On Nov. 10, the House blocked an attempt to impeach Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, voting 211 to 204 to shelve the articles filed by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). Massie, who lost his Republican primary in May, was the only Republican to vote to keep the resolution alive.
His eight articles charge Hegseth with waging war against Iran without congressional authorization. They also cite the strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, the capture of Nicolás Maduro, and Operation Rough Rider, a 52-day bombing campaign in Yemen.
Hours before the vote, Hegseth answered the charges in the Pentagon briefing room. “In the 250 years of our American republic, no Secretary of War or Secretary of Defense has ever been impeached for carrying out lawful military operations,” he said, according to the Pentagon transcript.
He said every operation named in the articles “was a lawful operation ordered by the commander-in-chief.” Hegseth said he then issued the orders, Congress was notified, and American troops carried them out. He said the same standard had applied “War Powers Resolution or not,” citing Ronald Reagan in Lebanon, Bill Clinton in Kosovo, and Barack Obama and Joe Biden in Iraq and Syria.
Democrats won control of the House in the Nov. 3 midterms and will take the majority in January. They have promised to revive the impeachment effort. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the expected next speaker, said, “In the majority, one of the first things we’re gonna do is run Pete Hegseth out of town.”
Congress has also voted on the Iran war itself. On March 5, the House rejected a resolution to limit the operation. On June 24, the White House asked Congress for $87.6 billion in supplemental funding, including $67 billion for the Pentagon to restock munitions and cover deployment costs.
On July 23, the House passed a concurrent resolution rebuking the operation by a vote of 214 to 208. A concurrent resolution does not go to the president for signature. The Senate rejected a separate Democratic measure that day.
The administration has laid out its legal case for the Iran strikes, its earlier June 2025 strike, and the drug-boat strikes.
The impeachment record supports Hegseth’s historical claim. The only secretary of war the House has ever impeached was William Belknap in 1876. The charge involved kickbacks from the Fort Sill military trading post, according to the U.S. Senate. Belknap resigned minutes before the House voted, and the Senate acquitted him.
No secretary of defense has been impeached since the post was created in 1947. In 2004, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) filed articles against Donald Rumsfeld over the Iraq War and the Abu Ghraib prison abuses (H.Res. 629). The House never voted on them.
Presidents have repeatedly sent American forces into combat without specific congressional authorization. One major example came in June 1950, when Harry Truman sent troops to Korea. Truman “did not seek congressional authorization for the military action under domestic law,” and Congress passed neither a declaration of war nor an authorization, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The Truman administration defended the war as an “international police action” enforcing United Nations Security Council resolutions. The fighting lasted until the armistice of July 1953.
Bill Clinton began bombing Yugoslavia over Kosovo on March 24, 1999. On April 28, the House voted on S.Con.Res. 21, a resolution authorizing the air campaign. It failed on a 213-213 tie. Clinton continued the bombing. While the campaign was underway, Congress approved emergency funding for it.
The House passed the supplemental bill 269 to 158 on May 18, and Clinton signed it on May 21. It included $3.3 billion for Kosovo military operations, according to CRS. The air campaign lasted 78 days and ended on June 10.
In 2011, Obama kept U.S. forces involved in the Libya campaign beyond 60 days without congressional approval. The administration argued that the War Powers Resolution’s withdrawal deadline did not apply. State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the operation did not amount to “hostilities” under the law and described it as “expressly designed to be limited.”
In his first term, Donald Trump ordered strikes on Syria in April 2017 and again in April 2018 without congressional authorization. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded that the 2018 strikes fell within the president’s authority under Article II of the Constitution.
Several presidents faced war-related impeachment proposals. None of those proposals resulted in impeachment by the full House. In April 1952, Rep. Paul Shafer (R-Mich.) introduced H.Res. 614 to impeach Truman. It charged him with placing U.S. forces under the UN Command in Korea without congressional approval, seizing the steel mills and firing Gen. Douglas MacArthur. The Judiciary Committee never acted on it, according to a CRS review.
On July 30, 1974, the Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee approved a Watergate-related article against Richard Nixon. The same day, it voted 26 to 12 against an article charging him with concealing the bombing of Cambodia.
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Rep. Ted Weiss (D-N.Y.) introduced H.Res. 370 against Reagan over the 1983 invasion of Grenada. In 1991, Rep. Henry Gonzalez (D-Texas) filed H.Res. 34 and H.Res. 86 against George H.W. Bush over the Persian Gulf War. In 2008, the House voted 251 to 166 to send Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s articles against George W. Bush, which included charges related to the Iraq War, to committee. The articles never returned to the House floor.
The House has never impeached a secretary of war or defense over a military operation. The vote on Hegseth leaves that record intact, though Democrats have pledged to revive the effort when they take the majority in January.
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