United States lawmakers are preparing to force an impeachment vote against Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has become the focus of Republican recriminations over the party’s heavy defeat in this week’s midterm elections.
No impeachment has yet taken place. Republican congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky filed eight impeachment accusations against Hegseth in September and has said he will trigger a vote when Congress reconvenes next week.
The arithmetic
Impeachment in the House of Representatives requires only a simple majority of 218 votes. Democrats hold 214 seats after Tuesday’s result, meaning a small number of Republican defections would be enough to carry the motion.
Removing Hegseth from office is a far higher bar. That requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate — 67 votes — where Democrats hold at most 56 seats and would need 11 Republicans to join them.
Blamed for the war, and the result
The US-Israeli war on Iran, launched in February, dominated the campaign. About four in ten voters said the economy was their main concern, with most citing petrol and grocery prices that rose sharply after the war began.
Vice President JD Vance said bluntly that “the reason we lost is the war”, adding that “any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there”. One party figure told Al Jazeera that Hegseth “sold the war to Trump, telling him it would be an easy win” and “cost us this election”.
Republican Senator Thom Tillis said Hegseth would face “a reckoning” in the post-election session and would be unable to secure the Pentagon funding he needs. Tillis, who voted to confirm Hegseth in January 2025, called that vote the “biggest regret of my career”.
Hegseth has not resigned. President Trump has said his defence secretary is “doing a very good job” and ruled out replacing him. Hiru News reported that the vote would proceed only if Hegseth does not step down first.
Update, 6 November: Trump privately canvassed advisers on Hegseth’s future
Trump’s public backing sits alongside private doubts, according to reporting published on Friday. The president has been asking advisers, in person and by phone, whether Hegseth should stay in the job, the Daily Mirror reported, carrying a CBS News dispatch that cited multiple sources familiar with the matter. Other sources told CBS News that Trump has not decided to replace him.
That is a sharper account than the flat denial reported a day earlier. Asked directly on Wednesday afternoon whether he was considering a replacement, Trump said: “No, I think he’s doing a very good job.” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said the president “has full confidence in Secretary Hegseth.”
A named possible successor. One source told CBS News that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is being floated for the post. The reported reasoning is procedural: DeSantis could clear Senate confirmation during the lame-duck period and take over when his term as governor expires on 5 January — before the incoming Congress, with its strengthened Democratic majorities, is seated.
Blame may not stop at Hegseth. Some White House aides expect part of the responsibility for the midterm losses to fall on Adm. Brad Cooper, head of US Central Command, and Gen. Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both of whom were central to guidance on the Iran war.
Trump also raised a different destination for his defence secretary, saying Hegseth would be “very popular” if he filled the Senate seat Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn vacates on becoming governor — while adding, “I haven’t heard that at all.”
The impeachment arithmetic above is unchanged, and the Daily Mirror filing notes that the prospect of an impeachment effort could grow with Democrats holding strong majorities in both chambers.
Update, 10 November: the House killed the effort, 211–204
Republicans in the House of Representatives shut down the impeachment push on Tuesday. The chamber voted 211 in favour and 204 against a procedural motion referring the impeachment charges to the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee, which effectively ends the attempt to remove Hegseth from office, Al Jazeera reported.
Massie was the only Republican to vote against the referral — that is, the only member of his own party to try to keep his resolution alive.
He had reintroduced the eight articles of impeachment he first raised in September. They allege that Hegseth launched an illegal war against Iran without congressional authorisation, as required by the War Powers Resolution, and that he oversaw a campaign of strikes on alleged drug-trafficking vessels which legal scholars have characterised as extrajudicial killings.
Hegseth called the resolution “sabotage” and a “farce”. President Trump wrote that “the Democrats’ attempt to impeach Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has miserably FAILED!” — though the resolution was filed by a Republican. Republican Senator Joni Ernst framed the underlying question differently, asking of Hegseth: “Is he being truthful in the way the war is going?”
The vote resolves the central question this article opened with. The 218-vote threshold was never tested: the referral motion disposed of the resolution before any vote on the articles themselves.
