House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that he is "a hard yes" on the impeachment resolution against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, telling host Jonathan Karl that "Pete Hegseth has got to go," according to ABC News. The Epoch Times, which transcribed the interview, has him adding that the "so-called secretary of defense has abused his power, undermined our national security and engineered this reckless and costly war of choice in Iran."
In an NPR "Morning Edition" interview on Nov. 6, Jeffries called Hegseth "the most unqualified secretary of defense in American history" and said "He's got to go," but when asked directly about impeachment he said, "I don't want to get out ahead of the caucus," per NPR's write-up. On Wednesday, the morning after Democrats won the House and Senate, he told reporters that not one House Democrat had raised impeachment with him, as we reported.
Asked on Sunday whether all House Democrats would follow him, Jeffries did not claim a whip count. "We'll certainly have that conversation on Tuesday morning when we reconvene for the first time in Washington, D.C.," he said, adding that he expects "incredibly strong support" for the resolution.
The impeachment articles are not a Democratic vehicle: they belong to Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who is leaving Congress after losing his primary to a Trump-backed challenger and plans to reintroduce his impeachment articles as early as Monday, ABC reports. Because it is a privileged resolution, leaders must schedule a vote within two legislative days, or move to table it.
Massie first filed the 34-page, eight-article resolution on the House floor on Sept. 15. CBS News summarized it as charging that Hegseth violated the 1973 War Powers Resolution by waging the Iran war without a declaration from Congress, ignored laws meant to limit civilian casualties (including a strike on a girls' school in Iran), and retaliated against Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) after he urged service members to "refuse illegal orders." Others cover boat strikes in the Caribbean, the capture of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro and strikes on Yemen. The Pentagon's press secretary, Kingsley Wilson, answered at the time that Hegseth is a "transformative leader" and the department is "unified behind the Secretary's vision."
Speaker Mike Johnson sent members home early for the campaign recess without a House vote, and Massie said in an October post that he would reintroduce the articles when Congress returned, per Scripps. After the election he added a condition. "There is one contingency in which I won't reintroduce the articles of impeachment: Hegseth resigns," he wrote on X on Wednesday. He has also urged Trump to fire Hegseth quickly so the Republican Senate could confirm a successor before Democrats take over in January, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reports.
Neither man at the top of the administration is budging. Hegseth answered in a roughly six-minute video on X on Thursday, calling Massie "a disgruntled, defeated congressman" who, "along with all his Democrat allies, has also dropped sham articles of impeachment against yours truly." Trump has said Hegseth is doing a "fantastic job" and that he intends to keep him, per ABC and the Star-Advertiser. Vice President JD Vance, for his part, blamed the midterm rout on the war: "The reason we lost is the war."
Even if the House impeaches Hegseth, the Senate must begin a trial unless Republicans vote to set it aside, and conviction takes a two-thirds vote that Democrats, who take control of the chamber only in January, would need many Republicans to reach. House Democrats had already introduced their own six articles against Hegseth in April over the Iran war, per Scripps. What changes Tuesday is the leader of the caucus attaching his name to a Republican's resolution, days after saying he would not get ahead of his members.