Friday, November 13, 2026
Democrats fumbled the Hegseth impeachment. That could be a blessing in disguise | Claire Finkelstein
Democrats fumbled the Hegseth impeachment. That could be a blessing in disguise | Claire Finkelstein
“House Republicans scuttled Massie’s impeachment articles against Hegseth, but Democrats may refocus charges. Potential bipartisan articles include mishandling classified communications, Caribbean and Pacific boat strikes, and retribution against Mark Kelly. Impeachment could also investigate Pentagon lawyers and strengthen congressional oversight.
AI Generated
A traffic jam, combined with disorganization on the part of Democrats, enabled House Republicans to scuttle the representative Thomas Massie’s articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth on Wednesday.
While recriminations are now flying among Democrats, the fumble may have been a blessing in disguise. Democrats can now refocus the articles against the defense secretary, possibly to better effect.
The first four of Massie’s articles of impeachment addressed the Iran war, asserting that the Department of Defense overstepped presidential war powers authority. The first three accused Hegseth of failing to respect congressional authority and the War Powers Resolution. And the fourth claimed that that the Pentagon failed to mitigate harm to civilians in its operations, resulting in the tragedy of the US strike on the girls’ school in Minab, Iran.
Inclusion of the first four articles of impeachment, however, might ultimately have backfired in the Senate, and maybe even in the House in the final vote.
The US has a long history of presidents ignoring Congress’s role in decisions to engage in military force. From Nixon’s invasion of Laos and Cambodia, to US-led Nato intervention in Kosovo and Serbia under Bill Clinton, to US military intervention in Libya under Barack Obama, among others, presidents and their secretaries of defense have flouted Congress’s role in authorizing military operations for years.
The same can be said about harm to civilians in US operations. It was mistaken strikes against civilians during the Obama years that inspired Secretary Mattis, followed by Secretary Austin, to establish the now-shuttered Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response program. Dismantling the program was a Hegseth initiative and one of Massie’s concerns.
A more targeted set of articles in the new Congress might stand a better chance of success.
Three causes for impeachment stand out as most likely to garner bipartisan support. The first is one that did not even appear in Massie’s articles: Hegseth’s egregious handling of classified communications in the infamous Signal chat conversation regarding a planned military operation in Yemen, when the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently included on the thread.
“Signalgate”, as it has been called, identifies one of the worst cases of mishandling classified information ever to occur by a higher-level official in the defense department. A Pentagon report itself suggests that Hegseth put troops in danger in this incident.
Hegseth and other members of the administration continued to exchangeclassified information on Signal even after the initial revelation by the Atlantic. Hegseth then embarked on extensive internal investigations, using polygraph testing to search for leakers, and ultimately firing Lt Gen Brett Sylvia, a member of the joint staff. Yet the secretary himself, or at least his lax practices, may well have been the source of some of the very leaks he is investigating.
Second, boat strikes directed against civilian vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific stand on a different footing from the articles relating to the Iran war. This use of US military force has been virtually unanimously condemned by legal experts as an indisputable violation of the laws of war, or, more accurately, as murder.
Third, an article of impeachment addressing the vindictive campaign of retribution against the senator Mark Kelly for a controversial video he made with five other members of Congress could well garner support from Republicans, some of whom may rise to the occasion to defend their colleague.
As I made clear in a brief in support of Mark Kelly, the video, which reminded troops they may refuse to follow illegal orders, merely restated textbook training to servicemembers regarding the law of superior orders. The attack on Kelly was not popular with either Democratic or Republican members of Congress.
As I recently wrote about possible impeachment charges against Trump, Congress’s heightened investigatory powers during an impeachment inquiry provide a critical benefit of the process.
A Hegseth impeachment could force release of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memo justifying the boat strikes. OLC lawyers should be called on to testify – presumably behind closed doors – to explain the process by which they came to support the strikes.
An investigation of the OLC is long overdue in any event, and a more general inquiry should be conducted by the House and Senate judiciary committees.
Hegseth’s attack on Pentagon lawyers should also be investigated and should possibly form a fourth article in newly refocused impeachment charges against him.
Starting with the firing of the top Judge Advocate Generals and moving on to incursions into the role played by rank-and-file Jags, Hegseth has sought to undermine fidelity to the rule of law and the role of lawyers in reviewing military operations.
While Congress has heard some testimony on these matters, such as that of Adm Frank Bradley, who took the hit himself for certain of the boat strikes in a likely attempt to protect Hegseth, many questions remain unanswered.
Most critically, impeachment proceedings against Hegseth will provide an opportunity for Congress to strengthen its oversight authority.
Hegseth will likely invoke either presidential “testimonial immunity” or “deliberative privilege”, doctrines made up by the executive branch over time that have rarely been tested in article III courts.
While it is true that presidents need to be able to consult with members of their cabinets confidentially without fear of public revelation, these doctrines have served more to interfere with congressional oversight and block transparency than to further sound presidential decision-making. Congress must work to cut these outsized claims of presidential authority down to size.
There will also likely be assertions that information cannot be shared with Congress due to classification concerns.
Here, too, Congress must stand firm and focus on rebuilding its oversight authority. Members of the two armed services committees have robust classification privileges that make sharing information with Congress behind closed doors entirely legal and appropriate.
Leaders of the 120th Congress will have the opportunity to lead critical impeachment inquiries as well as conduct extensive oversight in the new year, but they must play their cards carefully and keep their eyes on the prize – long-term restoration of democratic norms and the strengthening of checks and balances in the federal government.
Claire Finkelstein, a contributing opinion writer for the Guardian, is the Algernon Biddle professor of law and professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the founder and faculty director of Penn’s Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL). She is a fellow in residence at the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University during the 2026-27 academic year“
The Worst Thing Democrats Could Do Right Now
The Worst Thing Democrats Could Do Right Now
“Following a historic reckoning, Democrats must avoid reverting to insider politics and instead sustain populist energy. New leaders should govern visibly, combat corruption, conduct off-site oversight, and pass popular legislation addressing affordability and power concentrations.
AI Generated
By Ben Rhodes
Mr. Rhodes is a contributing Opinion writer. For this essay, he spoke with dozens of Democratic politicians, operatives and strategists.
These are not normal times, and that was not a normal midterm election. For two years, President Trump has ruled the United States like a personal fief while his would-be subjects have endured war, rising prices and political chaos. Now that Americans have delivered a historic reckoning for Republicans, Democrats must show that they can lead a political realignment.
The opportunity is generational. After decades of polarization, the dam broke in Republican strongholds. From state legislatures to the U.S. Senate, many Democrats who swept into office are younger and come from unconventional political backgrounds. From the center to the left, they didn’t just promise competent governance; they directly challenged a corrupt system and obscene concentrations of power, and they promised to make that system work for the people. For the first time in the Trump decade, the Democrats were the populists. If they can sustain that energy, our Gilded Age can be followed by a progressive era.
The danger is that once in power, Democrats will revert to business as usual. Top-down leadership from party insiders. News conferences at the Capitol with canned talking points. Budget fights that play out in leaks to the political press. Stop-and-start government shutdowns. Petty quarreling between centrists and the left. Performative oversight of Mr. Trump’s renovation projects that feels disconnected from the pain Americans are feeling.
In short, Democratic power in the waning days of the Trump era must look, feel and be different from past incarnations. Governance must be visible, participatory and consequential. If it isn’t, the blue tsunami will recede.
There are blueprints for how to do this. After she was elected to her Phoenix district two years ago at the age of 32, Yassamin Ansari was chosen to be president of the House Democrats freshman class. Instead of following a conventional playbook, she met the energy of the times.
After Immigration and Customs Enforcement started deporting people to El Salvador, she traveled there at a time when many institutions were bending the knee to Mr. Trump or ducking immigration. She has since made over a dozen visits to ICE detention centers in the United States, telling her constituents’ stories and highlighting the moral corruption of for-profit prisons benefiting from the mass incarceration of immigrants. After Republicans blocked the release of the Epstein files, she sat for hours at a table outside of Speaker Mike Johnson’s office under a sign that read: “Mike Johnson is starving families and gutting health care to cover up the Epstein files. Change my mind.”
“People want you to show up directly at the places where the issues are happening,” she told me after last week’s election. That allows you to get attention and connect the dots between a rigged system and the outcomes that have left voters demanding change. “People really want to see you showing, not just telling.”
In New York, Zohran Mamdani was the first Democrat after the second Trump election to model this kind of everything-everywhere-all-at-once playbook. He ran a campaign focused on affordability, showing up in all parts of the city to humanize the cost-of-living crisis. Once in office, he continued this frenetic pace, searching for every lever he could pull to restore confidence that government could, in fact, do something — going after bad landlords, funding child care and even giving parents a night off. His favorability rating in New York City has risen to nearly 70 percent.
Morris Katz, Mr. Mamdani’s 27-year-old chief political strategist, described the transition from campaigning to the mayoralty: “You have to govern at the speed of the modern attention span.” Heeding that lesson is fundamental to not allowing the air to slowly trickle out of the balloon once the Democrats take power.
Mr. Katz’s firm helped Gina Hinojosa break the Republican grip on the Texas governorship. Her campaign cultivated a populist message against the flood of data centers and Flock cameras into Texas, building a coalition that encompassed leftists and libertarians and everyone in between. The worst thing that Democrats could do is trade that newfound populist energy for a familiar insider ethos. “We need to remember that we don’t have the White House,” Mr. Katz warned. “They are the establishment. We are still the outsiders running against them.”
History provides cautionary tales for the incoming Democratic majorities, including the two midterm elections that led most directly to the two Trump presidencies.
In 2010, Republicans rode a populist red wave to a large House majority amid the hangover from the financial crisis and a right-wing backlash to Barack Obama’s presidency. Almost immediately, there was a split between the populist Tea Party and the Republican establishment, which veered between making promises it couldn’t keep about repealing the Obama agenda and negotiating a grand bargain for fiscal reform with the president.
Neither succeeded. Mr. Obama was handily re-elected, and by 2016, establishment Republicans had lost control of their voters, who abandoned them for Mr. Trump.
Fast-forward to 2022. Democrats held a narrow Senate majority despite political headwinds. This owed much to Republicans nominating extremist candidates such as Herschel Walker and Blake Masters, who lost to the Democratic stars Raphael Warnock and Mark Kelly. Yet President Joe Biden chose to interpret the results as a mandate for him, at 80 years old, to run for re-election despite an approval rating in the low 40s. The rest is the history we’re living.
After the 2024 election, one thing most Democrats agreed upon was the need for generational change. The party needed newer, younger faces out front and should no longer defer to establishment figures just because they’d built up a reservoir of good will.
That lesson should apply to the Senate today. Chuck Schumer has been a powerful and effective force in Democratic politics, but it is time for a new leader of the party in the Senate. It is not a rebuke of his tenure to conclude that voters want to see different faces leading a regenerated Democratic Party — people who can communicate outside of Washington, challenge special interests and make Congress more accessible.
Chris Van Hollen, who just announced a bid for majority leader, can certainly make a credible case as a progressive voice who traveled to El Salvador to oppose mass deportations at the beginning of the Trump administration, bucked Democratic leadership on Gaza and promises to take on a corrupt system that has caused Americans to lose faith in their government.
Many of the newly elected Senate Democrats are fresh faces in Washington — people like Annie Andrews in South Carolina, Adam Hamilton in Kansas, Troy Jackson in Maine and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. It is no coincidence that they all said the party needed new leadership. It would only breed cynicism to force them — and other newly elected Democrats who distanced themselves from party leadership — to reverse that stance as soon as they get to Washington.
The Democratic Party has an opportunity to show that it has evolved into something different. Why not take it?
How can these new Democratic majorities govern in a manner that meets the moment? Extreme times demand unusual tactics.
First, show at the outset that you’re serious about combating corruption. Representative Jason Crow of Colorado, who co-chaired candidate recruitment for the Democrats, sketched out that kind of agenda for me. Ban members and staff from trading stocks or using prediction markets. Don’t take money from corporate PACs. Ban the pop-up PACs that emerge during the final weeks of an election.
Second, conduct oversight that tells a story about how power enriches the few while prices keep rising. It is necessary, but not sufficient, to spotlight the grift of Mr. Trump and his oligarchs. Connect that corruption to the sectors of our economy that they have exploited to enrich themselves: crypto, defense technologies, prediction markets and artificial intelligence, to name a few.
What did those big law firms, tech companies and media organizations promise or provide in return for Mr. Trump’s favor? How much are people paying for pardons? What is the scale of foreign investment in Mr. Trump’s inner circle? Why are some people getting so rich while so many people can’t afford gas and groceries?
Set up special committees on issues such as corruption and A.I. and use those platforms to elevate the party’s younger and best messengers. As Ms. Ansari did, get out in the country. Go to ICE facilities to expose abuse and to rural communities hit hard by the war in Iran and tariffs. Haul tech oligarchs in front of Congress, but don’t do it in Washington. “If you’re going to do something on A.I.,” Mr. Katz told me, “go in front of a data center and subpoena the tech guys to be there.”
Third, pass popular legislation that responds directly to what Americans care about. With a healthy Senate majority, Democrats should abolish the filibuster so that every bill does not require an excruciating process to reach 60 votes. That would allow a pace of action that meets the enormous needs of the times.
Take direct aim at the affordability crisis. Reverse Medicaid cuts. Raise the minimum wage. Defund the war on Iran. Rescind costly tariffs. Regulate A.I. to prevent job displacement and insist upon safety testing for models. If Mr. Trump vetoes these bills, pass them again and force Republicans to choose between forming veto-proof majorities and siding with a historically unpopular president.
Meanwhile, against the backdrop of a presidential campaign, design more ambitious legislation that demonstrates what Democrats would do with full control of the government. To appropriately tax wealth to reduce inequality and fund public education and health care. To truly get money out of politics and make the kind of corruption we’ve seen illegal. To secure the border without targeting immigrants in our communities. To prohibit a president from going to war without first getting approval from Congress.
The more ambitious the program, the more the party will have to negotiate its own differences between progressives and the center. But the common thread holding this coalition together should be populist. The crisis in America today owes much to the increasing concentration of power in fewer hands: Big Tech, private equity, consolidated media and a coterie of political megadonors. Democrats must show — through their messengers, words and deeds — that they are the party committed to breaking up these concentrations of power and returning it to the people who just voted for it in staggering numbers.
Opportunities for a genuine political realignment don’t come along often. After a decade of Donald Trump, Americans are desperate for change. Democrats must show that they are ready to carry that energy into government, or else the pendulum will swing in a different direction.“
The Best Cities to Retire in 2026
The Best Cities to Retire in 2026
“A WalletHub study ranked 182 U.S. cities across affordability, activities, quality of life, and health care. Florida dominated, with Orlando, Miami, and Tampa taking the top three spots. Scottsdale and Casper followed. Stockton ranked last, while New York City was least affordable.
AI Generated
A study compared data across 45 metrics to find the best cities for senior living.
Florida emerged as the best state for retirees last year, according to a study by the personal finance platform WalletHub, and this year a similar study drilled down to the local level, pitting the 182 largest U.S. cities against one another. Four categories of data contributed equally to the final ranking: affordability, activities, quality of life and health care. Sources included the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and WalletHub’s own research.
Once again, Florida was found attractive by retirees, with Orlando benefiting from the state’s favorable tax policies and handily ranking second for affordability, according to WalletHub. In fact, the three top retirement cities were all in Florida, and four made it into the top 10.
Ranked second and third, Miami and Tampa piggybacked on the state’s financial advantages for retirees, according to Chip Lupo, a WalletHub analyst. (With no state income tax, residents keep a larger chunk of their Social Security check and other retirement income. There are also no inheritance or estate taxes.) Orlando’s access to “very affordable” in-home health and adult day care services edged out the other two cities, Mr. Lupo explained. Overall, the city fared well in the health care category, offering older residents plenty of options for specialized care through gerontologists, quality geriatric hospitals and home health care facilities. A central geographic location helped, too, making it more weather-friendly than hurricane-prone Gulf Coast cities, Mr. Lupo continued.
Mild-weathered Scottsdale, Ariz., a city with the best quality of life and the second-highest share of people 65 and over, finished fourth overall — despite scoring 114th for affordability. Next was Casper, Wyo., cited as one of the cheapest cities to live in.
Among the five worst places to retire, four were in California: Stockton, Calif., came in last. New York City was least affordable.
“A lot of people do live on fixed incomes and don’t have a whole lot of flexibility,” Mr. Lupo said. “In that case, you may want to settle for maybe not one of the worst, but somewhere middle of the road, a place like Knoxville, Tenn., or Columbia, S.C.”
Best and worst cities for retirement
The 10 best cities for retirement and the categories in which they scored highest, and the 10 worst cities and the categories in which they scored lowest.
Orlando, Fla.
Affordability, health care
Stockton, Calif.
Activities, health care
Miami
Activities, health care
San Bernardino, Calif.
Health care, quality of life
Tampa, Fla.
Activities, quality of life
Newark
Quality of life, affordability
Fresno, Calif.
Activities, health care
Scottsdale, Ariz.
Quality of life, activities
Casper, Wyo.
Affordability, quality of life
Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.
Activities, affordability
Atlanta
Activities, health care
Bakersfield, Calif.
Health care, activities
Minneapolis
Activities, health care
Tacoma, Wash.
Affordability, quality of life
Bridgeport, Conn.
Affordability, activities
Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Activities, health care
Detroit
Quality of life, health care
Charleston, S.C.
Activities, affordability
Pittsburgh
Health care, activities
Fontana, Calif.
Activities, affordability”
Van Hollen Says He Will Challenge Schumer for Senate Majority Leader
Van Hollen Says He Will Challenge Schumer for Senate Majority Leader
“Senator Chris Van Hollen announced a challenge to Chuck Schumer for Senate majority leader. Van Hollen cited addressing costs and the Iran war, claiming over ten supporters. Schumer maintains sufficient votes, while some Democrats support him and others urge unity. The Dec. 1 vote will decide leadership.
AI Generated
Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland has emerged as a favorite of Democrats seeking an alternative to Senator Chuck Schumer, who says he has the votes to win.
Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland announced on Thursday that he would challenge Senator Chuck Schumer of New York for majority leader, setting up a clash among Democrats just as they were celebrating their new majority and planning for a takeover of Congress in January.
The move by Mr. Van Hollen, a progressive Democrat elected to the Senate in 2016 after seven terms in the House representing the Washington, D.C., suburbs, comes as some Democratic senators and activists have called for an alternative to Mr. Schumer, a moderate whom they regard as too tied to the party establishment to lead a newly energized party forward in the next Congress.
Making his announcement in an interview on MS Now on Thursday evening, Mr. Van Hollen said his challenge to Mr. Schumer was “not about any one individual.” Instead, he said, it was to ensure that Democrats answered “the call of the American people” in the midterm elections, which he said was to “bring down costs” and end the war against Iran.
He said he had spoken to a large number of Democratic senators, including the incoming members, and did not believe that Mr. Schumer had a lock on the race, saying he had “more than 10” of the 55 Democratic senators and senators-elect behind him.
“Am I the underdog?” he said. “Yes.”
Mr. Van Hollen, who is also said to be weighing a run for president in 2028, had emerged as the favorite to challenge Mr. Schumer for the post and had expressed increasing willingness to do so in recent days.
Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who aligns with Democrats, said this week that he would oppose Mr. Schumer and had encouraged Mr. Van Hollen to become a candidate.
On Thursday night, Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan, who during his campaign called on Mr. Van Hollen to seek the post, greeted his announcement enthusiastically, saying he was “proud” to endorse him as majority leader.
“Last week, Michiganders rejected the failed status quo and the politics that too often leaves families behind,” Mr. El-Sayed said in a statement. “But we need to earn our mandate. That demands new leadership.”
Senate Democrats are scheduled to vote behind closed doors on Dec. 1 to determine who will be their leader when their party takes the Senate majority on Jan. 4.
In a statement, Mr. Schumer said that he welcomed “a discussion about the future of our caucus and the important work ahead,” but had enough commitments of support from Senate Democrats to be re-elected as leader.
“I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished together — 55 seats and counting is an amazing result,” he said, adding: “I look forward to leading our new Democratic majority and delivering for the American people.”
Sign up for the On Politics newsletter. It's a pivotal moment for American politics. Join us for 2026 and beyond.
Mr. Schumer oversaw the Senate Democratic campaign effort that has flipped at least eight seats, with the Democrat Scott Colom on Wednesday called as the winner in the Mississippi Senate race. The Alaska Senate race result has not been called, but the Democrat Mary Peltola is slightly ahead there.
Despite that success, some in the ranks of Senate Democrats have called for a broad discussion of party leadership going forward and a debate over the agenda the party should pursue.
Other Democrats say that the leadership fight is distracting from the stunning victory Democrats recorded on Nov. 3 and hurting their preparation for January.
“We were at 47-53 and now we are at 55, 56,” said Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania and a strong supporter of Mr. Schumer. He added: “I don’t understand why that’s a conversation.”
On Thursday night, Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, said he welcomed a conversation “about the path ahead,” but urged his colleagues not to draw out that process. He endorsed Mr. Schumer, whom he credited with leading the party to victory.
“We must move quickly to vote, unify, and get to work,” Mr. Schatz said.
Senator Angus King of Maine, the other independent who caucuses with Democrats, also threw his support behind Mr. Schumer in a statement, crediting him with engineering a historically successful election result.
“Chuck has outlined an aggressive plan for the new Democratic majority, which is directly responsive to the message we heard from the voters, and he has the experience and unique mastery of the Senate process to make it happen,” Mr. King said. “Why would you fire the manager when you just won the World Series?”
Mr. Van Hollen, 67, is the child of a diplomat and was elected to the House in 2002 after entering the race as an underdog in a very competitive primary while serving in the Maryland legislature.
In the House, he became a close ally to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a leading voice on budget issues. In 2008, he led the House campaign effort as Democrats expanded their majority when Barack Obama was elected president and also led the campaign team in 2010.
Mr. Van Hollen was seen as a potential future speaker in the House, but that prospect had seemed far off given Ms. Pelosi’s hold on the office. When Barbara Mikulski of Baltimore was set to retire from the Senate in 2016, he sought her seat and won. Given his experience, Senate Democrats immediately put him in charge of their campaign organization.
In the Senate, Mr. Van Hollen has focused on budget issues and foreign policy. He has been an outspoken proponent of cutting off money for the war against Iran.
On Thursday, he said Democrats’ Senate campaign arm should not take any funding from AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group that many progressives have shunned in recent years.
Progressive activists have urged that Mr. Schumer, 75, face a challenge to remaining in the position. Donors and organizations including MoveOn, Indivisible and the Working Families Party are likely to back and mobilize members on behalf of Mr. Van Hollen, according to a person familiar with progressive groups’ strategy who spoke about it on the condition of anonymity. Some of the donors plan to threaten to back primary challenges against any Democratic senator running for re-election in 2028 who does not come out in support of him, the person said.
Mr. Schumer and his allies have been adamant that he has more than enough votes to hold the position. But secret ballot leadership votes can be unpredictable. Some senators have refrained from going public with their support to avoid coming under pressure from those urging that Mr. Schumer be deposed.
“Circumstances change,” Mr. Van Hollen said. “It is one thing to have someone’s support when you’re the only choice. I think a little democracy in the Senate Democratic Caucus is a good thing.”
Lisa Lerer and Reid J. Epstein contributed reporting.
Carl Hulse is the chief Washington correspondent for The Times, primarily writing about Congress and national political races and issues. He has nearly four decades of experience reporting in the nation’s capital.“
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)