House GOP leaders said they would quash the impeachment resolution against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. On Tuesday, they managed to do just that.
In a 211-204 vote, the House adopted a procedural motion to refer the impeachment resolution to the Judiciary Committee, effectively shelving the effort.
Rep. Thomas Massie was the only Republican to vote with Democrats to keep the impeachment resolution alive, allowing GOP leaders to block the resolution from advancing to a final vote and denying Massie — who spearheaded the impeachment drive — a chance to force a vote on whether Hegseth should be removed from office.
While Republicans worried that attendance could allow Democrats to succeed, the vote Tuesday saw Democrats having more missing lawmakers than Republicans, though that also means the effort could succeed on another day with more favorable numbers — or when Democrats take back the majority in January.
At the moment, however, the successful procedural vote is a relief for Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. — especially after last week’s crushing midterm election losses. On Tuesday, the speaker told MS NOW he was confident Republicans had the votes to defeat the effort — and hours later, even with slim GOP margins, Johnson was right.
The vote also marks a show of support for President Donald Trump, who mounted an aggressive campaign to defend Hegseth from the charges.
In a series of Truth Social posts, Trump said Hegseth “should be praised, not impeached,” and he gave the secretary an “‘A’ PLUS, PLUS, PLUS” for his press conference responding to the effort.
Massie’s eight articles accused the Pentagon secretary of, among other things, waging war against Iran without congressional authorization, ordering extrajudicial killings in connection with the boat strikes in the Caribbean, and participating in the kidnapping of a sovereign foreign leader — namely, former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
On Tuesday morning, in a rare press conference, Hegseth hit back at the effort to impeach him while appealing to Trump.
Hegseth likened Massie to a “disgruntled congressman” and called the impeachment effort a “political spectacle.” He also invoked one of Trump’s go-to attack lines — railing against the so-called “perfect call” with Ukraine that served as a central piece of evidence in Democrats’ first impeachment of the president.
In the lead-up to Tuesday’s vote, Massie had tried to make the case to retiring GOP lawmakers that this was their chance to rein in Trump and Hegseth.
“What do they have to lose?” Massie asked.
But Republicans were, by and large, unconvinced.
Rep. Mike Lawler, who lost a re-election bid in New York, for instance, told MS NOW in a text message that he didn’t agree with the process.
“There have been no hearings, no investigations, no opportunity for the Secretary to answer the charges (whatever they are),” he wrote in part. “One member should not be foisting this upon the entire Congress.”
The vote to kill the impeachment resolution — at least for now — doesn’t mean every House Republican supports the defense secretary.
“I think he should resign,” one House Republican, who was granted anonymity because they were not yet ready to take a public stance on the issue, told MS NOW last week. “He needs to have the honor and the integrity of knowing that he’s done a bad job in service to the country in this particular position, and he needs to resign and save face.”
A second GOP lawmaker, who was also granted anonymity to discuss the internal dynamics, told MS NOW that “there’s a ton of members that have been wanting to take this vote, and we don’t have that big of a majority.”
But the dissatisfaction with Hegseth did not translate into support for moving ahead with impeachment.
The GOP leadership’s successful bid to scuttle Massie’s impeachment effort in the House comes a week after voters nationwide offered a resounding rebuke of the Republican Party over concerns about the cost of living and the Iran war — an issue Democrats tied to the price of fuel — opting to hand Democrats control of both the House and the Senate next year.
Meanwhile, Democrats are already eying ways to end the Iran conflict — even before they get the committee gavels — including using a Dec. 11 government funding deadline and a Dec. 31 annual defense bill deadline as leverage.
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