The Latest: Republican Rep. Thomas Massie files resolution to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
Rep. Thomas Massie moved Monday to force a vote to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, putting pressure on his fellow Republicans to decide whether to remove one of the Trump administration’s most prominent figures after the GOP’s sweeping midterm election losses.
The impeachment resolution from Massie, a renegade Republican from Kentucky, focuses largely on the war in Iran. It also includes references to Hegseth’s role in carrying out military actions in Yemen and Venezuela. A vote in the House could come by mid-week.
Hegseth said he would hold a press conference on Tuesday — his first in over 180 days — on the looming impeachment threat, adding that the war was necessary, even if unpopular.
The House and Senate were back in session as of Monday for just six short weeks — a lame-duck sprint to finish the Republican agenda before the GOP majorities end with the change of power on Jan. 3, 2027. Congress is returning to a changed Washington as the Capitol halls swell this week with the collision of incoming and outgoing lawmakers.
Here's the Latest:
President Trump told reporters at a briefing Monday that in previous comments he was just “having a little fun” when he floated the UFC chief Dana White as his next press secretary.
Saying White “loves the idea,” Trump said “we have other things we have to think about.”
Summoned to the podium by the president, White said “I don’t tell the president no to anything” but that he has “zero political aspirations.”
Asked by a reporter who would win a cage match between Trump and former President Joe Biden, White picked the current president, calling Trump “the toughest, most resilient human being I’ve ever met.”
With White at the briefing lectern, a reporter asked if Pete Rose — the all-time hits leader in Major League Baseball — should receive a federal pardon. White suggested he should and then Trump weighed in.
“I’d give Pete Rose a pardon,” Trump said.
Rose, who died in 2024, had pleaded guilty in 1990 to filing false federal income tax returns.
President Trump had reporters quickly gather as he went to the press briefing lectern Monday afternoon to discuss the Iran war and the situation in Venezuela.
Trump said that the situation in Iran has been a success and that the U.S. was ready to use additional military force, but he did not expect to do so.
Standing by Trump was Dana White, the head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, who Trump jokingly floated as a possible press secretary.
The president’s appearance before reporters at the White House was so hastily organized that officials didn’t affix the presidential seal to the lectern from which he spoke.
The House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries was asked during a news conference at the Capitol if the new White House chief of staff could be a viable partner as Democrats take charge of Congress.
Jeffries responded flatly: No.
He added: “His track record speaks for itself.”
The key architect of President Trump’s hardline immigration agenda, Miller was elevated Friday to become Trump’s chief of staff.
Jeffries, who is in line to become the House speaker in the new Congress, said: “I’ve gotten zero interest in working with that kind of individual.”
President Trump has long sought to add David MacNeil, the founder of the auto accessories and floor mats company WeatherTech, to his administration.
Trump said in a social media post that he would be the “Special Envoy for Manufacturing,” saying that the Republican donor “knows how to create jobs, bring Manufacturing back home, and put America First.”
The president has previously nominated MacNeil for other posts. In 2025, he selected him to be the “Ambassador at Large for Industrial and Manufacturing Competitiveness,” but the nomination was returned to him on procedural grounds.
In January, Trump nominated MacNeil to the Federal Trade Commission. But there has been no progress since on the nomination.
Following the Democratic sweep of the midterm elections, the party's House leader Hakeem Jeffries said House Democrats will have the largest majority of any party in this century.
“It is a clear mandate for House Democrats to get things done,” Jeffries said at a Capitol news conference.
He said Monday that the party’s priorities will be “to make life more affordable for the American people, to hold the president accountable and to make sure that this country can return to be the best version of herself.”
Whether they are leaving office in January or were reelected, Massie says his colleagues will “have to live with that vote.”
If they’re leaving Congress, “what do they have to lose?” the GOP congressman from Kentucky said. And if they plan to run for reelection in two years, they’ll have to answer to voters.
“This is the best vote you can take right now to put some daylight between yourself and the failed policy of this war in Iran and the way that it’s been handled,” Massie said.
Earlier Monday, Massie moved to force a vote to impeach Pete Hegseth, setting the stage for a dramatic vote on whether to remove the defense secretary and one of the most prominent Trump administration figures.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer says Democrats “are going to deliver” on affordability issues that helped them win new majorities in Congress.
He said that includes stopping President Donald Trump’s tariffs, lowering health care costs and banning public officials from stock trading.
In his opening remarks as the Senate went back into session Monday, Schumer said the party will make “government more competent and their capital less corrupt.”
“We’re going to spend every second of every day striving to prove ourselves worthy of Americans’ trust,” Schumer said.
Hakeem Jeffries, leader of House Democrats, said Monday that the Nvidia issue did come up during a closed-door session with the CIA director and the Director of National Intelligence that was primarily about Iran.
“We’re going to need a full briefing, specifically as it relates to the Nvidia issue, so we can all get to the bottom of what has happened,” he said, “and what the implications are in terms of America’s national security.”
Shares of Nvidia tumbled more than 5% Monday after the computer chip maker, central to the artificial intelligence race, opened an investigation into reports that CEO Jensen Huang was the “target of a foreign intelligence effort.”
Nvidia’s announcement of the investigation Sunday followed Huang’s acknowledgment he had been intimate with a business executive who, according to The New York Times, U.S. intelligence determined was gathering information for China
The U.S. stock market rallied to its best day since April and clawed back more of its big loss from last week as oil prices swing lower.
The S&P 500 jumped 2.3% Monday, its second straight gain following a wipeout on worries that Democratic victories in the midterm elections could mean a slowdown in the construction of AI data centers.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 2.2%, and the Nasdaq composite rallied 2.7%. Brent crude’s price dropped 5.8%, which helped lift the market. The strength came even though Nvidia, one of Wall Street’s most influential stocks, sank.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries said he’s a hard yes on impeaching Hegseth and called the Defense secretary the architect of the “reckless and costly failed war of choice” in Iran.
“The fact that Pete Hegseth is still around makes zero sense,” Jeffries said at the Capitol.
“The national nightmare that has been Pete Hegseth can end this week,” he said, referring to the House impeachment vote, “if the president doesn’t make the decision on his own to terminate him.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune says Republicans are willing to work with Democrats when they take the Senate majority next year. But he said the election was not a mandate for “radical policy and socialist fantasies.”
Opening the Senate on Monday, Thune, R-S.D., said Republicans’ defeat at the polls last week was a sign of frustration with the high cost of living, and that growing the government is not the answer to those problems.
“I hope my Democrat colleagues realize what this election was and what it was not,” Thune said.
He warned that Speaker Mike Johnson could try to delay a vote on his impeachment measure by moving to table it or refer it to a committee.
That would effectively kill the impeachment push, he said.
“They may try to get out of an actual vote on the substance of this,” Massie said. “We should have a vote and a rigorous debate on these eight articles of impeachment.”
Massie says his push to impeach the defense secretary is not about how well he’s done his job. Rather, he’s looking to remove Hegseth because “he’s broken the law and he’s violated the Constitution.”
“We’re not indicting him for being bad at his job,” Massie said in a news conference moments after reading his articles of impeachment on the House floor.
Hours after U.S. officials described Russia indicating a new openness to ending the war, Rubio said that the process still has “ways to go,” and that getting Europeans to the table with the Russians has still not happened.
His comments come as U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are set to mediate talks with Moscow and Kyiv in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, with Germany, the U.K. and France there on the sidelines.
“It’s been difficult to get anything productive out of that,” Rubio told reporters. “But we’ll keep trying. And that’s what we’ve been trying to do the whole time, is try to be creative and find ways that we can help bring that conflict in that war to an end.”
As Rep. Thomas Massie introduced the resolution, Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended his fellow Cabinet secretary, saying that he believes he has been doing “a great job” and that it’s unfair that a Republican is pushing the effort.
“I think Pete’s done a good job, I really do. Again, I work with him. And so I see perhaps a side of him that the media doesn’t see and members of Congress may not see,” Rubio said, speaking to reporters at the Group of Seven industrialized democracies gathering in Paris. “But I think Pete works really hard. He’s incredibly smart.”
The renegade Republican congressman took swift action as soon as the House chamber opened, a move that is expected to force an impeachment vote in the days ahead.
Thomas Massie is reading the resolution into the record from the floor of a nearly empty House. Few lawmakers are on hand, but the visitors’ gallery has dozens of people watching the proceedings unfold.
He said Hegseth “knowingly executed and implemented unlawful orders” and “remains a threat to the Constitution.”
Massie said Hegseth “thus warrants impeachment.”
Speaker Mike Johnson is criticizing an effort to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, calling it a “terrible look” in the middle of hostilities abroad.
“We don’t impeach Cabinet secretaries for political gain or for cheap tricks, and I think that’s what this is, and I think everybody knows it,” Johnson told reporters.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie is pushing the impeachment resolution forward over the objections of House GOP leadership.
Asked about Vice President JD Vance blaming the Iran war for the massive GOP losses in the election, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth noted that Trump said he would do it again, and “I agree.”
He repeated a line that Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters a day earlier, “It doesn’t have to be necessarily popular, but it can be necessary.”
He reiterated that “Iran is devastated” though the Islamic Republic has been able to keep striking military bases in the Middle East used by the United States, causing billions of dollars in damage, as well as commercial ships in the disputed Strait of Hormuz.
Hegseth said the war was necessary because “someone had to confront the Iranian regime’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon.”
Facing an expected impeachment resolution in Congress, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he’s eager to litigate the policy choices that he and President Donald Trump have made in Iran and Venezuela.
“If you want to take issue with what we did in Epic Fury or Rough Rider or nabbing Nicolás Maduro, you’re taking issue with the troops and what they accomplished, which is historic,” Hegseth told reporters Monday.
He also announced that he would hold a press conference — his first in over 180 days — on the looming impeachment threat on Tuesday.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie has pushed the impeachment resolution forward over the objections of House GOP leadership as momentum grows to hold Hegseth accountable for the Iran war, which many Republicans blame for the party’s midterm election wipeout.
Democrats appear ready to use the power of congressional oversight in response to voter anger.
Nationally, about 6 in 10 voters said the Trump administration had “gone too far” on immigration enforcement, according to The AP Voter Poll, a survey of more than 100,000 midterm voters. A similar share disapproved of how ICE was doing its job. And about 6 in 10 voters said immigrants to the U.S. today do more to “help the country,” while less than half, about 4 in 10, said they do more to “hurt the country.”
Rep. Robert Garcia, a Los Angeles-area Democrat who will take over the House Oversight Committee, warned the administration to “lawyer up.”
The next Congress will “address the Trump administration’s assault on the rule of law and hold those responsible accountable,” said Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security committee.
After Democrats’ overwhelming midterm victories this week, winning candidates spoke of the need, once they are sworn in, to rein in Trump’s mass deportation machine. Some suggested putting forward a new vision for immigration reform while both houses of Congress are in Democratic control.
But there are clear limits to what Democrats can achieve, even after their epic win, with Trump wielding veto power for another two years. Republicans have frontloaded billions of dollars for immigration enforcement, and the key architect of the president’s hard-line immigration agenda, Stephen Miller, is now his chief of staff.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin vowed on social media after the GOP wipeout that “Deportations will continue.”
At around the same time a driver crashed into a sign just north of the White House on Monday morning, the Secret Service says another person jumped over a barricade.
A police bomb squad was called in to sweep the car as a precaution, and roads around Lafayette Square were closed. A spokesperson for the Secret Service says that both the driver and the person who breached the barricade have been arrested.
Temporary fencing has been up around Lafayette Square for months, and the Trump administration has been pushing for more permanent gates cordoning off the area historically a gathering spot for everyone from tourists to protesters.
The National Capital Planning Commission has also been considering a proposal for a White House visitors security screening center south of the Treasury Department.
Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven industrialized democracies began two days of talks in Paris on Monday as they grapple with multiple unresolved global crises amid questions about how Trump will approach foreign policy after his Republican Party’s heavy losses in the midterm elections.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is likely to face questions about whether the administration will shift its positions on the Russia-Ukraine war, the Iran conflict, energy security and artificial intelligence at the meetings between top diplomats from the U.S., Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan on Monday and Tuesday.
It is Rubio’s first overseas trip since Republicans lost control of Congress, partly because of the Iran war and other deeply unpopular policies. The talks also come amid major protests across Europe.
The United States — the world’s second-largest polluter after China — is again absent as world leaders, delegates and climate activists opened annual talks on curbing the global warming causing deadly heat waves in Europe and disasters such as the devastating floods in Nepal.
This U.N. Conference of the Parties, or COP31, comes as the war in Iran has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, hiking global prices of gasoline, oil and products made with them, such as fertilizers and pesticides. The disruption has pushed governments to rethink energy policies and increase investment in renewable energy sources like wind and solar.
“The climate crisis is now a global health crisis of pandemic proportions,” U.N. climate chief Simon Stiell said on Monday. “At this COP, nations face a choice: electric or shock. Rewire the global economy for the electric age. Or accept ongoing fossil fuel cost pain for families, firms and governments.”
Voters want Trump and the new Democratic congressional majority to repair the damage inflation has done to the economy.
Trump was defiant after Friday’s strong jobs report showed the unemployment rate dipping to 4.1%. “Democrats may control Congress, but I will NEVER stop fighting for you, and I will VETO anything that hurts America,” he texted supporters.
Democrats are seeking to check Trump’s power and are preparing for early fights on government spending. Other challenges include chronic budget deficits, tariffs, artificial intelligence and difficult choices about a Social Security system that could run short of money in as little as six years.
But as long as rising prices keep making middle-class lives less affordable, Democrats and Republicans risk angering and alienating voters in the next elections.
A U.S. deportation flight of at least eight Iranian nationals who were eventually bound for Iran has been abruptly canceled. That’s according to a legal group involved in a pending lawsuit that’s shed some light on the planned deportations.
Ali Rahnama is an attorney with the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund. He says at least eight Iranians were loaded onto a plane Sunday in Arizona bound for Pakistan.
The Iranians were told they would then be transported to Iran. But Rahnama says the flight was then canceled without explanation.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security refused to comment on the details of removal operations.
The closed-door meetings could end up being blame-casting sessions about what went wrong in the elections.
House Republicans are bracing for a contentious leadership battle after Mike Johnson decided to step aside, setting up a showdown between the No. 2 Republican, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the brawling former wrestling coach allied with the hard-right conservatives.
The two men had confronted one another when trying to become House speaker three years ago, but neither was able to win enough support from the Republican rank and file, leading to Johnson’s rise. With the House Republican numbers now shrunken, lawmakers could seek wholesale change in leadership.
In the Senate, Majority Leader John Thune is expected to retain his job as Republican leader, though in the minority after Democrats flipped Republican-held seats, including milestone wins in Texas and Kansas.
At least two newcomers to the Senate — Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan and Adam Hamilton of Kansas — have declined to publicly support Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer’s majority leader bid, but no challenger has emerged.
“I think we need somebody who’s going to bring us together ... somebody who’s going to come with fresh ideas,” Hamilton said Sunday on CNN.
Hakeem Jeffries, on track to make history as the nation’s first Black speaker of the House, also faces skepticism.
“Every single member here is going to have their individual vote,” said Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, at a Capitol press conference Sunday, flanked by newly elected lawmakers, including a handful from the Democratic Socialists of America.
“What we talked about at orientation today was not about any individual person, but about policy,” Casar said. “How we set a progressive path forward.”
Trump is determined to bring an end to the “horrible” war between Russia and Ukraine.
That’s according to Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, who’s scheduled to begin talks on Tuesday in the United Arab Emirates with Russian and Ukrainian negotiators. Kushner wrote on social media Monday that he and special envoy Steve Witkoff would meet first with leaders from Ukraine and other European nations.
Kushner says the U.S. is “working hard to find a negotiated solution that can deliver lasting peace and create the conditions for a sovereign, secure, and prosperous Ukraine within a more stable European security environment.”
While Trump vowed to end the war within 24 hours of starting his second term, the war is nearing its five-year mark.
Trump defended Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to reporters on Sunday night before he flew back to Washington after spending the weekend at his Florida home.
“He’s guilty of two things, basically winning two wars,” Trump said. “I believe we saved the Middle East and Israel combined. And it’s awfully hard to say let’s impeach somebody who did that.”
Democrats are expected to widely support impeaching him and a number of Republicans have signaled they could join them.
“I’m a hard yes on the Hegseth resolution,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said Sunday on ABC.
Jeffries said it’s time for Hegseth to go, and that the secretary “has abused his power, undermined our national security and engineered this reckless and costly war of choice in Iran.”
Congress is reconvening in a changed Washington, with Trump doubling down on his political threats despite the landmark GOP losses.
The halls of the Capitol will swell this week with the collision of incoming and outgoing lawmakers, as the newcomers attend orientation sessions while the retiring lawmakers start to clear out. It’s creating a jumble of split-screen moments reflective of the new political landscape.
Dozens of jubilant Democrats, families and suitcases in tow for freshman orientation appeared emboldened by the party’s sweep of power. The trickle of Republicans coming in spoke soberly of the GOP’s vast challenges ahead.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday that Trump launched the war against Iran even if it was not “necessarily popular” to safeguard the world from the country’s nuclear ambitions.
He would not comment directly about the Republican wipeout in Tuesday’s elections, which delivered a resounding rebuke to Trump. The unpopularity of the Iran war and its impact on gasoline prices and other parts of the economy helped Democrats seize control of Congress.
Asked about Vice President JD Vance’s social media post last week that largely blamed the war for the Republican losses, Rubio told reporters that Trump “identified a very real threat” in Iran and worked to stop the Islamic Republic from pursuing a nuclear weapon.
“He addressed it even though oftentimes the right thing to do for the country — confronting difficult challenges for the security of our country — doing it isn’t necessarily popular, but necessary,” Rubio said in Florida before heading to a Group of 7 foreign ministers meeting in Paris.
Trump said Sunday he was only kidding about making UFC boss Dana White his next White House press secretary after announcing on social media he had offered his close friend the job.
After his party’s deep losses in Tuesday’s midterm elections, Trump shook up his administration on Friday by replacing his chief of staff and followed up on Saturday with a post that said he had offered the press secretary job to White. On Sunday, Trump said it was “just a little fun.”
“I was kidding, but I think Dana likes the idea, and he is a very capable guy,” Trump said, speaking to reporters in Florida before departing for the White House. White is set to visit him at the White House on Monday.
Trump does not currently have a press secretary after briefly giving the job to Katie Zacharia, who faltered behind the lectern and in interviews, and left the post after five days.
Trump and his Department of Justice are taking a combative stance toward Democrats after their election victories in the midterms, signaling intense conflict to come as lawmakers prepare aggressive investigations into the executive branch next year.
Trump set the tone, declaring on social media that investigative requests already made by Democrats are “extortion at the highest level, and they should be held accountable.” Attorney General Todd Blanche echoed the Republican president and said criminal investigations of Democrats are possible.
“They are not allowed to just go around threatening existing members of the administration, to go around threatening companies, and that’s what President Trump is extremely worried about and he should be,” Blanche said as he and congressional Democrats appeared on the Sunday news shows to discuss the repercussions from last week’s elections.
Rep. Robert Garcia, who is poised to chair the powerful House Oversight Committee in the next Congress, is preparing investigations into what he calls the “Trump crime family.” He said Democrats are not going to be intimidated.
Democrats have made clear that impeachment is an option.
President Donald Trump, in his first major interview since his party lost control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections, said he thinks his administration was too aggressive on deportations and that he thinks he can work with Democrats in the new Congress on some kind of immigration deal.
Trump said his deportation policy was part of the reason Republicans lost, telling CBS’s “60 Minutes” in an interview that aired on Sunday: “I think it might be too tough, yeah.”
He added that he thinks he could reach an agreement with the new Democratic majority. “The deal would be we would work something out. And I think it’s something -- I think that’s something that’s actually doable,” he said in the interview.
Trump did not give specifics about what that deal would look like — and shortly after taping the interview on Friday, Trump named the key architect of his hard-line immigration agenda, Stephen Miller, as his new chief of staff.
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