Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth slammed the impeachment effort against him Tuesday, using his first news conference at the Pentagon in six months to deliver a defiant and politicized defense of his stewardship of the U.S. military.
Hegseth framed the impeachment effort as a “political spectacle” that undermines U.S. troops by targeting him over mere “policy disagreements” — not the high crimes required in the Constitution for his possible removal.
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day earlier, Rep. Thomas Massie launched a bid to impeach Hegseth over his handling of the unpopular war against Iran and other military actions. Massie, who lost his GOP primary in Kentucky to a Trump-backed opponent, read the impeachment resolution from the House floor just hours after it opened for the first day of sessions after the midterms. A House vote on whether to move forward with the impeachment is expected later Tuesday.
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The nomination of Elliot Gaiser to serve on the bench for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas could leave the Justice Department with another key vacancy amid a wave of departures after the midterm elections.
Gaiser was sworn in last year as assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel, which writes opinions on thorny legal questions for the executive branch.
Under Gaiser, a former solicitor general of Ohio, the Office of Legal Counsel has weighed in on issues ranging from gun rights to the U.S. military operation that removed Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro from power.
Trump said in a social media post that “Texas will appreciate having such a talented and intelligent Judge on their Federal Bench.”
The Justice Department has seen several high-ranking departures over the last week, including the resignations of three division leaders at Washington headquarters.
Asked about the impeachment effort against the Pentagon chief, the secretary of state defended Hegseth by saying he had worked to “execute on a direct order from the commander in chief” when it came to Iran, strikes on alleged drug boats in Latin America and more.
Rubio, who is also the national security adviser, told reporters after a G7 foreign ministers meeting in Paris that Trump has a right “to address imminent threats” against the United States.
He said Iran’s threats and boats that smuggle drugs into the U.S. fall into that category, referring to a campaign of deadly military strikes on vessels since last year.
In the January capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, Rubio again insisted it “was in many cases a law enforcement operation because he was a fugitive of American justice who was captured” on drug trafficking charges.
The vice president wrote in a social media post that the answer to whether Hegseth committed impeachable crimes is “obviously not.”
Vance argued that lawmakers backing a Hegseth impeachment were using the tool to register policy disagreements rather than for high crimes and misdemeanors.
“They did the same to Donald Trump,” Vance wrote. “Legislation is hard. Impeachments are easy (and ultimately, inconsequential).”
Vance argued that lawmakers were most upset with Hegseth for his efforts to reposition U.S. troops out of Europe, not for the Iran war.
Senate Republicans met Tuesday to discuss their future and were expected to reconvene in the afternoon as they decide whether to keep South Dakota Sen. John Thune as their leader. The meetings come just a week after major losses in midterm elections that cost them their majority.
Thune is still expected to be reelected, given that he remains popular with his GOP colleagues and is so far running unopposed. But senators left the meeting after two hours of discussions with no resolution on a way forward.
Some senators had said beforehand that it was too soon after the election for a vote on leadership.
“We want to be thoughtful and do the right thing,” said West Virginia Sen. Jim Justice as the meeting broke up.
House Speaker Mike Johnson is blasting the effort to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, calling it a “political gambit for attention” and “shameful.”
“The idea that you would impeach the secretary of war at a time of international conflict sends a terrible message to our enemies and our allies, and we are not going to play that game,” Johnson told reporters.
Johnson said he also watched most of Hegseth’s news conference in which the secretary gave a defiant and politicized defense of his stewardship of the U.S. military.
“I thought he did very well,” Johnson said, before predicting that Republicans would defeat the impeachment effort “one way or the other.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday confirmed Trump’s intent to hold three-way talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin when the U.S. president is in Shenzhen next week.
“We’re working to organize it and to frame it in the appropriate way,” Rubio said. “And hopefully, you know, we’ll have some news for you about that fairly soon.”
Trump believes the three sides should discuss “the status of nuclear weapons in the world,” as the president thinks nuclear proliferation is dangerous, Rubio said.
The meeting would be historic, though foreign policy experts warn that the three sides, with conflicting interests, are unlikely to hold substantive discussions.
Beijing does not like to engage in discussions on nuclear weapons, while Russia seeks to undermine U.S. support for Ukraine.
Thune is expected to be reelected, given that he remains popular with his GOP colleagues and is running unopposed. But some Republicans who returned to Washington on Monday for the first time since the election wipeout that cost them at least seven seats said it’s too soon to endorse the status quo.
“We need to have some real soul-searching,” said Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who circulated a letter to the conference asking to delay the closed-door, secret-ballot leadership elections. “We can’t just continue on business as usual — that kind of defeat demands change.”
Still, Johnson conceded that there’s no one else on the ballot.
The angst comes as the party is beginning to reckon with what the election results mean for GOP lawmakers and how soon they can try to rebuild their ranks. Two additional races remain uncalled in Alaska and Mississippi that could further deplete their numbers.
Thune made clear Monday that leadership is moving ahead with Senate elections, which include contests for other party leaders.
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Senate Majority Leader John Thune has arrived on Capitol Hill ahead of a meeting of his fellow Republicans to decide whether to delay leadership elections or select him as leader again in the next Congress.
Asked how he was feeling as he walked into his office, Thune said, “We’ll see.”
U.S. inflation was higher than expected last month, signaling that rising prices that powered sweeping Democratic victories in last week’s midterm elections will continue posing challenges for the White House and the Federal Reserve.
The consumer price index rose 0.4% from September to October, the Labor Department said Tuesday, down from 0.6% the previous month. The government did not report a yearly inflation rate because last year’s government shutdown meant no data was released for October 2025.
Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices rose 0.3%, the same as the preceding month. Both figures were a tenth of a point higher than forecast.
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Hegseth has concluded the news conference after taking six questions.
The secretary of defense was overwhelmingly defiant in his remarks from the Pentagon podium, which cast the impeachment as “sabotage” against U.S. troops. He insisted he had done nothing wrong and claimed the support of Trump and Vice President JD Vance. And when asked, he avoided questions about the political backlash against the war in last week’s midterm elections.
“I stand behind every one of these operations. I was proud to execute them, and I would do it again tomorrow,” Hegseth said.
The impeachment, he insisted, “puts a target on the backs of American warriors by signaling that Congress will undermine their missions in real time. This is not patriotism. This is sabotage.”
Trump praised Hegseth’s performance in a social media post published minutes after the news conference ended.
“Pete Hegseth gets an “A” PLUS, PLUS, PLUS for his defense against a disgruntled, angry, defeated, former Congressman, Thomas Massie, a TOTAL LOSER!” Trump wrote.
Hegseth is defending himself against impeachment by describing the effort as an attack on the troops.
“On the eve of Veterans Day,” Hegseth said, “these resolutions tell every one of them that their service was a crime.”
“These are heroes, and no politician in Washington will tell them otherwise while I hold this office,” he added. “If they want to come for the warriors, they’re going to have to come through me.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is condemning the impeachment effort against him as “a political spectacle, a personal manifesto driven by ego and resentment.”
Hegseth made the comments at the beginning of a morning news conference at the Pentagon. It was his first news conference from the Pentagon in six months and came just a day after Rep. Thomas Massie launched an effort to impeach him over his handling of the unpopular war against Iran and other actions.
Hegseth said Massie’s concerns are not impeachable, calling them “policy disagreements, not high crimes, not misdemeanors, not treason, not bribery, not the kinds of offenses the founders intended when they wrote the impeachment clause.”
He continued: “The proper remedy for a policy disagreement, it’s legislation, it’s debate, it’s the next presidential election.”
Trump said Monday that the FBI is investigating Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s affair with an alleged Chinese government agent, but said he doesn’t think the executive who has helped to develop artificial intelligence has a reason to worry.
“I know the FBI is looking into it in terms of something else, and I think that he’ll be in good shape,” Trump said at a White House briefing.
The sudden emergence of Huang’s infidelity has rocked the political class and America’s tech sector, creating new concerns about whether China has been able to access the cutting-edge chips designed by Nvidia that are powering the development of artificial intelligence.
Trump suggested the extraordinary step of directly involving himself in a counterintelligence investigation, a sign of his friendly relationship with Huang and the possible geopolitical stakes.
Huang has acknowledged he had an affair, issuing an apology to his wife and to the company in an open letter posted on Nvidia’s website. The New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence determined that the woman was gathering information for Beijing.
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Senators from both parties returned to Washington on Monday with questions about the future of their leadership after last week’s election decisively gave Democrats a significant new majority.
Republicans who are losing around a quarter of their conference to election losses and retirements are debating whether to immediately reelect South Dakota Sen. John Thune as leader in votes scheduled for Tuesday. Across the aisle, Democrats who could hold as many as 56 seats next year are having private discussions about whether New York Sen. Chuck Schumer is still the right person to lead them, even as he carried the party to historic wins.
Both men are expected to easily win the backing of a majority of their members in closed-door, secret-ballot elections — the Republicans this week, and Democrats likely in December. But the internal discussions on both sides could prove consequential to their parties’ effectiveness in the next Congress and how voters perceive them leading into the 2028 presidential election.
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The Senate on Monday advanced bipartisan legislation aimed at speeding up permitting reviews to power data centers and other infrastructure projects, in the first major action since last week’s election that soundly repudiated Trump and congressional Republicans.
The Senate voted 73-25 to formally take up the bill, which senators and the president have pushed to meet growing demand for electricity and other energy sources that now face yearslong delays before reaching the grid.
The legislation’s sweeping changes would shorten the timeline to get big energy projects started — both for clean energy and fossil fuel projects — and make sure data centers pay for the energy they use. Anger over artificial intelligence data centers and rising electricity prices helped usher in a wave of Democrats pledging to clamp down on the massive, energy-hungry structures.
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is scheduled to give his first news conference from the Pentagon in six months on Tuesday, just a day after a Republican lawmaker launched an effort to impeach him over his handling of the unpopular war against Iran and other actions.
The briefing will be Hegseth’s first since May, even as the U.S. military has kept up intermittent operations against the Islamic Republic as well as fatal strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in Latin America.
Hegseth, who has said the news conference would focus on the impeachment threat, is gearing up for a fight, having launched a social media blitz and saying he is ready to defend his and President Donald Trump’s actions from “politically motivated people.”
Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who lost his primary to a Trump-backed opponent, filed the impeachment resolution in the House on Monday. It sets the stage for a dramatic vote on whether to remove a prominent Trump administration figure following sweeping losses for Republicans in last week’s midterm elections that many at least partly blamed on the Iran conflict and its economic impact.
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