• Hegseth impeachment efforts: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will hold a rare press conference this morning after GOP Rep. Thomas Massie introduced articles of impeachment against him yesterday , in a move Hegseth has brushed off. A vote will have to happen by Wednesday. President Donald Trump has pledged to stand by Hegseth if he is impeached.
• Next GOP leader: Later today, Republicans are scheduled to hold votes for the next leader of their conference in the House and Senate. Reps. Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan are competing to be the GOP minority leader after Speaker Mike Johnson announced he would not seek the post.
• Midterms latest: There are 13 House races not yet called, and the Mississippi Senate race remains too close to call. Alaska, too, is yet to see a Senate race result.
A week after a punishing midterm election, more than 30 Republican leaders from across the country are asking House and Senate leaders to delay leadership elections for at least a month “to do some serious soul-searching about how we got here and what we must do to right the ship.”
The letter, which is being sent today to all Republican members of Congress, was obtained by CNN.
It was signed by RNC members representing states from Arkansas to Wyoming, in hopes of delaying leadership elections that are scheduled to take place today.
Meanwhile, Republicans are scheduled to hold leadership elections today.
While Senate Majority Leader John Thune is still expected to keep his position as the top GOP senator next Congress, some senators are pushing to postpone their elections, showing potential discontent and frustration in the ranks as Republicans prepare to move into the minority.
A lawmaker will likely offer a motion to delay leadership elections, which would lead to a secret ballot. If it succeeds, the leadership election will be delayed. If it fails, as many suspect, then GOP senators will vote to reelect Thune.
Some of the senators pushing to delay, like Mike Lee and Ron Johnson, have not held back their criticism of leadership in the past, but Dave McCormick and Jim Banks have joined their demand for a delay.
GOP conference rules dictate that five senators can demand a special conference for a meeting to discuss any topic.
Banks echoed McCormick’s concerns yesterday.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth faces an impeachment vote this week, which, if successful, would make him the third Cabinet secretary to be impeached.
Impeachment is an allegation of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
In 1876, Secretary of War William Belknap faced impeachment for taking kickbacks.
Belknap was the poster child for the rot in the US government during the Gilded Age. He tried to head off impeachment by resigning in a tearful admission to President Ulysses S. Grant at the White House. He was still impeached, although the Senate failed to convict Belknap.
The most recent Cabinet member to face impeachment was President Joe Biden’s secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas . House Republicans voted to impeach Mayorkas by a narrow margin over his handling of immigration at the southern border.
But the process requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate to convict on impeachment charges, and that has never happened for an executive branch official.
For his part, Hegseth is accused of overstepping his authority in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, breaking the law by making war without congressional authorization, failing to minimize civilian casualties, extrajudicial killings and more.
The articles of impeachment against Hegseth were written, even before the midterms, by anti-war Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie.
Now that Republicans have lost the House and Senate, there is conjecture that some may join Massie and Democrats in voting to impeach Hegseth.
GOP Rep. Thomas Massie explains his reasoning for bringing eight articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at a press conference just minutes after formally introducing them on the House floor.
GOP Rep. Thomas Massie explained his reasoning shortly after bringing eight articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth yesterday.
“There’s no argument in these impeachment articles that he’s ineffective. The argument here is that he’s broken laws and he’s violated the Constitution, and so that’s the question put in front of my colleagues,” Massie said.
The articles focus mostly on Hegseth’s actions in the Iran war, but Massie also pointed to strikes against alleged drug boats that have killed at least 243 people.
Massie gave an emphatic “no” when asked whether any other House Republicans had already given him a commitment they would vote in support of his efforts, but added a vote would end up being “on everybody’s conscience.”
Asked why he did not move to impeach Donald Trump instead, Massie said the president should see it as “a metaphor,” though he later insisted to CNN’s Manu Raju that the Hegseth move was not a symbolic one even though it faces slim odds in the Senate.
“One of his horses shot out from under him, and then maybe he will see things differently,” Massie explained on bringing articles against Hegseth versus Trump.
Massie later predicted Hegseth won’t make it to the end of the year as Pentagon chief, telling CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that impeaching him now would be “polite” compared to what Democrats will do when they take over the House in January.
In his latest vow to stand by Hegseth if he’s impeached, Trump said the Pentagon chief “should be praised, not impeached.”
Trump blasted Massie, calling him “a total loser.”
Republican congressman Thomas Massie thinks there is "a high probability that Pete Hegseth won't make it until December 31st of this year."
The House is now on a collision course with an impeachment vote for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
So how might that play out? And what are the political pluses and minuses for both sides?
On the Democratic side : The gambit makes sense as an opportunity to respond to voters’ concerns and try to change course in the Iran war. It also puts Republicans who have been openly critical of Hegseth on the spot.
But the gambit is also risky, as all impeachments are, in part because it’s being led by a Republican, outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie, whose priorities don’t totally overlap with Democrats’.
On the GOP side: There is no question that impeachment is a headache that could divide the party at an inopportune time.
But it could also help Republicans focus on a scapegoat rather than the president who is actually most responsible for the war — and for the other things Massie wants to impeach Hegseth over.
Read more analysis of the battle ahead here .
