The House just put Thomas Massie’s impeachment gambit where political stunts go to collect dust: the Judiciary Committee.
As reported by RedState, the House voted 211-204 Tuesday to send the effort to the House Judiciary Committee. Every Republican in attendance except Massie voted for the referral. That means there was no straight up-or-down vote on articles of impeachment, and the proposal is effectively bottled up in a lame-duck Congress.
That result matters because the impeachment tool is supposed to address high crimes and misdemeanors, not serve as a legislative tantrum over policy. Critics, including Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, argued that the case against him was really about disagreements with President Trump’s policies. Democrats backing the effort may call that accountability, but changing policy through impeachment would be a rather creative rewrite of the Constitution.
Hegseth made the point plainly: “That’s what it is. Policy disagreements. Not high crimes. Not misdemeanors. Not treason. Not bribery.”
He also explained what he believes the proper alternative should be: “the proper remedy for a policy disagreement is legislation, it’s debate, it’s the next presidential election. It’s not handing the House and Senate floor to the Democrats so that they can run a show trial against the president and the Secretary of War while Republicans still control Congress.”
During a contentious Fox News interview before the vote, Democratic Rep. Jason Crow appeared to make that very argument. Jonathan Turley said Crow described impeachment as a way of forcing “a course change,” calling the attitude destabilizing. Crow also said, “I want Pete Hegseth removed.” Martha MacCallum pushed back, telling him, “You’re making an ENORMOUS amount of assumptions,” and reminding him that “it’s not the people’s choice, it’s the PRESIDENT’S choice.”
MacCallum’s challenge was simple enough: Hegseth serves at the president’s direction, not at the pleasure of a congressional faction looking for a policy do-over. That basic point apparently needed to be made on live television, because Washington’s impeachment fever has reached the stage where policy disputes are being dressed up in constitutional clothing.
Turley later called the effort “constitutionally incomprehensible…” and described the rationale as “chilling,” especially without evidence of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” That is a serious criticism, and it lands because the stated complaint keeps circling back to what Hegseth and the administration chose to do, not to the constitutional offenses required for impeachment.
Rep. Ro Khanna made the same policy-based case before the vote while saying he was working with Massie to get the votes. Khanna said, “We need to impeach Hegseth. If there was one message this election, it’s that people did not want the war in Iran. Hegseth needs to go.”
There is the political theater in plain view. Impeachment is being presented as a way to force a course correction, while the ordinary tools of legislation, debate, and elections sit right there, inconveniently refusing to disappear. The House referral did not settle every disagreement over Hegseth or President Trump’s policies, but it did keep this particular impeachment drive from getting the clean floor vote its backers wanted.
Massie’s gambit is therefore stuck in committee, and the episode offers a preview of the political fights still ahead. When impeachment becomes a pressure tactic for changing policy, the country gets less accountability and more congressional theater. Washington has never lacked for drama, but even this production ran into a committee referral and a 211-204 vote.
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