The House just shut down Thomas Massie’s attempt to force Pete Hegseth out of the Trump administration.

By a 211–204 vote Tuesday evening, lawmakers sent Massie’s eight-article impeachment resolution to the House Judiciary Committee. The referral effectively kills the effort for the remainder of this Congress.

Massie tried to turn a bitter policy fight into an impeachment spectacle. The House refused to give him the floor victory he wanted.

The immediate reaction captured the political reality: Massie’s resolution was going nowhere.

Darrell Issa’s motion to refer House Resolution 1655 to Judiciary was the question before members. They did not cast a straight up-or-down vote on the articles themselves.

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The official House Clerk record shows the motion passed at 6:02 p.m. Eastern. Republicans supplied 210 of the yes votes, one independent joined them, and no Democrat voted for referral.

Massie was the lone Republican to vote no. All 203 Democrats who voted opposed referral, leaving the Kentucky congressman aligned with the Democratic caucus in trying to keep the impeachment effort alive.

That is the clean result: Hegseth was not impeached, and the House did not vote on the merits of Massie’s accusations. It placed the resolution in committee, where it has no realistic path before the 119th Congress expires.

Massie’s official summary accused Hegseth of eight separate impeachable offenses, all of which remain allegations rather than findings by the House.

The Massie office says the first three articles concern the War Powers Resolution and U.S. military operations against Iran. The fourth alleges that Hegseth ignored legal protections intended to minimize civilian casualties.

The fifth alleges extrajudicial killings in military strikes against suspected drug-trafficking vessels. The sixth accuses Hegseth of retaliating against Sen. Mark Kelly over speech about unlawful military orders.

The final two articles concern the operation that captured Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores in Venezuela and Operation Rough Rider in Yemen. Massie argues those actions lacked proper constitutional or statutory authority; the administration flatly rejects that case.

Vice President JD Vance made the administration’s central argument before the vote: policy disputes belong in legislation and debate, not in a made-for-television impeachment push.

The White House said Hegseth regards every operation named in the resolution as lawful, ordered by President Trump, properly reported to Congress and carried out by American service members acting on his orders.

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Hegseth’s answer was unapologetic. He said the dispute is over military policy, not bribery, treason or the kind of misconduct the founders placed at the center of impeachment.

Speaker Mike Johnson also warned that trying to impeach the nation’s defense chief during an international conflict would send a reckless signal to both allies and enemies.

Massie wanted a showdown. What he got was a trip to committee and a brutal vote tally showing that he stood alone among Republicans against ending the floor fight.

Hegseth remains in place, President Trump’s party closed ranks, and this impeachment push is dead on arrival.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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