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The House of Representatives has blocked an effort to impeach Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, voting 211-204 on Tuesday to refer eight articles of impeachment to the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee — a procedural move that effectively kills the measure before the current Congress expires.
The articles were introduced by Republican congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who accused Hegseth of waging war against Iran for more than 90 days without congressional authorisation, in violation of the War Powers Act. The articles also alleged that Hegseth oversaw what Massie called “extrajudicial killings” during a US naval campaign targeting vessels alleged to be carrying drugs in the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.
Massie was the only Republican to vote against sending the resolution to committee. More than a dozen members were absent from the chamber, including 11 Democrats, narrowing the margin. Because only a short period remains before Democrats assume control of both chambers in January following their midterm election victory, the referral to committee is widely understood to be a burial rather than a delay within this Congress.
Impeachment resolutions can, however, be carried over past the end of a congressional term, meaning the incoming Democratic majority will be able to take up the matter when the new Congress convenes.
Hegseth calls it ‘sabotage’
Speaking at his first Pentagon news briefing in six months, Hegseth dismissed the impeachment effort as a “farce” and “sabotage”, saying Massie was motivated by policy disagreements rather than genuine constitutional offences. “This is not patriotism. This is sabotage,” Hegseth said, arguing that the resolution endangered national security by signalling to adversaries that the United States would “punish its own warriors and its own civilian leadership for successfully executing lawful military operations.”
He also said the charges did not meet the constitutional threshold for impeachment, describing them as falling short of “high crimes, not misdemeanours, not treason, not bribery, not the kinds of offences the founders intended when they wrote the impeachment clause.”
President Donald Trump celebrated the outcome on Truth Social, writing that the impeachment effort “has miserably FAILED” and calling Hegseth “a Great American Patriot”. Trump cited what he described as military victories in Venezuela and Iran and record recruitment numbers as evidence of Hegseth’s performance.
Massie ‘disappointed’ but not surprised
After the vote, Massie told CBS — the BBC’s US media partner — that he “wasn’t surprised” but “was disappointed”. He had previously acknowledged the bid might not succeed immediately, arguing instead that it could pressure Trump to replace Hegseth before Democrats could launch their own impeachment process, and that doing so now would give the Republican-controlled Senate time to confirm a successor.
“My diagnosis of Congress is these people know what to do,” Massie said. “They just can’t bring themselves to do it, even when it would benefit them politically.”
Massie, who lost his re-election bid earlier this year to a Trump-backed opponent, has been a persistent critic of the Iran war since it began in February and had previously drawn the president’s anger by demanding the release of files related to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, had predicted earlier on Tuesday that the impeachment effort would fail. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, also a Republican, said separately that he expected Hegseth to resign or be fired by Trump, a remark that underscored the unease some in the party feel about the defence secretary even as they declined to support Massie’s measure.
With Democrats set to control both chambers from January, the question of Hegseth’s tenure is unlikely to be resolved by Tuesday’s vote alone.