Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth denounced the impeachment drive against him as “a political spectacle, a personal manifesto driven by ego and resentment.” Speaking at a Pentagon news conference, Hegseth responded a day after Rep. Thomas Massie began seeking his impeachment over his management of the unpopular war with Iran and other decisions.
Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, introduced the resolution on the House floor only hours after lawmakers returned for their first session since the midterm elections.
Separately, the Senate voted Monday to move forward with bipartisan legislation designed to accelerate permitting for power projects, data centers and other major infrastructure. The 73-25 vote formally advanced a measure backed by senators and President Donald Trump as they seek to address surging electricity demand and lengthy delays in connecting new energy supplies to the grid.
Here’s the latest:
Johnson denounces Hegseth impeachment push as ‘shameful’
House Speaker Mike Johnson criticized the effort to remove Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, describing it as a “political gambit for attention” and calling the move “shameful.”
“The idea that you would impeach the secretary of war at a time of international conflict sends a terrible message to our enemies and our allies, and we are not going to play that game,” Johnson told reporters.
Johnson said he watched most of Hegseth’s news conference, where the defense secretary offered a forceful and highly political defense of his record overseeing the military.
“I thought he did very well,” Johnson said, predicting Republicans would block the impeachment effort “one way or the other.”
Rubio says decision on Trump-Putin-Xi meeting could come soon
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that Trump intends to pursue a three-way meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin during the U.S. president’s visit to Shenzhen next week.
“We’re working to organize it and to frame it in the appropriate way,” Rubio said. “And hopefully, you know, we’ll have some news for you about that fairly soon.”
Rubio said Trump wants the leaders to discuss “the status of nuclear weapons in the world,” adding that the president views nuclear proliferation as dangerous.
Such a gathering would be historic, although foreign policy specialists caution that the countries’ competing priorities could make meaningful negotiations difficult.
China has generally resisted nuclear weapons discussions, while Russia has sought to weaken American support for Ukraine.
John Thune seeks another term as Senate Republican leader
Thune is widely expected to win another term because he remains well regarded among Senate Republicans and has no challenger. Still, several lawmakers returning to Washington after the election losses said the party should not automatically preserve the current leadership structure.
“We need to have some real soul-searching,” Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson said after circulating a letter urging Republicans to postpone their private, secret-ballot leadership elections. “We can’t just continue on business as usual — that kind of defeat demands change.”
Johnson acknowledged, however, that no alternative candidate has entered the race.
The debate reflects the party’s broader effort to understand the election results and determine how quickly it can rebuild its ranks. Two contests, in Alaska and Mississippi, remain unresolved and could reduce the Republican conference even further.
Thune said Monday that the Senate Republican leadership elections would proceed, including races for other senior posts.
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Thune reaches Capitol before leadership vote
Senate Majority Leader John Thune arrived at the Capitol ahead of a gathering where Republicans will decide whether to delay their leadership elections or return him to the post for the next Congress.
When reporters asked how he felt as he entered his office, Thune replied, “We’ll see.”
Inflation exceeds expectations, highlighting continued affordability pressures
U.S. inflation rose more than economists anticipated last month, suggesting that the high prices that contributed to sweeping Democratic victories in the midterm elections will remain a challenge for both the White House and the Federal Reserve.
The Labor Department reported Tuesday that the consumer price index climbed 0.4% between September and October, compared with a 0.6% increase the month before. Officials did not provide an annual inflation figure because last year’s government shutdown prevented the release of October 2025 data.
Core prices, which exclude volatile food and energy costs, increased 0.3%, matching the previous month. Both the overall and core figures were 0.1 percentage point above forecasts.
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Defiant Hegseth ends Pentagon news conference
Hegseth ended the news conference after answering six questions.
From the Pentagon podium, the defense secretary repeatedly rejected the impeachment effort and characterized it as “sabotage” directed at American troops. He said he had committed no wrongdoing and pointed to support from Trump and Vice President JD Vance. Hegseth also sidestepped questions about the political fallout from the war in the midterm elections.
“I stand behind every one of these operations. I was proud to execute them, and I would do it again tomorrow,” Hegseth said.
He argued that impeachment “puts a target on the backs of American warriors by signaling that Congress will undermine their missions in real time. This is not patriotism. This is sabotage.”
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Trump praised Hegseth shortly after the appearance in a post on social media.
“Pete Hegseth gets an ‘A’ PLUS, PLUS, PLUS for his defense against a disgruntled, angry, defeated, former Congressman, Thomas Massie, a TOTAL LOSER!” Trump wrote.
Hegseth portrays impeachment effort as an attack on troops
Hegseth continued defending himself by framing the impeachment resolution as an assault on the military personnel carrying out U.S. missions.
“On the eve of Veterans Day,” Hegseth said, “these resolutions tell every one of them that their service was a crime.”
“These are heroes, and no politician in Washington will tell them otherwise while I hold this office,” he added. “If they want to come for the warriors, they’re going to have to come through me.”
Hegseth calls impeachment effort a ‘political spectacle’
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth denounced the impeachment effort as “a political spectacle, a personal manifesto driven by ego and resentment.”
He made the remarks at the start of a morning news conference at the Pentagon, his first there in six months. The appearance came one day after Rep. Thomas Massie launched his campaign to impeach Hegseth over the defense secretary’s handling of the unpopular conflict with Iran and other actions.
Hegseth argued that Massie’s complaints do not meet the constitutional standard for impeachment, describing them as “policy disagreements, not high crimes, not misdemeanors, not treason, not bribery, not the kinds of offenses the founders intended when they wrote the impeachment clause.”
He added, “The proper remedy for a policy disagreement, it’s legislation, it’s debate, it’s the next presidential election.”
Trump says FBI examining Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s relationship with alleged Chinese agent
Trump said Monday that the FBI is investigating Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s affair with a woman allegedly linked to the Chinese government, while indicating he did not believe the artificial intelligence executive had reason to be concerned.
“I know the FBI is looking into it in terms of something else, and I think that he’ll be in good shape,” Trump said during a White House briefing.
Reports about Huang’s infidelity have sent shock waves through Washington and the technology industry, raising fresh questions about whether Beijing gained access to Nvidia’s advanced chips, which are central to the development of artificial intelligence.
Trump’s public comments appeared to place him unusually close to a counterintelligence inquiry, underscoring his relationship with Huang and the potential international security implications.
Huang has confirmed the affair and apologized to his wife and Nvidia in an open letter published on the company’s website. The New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence officials concluded the woman was collecting information for Beijing.
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Thune and Schumer confront leadership questions after election
Lawmakers from both parties returned to Washington Monday facing uncertainty over their leadership following an election that gave Democrats a substantially larger majority.
Republicans, who are expected to lose roughly a quarter of their conference through defeats and retirements, are weighing whether to quickly reelect South Dakota Sen. John Thune in Tuesday’s leadership vote. Democrats, who could control as many as 56 seats next year, are privately considering whether New York Sen. Chuck Schumer should continue leading them, despite his role in delivering historic gains for the party.
Both leaders are expected to secure majority support in closed-door, secret-ballot elections — Republicans this week and Democrats likely in December. Even so, the internal debates could shape how effectively each party operates in the next Congress and influence voters’ views ahead of the 2028 presidential election.
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Senate moves forward with major energy permitting bill after midterms
In its first major action since the midterm elections, the Senate advanced bipartisan legislation intended to speed permitting for data centers and other energy-intensive infrastructure projects.
The chamber voted 73-25 to begin formal consideration of the bill, which senators and Trump have promoted as a way to meet rising electricity demand and reduce the yearslong wait for new energy sources to connect to the grid.
The measure would shorten the approval process for large clean-energy and fossil-fuel projects while requiring data centers to cover the cost of the electricity they consume. Frustration over AI data centers and rising power bills helped fuel Democratic victories, with many candidates promising tighter oversight of the enormous, energy-intensive facilities.
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Hegseth prepares for first Pentagon briefing since May amid impeachment threat
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was scheduled to hold his first Pentagon news conference in six months on Tuesday, one day after a Republican lawmaker introduced an impeachment resolution focused on Hegseth’s handling of the unpopular war with Iran and other decisions.
The briefing came as U.S. forces continued intermittent operations against Iran, along with deadly strikes on boats allegedly involved in drug smuggling in Latin America.
Hegseth said the event would center on the impeachment effort. He had also launched an aggressive social media campaign and vowed to defend his actions, as well as Trump’s, against what he called “politically motivated people.”
Rep. Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican who lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger, filed the resolution Monday. The move set up a potentially dramatic House vote on whether to remove a prominent Trump administration official after Republicans suffered sweeping losses in the midterm elections, results that many attributed at least in part to the Iran conflict and its economic consequences.
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