What to know about the Republican-led effort to impeach Pete Hegseth
To figure out what awaits for Hegseth and what it could mean for the Iran war, Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram spoke with the Washington Post’s Dan Lamothe about the impeachment effort, how the Pentagon is feeling after eight months of the Iran war, and whether there’s an off-ramp in sight.
Key points
- The president has defended his defense secretary and called the impeachment drive the effort of “a stone cold loser.”.
- On Tuesday, he defended his tenure atop the Pentagon in a rare press conference, calling the impeachment effort a “political spectacle, a personal manifesto driven by ego and resentment.” Following the press conference, President Donald Trump posted online that Hegseth deserves an “A PLUS PLUS PLUS” for defending himself.
- A lot of Democrats have been saying that they want to impeach Pete Hegseth if they take control.
| Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth may be on track to become just the third Cabinet member in history to be impeached, after Republican Rep.
Additional details
- Thomas Massie (R-KY) speaks during a press conference on articles of impeachment against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on November 9, 2026.
- Others accuse Hegseth of carrying out unlawful military strikes against boats carrying alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean and the Pacific, suppressing free speech, kidnapping former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and waging unlawful war in Yemen.
- Some articles of impeachment, which accuse Hegseth of high crimes and misdemeanors, focus on Hegseth’s conduct during the Iran war, including waging war without congressional authorization.
- On the Iran issue, it’s a little more complicated because you can think the policy of going into the war with Iran is problematic, detrimental to the national security of the country based on the amount of munitions we’re using, a variety of things.
- Either way, you’ve got an on-the-record rebuke, and you also have a forcing function to get every single member either on the record voting for it or on the record that they avoided voting for it.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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