Among the points midterm voters made very clear with their collective rebuke of President Trump’s second term so far: They want public officials who corruptly abuse their power to be held accountable.
That is why the incoming Congress must rescue one of the most important constitutional guardrails from its path to extinction: the impeachment power. And there is no better way to start that process than by impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
That Trump was twice impeached by the House, but also twice acquitted in the Senate, was more than a win for the president: It was a loss for democracy, because it rendered impeachment practically a dead letter. As long as a public official digs in, refuses to take responsibility, and waves the whole process away as an act of political retribution, that official can survive.
In failing to convict Trump, Congress stripped impeachment of its deterrent value. Incoming lawmakers should reclaim it.
This is especially important because of the elevation to Trump’s chief of staff of Stephen Miller, whose participation was instrumental in the actions leading to the calls to oust Hegseth. It’s constitutionally unclear whether Miller could face impeachment, since he is a member of Trump’s staff and not a Senate-confirmed official. But Miller’s ability to do more harm to the rule of law will be greatly restrained if officials in the position to do his bidding find their jobs on the line.
Hegseth is right that impeachment is not a solution for “policy disagreements” as he said during a defiant press briefing Tuesday blasting the impeachment effort. But Hegseth’s actions go far beyond political unpalatability. Outgoing Republican Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky captured the worst of it in the articles of impeachment he reintroduced Monday as lawmakers returned from their election break.
First, the articles charge that Hegseth launched the attack on Iran, which has led to a disastrous war that has lasted eight months and counting, all without the constitutionally mandated authorization by Congress. Hegseth is also charged with failing to minimize civilian casualties related to the war, including the Feb. 28 strike on an Iranian elementary school that killed 156 people, mostly schoolchildren, and injured nearly 100 more, which looked an awful lot like a war crime.
The fact that the Trump administration claims authority to unilaterally attack Iran rests with the president alone as commander-in-chief is not only an unconstitutional and morally dangerous proposition, that justification has Miller’s name written all over it. Few have embraced the view that the president possesses the power to wage aggressive attacks on foreign powers more than Miller, his recent post-election advice that Trump wind down the Iran war notwithstanding.
Second, the impeachment articles charge Hegseth with overseeing the “extrajudicial killings” of civilians via boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, a plan Miller also had a hand in. The administration claimed that the targets were drug smugglers and declared a phony “war” on narcoterrorists, which in its view authorized military action. But there is no constitutional or legal authority for such war, and even if there were, rules of engagement require that attacks stop if the targets are defenseless or surrender. But under Hegseth’s order to “kill them all,” some of those who survived initial attacks and were left clinging to smoldering jetsam at sea were executed where they floated.
Those actions drew immediate rebuke even from Republicans.
“Off our coast, it isn’t our policy just to blow people up,” Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky said last year in an interview with on “Rob Schmitt Tonight.” “We don’t blow up ships entering our waters unless they’re hellbent on attacking another ship, or unless they are resisting with gunfire. We arrest people.”
Even conservative legal scholar John Yoo, who worked in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during George W. Bush’s presidency, decried the offshore killings in a Washington Post op-ed last year.
“American law instead relies upon the criminal justice or civil tort systems to respond to broad, persistent social harms,” Yoo wrote. In other words, you hold suspected criminals accountable in court. You don’t turn the sea into a fake battlefield and fire missiles at them.
Critics have also pointed out that some of the targeted boats may not have contained drugs at all, but rather refugees fleeing the oppressive Venezuelan dictatorship.
That leads to yet another impeachment charge against Hegseth: participating in the unlawful capture and removal of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores without congressional authorization. There is an additional charge for illegally attacking Yemen without Congress’s authorization. Foreign policy is supposed to be conducted through diplomacy, not with the business ends of a missiles and rifles.
Miller’s elevation at the White House will bring with it an even stronger embrace of the unitary executive theory, the view embraced by Trump and Miller that the law is no barrier to presidential actions. Without the deterrence value of impeachment, others in Trump’s Cabinet could also feel free to do as they please, knowing consequences are unlikely to follow.
Republicans chose not to hold Hegseth accountable, but incoming lawmakers can’t afford not to impeach Hegseth, and also convict him in the Senate. Our founders knew the importance of giving Congress the ability — the duty, really — to remove and bar officials from ever holding office again if they abuse their power. It is meant to support the foundational principle that no one is above the law, and there is no place in government for corrupt actors. It is time to reclaim and use that power before it’s lost forever.
Kimberly Atkins Stohr is a columnist for the Globe. She may be reached at kimberly.atkinsstohr@globe.com.