The BLUF - November 10th

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This is Atlas, and you’re reading the Bottom Line Up Front, where we cover the top geopolitical stories from around the world every Tuesday!

Today’s topics:

• Hegseth Calls Impeachment Push A Farce As The House Takes Up Massie’s Eight Articles

• Saudi Air Defenses Down Missiles Fired At Riyadh Hours After Attack On Key Oil Pipeline

• Trump Says Iran War Is “Effectively Over” Militarily But Keeps The Blockade In Place

Hegseth Calls Impeachment Push A Farce As The House Takes Up Massie’s Eight Articles

_{By: Atlas}

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth used his first Pentagon news briefing since May to attack the effort to impeach him, calling it “a farce” and “sabotage” hours before the House was expected to take up the resolution.

“What one disgruntled and defeated congressman is attempting is not oversight, and it’s not accountability,” Hegseth said at the briefing, which began shortly after 8 a.m. ET (7 a.m. CST) Tuesday. “It’s a political spectacle, a personal manifesto driven by ego and resentment.”

Soon after he finished, President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that Hegseth “gets an ‘A’ PLUS, PLUS, PLUS for his defense against a disgruntled, angry, defeated, former Congressman, Thomas Massie, a TOTAL LOSER!”

The House is expected to act Tuesday evening.

How Massie forced the vote

Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who lost his primary this year to a challenger Trump backed, gave notice of the resolution on the House floor at 2:04 p.m. ET (1:04 p.m. CST) Monday, according to the House Clerk’s floor log. He offered it as a question of the privileges of the House, which requires action within two legislative days, and the chair said it would rule on whether it qualifies when the measure comes up. It has not yet been assigned a resolution number.

It is the second time Massie has tried. He gave notice of a substantially similar resolution on Sept. 15, but House Republican leaders canceled the votes planned for that Thursday and Speaker Mike Johnson sent members home to campaign, and the measure lapsed.

Speaking to reporters outside the Capitol on Monday afternoon, Massie said he had neither asked for nor received commitments from other Republicans. He said members who lost their races on Nov. 3 may feel freer to vote yes. “And if they were part of the retirement caucus, what do they have to lose?” he said.

Massie also urged Trump to act before Democrats take control of both chambers in January. “President Trump should replace Secretary Hegseth now while he can still get a replacement confirmed in the Senate,” he said in a statement.

What the eight articles charge

The articles are Massie’s accusations, untested in any hearing or trial. Three charge that Hegseth violated the 1973 War Powers Resolution in Iran. They allege he waged war from late February without a declaration, authorization or imminent threat, and that he kept fighting after the House and Senate adopted a concurrent resolution in June directing the withdrawal of U.S. forces, and after the law’s 60-day clock ran out.

A fourth article accuses him of ignoring laws meant to limit civilian deaths and of dismantling the safeguards Congress required. It ties those cuts to a strike at the start of the war on an elementary school in Minab, Iran. Reading it on the floor, Massie said reported tolls showed at least 156 civilians killed, including at least 120 schoolchildren.

A fifth calls the strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific “extrajudicial killings.” Massie’s office says the campaign has caused at least 243 deaths. His September version of the same article put the toll at 221; the higher figure adds strikes carried out since then.

The remaining three articles accuse Hegseth of retaliating against Sen. Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat, after he appeared in a video telling service members they could refuse illegal orders. They also cover his role in Operation Absolute Resolve, the January raid that seized then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and in Operation Rough Rider, the 2025 strike campaign in Yemen, which the articles say Congress never authorized.

Hegseth and Trump push back

Hegseth told reporters that the charges amounted to policy disputes rather than impeachable offenses. “None of these are high crimes or misdemeanors,” he said. “They’re partisan policy disagreements from people who want to politicize our military.”

“Iran, the cartels, Maduro, Yemen, every one was a lawful operation ordered by the commander in chief, then ordered by myself, notified to Congress and executed by American warriors who did their jobs,” he said.

Comparing the effort to Trump’s two impeachments, both ending in Senate acquittals, he said: “They will fail again.”

Trump has also stood by Hegseth. “I’ll stand by him,” he told reporters. “He won two wars.” He called Massie a “stone-cold loser.”

Where House members stand

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said he is a “hard yes,” accusing Hegseth of having “abused his power” and engineered “this reckless and costly war of choice in Iran.”

Johnson opposes the effort. Impeaching a Cabinet secretary “in the middle of hostilities abroad would be a terrible, terrible look,” he said.

Some Republicans remain undecided. Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who retires in January, said he is “wrestling” with the vote. “I don’t think he’s been a good secretary, but do you impeach a guy for that?” he said.

By published counts, impeachment would need at least three Republicans to join every Democrat, though absences could shift that number. Conviction in the Senate would require a two-thirds vote.

The House has impeached a Cabinet secretary only twice. Secretary of War William Belknap resigned minutes before the House voted to impeach him in March 1876. The Senate tried him anyway, and on Aug. 1, 1876, majorities voted to convict on all five articles, but each vote fell short of two-thirds and he was acquitted. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was impeached 214-213 on Feb. 13, 2024, and the Senate dismissed both articles without a trial that April.

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