PoliticsNovember 13, 20263 min readBy Peter OlaleruEditor

The House did vote on impeachment this week — just not on Trump

A viral headline promised a Trump impeachment vote. The House voted on impeachment this week — against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and the effort is dead.

TweetLinkedIn
Report an issue
Pete Hegseth
Photo: U.S. Department of Defense / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

A headline circulating online promised a House vote on impeaching Donald Trump "next week." No such vote is documented. The impeachment vote the House actually took this week was against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — and it killed the effort rather than advancing it.

The House voted 211-204 on Tuesday to refer articles of impeachment against Hegseth back to the House Judiciary Committee, where they can remain indefinitely. The maneuver effectively ends the drive for the current Congress, whose term ends in eight weeks. The articles were introduced by Republican Congressman Thomas Massie and backed primarily by Democrats, who accused Hegseth of abuses of power and illegal military operations. Eleven Democrats were absent from the procedural vote.

The viral framing came from a Times of India headline that quoted Al Green and described an imminent House vote on Trump's impeachment. The page text at that address does not contain the story; it shows unrelated content about Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Sam Pitroda. No fetched source confirms a scheduled House vote on impeaching Trump.

Al Green does appear in this week's political coverage, but not in connection with a Trump impeachment drive. A University of Houston Hobby School survey shows Christian Menefee leading Green 52 percent to 28 percent in the March 3 Democratic primary for the redrawn Texas 18th Congressional District.

The gap between the headline and the record matters because it points readers toward a constitutional crisis that the evidence does not describe. What the evidence describes is a shelved impeachment effort against a cabinet secretary and a competitive Democratic primary in Texas. The stakes are congressional procedure and a primary challenge, not a presidential removal vote.

Separately, Israel's Mossad chief Roman Gofman is reported to be in Washington for talks with senior Trump administration officials on the war in Iran, amid US-Israel differences.

Sources

  1. [1]timesofindia.indiatimes.com
  2. [2]aljazeera.com
  3. [3]houstonpublicmedia.org
  4. [4]timesofindia.indiatimes.com
Peter Olaleru

Editor

Peter Olaleru

Peter is the editor of Measured Take and a cybersecurity professional. He leads our news, fact checks and sport from around the world, with a particular eye on cyber attacks, data breaches, scams, AI and misinformation.

TweetLinkedIn

Reader notes

Loading comments...