Some Democrats who missed key procedural vote to impeach Pete Hegseth blame traffic jam in DC – US politics live

Donald Trump is at the Arlington national cemetery for a Veterans Day service. Here are some pictures of him alongside JD Vance and Pete Hegseth.

It comes just a day after House Republicans were able to quash an effort to impeach Hegseth, after outgoing GOP congressman Thomas Massie filed a resolution earlier this week in a bid to oust the embattled Pentagon chief.

The White House’s top lawyer, Will Scharf, has sent a letter to Democratic congressman Robert Garcia, the incoming chair of the House oversight committee, threatening Democrats with criminal investigations if they launch oversight inquiries purely “deployed to harass and aggrandize” members of the Trump administration that could verge into “blatant criminality”.

This comes as Democrats have vowed to investigate cabinet members and issue subpoenas to allies in the president’s orbit. Scharf, however, said that the White House is monitoring “abusive and capricious threats that are now proliferating from Democrat legislators who seek to abuse the legislative process to intimidate and to interfere with the lawful functioning of government”.

The House oversight committee, the lower chamber’s main investigative body, is able to investigate government offices or individuals; however, its inquiries must serve a valid legislative purpose. The committee cannot act as a formal law enforcement or criminal trial agency.

In his letter, Scharf accused Garcia and other colleagues of displaying “malicious and improper features” in their promises to conduct investigations in the new Congress. The White House counsel listed several statements from incumbent and incoming Democrats which, he claims, are personal grievances as opposed to furthering a “legitimate legislative task”.

“Issuing unlawful subpoenas with the intention of depriving citizens oftheir constitutional rights and privileges may warrant further investigation,” Scharf added.

Garcia, however, remained undeterred in response.

“It appears Donald Trump has something to hide. Let’s be clear,” the top Democrat said in a statement. “Congress has wide latitude to conduct investigations and oversight, an authority inherent in the power to legislate.”

He added that the administration “continues to weaponize the government” with threats of “unconstitutional attacks” on lawmakers.

“We are a co-equal branch of government and will not be deterred by baseless threats from a weaponized [justice department] or from the president’s lawyers,” Garcia said.

The United States could lose its measles elimination status this week, an event likely to cement health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s legacy of meddling in vaccine policies amid the worst outbreak of the virus in the US in 35 years.

If the US loses its measles-free status, it would join Canada and several European and Asian nations that had eliminated the disease only for it to return.

“That is a tremendous step backwards,” said Dr Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center, an attending physician in the division of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and a prominent critic of Kennedy.

A panel of eight independent experts will consider the epidemiological evidence in Washington DC, part of a group called the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), a regional branch of the World Health Organization (WHO). The PAHO director will make the final call.

“Independent of what PAHO says, measles is now endemic in the US. Measles has a foothold in the US,” said Offit. “We’re going to see it this year, we’re going to see it next year,” because the US “critically decreased the percentage” of people vaccinated.

The US is in the midst of its worst measles outbreak since 1991 with more than 5,400 cases nationally, according to the Johns Hopkins University International Vaccine Access Center tracker. Just this year, six people have died in Pennsylvania, a child died in New York on election day and an infant died in Wisconsin days later. Nearly every US state has an active outbreak.

Democrat Scott Colom is still leading the extemely close US Senate race in Mississippi against Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith.

Colom is up by more than 3,000 votes, with 98% counted. A reminder that Tuesday 10 November was the ballot deadline in the state, which means that we can expect consequential drops today.

If Colom wins, it will be a remarkable upset in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat as senator since 1982, and in a state that Donald Trump carried by 22 points in 2024.

Some Democrats, out of the 11 who missed the key procedural vote on Tuesday to impeach Pete Hegseth, blamed a traffic jam in Washington DC for their inability to make it to the US Capitol in time.

By a vote of 211-204, Republicans referred the articles of impeachment to the judiciary committee – effectively killing the effort to oust Hegseth.

Since several outgoing Republicans were not back in Washington, if those Democrats voted to block the move the impeachment resolution would have headed to the House floor for a full debate and vote.

On social media, a number of representatives said that they were stuck behind a motorcade, causing them to miss the voting window.

A spokesperson for the congresswoman Melanie Stansbury, of New Mexico, said she was “blocked from entering the Capitol to vote due a traffic incident and a police escort of a bus during the vote. When she reached the chamber the vote had just gaveled out”.

Meanwhile, the representative Laura Gillen, of New York, similarly blamed the “same police escort blocking the Capitol when Republicans closed the vote”.

The Illinois congressman Johnathan Jackson cited the same reason in a post on X.

Axios reported that some of the House Democrats were on their way back from a political action committee event that is focused on electing pro-choice Democratic women to office.

The House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, is now facing criticism for apparently failing to pressure members of his party to be present for a crucial vote.

When asked by reporters about the absences on Tuesday, Jeffries said that he had not “had a conversation with anyone on the floor team about what may or may not have happened in terms of the Hegseth resolution”.

He added that the resolution would likely be revived: “This is not the end of it. It’s just the beginning.”

Democrat Eileen Laubacher is leading Republican incumbent Lauren Boebert in the race for Colorado’s fourth congressional district. As of now, Laubacher is up by over 3,300 votes with 98% counted.

Boebert, a Maga firebrand and loyal ally to Donald Trump, is trying to hold on to the reliably red district that Trump carried by 18 points in 2024. If Laubacher wins, she would also be the first Democrat to win the seat since 2009.

After a federal judge has allowed Donald Trump’s $10bn defamation lawsuit against the BBC to proceed, the president heralded the move on Truth Social.

“A Huge Victory against Fake News BBC, a terrible abuser of the truth, just handed down by highly respected District Court Judge, Jeffrey T. Kuntz,” Trump wrote. “We will continue fighting against, and defeating, all of those who try to deceive the American People!”

The president is suing the broadcaster over an edited clip that made it appear that Trump told his supporters to storm the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.

Donald Trump is in Washington today.

In honor of veterans day, the president will head to Arlington National Cemetery with first lady Melania Trump for a wreath laying ceremony and to deliver remarks at 11am ET. After, Trump will be back in the White House for meetings.

If there was one obvious conclusion from Democrats’ sweeping victories in the mid-term elections on Tuesday, it seemed to be that the Republican effort to redraw congressional districts in their favor backfired.

Starting last summer, Trump and Republican allies undertook an aggressive effort to redraw congressional districts, reconfiguring the lines to give Republican candidates an advantage. Ahead of the midterms, Republicans redrew 15 seats to their advantage. After Tuesday’s election, they appear poised to lose all but two of them. “It was definitely the wrong move,” an unnamed House Republican told Fox News. “One of the truisms in politics is never to overreach. We did and that was part of the reason for the backlash.”

The Republicans losses included defeats in Texas, Florida and North Carolina where Republicans hoped to pick up as many as 10 combined congressional seats.

“The maps themselves did fail, and failed quite epically,” said John Bisognano, the president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a Democratic redistricting group. “I would also argue the idea itself was an even bigger failure. Allowing an environment to be created around you in which everyone begins to realize how deeply corrupt this administration is and how fearful they are of the American people in elections, so much so that their main tactical path forward is going to be to redraw maps to steal as many voters as they can.”

But even though Republicans failed to pick up nearly all of the new seats they drew, it would be misleading to say that gerrymandering did not work at all in this election, said Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a professor at Harvard who studies redistricting. Republicans didn’t pick up the seats because Democrats had the strongest midterm elections in half a century.

The US Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has relocated from his home in the Washington area to a military base after an Iranian threat against his life, the New York Times has reported.

Bessent has spearheaded a US push to cripple Iran’s economy since the start of the Middle East war, vowing “economic asphyxiation” of the Islamic republic through a web of sanctions.

He is one of a number of senior figures in the Trump administration including the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the new chief of staff, Stephen Miller, to leave their home to live on a military base or protected housing.

The US national intelligence chief, Jay Clayton, said last month that Tehran had “substantially increased” its efforts to target Americans in the Middle East and beyond.

These include intensifying the targeting of current and former US officials such as Bessent, the NYT reported on Tuesday, citing three sources familiar with the matter.

Iranian plotting against US officials has reached a “more advanced stage”, according to the anonymous sources, but the severity of the threats against Bessent was unclear.

Washington ordered non-essential US embassy staff and their families to leave Saudi Arabia last month, after increasing attacks from Tehran-backed Houthi fighters.

The US military has also removed some aircraft from two British bases in recent weeks amid reported threats from Iran.

Jared Kushner ⁠and ⁠Steve Witkoff ​will travel to ⁠Moscow on Thursday, ⁠then ​meet ‌Ukrainian president ‌Volodymyr Zelenskyy ‌in Dublin after their trip to Russia, ‌Kushner said.

Kushner, US president Donald ⁠Trump’s son-in-law, ​said talks between ​Ukraine ​and ​Russia ‌in ​Abu ​Dhabi were a “first good step“.

Senator Bernie Sanders has confirmed that he will not be supporting senator Chuck Schumer as the Democratic majority leader in the new Congress, setting up a confrontation after the party’s sweep to power in the midterm elections.

Sanders was joined by Democratic senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan at a news conference at the Capitol, and together they said there needs to be a new generation of leadership and a vigorous debate about the party’s direction and future, AP reported.

A number of incoming Democratic senators have echoed the call, signaling that they would support another candidate over Schumer.

“The time is now for change,” said Sanders, the independent from Vermont and essentially the father of modern progressivism in the US. “And I will not be supporting Chuck to be reelected as the Democratic leader.”

Slotkin, who said she is not actively seeking the job herself, explained that she wants to see potential Senate leaders present a full plan about the priorities for the new majority. “I’m a no until and unless I see that from anyone,” she said.

The showdown has been building as Democrats swept across the Senate map to flip Republican-held seats far beyond those that were initially competitive, including in Texas, Kansas and South Carolina.

Schumer recruited high-profile candidates that helped secure the majority, including senator-elect Sherrod Brown in Ohio and senator-elect Roy Cooper in North Carolina.

But his preferred candidates also lost primaries in Michigan and Maine, with the progressive candidates prevailing and then going on to win their general elections.

Nancy Pelosi was one of 11 Democratic politicians to miss the Pete Hegseth impeachment vote.

If just eight of them had turned up to vote with their colleagues, the motion would have passed and the articles for impeachment would have moved forward.

The other Democrats recorded as not voting were Julia Brownley, Lou Correa, Laura Gillen of New York, Steven Horsford of Nevada, Jonathan Jackson of Illinois, Brittany Pettersen of Colorado, Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, Stevens of Michigan, Marilyn Strickland of Washington and Frederica Wilson of Florida, the Daily Beast reported.

House Republicans blocked an effort to impeach Hegseth, rejecting allegations that the defense secretary had repeatedly violated the constitution through his handling of the Iran war and other conflicts globally.

A motion to refer Thomas Massie’s eight articles of impeachment against Hegseth to committee passed in the House, 211-204.

The Pentagon declared “total victory” after the vote and Donald Trump celebrated the vote as an “EXONERATION of a Great American Patriot”.

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

Republican representative Thomas Massie compared the GOP with passengers content to go down with the Titanic after colleagues thwarted his effort to impeach defense secretary Pete Hegseth.

The vote came a week after Republicans lost control of the Senate and House of Representatives in their worst midterm election in more than a half century, and underscored how lawmakers remain wary of crossing Donald Trump, who has signaled his continued support for Hegseth.

“They know it’s a sinking ship but committed to stay on board,” Massie, a Republican congressman who lost his primary after breaking with the president, said.

Top Democrats announced their support for the resolution, but Republicans moved to kill it by referring it to the judiciary committee. Their motion succeeded on Tuesday, by a 211-204 vote, largely along party lines. Massie was the sole Republican to oppose the motion, along with all Democrats.

Trump, who was twice impeached, celebrated what he hailed as the “EXONERATION of a Great American Patriot” and lashed out at Massie for forcing the vote.

“The Democrats continue to weaponize and abuse the United States of America,” Trump said on Truth Social. “They must be stopped!”

The Pentagon, meanwhile, declared “total victory”. “The referral of these baseless impeachment articles to the House judiciary committee marks total victory for Secretary Hegseth, the Department of War, and the American warfighter,” Sean Parnell, a department spokesperson, wrote in a social media post.

Some 11 Democratic representatives skipped the vote, the Daily Beast reported earlier this morning, causing the articles of impeachment to fail. Among those to miss the vote was Nancy Pelosi.

If eight of ‌them had voted with fellow Democrats the measure could have proceeded.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said he would talk to members about whether to mount a new impeachment effort in the next ​Congress in January when the Democrats who triumphed in the midterm take their seats. “We’ll have that conversation at the appropriate time,” he said.

Read the full story here:

In other developments:

• Congressman Jim Jordan, a Republican hardliner from Ohio, won the election to become the next House minority leader in Congress. Jordan beat Representative Steve Scalise, the current majority leader, by 106-73 in a closed-door vote to lead Republicans from January. He replaces the current House speaker, Mike Johnson, who said he would not run when the GOP cedes control to Democrats in the new year.

• Meanwhile, Republicans in the upper chamber, re-elected John Thune to serve as Senate minority leader in the next Congress. The GOP senator from North Dakota didn’t face a challenger in the closed-door vote, as Democrats prepare for at least a 10-seat majority in the new year.

• Nine members of the Kennedy family sued the Trump administration in an effort to block its construction of a 250ft triumphal arch. The family’s complaint states that the arch, which is planned for near Arlington national cemetery, would obstruct the Kennedy gravesites, the JFK Eternal Flame and the sightlines of the cemetery, “permanently diminishing these memorials”.

• A federal judge has allowed Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the BBC to proceed. Trump is suing Britain’s publicly funded broadcaster for $10bn over an edited clip that made it appear that Trump told his supporters to storm the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.