Three California House members, including Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, missed a Tuesday procedural vote on a resolution to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The House voted 211-204 to send the measure to the Judiciary Committee, a move the Chronicle said effectively killed it for the year.
Pelosi was in San Francisco for Swords to Plowshares’ 30th Annual Veterans Day Celebration, her spokesperson, Ian Krager, said. It was a longstanding district tradition and her last time attending as a member of Congress, the statement said. She was being honored for a “lifetime of service championing veterans’ rights,” the organization’s website noted, and she joined the event to support a new 124-unit permanent supportive housing community at 1035 Van Ness Avenue for formerly homeless veterans. “Speaker Emerita Pelosi supports impeaching Secretary Hegseth and would have voted ‘No’ on the motion to refer,” Krager said.
Rep. Julia Brownley, a Ventura County Democrat who did not run for reelection, narrowly missed the vote after an Elect Democratic Women event and blamed traffic and Speaker Mike Johnson for closing the roll as colleagues rushed back, the Chronicle reported. Rep. Lou Correa of Santa Ana had already said Monday he would miss votes this week for an undisclosed medical procedure; his office said he filed a personal explanation that he would have voted against sending the resolution to committee. Had some of the 11 House Democrats who were absent been present, the resolution “in theory would still be alive,” the Chronicle wrote, though Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who introduced eight articles on Monday, would still have needed every Democrat and a handful of Republicans. House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of San Bernardino said the caucus was not actively whipping the vote. Afterward, Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove of Los Angeles called colleagues who missed it “pathetic” in a broader swipe at Hegseth and said people “should have gotten their raggedy selves up these steps to vote.” Johnson described Massie’s resolution as a “political gambit for attention.”
The articles, as summarized by the Chronicle, ranged from allegations that Hegseth illegally waged war in Iran to boat strikes on alleged drug traffickers, an investigation of Sen. Mark Kelly, and military action in Yemen and Venezuela. Those are allegations in the resolution, not findings.