Tomorrow, Monday, Nov. 9, Republican Rep. Thomas Massie is expected to force a vote on impeaching Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. He introduced a resolution with eight articles of impeachment. His focus was on accusing Hegseth of abusing the power of his office by conducting the war in Iran in violation of Congress’s War Powers Resolution of 1973.
In assessing the likelihood of Hegseth being impeached and then removed from office by the Senate, one must recognize that no Cabinet member has ever been impeached and removed by the Senate. The odds strongly favor Hegseth remaining in office.
Only two cabinet officers have ever been impeached. The first was William W. Belknap, Secretary of War under President Ulysses S. Grant, whom the House unanimously impeached. Anyone impeached by the House goes to trial before the Senate, where a two-thirds vote is required to convict and remove the officeholder. During the Senate trial of Belknap, more than 40 witnesses testified before the Senate voted not to convict and remove him.
The other cabinet officer was Alejandro Mayorkas, President Joe Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary. The Senate dismissed the charges against him as unconstitutional. Democrats must weigh the pros and cons of pursuing impeachment; if it passed, the Senate would most likely leave Hegseth in office.
Massie is following the privileged-resolution rules, which require House Speaker Mike Johnson to vote on the resolution two days after Massie announces his intention to introduce it. Johnson has indicated he could move to table Massie’s resolution within that period, which could effectively kill it. However, tabling requires a majority vote, and if two other Republicans vote against it, the resolution could not be tabled.
Massie believes he can secure those two votes. This assumes that the conservative Independent representative would support Johnson rather than Massie, given that Johnson is more closely aligned with Trump than with Democrats on most issues. If the resolution is not tabled, Johnson could steer it to a House committee with a majority vote.
If he succeeds, that committee could hold hearings and request documents and testimony. That would benefit Democrats by prompting public discussion of how the Iran War began and how the Trump administration initiated it without Congressional approval. Although Republicans control the committees’ agendas now, Democrats will chair the committees next session and they could extend or revive those efforts. This could create a worse scenario for House Republicans than sending it to the Senate for debate.
If the resolution goes to the Senate, the Constitution requires a two-thirds vote of the senators present to convict. Republicans would likely prefer to hold the trial while they have a Senate majority. However, their target adjournment for the year is December 18, which may not leave enough time to hold a trial and hear testimony.
Still, the Republicans might try to rush the process if impeachment reaches them. The Senate could also delay the trial, since the Constitution does not require it to begin within a set number of days or by a specific date. The Congressional Research Service expressly recognizes that an official impeached in one Congress may be tried by the Senate in the next Congressional session.
In the next session, even if the Democrats pick up the two undecided Senate races and the two independent senators who caucus with them, they would still have only 58 votes, leaving them 9 short of the 67 needed for a conviction. Democrats must consider the likelihood that nine Republican senators would not be willing to impeach a Trump cabinet member. In that case, a drawn-out Senate battle over impeaching a single cabinet member is likely to overshadow Democrats’ other, more important objective: meeting the economic needs of voters who expect them not to focus on partisan issues.
The bottom line for Democrats is to keep their eye on the ball. In other words, they need to show they can pass legislation effectively. The public is not interested in Democrats fighting losing battles to score political or even moral points. Democrats need to secure some early wins.
Some issues could win over enough Republicans to pass legislation in the Senate and secure enough votes to override any Trump veto. That requires innovation grounded in the principles that carried them to a landslide victory. It means hard work, not just speeches. How they handle the Hegseth impeachment will show whether they can succeed over the next two years and win in 2028.
