The Latest: Republican Rep. Thomas Massie files resolution to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
President Donald Trump told reporters that he believes the war in Iran “militarily is effectively over.” The president made a surprise visit to the White House briefing room after meeting with Qatar’s prime minister. Trump added that Iran has been “decapitated” but is still looking to make sure there’s a long-term solution to ensuring that Iran’s nuclear program is defanged.
Earlier on Monday, Rep. Thomas Massie moved to force a vote to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth based largely on the war in Iran. The impeachment resolution also includes references to Hegseth’s role in carrying out military actions in Yemen and Venezuela. A vote in the House could come by mid-week. Hegseth said he would hold a press conference on Tuesday — his first in over 180 days — on the impeachment threat, adding that the war was necessary, even if unpopular.
Massie filed the impeachment resolution as soon as the House opened for the first day of sessions after the midterms. Lawmakers are returning to Washington for just six short weeks — a lame-duck sprint to finish the Republican agenda before the GOP majorities end with the change of power on Jan. 3, 2027.
Here's the Latest:
After suggesting he was open to negotiating a deal with Democrats on immigration policy that he acknowledged might have been too tough, Trump on Monday said an amnesty was off the table.
“There won’t be amnesty,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “Somebody suggested, will there be amnesty? No, but— they came in. They knew the law.”
Trump defended his administration’s deportation policy as “very strong.” Asked if he had talked with his newly promoted chief of staff, Stephen Miller, about immigration changes, Trump said no.
“My policy hasn’t changed,” he said, adding that the focus will be on removing “the worst of the worst.”
“I’ll stand by him,” President Trump told reporters Monday, hours after a congressman introduced an impeachment resolution for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, read the resolution from the House floor just hours after it opened for the first day of sessions after the midterm election.
It largely focuses on the war in Iran but also includes references to Hegseth’s role in carrying out military actions in Yemen and Venezuela, with Massie saying Hegseth “knowingly executed and implemented unlawful orders” and “remains a threat to the Constitution.”
On Monday, Trump commended Hegseth for having “won the war” in Venezuela and as “winning the war” in Iran, which continues to drag on.
Trump went on to criticize Massie as a “sick guy” and a “loser.”
Hegseth has set a rare press briefing for Tuesday to discuss the matter.
President Donald Trump says he believes the war in Iran “militarily is effectively over.” The president made a surprise visit to the White House briefing room after meeting with Qatar’s prime minister earlier Monday.
“Iran militarily is effectively over,” Trump said. “We’re just keeping it the status quo.”
Trump added that Iran has been “decapitated” but said he is still looking to make sure there’s a long-term solution to ensuring that Iran’s nuclear program is defanged.
The president’s comments were his most definitive about moving away from his threat to resume strikes on Iran after the Democratic sweep of the U.S. midterm elections.
Trump spoke highly of Jensen Huang after Huang acknowledged he had been intimate with a business executive who, according to The New York Times, U.S. intelligence determined was gathering information for China.
“He’s an amazing guy, I hope there’s no problem,” Trump told journalists at the White House. “If there is a problem, we’ll let you know about it.”
“I know the FBI is looking into it in terms of something else, and I think that he’ll be in good shape,” Trump added.
He said Huang told him Monday “he had absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy.”
Asked whether he’ll bring up Huang when he speaks to Chinese President Xi Jinping, he said, “No, I don’t think so.” China’s Foreign Ministry has dismissed the spying allegations as a smear campaign against Beijing.
The House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries was asked during a news conference at the Capitol if the new White House chief of staff could be a viable partner as Democrats take charge of Congress.
Jeffries responded flatly: No.
He added: “His track record speaks for itself.”
The key architect of President Trump’s hardline immigration agenda, Miller was elevated Friday to become Trump’s chief of staff.
Jeffries, who is in line to become the House speaker in the new Congress, said: “I’ve gotten zero interest in working with that kind of individual.”
Following the Democratic sweep of the midterm elections, the party's House leader Hakeem Jeffries said House Democrats will have the largest majority of any party in this century.
“It is a clear mandate for House Democrats to get things done,” Jeffries said at a Capitol news conference.
He said Monday that the party’s priorities will be “to make life more affordable for the American people, to hold the president accountable and to make sure that this country can return to be the best version of herself.”
Whether they are leaving office in January or were reelected, Massie says his colleagues will “have to live with that vote.”
If they’re leaving Congress, “what do they have to lose?” the GOP congressman from Kentucky said. And if they plan to run for reelection in two years, they’ll have to answer to voters.
“This is the best vote you can take right now to put some daylight between yourself and the failed policy of this war in Iran and the way that it’s been handled,” Massie said.
Earlier Monday, Massie moved to force a vote to impeach Pete Hegseth, setting the stage for a dramatic vote on whether to remove the defense secretary and one of the most prominent Trump administration figures.
Hakeem Jeffries, leader of House Democrats, said Monday that the Nvidia issue did come up during a closed-door session with the CIA director and the Director of National Intelligence that was primarily about Iran.
“We’re going to need a full briefing, specifically as it relates to the Nvidia issue, so we can all get to the bottom of what has happened,” he said, “and what the implications are in terms of America’s national security.”
Shares of Nvidia tumbled more than 5% Monday after the computer chip maker, central to the artificial intelligence race, opened an investigation into reports that CEO Jensen Huang was the “target of a foreign intelligence effort.”
Nvidia’s announcement of the investigation Sunday followed Huang’s acknowledgment he had been intimate with a business executive who, according to The New York Times, U.S. intelligence determined was gathering information for China
The U.S. stock market rallied to its best day since April and clawed back more of its big loss from last week as oil prices swing lower.
The S&P 500 jumped 2.3% Monday, its second straight gain following a wipeout on worries that Democratic victories in the midterm elections could mean a slowdown in the construction of AI data centers.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 2.2%, and the Nasdaq composite rallied 2.7%. Brent crude’s price dropped 5.8%, which helped lift the market. The strength came even though Nvidia, one of Wall Street’s most influential stocks, sank.
He warned that Speaker Mike Johnson could try to delay a vote on his impeachment measure by moving to table it or refer it to a committee.
That would effectively kill the impeachment push, he said.
“They may try to get out of an actual vote on the substance of this,” Massie said. “We should have a vote and a rigorous debate on these eight articles of impeachment.”
Hours after U.S. officials described Russia indicating a new openness to ending the war, Rubio said that the process still has “ways to go,” and that getting Europeans to the table with the Russians has still not happened.
His comments come as U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are set to mediate talks with Moscow and Kyiv in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, with Germany, the U.K. and France there on the sidelines.
“It’s been difficult to get anything productive out of that,” Rubio told reporters. “But we’ll keep trying. And that’s what we’ve been trying to do the whole time, is try to be creative and find ways that we can help bring that conflict in that war to an end.”
As Rep. Thomas Massie introduced the resolution, Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended his fellow Cabinet secretary, saying that he believes he has been doing “a great job” and that it’s unfair that a Republican is pushing the effort.
“I think Pete’s done a good job, I really do. Again, I work with him. And so I see perhaps a side of him that the media doesn’t see and members of Congress may not see,” Rubio said, speaking to reporters at the Group of Seven industrialized democracies gathering in Paris. “But I think Pete works really hard. He’s incredibly smart.”
The renegade Republican congressman took swift action as soon as the House chamber opened, a move that is expected to force an impeachment vote in the days ahead.
Thomas Massie is reading the resolution into the record from the floor of a nearly empty House. Few lawmakers are on hand, but the visitors’ gallery has dozens of people watching the proceedings unfold.
He said Hegseth “knowingly executed and implemented unlawful orders” and “remains a threat to the Constitution.”
Massie said Hegseth “thus warrants impeachment.”
Asked about Vice President JD Vance blaming the Iran war for the massive GOP losses in the election, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth noted that Trump said he would do it again, and “I agree.”
He repeated a line that Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters a day earlier, “It doesn’t have to be necessarily popular, but it can be necessary.”
He reiterated that “Iran is devastated” though the Islamic Republic has been able to keep striking military bases in the Middle East used by the United States, causing billions of dollars in damage, as well as commercial ships in the disputed Strait of Hormuz.
Hegseth said the war was necessary because “someone had to confront the Iranian regime’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon.”
Facing an expected impeachment resolution in Congress, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he’s eager to litigate the policy choices that he and President Donald Trump have made in Iran and Venezuela.
“If you want to take issue with what we did in Epic Fury or Rough Rider or nabbing Nicolás Maduro, you’re taking issue with the troops and what they accomplished, which is historic,” Hegseth told reporters Monday.
He also announced that he would hold a press conference — his first in over 180 days — on the looming impeachment threat on Tuesday.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie has pushed the impeachment resolution forward over the objections of House GOP leadership as momentum grows to hold Hegseth accountable for the Iran war, which many Republicans blame for the party’s midterm election wipeout.
Democrats appear ready to use the power of congressional oversight in response to voter anger.
Nationally, about 6 in 10 voters said the Trump administration had “gone too far” on immigration enforcement, according to The AP Voter Poll, a survey of more than 100,000 midterm voters. A similar share disapproved of how ICE was doing its job. And about 6 in 10 voters said immigrants to the U.S. today do more to “help the country,” while less than half, about 4 in 10, said they do more to “hurt the country.”
Rep. Robert Garcia, a Los Angeles-area Democrat who will take over the House Oversight Committee, warned the administration to “lawyer up.”
The next Congress will “address the Trump administration’s assault on the rule of law and hold those responsible accountable,” said Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security committee.
After Democrats’ overwhelming midterm victories this week, winning candidates spoke of the need, once they are sworn in, to rein in Trump’s mass deportation machine. Some suggested putting forward a new vision for immigration reform while both houses of Congress are in Democratic control.
But there are clear limits to what Democrats can achieve, even after their epic win, with Trump wielding veto power for another two years. Republicans have frontloaded billions of dollars for immigration enforcement, and the key architect of the president’s hard-line immigration agenda, Stephen Miller, is now his chief of staff.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin vowed on social media after the GOP wipeout that “Deportations will continue.”
At around the same time a driver crashed into a sign just north of the White House on Monday morning, the Secret Service says another person jumped over a barricade.
A police bomb squad was called in to sweep the car as a precaution, and roads around Lafayette Square were closed. A spokesperson for the Secret Service says that both the driver and the person who breached the barricade have been arrested.
Temporary fencing has been up around Lafayette Square for months, and the Trump administration has been pushing for more permanent gates cordoning off the area historically a gathering spot for everyone from tourists to protesters.
The National Capital Planning Commission has also been considering a proposal for a White House visitors security screening center south of the Treasury Department.
Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven industrialized democracies began two days of talks in Paris on Monday as they grapple with multiple unresolved global crises amid questions about how Trump will approach foreign policy after his Republican Party’s heavy losses in the midterm elections.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is likely to face questions about whether the administration will shift its positions on the Russia-Ukraine war, the Iran conflict, energy security and artificial intelligence at the meetings between top diplomats from the U.S., Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan on Monday and Tuesday.
It is Rubio’s first overseas trip since Republicans lost control of Congress, partly because of the Iran war and other deeply unpopular policies. The talks also come amid major protests across Europe.
The United States — the world’s second-largest polluter after China — is again absent as world leaders, delegates and climate activists opened annual talks on curbing the global warming causing deadly heat waves in Europe and disasters such as the devastating floods in Nepal.
This U.N. Conference of the Parties, or COP31, comes as the war in Iran has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, hiking global prices of gasoline, oil and products made with them, such as fertilizers and pesticides. The disruption has pushed governments to rethink energy policies and increase investment in renewable energy sources like wind and solar.
“The climate crisis is now a global health crisis of pandemic proportions,” U.N. climate chief Simon Stiell said on Monday. “At this COP, nations face a choice: electric or shock. Rewire the global economy for the electric age. Or accept ongoing fossil fuel cost pain for families, firms and governments.”
The closed-door meetings could end up being blame-casting sessions about what went wrong in the elections.
House Republicans are bracing for a contentious leadership battle after Mike Johnson decided to step aside, setting up a showdown between the No. 2 Republican, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the brawling former wrestling coach allied with the hard-right conservatives.
The two men had confronted one another when trying to become House speaker three years ago, but neither was able to win enough support from the Republican rank and file, leading to Johnson’s rise. With the House Republican numbers now shrunken, lawmakers could seek wholesale change in leadership.
In the Senate, Majority Leader John Thune is expected to retain his job as Republican leader, though in the minority after Democrats flipped Republican-held seats, including milestone wins in Texas and Kansas.
At least two newcomers to the Senate — Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan and Adam Hamilton of Kansas — have declined to publicly support Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer’s majority leader bid, but no challenger has emerged.
“I think we need somebody who’s going to bring us together ... somebody who’s going to come with fresh ideas,” Hamilton said Sunday on CNN.
Hakeem Jeffries, on track to make history as the nation’s first Black speaker of the House, also faces skepticism.
“Every single member here is going to have their individual vote,” said Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, at a Capitol press conference Sunday, flanked by newly elected lawmakers, including a handful from the Democratic Socialists of America.
“What we talked about at orientation today was not about any individual person, but about policy,” Casar said. “How we set a progressive path forward.”
Trump is determined to bring an end to the “horrible” war between Russia and Ukraine.
That’s according to Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, who’s scheduled to begin talks on Tuesday in the United Arab Emirates with Russian and Ukrainian negotiators. Kushner wrote on social media Monday that he and special envoy Steve Witkoff would meet first with leaders from Ukraine and other European nations.
Kushner says the U.S. is “working hard to find a negotiated solution that can deliver lasting peace and create the conditions for a sovereign, secure, and prosperous Ukraine within a more stable European security environment.”
While Trump vowed to end the war within 24 hours of starting his second term, the war is nearing its five-year mark.
Congress is reconvening in a changed Washington, with Trump doubling down on his political threats despite the landmark GOP losses.
The halls of the Capitol will swell this week with the collision of incoming and outgoing lawmakers, as the newcomers attend orientation sessions while the retiring lawmakers start to clear out. It’s creating a jumble of split-screen moments reflective of the new political landscape.
Dozens of jubilant Democrats, families and suitcases in tow for freshman orientation appeared emboldened by the party’s sweep of power. The trickle of Republicans coming in spoke soberly of the GOP’s vast challenges ahead.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday that Trump launched the war against Iran even if it was not “necessarily popular” to safeguard the world from the country’s nuclear ambitions.
He would not comment directly about the Republican wipeout in Tuesday’s elections, which delivered a resounding rebuke to Trump. The unpopularity of the Iran war and its impact on gasoline prices and other parts of the economy helped Democrats seize control of Congress.
Asked about Vice President JD Vance’s social media post last week that largely blamed the war for the Republican losses, Rubio told reporters that Trump “identified a very real threat” in Iran and worked to stop the Islamic Republic from pursuing a nuclear weapon.
“He addressed it even though oftentimes the right thing to do for the country — confronting difficult challenges for the security of our country — doing it isn’t necessarily popular, but necessary,” Rubio said in Florida before heading to a Group of 7 foreign ministers meeting in Paris.
Trump said Sunday he was only kidding about making UFC boss Dana White his next White House press secretary after announcing on social media he had offered his close friend the job.
After his party’s deep losses in Tuesday’s midterm elections, Trump shook up his administration on Friday by replacing his chief of staff and followed up on Saturday with a post that said he had offered the press secretary job to White. On Sunday, Trump said it was “just a little fun.”
“I was kidding, but I think Dana likes the idea, and he is a very capable guy,” Trump said, speaking to reporters in Florida before departing for the White House. White is set to visit him at the White House on Monday.
Trump does not currently have a press secretary after briefly giving the job to Katie Zacharia, who faltered behind the lectern and in interviews, and left the post after five days.
Trump and his Department of Justice are taking a combative stance toward Democrats after their election victories in the midterms, signaling intense conflict to come as lawmakers prepare aggressive investigations into the executive branch next year.
Trump set the tone, declaring on social media that investigative requests already made by Democrats are “extortion at the highest level, and they should be held accountable.” Attorney General Todd Blanche echoed the Republican president and said criminal investigations of Democrats are possible.
“They are not allowed to just go around threatening existing members of the administration, to go around threatening companies, and that’s what President Trump is extremely worried about and he should be,” Blanche said as he and congressional Democrats appeared on the Sunday news shows to discuss the repercussions from last week’s elections.
Rep. Robert Garcia, who is poised to chair the powerful House Oversight Committee in the next Congress, is preparing investigations into what he calls the “Trump crime family.” He said Democrats are not going to be intimidated.
Democrats have made clear that impeachment is an option.
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