The Cabinet Secretary Democrats Are Ready To Run ‘out Of Town’

Many Democrats have a post-midterm dream that goes something like this: Pete Hegseth, the push-up-loving, beardo-mocking former Fox News host who has led the Pentagon for almost two years with bombast and theatrics, is either fired or hauled before their new majority in the House to face impeachment—which would make him just the third Cabinet secretary in history to face such a sanction. “One of the first things we’re going to do in the majority, we’re going to run Pete Hegseth out of town,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who is in line to be speaker of the House should the Democrats win that chamber, declared at a rally this month, the closest he’s come to saying the I-word.

Many of his colleagues feel the same. Hegseth helped steer the U.S. into war with Iran, and then failed to deliver victory. He initiated strikes against speedboats allegedly carrying narco-traffickers off the coasts of South and Central America that many Democrats view as extrajudicial killings. He pushed out scores of seasoned generals, many of whom were held in high esteem on Capitol Hill. All the while, he has flouted any notion of congressional oversight. His acidly partisan approach to Hill relations dates back to his contentious 2025 confirmation process, when he broke tradition by declining courtesy calls with most Democratic senators. And he has, in his political opponents’ view, brought a macho crassness to the job, railing against “fatties,” “weirdos,” and “beardos” and introducing hormone supplements to ensure “high T” troops. Former President Obama last weekend mocked the well-coiffed Hegseth for focusing on “the jawlines and testosterone levels of our troops” and for being consumed by vanity. “How much time,” Obama asked, “do you think this defense secretary spends looking at himself in the mirror in the morning?”

From a Democratic standpoint, what’s not to impeach? Yet precisely because Hegseth and his behavior present such a ripe target for House Democrats, they might ultimately decide against pursuing that measure. After all, even if a Democratic-controlled House voted to impeach Hegseth, and even if the Democrats win a majority in the Senate and convene a trial, Hegseth almost certainly would retain enough support in the upper chamber to fall short of the required 67 votes for conviction. The alternative is for Democrats to try to rein in Hegseth without the spectacle of impeachment, relying instead on the aggressive pursuit of their more traditional oversight mechanisms—hearings, investigations, and conditions attached to the annual defense budget. If Democrats are going to go to war, as it were, with the self-styled secretary of war, they may prefer to fight a battle they think they can actually win.

If Thomas Massie has his way, Hegseth’s impeachment wouldn’t wait until the new Congress convenes in January. The outgoing Republican representative from Kentucky has said he plans to bring the articles of impeachment he filed this fall against Hegseth up for a vote during the House’s lame-duck postelection session. His eight draft articles include accusations that Hegseth plotted to conduct an illegal war in Iran (a conflict for which President Trump never sought congressional authorization) and that he approved the “kidnapping of a sovereign foreign leader,” a reference to the January seizure of the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. Massie told Puck he thinks other Republicans who are poised to leave Congress may rally behind him. The vote to proceed with impeachment and the impeachment itself require a simple majority in the House.

[Read: Here’s who Democrats want to impeach next]

Democrats would likely welcome Massie’s move, even if it did no more than force Speaker Mike Johnson and Trump to come to Hegseth’s defense. A recent Politico poll showed that 63 percent of Democratic midterm voters would support impeaching the defense secretary. (Only Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was a more popular target for impeachment, with 65 percent support.) And, should Massie’s effort fail, the Democrats have their own draft articles at hand. Representative Yassamin Ansari of Arizona filed impeachment articles against Hegseth in April. Her draft articles are similar to Massie’s but also include accusations of obstructing congressional oversight and mishandling classified information (in March 2025, Hegseth shared sensitive war plans in a Signal group that included The Atlantic’s editor in chief). Her effort has 16 co-sponsors, all of them Democrats, but she sees the ground shifting and holds out hope that Trump will get rid of his defense secretary before Congress has the chance to act. “The calls against Hegseth’s leadership have increased dramatically on both sides of the aisle,” Ansari told us. “We are really strongly pushing the president to replace Hegseth.”

The White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told us in a statement that Trump strongly supports Hegseth. “Secretary Hegseth is doing a great job leading the Pentagon,” she said. Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson called Hegseth a “transformative leader” who has “slashed bureaucracy, unleashed innovation, and delivered for our warfighters every step of the way.”

The House has impeached only two Cabinet secretaries: William Belknap, the secretary of war, in 1876; and Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, in 2024. (In both cases, the Senate did not convict.)

Representative Jason Crow of Colorado, a Democrat and former Army Ranger, was one of the seven impeachment managers during Trump’s first impeachment trial in the Senate, in 2020. He told us the party needed to be cautious in considering a third presidential impeachment. But he is far less squeamish about trying to remove Hegseth. “Pete Hegseth and the corruption he’s brought to the Department of Defense is at the top of my list,” Crow said.

[Read: The Top Gun: Maverick theory of Pete Hegseth]

Representative Adam Smith, who would lead the House Armed Services Committee should Democrats take over, told us that he and his colleagues will have limited powers even in the majority, especially if the administration rebuffs congressional requests for documents or witnesses. The Justice Department, for instance, under Trump’s onetime personal attorney Todd Blanche, may decline to enforce congressional subpoenas. That would make even lawmakers like Smith, typically more inclined to dig into the arcana of acquisition reform than stage a made-for-TV trial, more likely to consider the toughest sanction.

“Do we try to work in a reasonable place or do we go right for the jugular here?” Smith said, referring to Jeffries’s desire to see Hegseth removed from office. “Personally I think there’s no reason to expect that Trump and Hegseth are going to cooperate with us in any way. So I think that Hakeem may well be right.” The decision could amount to an early test of Jeffries and his ability to corral the different factions in the Democratic caucus. Even as he has talked lately about running Hegseth out of town, Jeffries hasn’t explicitly endorsed an impeachment strategy. “Pete Hegseth needs to be pushed aside by the president,” he told MS NOW this week, “or we’re going to have to deal with the situation if he is not.”

GOP grumbling about Hegseth’s performance has intensified over the past year. Representative Mike Rogers and Senator Roger Wicker, the chairs of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, respectively, have objected to administration plans to cut the U.S. military presence in Europe and to Pentagon delays in providing aid to Ukraine. Senator Susan Collins and others complained when Hegseth fired respected military leaders, including Generals Randy George and Chris “C. D.” Donahue. Mike Johnson panned Hegseth’s plan to livestream an execution by firing squad. (Trump ultimately quashed the livestream.) Outgoing Senator Thom Tillis has described his vote to confirm Hegseth as the “biggest regret” of his career. Still, even those Republicans unimpressed with Hegseth have been loath to cross the president, and they continue to support most of Hegseth’s plans, including a boost in defense spending to $1.5 trillion.

[Read: How Pete Hegseth’s plan for a reality-TV execution imploded]

That suggests an uphill push for a conviction in the Senate—and a trial would provide Hegseth with a prominent, televised perch from which he could lambast the effort, secure in the knowledge that his prospects of conviction are remote. That may be all the more desirable for him as Trump enters his lame-duck years and the MAGA faithful search for a worthy successor. The spectacle of Hegseth in a congressional hearing room defending his troops and hitting back against Democrats could boost the presidential ambitions he is said to harbor. Trump’s two impeachments ultimately helped his political standing by giving him a clear foe; Republicans might welcome a similar dynamic with the secretary of defense in the dock.

Should Democrats decide against impeachment proceedings, they are likely instead to resort to more common oversight measures. Riders to the defense-spending legislation could compel the Pentagon to comply with congressional mandates barring troop drawdowns around the world. Admiral Mitch Bradley, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, will likely face questions over a September 2, 2025, air strike that killed two men clinging to maritime wreckage in the Caribbean. Democratic lawmakers also want to declassify the Office of Legal Counsel memo that lays out a legal rationale for those operations, and potentially bring in military lawyers to testify. Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. military operations in the Middle East, could be asked about casualties from the Iran war—those of American troops and Iranian civilians—and damage to U.S. bases in the region. But all of these efforts would be politically fraught for Democrats, whom Republicans are sure to accuse of going after the troops.

Lawmakers told us they still don’t know the true state of the Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain and other facilities that have been attacked, other than that they have sustained real damage. When Democratic Senator Chris Murphy made a fact-finding trip to Qatar this month, the Pentagon denied him permission to visit Al Udeid, the military’s regional air hub, which was struck by Iran, and barred military officials from briefing him. Lawmakers will push Hegesth on whether the military was negligent in protecting U.S. forces from Iranian drones and missiles—21 service members have died and more than 800 have been wounded in the conflict—and subjecting sailors to a record-breaking stint at sea. “My north star is anything jeopardizing the immediate safety and well-being of our troops,” Crow told us. “Are they getting equipment they need? Why is he firing the top ranks of the Army? There are a lot of questions.” The Pentagon may also be pressed to provide details of business deals made as part of Hegseth’s race to move the military into the age of artificial intelligence or to purchase Venezuelan oil.

All of that presumes, of course, that Hegseth remains in office. Trump has shown no inclination to fire him, though the White House may look for scapegoats in the event of a midterm drubbing. The Cabinet official most closely associated with the Iran war could fit the bill. Or Trump could find an off-ramp for Hegseth. Rumors abound at the Pentagon that the president will prevail on Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee to name Hegseth to her vacant seat should she win her race for Tennessee governor, as she’s expected to do. A spokeswoman for Blackburn’s campaign said the senator would not have any discussions about a potential replacement “until the appropriate time”; the Pentagon’s Wilson said the Blackburn idea was “nothing more than Beltway gossip by anonymous sources.” The White House declined to comment on the idea. Were it to happen, Democrats might be satisfied that Hegseth is out of the Pentagon—but less pleased to have him as a colleague.