Hegseth Impeachment Shelved, 211-204. Massie Stood Alone, and 11 Democrats Didn’t Show.

Written By TNT Staff, Posted on November 11, 2026

The House voted 211-204 on Tuesday evening to send Rep. Thomas Massie’s resolution impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, H.Res. 1655, to the Judiciary Committee. According to the Clerk’s official roll call, 210 Republicans and independent Kevin Kiley of California voted to refer it. Massie was the only Republican to vote no, alongside all 203 Democrats who voted. Eighteen members didn’t vote: 11 Democrats and seven Republicans.

With only weeks left in the 119th Congress, sending the resolution to committee ends it for this session. As TNT reported Monday, Massie forced the vote and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called himself a “hard yes.” The question now is what Democrats do with the issue once they run the House in January.

What the roll call shows

The Democrats who didn’t vote were Julia Brownley, Lou Correa, Laura Gillen, Steven Horsford, Jonathan Jackson, Nancy Pelosi, Brittany Pettersen, Melanie Stansbury, Haley Stevens, Marilyn Strickland and Frederica Wilson. The BBC reported that several of them blamed traffic. Even Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed, D-Mich., told his party’s absentees on CNN to “show up and do your job,” the BBC reported.

The math is worth getting right, though, because both parties will spin it. If the 11 missing Democrats had voted no, the referral would have failed, 211-215, and the resolution would have stayed alive on the floor. If all 18 absentees had voted with their parties, the referral would have passed anyway, 218-215. The Democrats who skipped didn’t cost their side the vote by themselves. They did show how seriously their own members took a vote their leader had called a “hard yes.”

Theater now, hearings later

Democratic leaders don’t hide that this is a preview. “This is not the end of it. It’s just the beginning,” Jeffries said after the vote, according to CBS News. Rep. Gregory Meeks told Fox News, “I’m not going to let it go.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Senate “needs to put Pete Hegseth on trial,” and Rep. Ro Khanna summed up the strategy on X: “Impeach Hegseth. End the war.”

That last line is the giveaway. Impeachment is for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” not for losing an argument about policy. Massie’s eight articles focus on war powers: the Iran campaign without new authorization, the boat strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific, and the operation against Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. Those are serious constitutional questions, and Congress has the tools to answer them, including authorizations, appropriations and war-powers resolutions. Hegseth called the effort a “farce” and said the articles were “partisan policy disagreements from people who want to politicize our military,” CBS reported. On the legal standard, he has a point.

“My diagnosis of Congress is these people know what to do. They just can’t bring themselves to do it.” — Rep. Thomas Massie, after the vote (via CBS News)

Massie, alone

Massie leaves Congress in early January after losing his May primary. After the vote he said he “wasn’t surprised, but I was disappointed,” CBS reported, and he has said he won’t file another impeachment resolution. Instead he plans to force a war-powers vote, daring Republicans who blamed the war for their midterm losses to vote the way they talk: “will they still vote for it?” That’s the right venue for this argument.

Not one Republican joined him. That doesn’t mean Hegseth is safe. CBS reported that many Republicans are frustrated with how he has run a war now in its ninth month, and Sen. Ted Cruz said Tuesday he expects Hegseth to resign or be fired, the BBC reported.

Be honest about the costs

Defending Hegseth against a bad impeachment doesn’t require pretending the war has been easy. It is in its ninth month. This week’s federal indictment over the plot against RAF Fairford, the British base that housed U.S. bombers, is a reminder that Iran’s network allegedly keeps targeting Americans and their allies, in one case from inside a U.S. jail. Voters are entitled to a clear account of the war’s aims, costs and timeline, and Congress is entitled to vote on it.

Tuesday’s vote didn’t clear Hegseth, and it didn’t convict him. It moved the fight to January, when Democrats will have the gavel and Republicans will have to decide whether their complaints about the war amount to a position.

Sources: Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives (Roll Call 317, H.Res. 1655); CBS News; BBC; Fox News.

TNT Staff