Rep. Yassamin Ansari said Monday she will file five articles of impeachment against Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, accusing him of war crimes tied to the current conflict and saying he has repeatedly violated his oath of office. She said she plans to formally bring the impeachment next week.
Ansari went further than Hegseth. She also urged invocation of the 25th Amendment to remove President Donald Trump, after his Easter Sunday warning to Iranian leadership to “open the f---ing Strait” of Hormuz by Tuesday or face strikes on critical infrastructure. “Donald Trump’s deranged statements — including one on Easter Sunday — are further entrenching our country and our world in another devastating, never-ending war,” she said.
The Arizona Democrat framed the move as a constitutional argument as much as a foreign-policy protest. “As the daughter of Iranian immigrants who fled this regime, and as an American Congresswoman who swore an oath to the United States Constitution, I know that this cannot go on,” she said. She said only Congress has the power to declare war, and alleged that Hegseth’s reckless endangerment of U.S. servicemembers and repeated war crimes were grounds for impeachment and removal from office.
Ansari accused Hegseth of being involved in bombing a girls’ school in Minab, Iran, and of willfully targeting civilian infrastructure. The impeachment push comes amid a sharper clash over the Trump administration’s handling of Iran, after Ansari said in February she had told she felt “a rush of hope, but also unease” when she learned Americans and Israelis had taken out Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Her family history has shaped that view: decades ago, her parents fled the regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
The allegation arrives as Trump and Hegseth were also being credited by with helping engineer the rescue of a U.S. airman shot down by Iranian forces over the weekend. That makes the political terrain more volatile, not less: Ansari is attacking the same officials she says are pushing the country toward war, while the Pentagon is defending the people she wants punished.
Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson slammed the impeachment plan when reached for comment. For now, the fight is set to move from floor statements to formal paperwork next week, and Ansari has made clear she intends to use it to force Congress to answer whether Hegseth’s conduct, and Trump’s threats, have crossed the line she says they already have.
