“Jeffries didn’t even whip the vote,” one critic said about the House minority leader, who wants to be speaker. “This is why people want a stronger leader.”
As House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries seeks to become speaker when Democrats retake Congress in January, critics questioned his leadership Tuesday after the Republican-led lower chamber effectively blocked a bid to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth by just seven votes—an outcome that may have been averted if more Democrats showed up to vote.
The 211-204 procedural vote effectively torpedoed Congressman Thomas Massie’s attempt to impeach Hegseth by sending the outgoing Kentucky Republican’s resolution to the House Judiciary Committee, where it will likely gather dust during the remainder of the GOP-controlled congressional term.
This vote is doa in the senate because there are not enough republicans to flip. So I don’t understand why everyone is so bent up about this? Wait until January when we have a new congress. You guys either don’t care about this enough to know how our government works. It’s baffling.
I disagree that this is doa in the senate, but that’s beside the point. The main point of this (and many other failing proposals) is messaging.
With this, Jeffries communicated that even after the midterms, he doesn’t care about this. You are right that in January the democrats will have full control and will be able to impeach if they want, but this signals they likely will not.
If it had passed to the senate, it would have forced republican senators to reaffirm their loyalty to trump by voting no. Since the midterms, many of them have discovered they are in a swing state all of a sudden. Even if none of them break ranks, that is valuable ammunition for the next election cycle. So in effect, Jeffries helped shield a bunch of republican senators from having to make a painful vote.
Blue AIPAC puppets just doing AIPAC things.
Why would Israel-funded politicians want to impeach the guy who killed Iranians?
This vote is doa in the senate. What exactly is it accomplishing? We have to wait until jan to unseat current republicans
Comment above explains it. Forces republicans in swing states to show their colors.
I’ll drag him for being a corpo stooge. Stop being a sell-out, jeff!
He’s never going to stop. He made it this far being one.
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Proposal submitted by a republican
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Speaker is republican
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Impeachment now would be dumb because republitards would get to pick his replacement…
The left: FUCK DEMOCRATS REEEEEEEEEEEE
Absolute troglodytes…
Yea I’m annoyed that this didn’t pass because it should’ve been a slam dunk for democrats and would’ve only added to their momentum after the midterms. But I also don’t like how it’s being presented as a sign of things to come. The newly elected congress isn’t even in session and everyone’s trying to pin it on them.
How would this passing add any “momentum” or be considered a “slam dunk”?
Wins, no matter how small, add momentum. That’s how it works. And it’s a ‘slam dunk’ because it’s a bill proposed by a Republican that dems could have easily gotten passed.
You’re under the illusion that there was a possible win to be had. If Johnson knew that Dems had the numbers, he’d never bring the proposal to the floor in the first place. If he did, it would be because the republicans would bring their majority, cuz incase you forgot, they still own congress.
Well Massie didn’t need Johnson’s permission to bring it to the floor it was a privileged resolution. So guess you’re under the illusion you know how parliamentary politics works.
Privileged resolution just means Johnson’s choice is reduced to two legislative days to bring it up, not that he loses all agency. NT tho. And Johnson steered it to be referred to committee.
Johnson had no way to stop the vote other than adjourning the session. And he wouldn’t have known 11 dems would be absent in 2 days. It had a real chance of passing. He got lucky it didn’t go through.
I don’t have any faith in Jeffries, but if this plan of replacing Hegseth with stooge #12 immediately following impeachment was any kind of viable, why not trade him now anyway and preempt any hearings that should ve inevitable come January?
So you think people’s lives are just numbers on a screen? Is politics a game for you? Oh well we losing this time so might as well not try. PEOPLE ARE DYING. Israel is killing people every single day. Ice is killing people everyday. There are thousands of immigrants sitting in concentration camps. They are getting raped and tortured EVERY SINGLE DAY. This isn’t a fucking game. It’s not about winning and losing. We have an obligation to uphold justice and protect as many people as we possibly can.
Tell me you don’t know how the process works without telling me. The only person acting like it’s a game is you. I’m arguing for effective action, you want pointless theatre. Go ahead and explain how that would be accomplished or just keep virtue signaling into the void.
still requires super majority in the Senate so he likely won’t get ousted before or after new senators are seated (without 10+ Republican defections)
still, there’s enough representation to refer him to the Senate for prosecution and a strong inquiry to made
Yea, but after the new members are present it’s more likely to get a supermajority and they’ll get to block any unhinged replacement after. Trying to do it now is just pointless.
1st stipulation still feels like a stretch but maybe you’re right. 2nd is plain wrong as there is always value in delivering justice.
it wouldn’t be pointless but could be materially worse if the replacement was indeed more unhinged. but that’s as hypothetical as a successful impeachment so either way it’s speculative.
Sorry, what are you referring to when you say “delivering justice” if absolutely nothing would come out of an attempted impeachment right now? (This vote wasn’t a vote to impeach btw, and for that vote there’s no way republicans would bring it to the floor without their majority present).
i know how the process works. the House doesn’t impeach, they vote to refer to the Senate where Reps prosecute the case for impeachment and Senators vote on it.
i don’t think we’re going to agree. i believe that the act of a impeachment that is foregone for failure still serves a latent purpose of opening the opportunity for investigation and signals to your constituents that you’re using what powers you have to try to serve their will. my reading of your take is that if an action produces anything other than its manifest purpose, it’s a failure.
What’s crazy is you saw the last 2 years and are arguing about the process. You learned nothing under this dictatorship. The rules don’t mean anything. They do whatever they want. Only when democrats want to do something it’s theater or about following processes. Our politicians, both left and right, have WAY more power than they let on. The red tape is is self imposed. When enough people get angry we can make massive change and if you ask me the American people need to see things being done. All beauocracy is theatre and maybe if the left actually put some theater for us more people would get mad and actually do something.
It is sad that you see giving up as a valid option. When the cards you want aren’t on the table you flip the fucking table. It sounds ridiculous but people’s lives are at stake. Do you even care about all the people that will die because they will be priced out of their life saving medications? I guess fighting for healthcare is performative too.
Notice how you didn’t lay out the sequence of events you expected. You seem confused about the difference between congress and executive orders, you might want to check that out. Or you can just virtue signal into the void yet again.
I’m confused by your line of thought. My complaint isn’t that the vote didn’t pass specifically, it was that someone who is presuming to take over leadership in 2027 didn’t make an effort to show leadership.
No matter if it was this Congress or the next one, the vote is mainly to feel out if Republicans are defecting from Trump at all. After the House passes an impeachment, the Senate has to vote 2/3rds to kick him out of office. All that effort isn’t going to happen before the new Congress is sworn in and if Republicans were looking to replace Hegseth before 2027, he is able to resign without being impeached.
They’re not looking to replace him, Dems are. But that’s impossible right now in a congress owned by republicans. Ofc you’re confused, this was a vote initiated by a republican and brought to the floor by a republican speaker, but you’re convinced that this is about Dem leadership.
I guess I’ll rephrase. Jefferies is the presumed speaker of the house in 2027. Which shows better ability to lead:
A. Miss a vote that would pass a Republican led house impeaching Hegseth for it to die in the Senate B. Have a Democrat led house impeach Hegseth to die in the Senate
You’re ignoring impeachment takes 67 senators voting for it. Maybe you’re more optimistic 12 republican senators will flip.
Your A. scenario would never happen because Johnson never would’ve brought it to the floor the moment he did if he knew Dems had the numbers…Yes, I’m more interested and optimistic for the version of events that is more likely to pass in the senate and allows Dems to block a replacement.
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As few days as our Congress is in session, I don’t think it is too much to ask our Representatives to be present in or around the Capitol during business hours unless it is a life or death emergency. My employer wouldn’t keep me around if I was slacking off whenever I felt like it.
We should assume it is deliberate. There will be a lot of “rotating villains”, “parliamentarians” and “bipartisanship” in the coming congress. Any excuse to not get anything good passed.
All of it is bullshit. Many democrats want to protect the status quo in spite of the popular mandate for change.
Don’t give them the benefit of the doubt.
Fucking Hydra bullshit. Hate it.
We need to expose and get rid of all of them.
AIPAC Shakur didn’t fight to impeach the guy who attacked Iran?
Can’t imagine why.
Is Jeffries the new rotating villain?
Nah this is just what you are supposed to do after you vote for the lesser of two evils, you try and make the lesser even more lesser.
It’s why it was crazy for people to not vote for Kamala because the Democrats didn’t promise to stop genociding and in the process get the guy in who wants to genocide harder.
I know I’m digging my grave mentioning this here but, genocide is bad no matter who does it and more Palestinians were killed under Biden than under Trump. Not that the numbers themselves matter because any innocent Palestinian, or Iranian, or other person killed unjustifiably by Democrats is enough to take my vote away completely.
Also the facts from polling shows directly, if every single person who voted 3rd party because of democrats genocide and violence Kamala still wouldn’t have won. So it’s not about supporting Trump by not supporting Kamala it’s about not supporting Kamala’s support of Bidens style of Genocide thru Isreal.
I do 100% agree about the making lesser evils actually lesser, tho, that’s good shit
and, to add to that, their own internal polling showed them their support of the genocide could cost the election.
An election they themselves said was existential.
In their defense, Kamala only held 95% of their beliefs while the other guy promised a blank check to Netanyahu…so it was a really tough choice.
Not giving billions to wipe a people off the face of the earth might be 5% of your beliefs, ranks a bit higher for me. But thanks for telling us that.
So you either did nothing or picked a guy who gives Netanyahu everything he asks for 🤣. Real moral courage.
I don’t know why people still try to play this game. Genocide might be something you can hand wave away, and vote based on marginal data difference like it’s for a sports team, but a lot of people actually do have moral courage, AND they do more for poor disenfranchised working class Americans than democrats ever do.
don’t even get me started on people who ONLY vote and then think their political responsibilities are done right there. You are complicit in killing innocent men women and children. You support the racist Military Industrial Complex whole heartedly. Congrats.
I voted for De La Cruz.
what you are supposed to do
What is?
Re read the full sentence, because it answers your question.
This is what people are talking about when we say “media literacy is dead” did you not read the rest of the sentence?
Jeffries and schumer need to go yesterMANYYEARSAGO, but I’m always cautious of Massie… Seemingly on the right side of history on one thing with the “courage” to call a pedophile a pedophile (in this one case at least) but he still has a lot of fucked up standard nutjob conservative ideas unfortunately.
Is anyone familiar enough with procedure here, did he need to call this when he did? Is there precedent for maybe working with dem leaders on timing, directly or through back channels, if he truly wanted this to pass? I don’t know enough about the other dems that missed here, any of them those “blue dog” dipshits?
Because otherwise, Massie wants to be the guy seen as stirring shit up, but without ever actually toppling the regime? It’s effective at taking wind out of the sails and giving the illusion that hegseth has support to folks paying half attention.
In any event, tie Haley Stevens to Nancy pelosi and throw them in the middle of the ocean. And let their only rescue support be chuck schumer as navigator on a coast guard ship piloted by Hakeem jefferies, 400 miles away.
Massie hates Trump. He’s Republican and I vehemently disagree with him on many issues, but he’s not MAGA. Massie is the kind of politician I can disagree with without hating.
But there was also an opportunity for the Republicans here. If the impeachment had gone through and the Senate fast-tracked the trial and voted to remove him, the GOP Senators could have done some real damage control for their brand while punishing Trump for what he did to them AND getting to confirm the next SecDef.
Not present: Nancy Pelosi (Calif.)
Made me laugh. Of course she’s on the list.
She was literally away receiving an award. Apparently the Meeting All Our Expectations Award.
Just another big “fuck you” on her way out. Useless cunt
Cunts are very useful.
Insider trading fucking centrists who piss away generational majorities to protect the rich? Not so much.
Get ready for another year of protesting even with dems in Congress.
Dems in Congress only means there’s a chance people will listen as opposed to before when there was no chance.
We are NOT out of the woods yet.
Brunch is NOT back on the menu, libs
Americans aren’t getting out of the woods. Republicans aren’t leaving the White House regardless of what happens.
Cool then the states can mobilize the Nat Guard who will effectively be independent due to no Commander and Chief to drag the profligates out. Hell there’s a good chance the military as a whole would ignore it for similar reasons of there is no chief, point is there are less than civil ways of removing Trump. If it causes war we can complete what Sherman failed to do, though I doubt we’ll need to burn Atlanta this time 'round.
A few months ago comments like this were saying that the election was cancelled… Turns out being a doomer doesn’t actually accomplish anything.
Jeffries didn’t even whip the vote. He told people to ‘vote their conscience,’ and 11 members of his caucus didn’t show up,” writer Laura Bassett wrote on social media. “This is why people want a stronger leader.”
Jeffries is a piece of shit and shouldn’t be anywhere near any leadership position…
But whipping votes is the job of the second in line…
A job with the literal title “minority whip”…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Clark
We can’t just focus on two popular names, we need to flush all the neoliberals out of leadership.
All that being said, votes just happen whenever with no warning. It’s way past time that these votes need to be scheduled in advance. Instead of “vote starts now” at least “vote starts in 24 hour, exactly at ____ o’clock”
Once the main vote happens, there can be exceptions for follow ups, like “next vote in one hour”
The current way shit is done is fucking stupid
All that being said, votes just happen whenever with no warning. It’s way past time that these votes need to be scheduled in advance. Instead of “vote starts now” at least “vote starts in 24 hour, exactly at ____ o’clock”
Yeah, it’s worth noting because the vote was called right after many Dems left for a break. And then when the call went out for all the Dems to scramble back, many were too far away and couldn’t make it before the vote was held.
Is that a thing that can happen? Here in Australia our parliament is designed in such a way that the chamber (House or Senate) is no more than three minutes walk from every parliamentarian’s office and, when a vote is held where a formal division is required, they ‘ring the bells’ (literally a ringing bell with alarms in every office) for exactly four minutes so every parliamentarian has the ability to make it to the chamber for the vote before they lock the doors. To design a parliament or congress building in any other way seems insane to me.
That sounds like a good system set up in good faith. The USA government was set up in very bad faith, by men who thought they could own people like cattle
Id personally argue that this isn’t an issue of bad faith and moreso an issue of being out of date and then being used in bad faith. We are talking about a system that was set up when the steam engine was still very new and the fastest way to move around was by boat and by horse, your kinda hard capped on how fast you can move at the time. A lot of the federal systems in particular make a lot of sense when you factor in just how old a lot of it is, looking at you electoral college.
We designed our system in the 1890s, learning from both the US and British systems, and others. The writers of our Constitution did a pretty amazing job, but they had the advantage of hindsight.
It’s honestly depressing how little thought people put into this stuff, not every rage addict is a trump supporter these days. Uninformed angry people are all over, and they really want to share opinions
Voting by our representatives should take place over the course of a week. They can use web cameras to discuss the topic, a publicly recorded version of Discord, and so on. I want my reps to drink coffee, talk out the issues, and be able to submit their vote without time pressure.
Our systems are rooted in being physically present, yet make mental presence optional.
A job with the literal title “minority whip”…
That is not the official title for that position, though it’s commonly called that. The official title is Assistant Minority Leader, because the person in that position reports to the House Minority Leader. Katherine Clark shares responsibility for this failure, but the buck stops at the top, and that’s Jeffries. It’s literally part of Jeffries’ job to tell the Assistant which votes should get whipped. The Assistant doesn’t typically decide that on their own.
That’s why majority leader is an important position. Because they’re SUPPOSED to keep this kind of childish bullshit from happening. If you elect adults, this doesn’t happen. If you elect children (including those AARP age), you get the level of administration you voted for.
The childish bullshit is just politics
Mike Johnson made a strong move here. The vote never actually mattered. It was political theater. Zero chance Hegseth was even getting impeached and convicted
The whole thing was just getting Republicans on record defending him, but Johnson managed to make the plan explode on Democrats. Now everyone is pissed at Democrats over a vote that didn’t matter
No, childish bullshit is Republican politics. I wish people who thought this was what politics was for would either grow the fuck up or get the hell out of the room while the grownups talk, but here we are, with half of America thinking juvenile pranks and “For the LULZ” is just how the country works. Every Republican from Johnson down should be ashamed, but we already know they don’t have the capacity for that. Jefferies failure to keep his team on side in the lame duck sessions is a failure of leadership. Republicans having no dignity or morals isn’t news anymore.
This was great strategy on the part of Massie to support the incoming wave of progressives,
Yep. This is making a great case for replacing current congressional leadership with new blood.
I’m very disappointed in my rep, Melanie Stansbury. She won’t get my vote again. I wrote a message to her on the government contact form, saying as much. Fat lot of good that will do.
11 dem no show, i wonder who side are they even on.
Israel’s. Most were at an Israeli fund raising event.
1 was recovering from surgery.
Majority of dems who didn’t vote, also had funding to their campaigns through aipac. Looking at you Marylin Strickland.
Not only that, they were attending an AIPAC event instead of being there to vote.
Are you fucking kidding me
Some of the 11 Democrats who missedTuesday’s vote to advance the impeachment of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were reportedly attending an event hosted by a “front group” for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, commonly known as AIPAC.
Israel says Smegmeth stays so he stays. Can’t risk peace breaking out.
The vote was never about removing Hegseth
Everyone knew the senate wouldn’t convict even if the house impeached. This was just for the headlines and attack ads
Majority who voted probably also had aipac funding.
