Top Democrats are lining up behind Republican Rep. Thomas Massie’s effort to impeach War Secretary Pete Hegseth, signaling that the fight could continue when Democrats take control of Congress in January.
“Hard yes on the Hegseth impeachment resolution,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said ahead of its introduction.
The Democratic reactions online telegraph an appetite to scrutinize Trump’s administration through congressional power once their majorities are formally sworn in in January, at the start of the 120th Congress.
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Massie himself framed the effort as likely to be repeated in the new year.
“My Hegseth impeachment resolution is a much gentler version of what’s coming when Dems control Congress,” Massie said.
Already, Rep. Al Green, D-Texas — who has repeatedly introduced impeachment resolutions against President Donald Trump — urged his colleagues to expand their horizons for impeachment moments after Massie introduced his resolution.
“If the Constitution is to be honored and Congress respected, a president whom many members of Congress have declared impeachable must be impeached. Failure to do so would be another step toward making the Constitution meaningless and Congress powerless,” Green wrote online.
Massie is filing eight articles of impeachment against Hegseth, accusing him of violating the War Powers Resolution in Iran and Yemen, failing to prevent civilian casualties, using lethal force in an extrajudicial manner, suppressing free speech and kidnapping a sovereign foreign leader without congressional authorization with the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Although he didn’t mention Massie by name, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., echoed Jeffries’ enthusiasm.
“The Senate needs to put Pete Hegseth on trial so we can remove him for his catastrophic failure in Iran,” Schumer said in remarks on the Senate floor.
Even beyond a review of Hegseth’s record as war secretary, some Democrats argued that removing Hegseth would help end the conflict — a war that Democrats believe has extended far beyond Trump’s power to use the military in a conflict without a declaration of war from Congress.
“Impeach Hegseth. End the war,” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said in a post to X.
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Calls for Hegseth’s impeachment have circulated among Democrats for months. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., has frequently called for Hegseth to step down.
“It’s way past time,” Omar, who shares her home state of Minnesota with Hegseth, said in September.
“He has made a mockery of our country; it risks our national security and it’s losing us respect.”
On Monday afternoon, Omar doubled down on those calls, arguing that Hegseth had operated beyond the boundaries of his office in conducting strikes on boats off the coast of Venezuela for allegedly carrying narcotics.
“Pete Hegseth has grossly abused his position as Secretary of Defense. He is waging an illegal war in Iran, conducting extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean and continues to put innocent civilians in harm’s way,” Omar said.
Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, echoed Omar’s list of grievances.
“He has caused the military and the members therein to have the lowest morale we’ve seen by his actions — firing individuals just based upon just cultural issues, basically. That kind of thing is not who we want to be a representative of us in the United States defense, and I think he should resign. And if I have to vote on it, whether it’s today or tomorrow or next week, to say that he should be impeached, I will vote so,” Meeks said on Tuesday.
When asked if Democrats should renew the effort in January should Massie’s resolution face defeat, Meeks hinted that he believed so.
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“I’m not going to let it go,” Meeks said. “We’re going to continue to dig into him, his involvement, his advice that led us to this illegal war in the first place.”
The House must approve articles of impeachment, and the Senate must vote to convict Hegseth for him to be removed from office.
The resolution can clear the House with a simple majority but requires two-thirds of senators to affirm a guilty verdict.