The push to impeach Pete Hegseth is on

As Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth becomes increasingly mired in scandal surrounding military strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean, the familiar refrains of Beltway speech have come into play. Congressional Democrats, for example, are calling for more “transparency” and official “accountability” and promising to expand investigations into the deadly attacks.

There’s certainly a lot to investigate about Hegseth, who appears to have given a second order to kill two trapped survivors in the first strike and then lied about it. Yet amid rounds of congressional special investigations and inquiries, Justice Department task forces, military investigations, and international legal proceedings, the forced removal of a criminal from the cabinet is an almost guaranteed non-outcome. That’s why it’s so galling that Democratic lawmakers have largely been reluctant to invoke the most effective tool to ensure such accountability: a motion to impeach Hegseth.

It is difficult to imagine a case where impeachment would be a more appropriate remedy. After all, if murder isn’t considered a “high crime,” what is? And an impeachment inquiry, narrowly focused on documenting the criminal charges, would be an encouraging first step in holding Hegseth accountable for his conduct in a truly meaningful way.

Of course, another conventional Beltway wisdom is that indictments are inherently political — and therefore politically risky. And few Beltway operators are more conventional than the Democrats’ extremely risk-averse House leader, Hakeem Jeffries. It was therefore not surprising that Jeffries was keen to rule out a formal impeachment inquiry shortly after Hegseth’s role in the second strike was announced. Jeffries asserted that planned investigations by the House and Senate Armed Services Committees should produce “a meaningful investigation that we can hope to be bipartisan” — while also asserting that House Republican leaders were far too partisan to allow articles of impeachment to be placed on the legislative calendar.

Leaving aside the blatantly contradictory nature of Jeffries’ position, the impeachment mechanism is not actually as burdensome as he claims. Under House Rule IX, any member can make a motion to remove a member of the executive branch in a privileged vote, meaning the House leaders of both major parties do not need to approve it in advance. Once an impeachment resolution is introduced under Article IX, the House has two days to vote on it, by a straight up or down vote, or to approve another resolution to reject the impeachment resolution.

This is precisely the course that Michigan Democratic Rep. Shri Thanedar is currently pursuing against Hegseth. On Tuesday, Thanedar announced he had filed articles of impeachment against Hegseth.

Thanedar’s motion cites both the second strike carried out on September 2 and the Pentagon’s recent damning investigation into Hegseth’s unauthorized sharing of details of a bombing in Yemen on an unsecured Signal group chat. “Here is a Secretary of Defense who is running a trillion-dollar budget, putting people at risk, and he has to act responsibly,” Thanedar said in an interview with The Nation. “Him exposing war plans in Signal chat puts our military in grave danger.”

As for the Caribbean strike, Thanedar added: “In reality, it is murder; it has nothing to do with drugs or protecting the United States,” also noting that President Donald Trump recently pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of trafficking some 450 tons of cocaine to the United States.

The first article of Thanedar’s resolution accuses Hegseth of “murder and conspiracy to commit murder,” sidestepping the more vague and euphemistic suggestion in most mainstream news articles that he might be guilty of “war crimes.” (A secondary problem with this wording is that there is no declared war, or even “police action” by a similar euphemism that governs the U.S. military’s rules of engagement in jury-rigged, barely rationalized, and themselves illegal attacks.) The article clarifies that, in the September 2 attack, “in accordance with the order of Peter B. Hegseth, the armed forces conducted a second strike for the express purpose, voluntary and deliberately killed the castaways. survivors of the first strike,” citing provisions in the Defense Department’s Law of War Manual that outlaw actions that deprive survivors of quarters after the attack — let alone actions that kill them outright after an initial attack. The second article calls for Hegseth to be impeached and removed from office for broadcasting the Yemen strike plans on the Signal group chat last spring.

Given that leaders of both parties want nothing to do with it, Thanedar’s resolution may ultimately not go too far. But there’s a lot to be said for simply initiating a serious discussion about Hegseth’s impeachment on the Hill. To begin, an impeachment resolution represents an opportune moment for all members of Congress to take a clear stand on Hegseth’s actions. For Democrats in particular, the continued invocation of Trump’s criminal intrusions into the White House and threats to democratic autonomy are beginning to ring hollow in the absence of clear steps to impose tangible consequences on the perpetrators of these acts. “That’s what makes them look weak,” said a consultant familiar with Thanedar’s resolutions, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “I’ve heard it before: It’s a bit of a D.C. elite bubble to say, ‘Oh, the last impeachments backfired or failed.’ But that’s not true: Democrats haven’t really paid the price at the ballot box” after their successive attempts to impeach Trump in 2019 and 2021. “I think we can’t go out there and say, ‘They’re criminals and criminals.’ [Trump’s] trying to be a dictator,” which is true and important, with nothing to back it up. And it’s not like they’ll be making this move at a time when he’s tied in the polls; he has a disapproval gap of 20 percent.

This is one of the main reasons why, even before their formal introduction, Thanedar’s articles of impeachment received resounding support from members of the Democratic Party’s activist base. “Pete Hegseth is an incredibly unqualified Christian nationalist lackey and alleged abuser who should never have been named in the first place,” said Hunter Dunn, a spokesperson for the 50501 movement, which was instrumental in organizing the successful wave of No Kings protests across the country. “His support for Russian war crimes, the Gaza genocide, his role in Signalgate, his attempts to censor the press, and his overall incompetence would each be reasons enough for his expulsion. After murdering multiple sailors in the Caribbean, the only place he belongs is in a prison cell. As such, we are working on a number of different avenues to push toward his ouster, including asking our members to contact representatives of Congress and lobby for his impeachment, leveraging our social media platforms to build public support for an investigation into Hegseth and his expulsion, as well as targeted protests Thanedar, who previously sought to initiate an Article IX impeachment measure against Trump until Democratic leaders persuaded him to withdraw it, is now seeking a better reception from the party’s rank-and-file members, as well as some possible recruits from the House’s increasingly fractious Republican majority. vote on the Epstein files is that Republicans are now ready to challenge this president and are ready to oppose him on the right issue.” And at the very least, he added, a vote to impeach Hegseth should provide a record on which to continue organizing. “The question is not ‘What is the policy?’ or “What do the polls say?” It’s more about, “Is this a crime?” If so, then we must do what is right…. This puts members of Congress on notice to take a stand. This is why we were elected.