Massie plans renewed impeachment articles unless Hegseth resigns
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a Thursday video posted online that he was not going anywhere. The video addressed DEI and trans people before he rejected Rep. Thomas Massie’s renewed impeachment effort. “A disgruntled, defeated congressman [aka Massie], along with all his Democrat allies, has also dropped sham articles of impeachment against yours truly, just like they tried against President Trump twice,” Hegseth said. “Didn’t work against President Trump, and it won’t work with me. You can rest assured of that.” Guardian columnist Arwa Mahdawi noted that Hegseth prefers to identify as the “war secretary.”
The outgoing Republican congressman told Bloomberg News he would “definitely” reintroduce articles of impeachment against Hegseth next week. In a Wednesday post on X, Massie wrote: “There is one contingency in which I won’t reintroduce the articles of impeachment: Hegseth resigns.” Mahdawi wrote that Massie had previously sought Hegseth’s impeachment for starting the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran without congressional approval.
Sen. Thom Tillis, an outgoing Republican senator, told CBS News on Tuesday night that Hegseth had a “reckoning” coming. After Hegseth’s video, Tillis wrote on social media: “@PeteHegseth, cabinet secretaries shouldn’t be wasting taxpayer dollars on campaign style videos.” “This is about you: the incompetence you’ve displayed, the bad advice you’ve given to president, and your shameful and embarrassing episodes from firing our top generals to texting war plans to reporters,” Tillis wrote, addressing Hegseth directly.
Democrats had made Hegseth a target before the midterms. Mahdawi described Hegseth as a “former Fox News personality.” “In the majority, one of the first things we’re going to do is run Pete Hegseth out of town,” Hakeem Jeffries said at a campaign rally.
President Donald Trump publicly backed Hegseth on Wednesday. Asked whether he was considering replacing the defense secretary, Trump said: “No, I think he’s doing a very good job.” NBC News reported the same day that Trump had told some allies he was considering replacing Hegseth.
After the midterm elections ended with Republican losses, Guardian opinion columnist Arwa Mahdawi wrote that “the blame game is only just getting started,” with Republicans “desperate to find scapegoats for their shellacking” and Hegseth “an obvious choice” among them. She wrote that the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran “played a key role in the midterm upset, as even JD Vance has admitted,” and that Hegseth “was one of its main architects.” Mahdawi wrote that the criticism was “not just” from Democrats, noting that many of Hegseth’s peers were “eager to give him the boot.” She also wrote that there was “little chance that Hegseth will unilaterally decide to make a dignified exit.”
The column catalogued episodes in Hegseth’s career: allegations of past drunk and disorderly conduct; the settlement he paid to a woman who accused him of raping her in 2017; the time his own mother called him an “abuser of women”; and a New Yorker report that he was accused in 2015 of drunkenly chanting “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!” Mahdawi noted that Hegseth had denied any wrongdoing and that Hegseth’s lawyer told the New Yorker it would not comment on the “outlandish claims.” The column also cited the time he accidentally sent top secret war plans in a Signal group chat that included a reporter from the Atlantic and referred to “the alleged war crimes he’s responsible for.”
Mahdawi wrote that “Hegseth loves to rail against ‘DEI hires’, but imagine for a moment if a woman was texting classified information to the wrong people and battling scandal after scandal.” She added: “There’s no way she’d still be heading up the Pentagon.” She also observed: “As has been widely observed, Trump seems to like getting rid of his high-level female officials when they embarrass him, while holding on to his mediocre men.” Mahdawi wrote: “Indeed, while the secretary of war may be on the defensive now, there’s always the depressing possibility that his sex – and his sycophancy towards the president – may end up saving him.”
Mahdawi wrote that even if Hegseth could “cling on to the sinking ship until it finally goes down,” he “must be feeling very uncomfortable right now,” and that she was “clinging on to hope that he will have a very public downfall.” The column noted that Hegseth had wanted to livestream an execution via firing squad, although it never happened. Mahdawi added: “perhaps we’ll all get to watch a live stream of Hegseth getting fired.”
Mahdawi wrote that Nancy Lacore, a three-star admiral who served in the Navy for 35 years, was “ousted by Hegseth without cause amid a broader purge.” She wrote that “In response, she mounted a bid for Congress that made Hegseth’s incompetence a key talking point.” Mahdawi said the race had not been officially called when the column was published, but wrote that it “looks like she’s managed to flip a traditionally Republican seat.” Mahdawi also wrote: “Wouldn’t it be poetic if she plays a part in firing Pete?”
Other items cited in the column
The column’s shorter items ranged across election analysis, a court case, the conflict in the West Bank, health misinformation and one oddity.
On the election, podcaster Tim Pool told Fox News: “Eighteen- to 29-year-old young white men with no college degrees swung 40 points to the Democrats, and I don’t think it’s all because they’re socialists.” He added: “I think it’s because many of them want to burn the Republican party down.”
On a sexual assault case, part of Brand’s defence was the claim: “Not one of [the victims] resisted or screamed or even tried to leave.” Speaking after the trial, Claire Waxman, the victims’ commissioner for England and Wales, warned about misconceptions surrounding sexual assault. “The idea that rape victims must scream, physically resist or immediately report an offence is a well-established rape myth, rooted in outdated and harmful assumptions about how victims are expected to behave,” she said. “Justice must be grounded in evidence, not misconceptions.”
Mahdawi reported that Israeli militants killed five teenage students at al-Mughayyir school in the West Bank during the prior academic year, one at the school gates. Parents’ fears about sending children back to class led the school to build larger fences. Mahdawi wrote: “Meanwhile, ‘settlers’ continue their violent pogroms on the village, and far too many US politicians continue to excuse and enable this violence.”
A Guardian investigation found that groups such as Crunchy Moms, which has more than 490,000 members, “are hives of” anti-vaccine content and medical misinformation. The investigation found that Meta “appears to have helped spread such ideas by promoting Crunchy Moms into users’ feeds, even when they do not seek it out.”
Surveillance cameras captured an alligator entering the back of a bagel shop in North Carolina, startling customers. Police were called, and the animal was removed.