More than 150 civilians died when a US strike hit Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, Iran. About 120 of them were schoolchildren, mostly girls age 12 and younger. That strike sits at the center of the fourth of eight articles of impeachment that Republican Rep. Thomas Massie reintroduced against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday. Washington's answer to dead children, once again, is a procedural fight over paperwork.
Massie filed under privileged procedures, which means House Republican leaders have to schedule a floor vote within two legislative days. They can also try to bury it with a motion to hold back the measure, which needs only a simple majority. The resolution seeks Hegseth's removal and his disqualification from future federal office. It accuses him of waging unauthorized wars, undermining civilian protections and conducting extrajudicial killings.
The State's Monopoly
Read the articles as a ledger of what a state can do when nobody stops it. The first three accuse Hegseth of violating the War Powers Resolution of 1973 by directing operations against Iran without congressional authorization, then continuing the conflict despite congressional efforts to withdraw American forces. A law passed in 1973 to leash the executive, and the executive kept going anyway.
The fifth article covers strikes on vessels suspected of drug trafficking in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, reportedly killing at least 243 people. The seventh covers the January operation that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Massie alleges it was unauthorized and that it left at least 83 dead and seven American casualties. The eighth accuses Hegseth of directing Operation Rough Rider in Yemen, which allegedly involved more than 1,100 strikes over approximately 52 days in 2025.
Iran, Yemen, Venezuela, two oceans. One apparatus.
Who Gets Crushed
The sixth article may be the most revealing about how hierarchy treats its own. It accuses Hegseth of retaliating against Sen. Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain, after Kelly took part in a video reminding military personnel they can refuse unlawful orders. Read that again. Telling soldiers they can say no is the offense the Pentagon allegedly punished. The chain of command doesn't tolerate a reminder that the chain can be broken.
The people at the bottom of this chain appear in the article as numbers: 120 schoolchildren, 243 dead on boats, 83 killed in Venezuela, 1,100 strikes in 52 days. None of them got a vote on any of it. None of them will get one on the impeachment resolution either.
The Election and Reform Trap
Hegseth, asked whether he has enough Republican support to defeat the articles, shrugged it off. "We're not worried about impeachment. We're going to do a press conference tomorrow morning on that topic," he told reporters. That's the confidence of a man who knows how the machinery works. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries voiced support for the effort, declaring he is a "hard yes" on the resolution.
So the opposition party says yes, a Republican sponsors it, and leadership holds a simple-majority escape hatch. The procedure exists. Whether it constrains anything is another matter, and the record in the articles themselves is not encouraging: Congress tried to withdraw American forces from the Iran conflict, and the operations allegedly continued.
Impeachment, if it comes, would swap one official for another inside the same institution. The strikes, the ships, the carrier groups and the war powers the executive claims for itself would all remain. Removing a man doesn't dismantle a monopoly on violence. It just changes who signs the orders.
Who Pays
The war this resolution targets was fought over there. The accounting is being done over here, in committee language, in privileged motions, in press conferences scheduled for tomorrow morning. Somewhere in Minab, the school's desks were counted differently.
- pete hegseth
- impeachment
- thomas massie
- iran war
- war powers
- hakeem jeffries
- mark kelly
- pentagon