charges Hegseth with waging war without congressional authorization, violating laws meant to protect civilians, and abusing the powers of his office.

The vote would be the first against a Cabinet secretary since House Republicans impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in 2024. If it succeeds, Hegseth would become the third Cabinet official impeached in U.S. history, CNN reported. It comes after Democrats swept the House and Senate in midterm elections that President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other Republican leaders have attributed to the Iran war and its economic fallout, the Guardian reported.

Massie first filed the articles on Sept. 15. House Speaker Mike Johnson sent the chamber into recess before the resolution could be heard. Massie reintroduced them Monday under a House rule that gives leaders two legislative days to schedule a vote, CNN reported.

The eight articles span four countries. In Iran, the resolution charges Hegseth with directing U.S. forces into hostilities “absent a declaration of war, other statutory authorization or a national emergency.” The articles quote Hegseth boasting of a Pentagon culture dismissive of “stupid rules of engagement” and oriented toward “maximum lethality, not tepid legality,” and argue that a U.S. strike that hit an elementary school in Iran, which killed more than 100 children, was a foreseeable result, CNN reported.

In Yemen, the articles accuse Hegseth of conducting an unlawful war that contributed to civilian deaths. In Venezuela, they describe the operation that ended in the capture of President Nicolás Maduro as “an act of war against a sovereign country executed under the guise of narcotics law enforcement.”

The resolution also covers the Pentagon’s campaign against suspected drug boats in the Caribbean. At least 80 vessels have been destroyed and 243 people killed since the operations began in September 2025, CNN reported, with the Pentagon providing no public evidence against those killed. The articles call the sinkings extrajudicial killings and note that crews were left without rescue.

A separate article charges that Hegseth’s investigation and threatened prosecution of Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat, for calling on troops to disobey illegal orders violated the First Amendment, the Guardian reported.

Hegseth spent Monday morning at the Naval War College announcing changes to military education, saying the goal was to enable officers “to wage war with such devastating speed, precision and lethality that no adversary dares test American deterrence,” the Guardian reported.

He told reporters he was not worried about impeachment and agreed with Trump that he would launch the Iran war again if given a do-over, CNN reported. He called disagreements over his conduct “disagreements with success” and said those who question the operations are “taking issue with the troops.”

In a video posted Thursday on X, Hegseth compared his situation to Trump’s two impeachments. “It’s all about the politics of personal destruction,” he said, the Associated Press reported. “Didn’t work against President Trump, and it won’t work with me.” The watchdog groups Common Cause and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said the video violated the Hatch Act, which bars the use of government funds for partisan purposes.

The White House is standing by him. Trump told reporters last week that Hegseth was doing “a very good job,” CNN reported. Hegseth welcomed the promotion of Stephen Miller to chief of staff with a social media post reading “Stand. Fight.”

The political ground has shifted under both men. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who is expected to become speaker when the new Congress convenes in January, told ABC News on Sunday that he is a “hard yes” on impeachment. “Hegseth has got to go,” Jeffries said, the Guardian reported.

Republicans retain control of the House until the new members are seated, and GOP leaders can move to table the resolution. But the vote puts every Republican on the record days after an election in which voters rejected the war Hegseth ran. Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, who remains loyal to Trump, expressed reservations about Hegseth last week, CNN reported.

Conviction requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate, a threshold no Cabinet secretary has met. Secretary of War William Belknap was impeached in 1876 after taking kickbacks; he resigned in a tearful meeting with President Ulysses S. Grant, and the Senate failed to convict, CNN reported. The Senate voted to kill the articles against Mayorkas in 2024.

The impeachment drama unfolds against a Dec. 11 deadline to fund the government and the Senate passage of a defense spending bill, CNN reported. Hegseth’s presence complicates both.

What I think

The articles of impeachment are serious, and the conduct they describe is the kind that impeachment was designed to address. A defense secretary who wages war without Congress, kills civilians in a school strike he calls foreseeable, and sinks boats without trial is not a bureaucrat who displeased the opposition. He is an official who claims powers the Constitution does not give him.

The politics are less clean. Massie lost his primary to a pro-Trump rival and is on his way out of the House. Jeffries and the Democrats who will run the chamber next year have their own reasons to want a recorded vote before January, when the question becomes theirs to schedule. A bipartisan impeachment in the lame duck lets Republicans who lost their seats vote against Hegseth without consequence, and lets incoming Democrats avoid owning the process.

That does not make the vote wrong. It makes it convenient, and those two things can coexist. The strongest argument for impeachment is the one Massie has been making since September: Congress declared the power to make war, and a secretary who takes that power for himself should lose his job whether his party controls the Senate or not. The weakest response is Hegseth’s, which is to call his critics enemies of the troops and dare the Senate to convict him.

He is betting that the two-thirds threshold protects him. It probably does. But a strong House vote, with Republicans joining, would leave him governing with a mark that no Cabinet secretary has survived politically. Trump is standing by him for now. Trump stood by a lot of people in his first term until he didn’t. The question after Wednesday is whether Hegseth keeps enough Republican support to make the defense cheaper than the removal. After the midterms, that math is harder than it was in September.