It was a procedural vote, and a fairly dry one. Nobody debated the charges. Nobody voted on a single article. Around the Capitol on Tuesday night the talk was all about the 211-204 tally and who wasn't in it.
Eleven Democrats didn't cast a vote. So did seven Republicans, but nobody's counting those. Reuters did the arithmetic on the Democratic side and found that if eight of the eleven had shown up and voted no, the motion to refer would have failed, and Massie would have gotten his floor debate.
Pelosi was one of the eleven. SFGATE reported she missed the vote to collect a lifetime achievement award. Three other Democrats told Hindustan Times that a police escort was blocking the Capitol and they couldn't get in on time. Some of their own colleagues aren't thrilled with either answer.
Massie, a Kentucky Republican who's spent much of this year criticizing the Iran war, was the only member of his party to oppose the referral.
Massie filed them Monday and read every one out loud on the House floor.
Three are about the war itself. His argument is that Hegseth has run it for 256 days now without a declaration of war or authorization from Congress, which breaks the War Powers Resolution of 1973, and that the Pentagon kept going even after lawmakers tried to end it.
The other five go further afield. They accuse Hegseth of ignoring laws meant to limit civilian deaths, of ordering what Massie calls extrajudicial killings in deadly boat strikes, and of authorizing operations in Yemen and Venezuela without Congress, including the one that grabbed then-President Nicolas Maduro. The last one says Hegseth retaliated against a sitting senator for speaking out.
This was Massie's second swing. A September attempt stalled when Speaker Mike Johnson adjourned the House early ahead of the midterms. And back in April, Rep. Yassamin Ansari led a group of Democrats who filed six articles of their own, which went nowhere.
Hegseth didn't wait for the vote. Tuesday morning he stood up at the Pentagon for his first press conference since May and called the whole effort a farce and an act of sabotage. He said Massie was undermining American troops. He said he'd run the war the same way again tomorrow. Impeachments of Trump had failed, he reminded the room, and this one would too.
Trump gave him an "A PLUS, PLUS, PLUS" on Truth Social before the vote. Afterward he wrote that the Democrats' move had "miserably failed," went after Massie by name, and called the result an exoneration of a great American patriot. JD Vance posted on X that asking whether Hegseth had committed impeachable crimes was absurd, and that the anger in Congress had less to do with Iran than with Hegseth shaking up the Pentagon bureaucracy. Attorney General Todd Blanche, speaking in the Rose Garden, said the secretary was doing a phenomenal job and following the law.
NBC News noted that several Republicans who've been openly critical of Hegseth still said they didn't think any of it counted as high crimes and misdemeanors.
Massie's sales pitch to fellow Republicans leaned heavily on the midterms. Republicans lost both chambers, he said, and that left two kinds of members who might break ranks: the ones who are leaving anyway, and the ones who squeaked through by a few hundred votes and now want some daylight between themselves and the war.
It wasn't enough. If every Democrat had voted, he needed three Republicans. He got zero
Impeachment needs a simple majority in the House. Conviction takes two-thirds of the Senate, and nobody sees that happening to Hegseth regardless of who runs the chamber.
Democrats take control in January and could file their own articles, whether Ansari's from April or something new. Whether they'll want to spend the first weeks of a fresh majority on it is a different question. Hakeem Jeffries said last week that Hegseth has to go, then stopped short of saying he should be impeached.
The House is also still arguing over a separate Iran war powers resolution. And Hegseth is at his desk.
