WASHINGTON (AP) — The House on Tuesday turned aside a resolution to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, halting an effort to remove the Pentagon chief for his conduct in office and his handling of the war in Iran.
The vote came as Republicans grapple with the fallout from sweeping midterm losses that some in the party have blamed on the war in Iran and the resulting surge in gas prices. But after President Donald Trump signaled strong support for Hegseth, GOP lawmakers largely stood by the secretary Tuesday, blocking the effort in a near party-line vote.
The effort was led by Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie and backed by Democrats. The vote Tuesday may only delay an impeachment push against Hegseth, with Democrats set to take control of the House and Senate in January.
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is expected to become the next speaker when Democrats take charge in January, stood firmly behind the push, saying Hegseth has “abused his power” and “undermined America’s national security.”
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer endorsed Hegseth’s impeachment as well.
Hegseth rebuked the effort Tuesday in his first news conference in months, portraying Massie as a rogue lawmaker and arguing he had committed none of the high crimes required in the Constitution for his removal. He framed the effort as an indictment against the nation’s service members and their successes and said it was undermining American forces “in real time.”
“This is not patriotism,” Hegseth said. “This is sabotage.”
Massie’s resolution included eight counts of impeachment. It largely focused on the war in Iran but also included references to Hegseth’s role in carrying out military actions in Yemen and Venezuela.
Massie, a Kentucky Republican leaving Congress in January after losing his primary to a Trump-backed opponent, says Hegseth has “knowingly executed and implemented unlawful orders.”
Hegseth holds rare press conference
Tuesday morning, Hegseth gave a defiant and politicized defense of his stewardship of the U.S. military in his first news conference at the Pentagon in six months. He chose to hit back at the rising bipartisan anger over battlefield strategy while offering few details about intermittent operations against Iran or fatal strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in Latin America.
Hegseth said the impeachment resolution “tells our enemies — Iran, the cartels, every adversary watching — the United States will actually punish its own warriors and its own civilian leadership for successfully executing lawful military operations.”
Trump praised Hegseth’s performance at the briefing in a social media post, while Vice President JD Vance said in his own post that the impeachment effort is “a ridiculous show that stands in for actual policymaking.”
Trump celebrated the House vote later Tuesday, saying on social media that it was the exoneration of “a Great American Patriot.”
Impeachment effort falls short
Massie filed the resolution in the House on Monday as lawmakers returned to Washington. Tuesday’s vote was a procedural attempt to stop the impeachment push outright by sending the matter back to committee. The motion succeeded 211-204, with a number of Democrats missing the vote.
Massie’s resolution had eight counts of impeachment that focused on U.S. military actions or changes on Hegseth’s watch. They include reported reductions in staff and resources at a Pentagon office focused on mitigating civilian harm, which preceded a U.S. missile striking an Iranian primary school during the war, killing up to 168 people.
“The law requires our military to withdraw from hostilities within 60 days if Congress does not authorize the activity,” Massie wrote on social media Tuesday. The Iran war “has been underway for 256 days. Congress has not authorized it. Hegseth is breaking the law.”
Another article of impeachment focused on Hegseth’s attempt to punish Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, a retired Navy pilot, for participating in a video that called on troops to resist unlawful orders. Massie also called out U.S. military strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in Latin America and the failure to rescue survivors, which Massie argued will encourage adversaries to treat American forces the same way.
What constitutes “high crimes and misdemeanors” is not spelled out in the Constitution, leaving it to lawmakers to decide what are impeachable acts.
Hegseth said Massie’s concerns are not impeachable, calling them “policy disagreements, not high crimes, not misdemeanors, not treason, not bribery, not the kinds of offenses the founders intended when they wrote the impeachment clause.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson called it a “political gambit for attention” and predicted Republicans would defeat it “one way or the other.”
Some Republicans were critical of Hegseth in the run-up to the vote, but said they didn’t believe he had committed impeachable offenses. Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican who is retiring after this year, said he didn’t agree with the “merit” of the impeachment although he is “critical of the secretary.”
“I have a lot of other things I thought were failures by the secretary,” Bacon said. “We control the agenda. We should be doing hearings.”
This isn’t the first impeachment attempt in recent years
Hegseth cast Massie’s resolution in historic terms, arguing that no defense secretary has been impeached in the nation’s 250-year history “for carrying out lawful military operations.”
But more recently, a Cabinet official in President Joe Biden’s administration, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, was impeached by House Republicans over his handling of the U.S.-Mexico border. The Senate dismissed all impeachment charges, shutting down his trial before arguments even began.
Mayorkas, who did not appear to testify before the impeachment proceedings, put the border crisis squarely on Congress for failing to update immigration laws during a time of global migration. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had said then, in April 2024, that House Republicans’ charges failed to meet “the high standard of high crimes and misdemeanors” and could set a dangerous precedent.
Before Mayorkas, no sitting Cabinet secretary had ever been impeached. It was nearly 150 years ago that the House voted to impeach President Ulysses S. Grant’s war secretary, William Belknap, over a kickback scheme in government contracts. He resigned before the vote.
Trump offers support for Hegseth
Trump backed Hegseth in the wake of Massie’s impeachment resolution, pointing to the U.S. military raid to capture then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January as well as operations against Iran that he asserts have “obliterated” its navy and air force.
“Pete Hegseth gets an “A” PLUS, PLUS, PLUS for his defense against a disgruntled, angry, defeated, former Congressman, Thomas Massie, a TOTAL LOSER!” Trump wrote Tuesday on Truth Social.
Iran, however, has been able to keep striking U.S. military bases in the Middle East and has disrupted shipping in the Strait of Hormuz during the more than 8-month-old conflict, driving up global oil prices.
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Associated Press writer Steve Peoples in New York and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.