The US House of Representatives has rejected an attempt to impeach Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth. A motion to refer eight articles of impeachment to a committee passed by 211 votes in favour and 204 against.
The articles of impeachment were submitted by Republican Representative Thomas Massie. He alleged that the Defence Secretary committed a series of unlawful acts, including the killing of civilians in Iran, the launch of unauthorised operations in Venezuela and Yemen, and retaliation against a Democratic senator. The impeachment attempt also rejected claims that the Defence Secretary repeatedly violated the Constitution through his conduct of the war with Iran and other conflicts around the world.
The vote came one week after the mid-term elections. The Pentagon declared a "complete victory" following the blockage of the impeachment vote. Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell wrote in a social media post that referring these "baseless" articles of impeachment to the House Judiciary Committee represents a complete victory for Secretary Hegseth, the Department of War and the American warrior. He added that they look forward to the conclusion of this "false" procedure in the committee, where, he noted, facts will continue to prevail.
Donald Trump celebrated the outcome of the vote as an "exoneration of a great American patriot." On Truth Social, he stated that Democrats continue to abuse the United States and that this must be stopped. Hegseth claimed at a Pentagon press conference that the articles of impeachment were baseless and that all strikes were conducted lawfully. "As for the articles themselves, Iran, cartels, Maduro, Yemen — these were all lawful operations ordered by the Commander-in-Chief, then by me, of which Congress was informed and which were carried out by American warriors doing their job," Hegseth said. He added that they had destroyed the capabilities of terrorist regimes, sunk ships transporting poison to their communities and put a narco-dictator in handcuffs, asserting that these were not serious criminal offences but a job well done.
Hegseth called the impeachment a "political spectacle" organised by the ousted congressman from Kentucky, describing it as a farce and a trick. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader in the House of Representatives, supported the effort to impeach Hegseth. He accused the Defence Secretary of "undermining American national security." In an interview with PBS, he said he was "firmly for the Hegseth resolution" and that Hegseth had abused his power and was the architect of a reckless and expensive war of choice in Iran, which had made the country less safe and life more expensive for Americans.
There were also changes in Republican leadership. Congressman Jim Jordan won the election for the next Republican minority leader in Congress, defeating Representative Steve Scalise with a result of 106 to 73 in a closed-door vote. Jordan, who has been serving since January, replaces current House Speaker Mike Johnson, who said he would not run when Republicans hand control to the Democrats. Republicans in the upper house re-elected John Thune as the leader of the Republican minority in the next term; the Republican senator from North Dakota had no opponent in the closed-door vote.
In other political developments, nine members of the Kennedy family sued the Trump administration, seeking to block the construction of a 250-foot-high arch. The lawsuit states that the arch, planned near Arlington National Cemetery, would obscure the Kennedy graves, the JFK eternal flame and cemetery views, "permanently diminishing these memorial features." A federal judge allowed Trump's defamation lawsuit against the BBC to proceed; Trump is suing the British public broadcaster for $10 billion over an edited clip that created the impression that he told his supporters to attack the Capitol on 6 January 2021. Reporters Without Borders called on the new Democratic Congress to impeach Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, asserting that his tenure has been marked by a campaign to intimidate and punish media that the president dislikes. RSF Executive Director for North America Clayton Weimers assessed that few individuals are more deserving of the White House's efforts to weaken the First Amendment than Carr.
On the foreign policy front, while world leaders begin formal talks tomorrow at the UN climate change conference, the United States is skipping the climate summit for the second year in a row. Outgoing California Governor Gavin Newsom will lead the delegation to Cop31, which is being held in Turkey this year; his public relations office stated on social media that Donald Trump is skipping the summit again and thereby embarrassing America on the world stage. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated that the United States and China should cooperate on mitigating artificial intelligence risks despite competing for dominance. Bessent travels to China next week for the third meeting this year between Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, which is expected on the sidelines of the APEC summit. He said that cooperation would protect against common risks and prevent misunderstandings between the two systems, that he expects an exchange of best practices for assessing and testing advanced models before their release, and that the two countries keep human judgment firmly at the head of the technology. He added that the two countries had agreed to establish a direct channel for mutual warning on serious incidents. The conflict with Iran proved divisive among Republicans, with a small but growing number of them voting with Democrats on war powers resolutions demanding Trump end hostilities before the mid-term elections.
