Pete Hegseth Deserves To Be Impeached

Impeachment should never be taken lightly. Impeaching Hegseth is still the right thing to do.

Pete Hegseth says he wants to create fighters. He has been better at creating problems for our fighting force.

Last week, Speaker Mike Johnson had a problem. A resolution to impeach Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was on the House floor, and under the rules, his members were going to have to vote on it within two days.

So he sent them home.

He called an early recess, seven weeks worth to take it past the November election, and swore up and down it had nothing to do with Hegseth. Nobody believed him.

And here’s the kicker: the impeachment resolution wasn’t filed by some firebrand Democrat. It came from Thomas Massie, a conservative Republican.

But with Democrats poised to regain control of the House, impeachment is about to get much more attention, and very quickly.

So let’s talk about impeachment, a topic I know a thing or two about, because it’s serious business.

Impeachment is not a censure vote or a strongly worded letter. It is a major guardrail provided to Congress by the Constitution to give it the power to tear a person out of the government of the United States.

In 1974, a Republican named Tom Railsback voted to impeach a president of his own party, a man he admired. He worried it would end his career. He did it anyway, because he decided his oath to the Constitution outranked his loyalty to Richard Nixon.

When I voted to impeach Donald Trump, the seriousness of the moment outweighed everything else and knew what it would cost me. When I cast my vote, I did not feel triumphant. I felt the weight of history on my shoulders.

If impeachment ever feels fun, you’re doing it wrong.

So when I tell you Pete Hegseth has earned impeachment, know that I don’t say it lightly. I say it because I take the word seriously, and because the case is overwhelming.

The Case Against Hegseth

We have to start with the boat strikes.

For a year now, on Hegseth’s orders, the U.S. military has been blowing up small boats it says are carrying drugs. At least 231 people are dead. Roughly 69 strikes.

The government has shown no evidence these boats were smuggling anything. It has released almost none of the victims’ names. United Nations experts have a plain term for what this is: extrajudicial executions.

And Hegseth brags about it. He says we’ll “hunt them down and kill them.” He says he’ll treat them “exactly how we treated Al-Qaeda.” Human beings, blown out of the water without a trial, without a charge, without so much as a name.

Second, there’s what he’s done to the military itself. He has purged the senior ranks, firing the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Navy Secretary, and battle-tested commanders in the middle of an active war. Our armed forces have always belonged to the country and the Constitution, not to a party or a president. In an attempt to install loyalists, Hegseth is jettisoning vital experience right when we need it most, and that makes America less safe.

“So when I tell you Pete Hegseth has earned impeachment, know that I don’t say it lightly. I say it because I take the word seriously, and because the case is overwhelming.” - Adam Kinzinger

Finally, there’s the war with Iran. Under the Constitution, a president can’t wage war on his own and needs Congressional approval after 60 days of combat. Hegseth never got that authorization. And when a federal law kicked in that was supposed to force the issue, the administration’s legal justification was so flimsy it would have embarrassed a first-year law student.

Hegseth talked this president into an illegal war of choice with Iran and promised it would be quick. It wasn’t. At least 18 American service members have been publicly confirmed killed in the Iran war. But according to six U.S. officials familiar with the Pentagon’s internal casualty figures, the actual military death toll is at least 22. And after tens of billions of dollars all average Americans have to show for it are higher prices on gas and groceries.

Any one of these would be a scandal. Taken together, they’re more than enough to fill a resignation letter. Congress should be kind enough to sign it for him.

The Choices Ahead

Speaking on behalf of our military, Hegseth has traded seriousness for a level of disregard that endangers military objectives for us around the world. He has bucked norms in the process, and thus deserves to be impeached.

While Pete Hegseth deserves to be impeached, I am not going to pretend impeachment has no downsides. Pretending it doesn’t is the trap waiting for Democrats if (when) voters hand them the majority in November.

This is the most corrupt administration in American history. A new Democratic majority could spend its entire first year doing nothing but impeaching members of this cabinet who deserve it and never hit the bottom of the list. The temptation will be enormous.

But the voters who hand Democrats that majority won’t be doing it to impeach people like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Most Americans couldn’t pick Howard Lutnick out of a lineup. And nobody is voting on the finer points of the War Powers Resolution.

They’re voting because gas costs too much. And because a war they never asked for is grinding on and making life worse. And because it is impossible to miss Trump’s corruption.

Put plainly, Democrats owe it to the country and to future generations to hold this lawless administration accountable (Trump himself is a discussion for a whole different article). But they will also owe a duty to the people who gave them a majority for reasons that have nothing to do with impeachment. And those two imperatives can sometimes be mutually exclusive.

To any Democrat who finds that balancing act exhausting, I’d say this: good.

That struggle isn’t a burden. It’s the beating heart of the job you dreamed of and spent months asking voters for. Wrestling with what’s right for the country in 50 years versus what’s right by the voters who trusted you today is called governing.

A politician who doesn’t feel that tension is the one who probably shouldn’t be trusted with the power to make tough calls in the first place.

So here’s where I land: impeach him.

But do it with the full weight of history on your shoulders. And do it without forgetting, for one single day, who sent you to Washington and why.

— Adam