US midterms 2026 latest: Articles of impeachment against Hegseth

I'm Alex Marko in Washington. This is Al Jazeera. We have breaking news. Articles of impeachment have been put in place by Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, against Pete Hegseth, the current defense secretary, setting up a showdown in the Congress this week. We're also following another developing story. The Qatari prime minister is here in Washington for meetings with Donald Trump at the White House. Qatar has been a key mediator between Iran and the U.S. in this conflict. And so we are going to check in with our correspondents in just a moment about what is going on both at the White House and on Capitol Hill. But first, I want to play some sound about this. These articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth that have just been introduced by Congressman Massey of Kentucky. Take a listen. This is not about me, but of course, the other side, in case you've noticed, they're obsessed. A disgruntled, defeated congressman, along with all his Democrat allies. Has also dropped sham articles of impeachment against yours truly, just like they tried against President Trump twice. Didn't work against President Trump, and it won't work with me. You can rest assured of that. So that was Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, who preemptively last week was discrediting the efforts that are now in place by a Republican and fully supported by Democrats across the board to impeachment. We have our correspondent who covers the White House, Kimberly Halkett. She is here in Washington, D.C. But first, I want to go to Matthew Torres on Capitol Hill. So, Matthew, this is something that was expected in this lame duck session that has just started today. What more do we know about these efforts? To oust Pete Hegseth. Well, first off, Pete Hegseth is already announcing that he is going to be holding a press conference on Tuesday to address these articles of impeachment. But as you have mentioned there moments ago, Republican Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who lost his primary earlier this year, just reintroduced a resolution on the House floor to impeach Hegseth, accusing him of high crimes and misdemeanors, saying that Hegseth allegedly abused his powers and failed to consult with Congress about his military campaign in Iran. Both Republicans and Democrats know that the Iran war was very unpopular, enough to the point that Republicans suffered major losses during the midterm elections. So now, Massey, in fact, reintroduced similar legislation before the midterm elections, but House Speaker Mike Johnson delayed that vote because of the midterms and telling lawmakers to go home early. This time around, Massey wasted no time, now that they are back in session, and reintroduced this resolution and forcing a House votes as early as this week. Democrat House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also said over the weekend that he does support impeaching Pete Hegseth over his role in the Iran War. I'm a hard yes on the Hegseth resolution. The so-called Secretary of Defense has abused his power, undermined our national security, and engineered this reckless and costly war of choice in Iran, which has skyrocketed prices on the American people and made the country less safe. Pete Hegseth has got to go. All right. And here's a little bit more of what Congressman Thomas Massie has had to say about Pete Hegseth. Take a listen. In his conduct, while Secretary of Defense, Peter Brian Hegseth, in violation of his oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, especially with regard to the commission of war, has abused the powers of the Department of Defense. All right, that was Thomas Massie on the House floor talking about those articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth. I want to switch gears and go to our White House correspondent, Kimberly Halkett. Kimberly, the other developing story that we're following, of course, are these negotiations over the war in Iran. Donald Trump has said that it is not an inevitability that the two sides go back to the fighting. The country, one of the countries in the middle of all this trying to prevent that war from resuming in any kind of very real kinetic way is Qatar. And, of course, the prime minister is is here today for discussions at the White House. What more do we know about those talks? Yeah, what we know is that the U.S. president has been listening to essentially hand-delivered draft, if you will, from Tehran about... What it's willing to accept on the heels of meetings between Iranian and Qatari officials that took place last week. So what we know is that there is a proposal in place, one of many that is being considered, that would provide for a ceasefire and then would allow for nuclear discussions to take place, specifically what to do with the uranium stockpiles that are still in existence in Iran. What we know is that there isn't a lot of reception here in the United States to the proposal of this being phased in terms of a ceasefire and the discussions. In fact, what we know from the comments from Secretary of State Marco Rubio as recently as Sunday is that he has called the proposals so far put forward by the Iranians as being unacceptable. So the prospect, despite this meeting that is occurring, Or has occurred. It's unclear if it has officially wrapped up between the Qatari officials as well as the president. What we know at this point is that there are still dim prospects for any immediate end to this conflict, which has been ongoing for months. All right. Kimberly Halkett, stay with me. I want to bring in Matthew Torres back in, I should say. Matthew, we've also been hearing from President Trump, who appeared in the wake of these historic midterm results to accept the defeat by Republicans across the country. Today, he appears to be changing his tune and questioning those results. What's he saying? Right. On social media, he is sowing doubt on the election results, which, as we know, really favored Democrats and giving them the ability to gain control of Congress in January. This does not come as a surprise to a lot of Democrats, certainly, though this comes nearly a week after those midterm elections and already after President Donald Trump says that he is willing to work with Democrats on several issues, including immigration reform. So now that you have him, at least on social media, so So in doubt and really putting into question election integrity, you have Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, saying that he's calling it pathetic and saying that this is a win for Democrats, saying that this is now the largest Democratic congressional majorities in decades. Certainly a change of tune, but something that Democrats were anticipating that President Trump. Would eventually say or potentially say I did spend some time in Georgia during the midterm elections where that state has obviously clearly got a brunt, a lot of brunt from President Donald Trump when it comes to allegations of election fraud. The election office's officials down there say they are ready. If it gets to that point, defend their election integrity if President Donald Trump were to question those election results, and he is doing so without providing any specific evidence that prove his claims. Alex? Yeah, it remains to be seen whether the Trump administration really ratchets up their efforts to go after some of these election results. But in his first extended interview since those results, President Trump was asked why he believes that Republicans performed poorly. He acknowledged in this interview that the war in Iraq played a role as well as his administration's immigration crackdown. Take a listen. It both helped and hurt. I think I got an A-plus for closing up the border. I get very high marks for getting the bad ones out, but I get hurt because we also took people that had good jobs that created one violation. Well, breaking of the law, that was that they came into the country illegally. So you think your deportation policy went too far? It was too tough. I think it might be too tough, yeah. What would happen? What does the deal look like with the Democrats? Ultimately, that hurt me. Well, the deal would be we would work something out. And I think it's something. And let's go back to our White House correspondent, Kimberly Halkett. So, Kimberly, we have this acknowledgment from the president that perhaps the immigration enforcement crackdown was too tough. At the same time. Sending a very clear message by naming Stephen Miller, the architect of this crackdown, as his new chief of staff. What do we make of this mixed messaging? Well, on the one hand, you're right. We have rare contrition by the U.S. president. I was at the White House on Friday when CBS did that interview. It happened Friday morning. And then Friday afternoon is when the U.S. president named Stephen Miller as his chief of staff. So while the U.S. president had expressed some remorse for aggressive immigration enforcement. He then doubled down on those policies just hours later by naming Stephen Miller as his chief of staff. Stephen Miller is the architect of this aggressive enforcement of immigration law. So while we hear from the president that he believes that he got high marks for the closure of the border, what we are hearing from him is, like you say, mixed messaging. And that has a lot to do with the story in states like Texas that are along the border of the United States. States and Mexico. The president, it typically comes down to him personally. And in this case, we know that when he ran for president, there was a very strong support from the Latino population for the U.S. president. But obviously, in the last week, that completely changed. All right. Kimberly Halkett, Matthew Torres, thank you so much for that reporting. And just a reminder, we have breaking news out of Washington. Articles of impeachment have been introduced in the U.S. Congress by Congressman Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, against Pete Hegseth, setting up a showdown between Congress and the Pentagon. We will have more on that in our continuing coverage. But for now, I want to hand back to Malin Saeed in Doha for more world news.