Hey everybody. Welcome back. Thanks for being here.
Our top story today. Pete Hegseth is about to potentially face impeachment in a Republican-led House, and he’s calling it a punishment for winning. Republican Congressman Thomas Massie filed the articles of impeachment yesterday, 34 pages, eight counts. The vote could come this week. This morning Hegseth held his first Pentagon briefing since May to say he’s being punished for victory. The president says he’ll stand by him either way, and calls Iran a win. Ask anyone buying gas right now whether Iran feels like a win and I think you’ll hear a different answer.
We’ll also get into Republicans breaking with the president over the Nvidia CEO and his alleged Chinese spy lover, peace talks on Ukraine that are underway in Abu Dhabi with Putin asking for the same thing he’s always asked for, whistleblowers telling House Democrats the Interior Department is destroying records on the president’s building projects (which Interior denies), and the president back to claiming the election was rigged but this time to an audience that has started to stop listening.
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Let’s get to it.
1. GOP Congressman Begins Hegseth Impeachment Process
Here’s where things stand. Congressman Massie filed his resolution as privileged yesterday, which means the House has to deal with it within two legislative days and reports are that the vote will take place by Wednesday. The articles: waging a war with Iran without authorization, violating the rules meant to protect civilians, the boat strikes, and more. Here’s the secretary this morning.
And here’s Massie, before the briefing, predicting the general gist of those words.
And finally, the president, on Truth Social:
Two victories. Well, let’s check one. The Strait of Hormuz is still largely blocked. Ships are still being hit. Oil was over 100 dollars a barrel until last week. More than 20 Americans are dead and the Pentagon has slow-walked publishing updated casualty numbers.
On impeachment, the Hegseth aides are calling it a “politicized spectacle” and are telling Republicans to push back “while we still hold the trifecta.” That’s the strategy. Not that the war went well, but that there’s still time to protect him before January.
Look, I’ve never seen a Secretary of Defense describe an unfinished war as a victory while the casualty list is incomplete. If this were a victory, the president wouldn’t need Fox to go to bat for him on the issue, the Vice President wouldn’t be blaming the war for the election, and the Pentagon wouldn’t be writing talking points about the trifecta.
Massie’s impeachment vote is set to arrive, and I think the war will whip the votes for him, even those from some members of the president’s own party.
2. Trump AI Ally Mired in National Security Scandal
Jensen Huang runs Nvidia, which became the most valuable company in the world by making the chips every AI company needs. U.S. intelligence believes that a woman he had an affair with was passing information along to the CCP. Her company had already been suspected of smuggling banned Nvidia chips into China. This weekend, Huang finally admitted to the affair and apologized to his family and employees in an email. The Nvidia board is opening an investigation, but Huang will stay on as CEO in the meantime. So what did his friend in the White House think of the whole controversy?
Of course Huang will be in good shape. His company donated $25 million dollars to Trump’s precious ballroom. And if Kash Patel is the guy in charge, the president’s opinion will be the only one that matters.
Other Republicans aren’t so willing to let this one slide. Politico reports the Republican chairs of House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, and the Select Committee on the CCP have asked Huang to come in for a closed-door briefing next week. Brett Guthrie said “we need to do an investigation,” and John Cornyn said Congress should “absolutely” have a role in probing him. Even John Thune chimed in, telling the press: “We want to be responding in a serious way to any big threat to America’s national security interest.”
This isn’t the first time Trump has played fast and loose with Nvidia. Congressional China hawks have been frustrated with the president since he approved the sale of the company’s advanced chips to China over their objections. Politico reported that staff at the Commerce Department flagged the risk of Nvidia chips being diverted to China in “dozens” of reports that Howard Lutnick ignored.
The favorable treatment has extended to Huang personally. In September, he got an invite to a state dinner with Xi. In October, he was awarded the National Medal of Science. He’s been a symbol of Trump’s alliance with big tech and the face of the argument that tech companies can police themselves. Meanwhile, the woman at his side was working for Beijing. I can’t wait for the new Congress to sink their teeth into this one.
3. Ukraine-Russia Talks Underway in Abu Dhabi
In Abu Dhabi, American, Ukrainian, and Russian delegations are sitting down for the first trilateral talks since Trump started the war with Iran. A U.S. official said both sides have shown “a little bit of flexibility” in private. They’re back at it today.
The sticking points haven’t changed. Russia still wants all of Donetsk, including the cities Ukraine holds. Putin also refuses a simple ceasefire. Meanwhile, the American side is floating a security guarantee for Ukraine modeled on NATO’s Article 5, plus a U.S.-European draft reportedly includes a timetable for lifting sanctions and energy access for Russia.
Zelensky has explained many times why he can’t accept the land swaps Trump seems to prefer: “Ceding Ukrainian land for peace is just abstract words…Nobody trusts Putin to stop if we leave Donbas. He will pause. Then he will come back in one year, two years, or five years.”
As talks continued, the head of Ukraine’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee criticized Trump’s handling of the negotiations, telling the BBC he wants “a quick deal at the expense of Ukraine.” He explained that the only way to get Putin to negotiate for real is more pressure, sanctions and deep strikes: “While Putin has a war machine up and running, he has no incentives to negotiate.” On the other hand, he said agreements like Trump’s Russian diesel deal “only encourages Moscow to continue the war.”
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I’ve seen the destruction of this war with my own eyes. I would love to see a deal. But Putin will only make real concessions when he feels the pressure. Lifting sanctions does the exact opposite.
So negotiate. Talk. But show up strong. Put the pressure on. Make a deal with the future of the Ukrainian people in mind instead of chasing a headline.
4. Democrats Receive Interior Dept. Whistleblower Complaint
According to CNN, multiple whistleblowers have told House Democrats that the Interior Department is getting rid of records in anticipation of oversight investigations. The records relate to Trump’s makeover of Washington, D.C.
The president has pushed through many building projects on federal land, turning a historic city into his own tacky vanity project. There’s the golf course on East Potomac Park, promising a world class experience for Trump’s billionaire friends. There’s the Tidal Basin redevelopment plan, which makes room for Trump’s National Garden of American Heroes. And there’s the towering triumphal arch, complete with military snipers and drones.
The whistleblowers say some of the paperwork behind those projects has already been destroyed.
The Interior Department denies it. It said the whistleblower claim is “100 percent false.” A spokesperson added “the Department follows all federal records management obligations as directed by its ethics officials.”
But the timing tells its own story. CNN reports the administration is racing to push these projects through federal approvals over the next 60 days, before Democrats take control of Congress in January. A Trump ally even said: “It is going to be like a storm.”
Democrats aren’t taking any chances either. Representative Jared Huffman is expected to chair the Natural Resources Committee. He’s already sending preservation letters to everyone involved: the Interior Department, the Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Agriculture Department, and any company that donated to the projects.
The recipients have to certify that they’re preserving records. They also have to “identify and recover any deleted information.” Huffman is confident his committee will get the records, deleted or not. His message to the administration? “Everything is coming; it’s all coming.”
The committee isn’t waiting long. Working with the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees, it’s already planning early hearings on the golf course and the arch. It says it’s ready to issue subpoenas if the administration stonewalls them.
And here’s the thing. Innocent people don’t usually need a shredder. If these projects are on the level, the paperwork should be the easy part. Interior says nothing is being destroyed. Fine. In January, it’ll have to prove it. Under oath.
5. Trump Blames Voting Machines for Midterm Drubbing
Presidents don’t have to sign off on elections to determine if they’re fair. And this one left no room for fraud claims. He got crushed.
By yesterday morning, the shock had worn off. Trump went back to his favorite lie, posting on Truth Social.
There’s a lot to unpack here. First, bad polls don’t make a rigged election. They make bad polls. And besides, these polls weren’t even bad. They projected the Democrats to take both chambers.
Second, those early voting “dumps” he’s so worried about? That’s just counting. Election officials count ballots in batches, and some batches are larger than others. Trump made this same complaint in 2020. He and his allies took it to court more than 60 times, and they lost almost every case.
And lastly, is he really going back to the machines? Because that conspiracy did even worse. Fox News paid Dominion Voting Systems more than 787 million dollars to settle a defamation suit over it. The theory has been tested in courtrooms and by hand. It failed both times.
This proves one thing: Trump is desperate. The wheels are coming off his presidency, and he’s trying to burn the country down on the way out. He’s naming Stephen Miller chief of staff. He’s offering Dana White the press secretary job. And he’s back to claiming election fraud.
And here’s the bottom line. In 2020, this post would have launched a thousand lawsuits and a riot. In 2026, it got a two-word reply from far-right commentator Megyn Kelly: “Just stop.” That’s the change. It’s not that he’s stopped. It’s that the movement that used to carry it for him has put it down. They’re embarrassed, and they should be.
Because the machines didn’t beat him. The people did, and everyone but him has accepted it.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
Democrats haven’t even been sworn in yet, and they’re already coming after corporate America. Two days after last week’s election, Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal sent dozens of letters to companies that donated to President Trump’s White House ballroom project. The list includes Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, BlackRock and Coinbase. Blumenthal is set to chair the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He gave the companies until Jan. 4, the first full day of the new Congress, to produce records. Missing that deadline, he warned, would leave him “no choice but to consider alternative measures to obtain compliance.” The House Judiciary Committee is also looking into the Live Nation antitrust settlement. And the committee’s incoming chair, Jamie Raskin, says he’s ready to subpoena the law firms that cut pro bono deals with the White House. Such investigations come after strong voter mandate. Exit polls showed that anger over affordability and corruption drove voters to hand Democrats both chambers. But companies saw this coming. Many have spent months hiring congressional-investigations lawyers and running “wargame” simulations to map their exposure.
Washington grand juries keep denying prosecutors from the Justice Department who are trying to push Trump’s agenda. The New York Times reports that D.C. federal prosecutors have failed to get indictments in at least three cases in the past two weeks alone. The latest came Friday. A grand jury refused to indict someone accused of voting in two jurisdictions in 2024. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office declined to comment. But Pirro has had to brush off such losses before. She said in March she was “willing to take a no true bill,” meaning that a grand jury votes not to indict. That used to be almost unthinkable. Grand juries hear only the government’s side, and prosecutors just have to show probable cause. Trump’s first term produced one high-profile rejection, in the case against former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe. This term, D.C. grand juries have turned down cases against a man who threw a sandwich at a federal officer and against six Democratic lawmakers over their illegal-orders video. Last week, a federal magistrate judge threw out charges Pirro’s office had filed without going to a grand jury at all. He accused prosecutors of deliberately avoiding grand juries.
