Republicans block congressional vote
\nWASHINGTON
\nRepublicans in the US House of Representatives blocked an effort on Tuesday to impeach Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, winning a reprieve for the polarising Pentagon chief before Democrats take control of Congress next year and possibly try again. The vote on a procedural motion came just hours after Hegseth blasted efforts to impeach him as a farce and delivered a defiant defence of his record at the helm of the US military, winning praise from President Donald Trump.
\nThe chamber voted 211 to 204 in favour of a motion to refer eight articles of impeachment to the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee, a move that the sponsor of the impeachment push, US Representative Thomas Massie, warned would kill it.
\nMassie, an outgoing Kentucky Republican, had hoped to draw votes from Republicans upset with Hegseth\u2019s policies and wary of the unpopularity of the Iran war, but no other Republicans joined him. Democrats had voiced strong support for the impeachment effort, but 11 failed to show up to vote. Trump cheered the vote in a social media post, saying the effort to impeach Hegseth \u201chas miserably FAILED!\u201d
\nIn a sign that the impeachment episode may have drawn Trump and Hegseth closer together, Trump added that Hegseth\u2019s performance on Iran, Venezuela and other issues \u201cled to the EXONERATION of a Great American Patriot.\u201d Hegseth would have been the first US defence secretary to be impeached. The last time any civilian leader of the US military was impeached was in 1876, when William Belknap held the title \u201csecretary of war.\u201d
\nHegseth calls himself secretary of war, part of his effort to rebrand a military he said was too weak and \u201cwoke\u201d when he took office last year. Trump cannot change the name of the Department of Defence without approval from Congress. Voter anger over the Iran war, which has settled into an effective stalemate focused on securing the Strait of Hormuz, helped Democrats win control of Congress in last week\u2019s midterm elections.
\nHouse Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries took aim at Hegseth ahead of the vote, saying on Monday: \u201cPete Hegseth has abused his power, undermined America\u2019s national security, and he\u2019s the architect of the reckless and costly failed war of choice in Iran.\u201d But Hegseth repeatedly defended the conflict, calling Trump courageous and saying Iran\u2019s military has been left in ruins.
\nHe also said his orders to US forces were lawful, despite Massie\u2019s accusations of \u201chigh crimes and misdemeanours\u201d ranging from the war itself to the US military raid in January to depose Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. \u201cHistory will judge the Iran war quite differently than the conventional wisdom right now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Republicans block congressional vote WASHINGTON Republicans in the US House of Representatives blocked an effort on Tuesday to impeach Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, winning a reprieve for the polarising Pentagon chief before Democrats take control of Congress next year and possibly try again. The vote on a procedural motion came just hours after Hegseth blasted …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":105789,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105809"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105821,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105809\/revisions\/105821"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}