A last-ditch push by dissident Kentucky Republican Representative Thomas Massie to impeach U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth collapsed on Capitol Hill Tuesday, after a majority of House members voted to relegate the eight formal articles of impeachment to the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee, a procedural move that effectively shelved the removal initiative for the dwindling final weeks of the current congressional session.
The impeachment resolution, formally tabled by Massie on Monday, levied two core sets of allegations against Hegseth: first, that he had overseen 90+ days of active military operations against Iran without explicit congressional authorization, in direct violation of U.S. war powers statutes, and second, that he had permitted extrajudicial killings during U.S. counter-narcotics interdiction missions targeting suspected drug-smuggling vessels operating across the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea. From its introduction, the bid was widely viewed as a long shot, as it would have required dozens of Republican lawmakers to break openly with sitting President Donald Trump to advance the process.
The final recorded tally stood at 211 to 204 in favor of referring the articles to committee, with Massie casting the lone Republican vote against the referral, while 11 Democratic lawmakers joined over a dozen total absent members who skipped the vote entirely. With Democrats set to seize full control of both the U.S. House and Senate chambers in January following their midterm election victories, the committee referral all but guarantees the impeachment push will not move forward under GOP congressional leadership, even though impeachment resolutions can technically carry over across congressional terms for incoming Democratic lawmakers to revisit next year.
Hegseth, delivering his first public Pentagon press briefing in six months, lambasted the impeachment initiative as a partisan farce, petty political stunt, and deliberate act of sabotage that endangered U.S. national security. He argued the resolution sent a dangerous signal to America’s global adversaries that the U.S. would punish its own civilian defense leadership for executing lawful, successful military operations, and emphasized the allegations stemmed from trivial policy disagreements rather than the high crimes and misdemeanors the U.S. Constitution’s impeachment clause was designed to address. His remarks aligned closely with statements Trump delivered during an unannounced Monday appearance in the White House press briefing room, where the president highlighted record-high U.S. military recruitment numbers and recent operational victories in Iran and Venezuela.
Trump celebrated the procedural defeat of the impeachment bid in a public Truth Social post, framing the outcome as full exoneration for Hegseth, who he described as a loyal American patriot. Massie, who lost his 2024 re-election primary to a Trump-endorsed rival, had openly acknowledged his impeachment push faced steep immediate odds, but argued advancing it would pressure Trump to replace Hegseth before the Democratic majority took power, giving the still-GOP-controlled Senate time to confirm a successor before the opposition party controlled the chamber. The Kentucky congressman, a longstanding critic of both the Trump administration’s unauthorized Iran military campaign and the president’s refusal to release full records related to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, framed his initiative as a necessary check on executive overreach, even as fellow Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson had predicted its failure hours before the vote.
Even with the immediate impeachment threat neutralized, Hegseth’s long-term position in the Trump administration remains uncertain, with high-profile Republican figures including Texas Senator Ted Cruz publicly stating Tuesday that he expects Hegseth will either voluntarily resign or be dismissed by President Trump in the near future.
US House blocks bid to impeach Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, for now
