How many House votes are required to impeach a secretary of defense for the 2025-26 Congress
Executive summary
A secretary of defense can be impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives by the same constitutional mechanism that applies to other “civil officers”: the House approves articles of impeachment by a vote of the chamber, requiring a simple majority to adopt those articles (the Constitution vests the House with the “sole Power of Impeachment”) [1] [2]. The practical number of votes necessary therefore equals whatever constitutes a majority in the House at the moment the vote is taken — a political fact that depends on attendance and voting behavior [3] [2].
1. What the Constitution and congressional practice say about the vote required
The Constitution assigns the House the exclusive power to impeach, and longstanding practice and authoritative guides state that the House adopts articles of impeachment by majority vote of the chamber — not a supermajority — making impeachment in form a simple-majority action in the House [1] [2]. The Library of Congress and CRS explanations of House procedure confirm that the House’s adoption of articles is a chapter-one step in a two-step removal process with the Senate conducting the trial afterward [2].
2. How that translates into a numerical threshold
Legal and congressional sources repeatedly frame impeachment as “a majority vote of the House,” but they do not freeze that into a single absolute number because the House’s effective majority can change with vacancies, absences, or members voting “present” instead of “yea” or “nay” [2] [3]. Historical summaries and civic guides reiterate the majority requirement without stating a fixed seat count, and official Senate materials emphasize that conviction — the subsequent step — requires a two‑thirds Senate supermajority, underscoring that impeachment alone does not remove an officer [1] [4].
3. Precedent and rarity: cabinet officials and the politics of a House vote
Impeachment of cabinet-level officials is rare — the House has impeached cabinet officers only a handful of times in U.S. history — and modern practice shows impeachment is as much a political calculation as a legal one [2] [5]. Recent episodes demonstrate this: the House voted to approve articles against Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas in 2024, illustrating the same majority-floor mechanism, and commentators and reporters have noted that such efforts are often partisan and may not progress if the majority party does not back them or refuses to bring them to the floor [3] [6] [7].
4. The 2025–26 context and practical implications for any Hegseth effort
In the 2025–26 political environment multiple Democrats filed or publicized articles against Secretary Hegseth, but observers and outlets said such efforts face steep political hurdles and may not advance if House leadership declines to bring articles to a floor vote [8] [7] [9]. While the constitutional rule is straightforward — adoption by majority — the political reality is that leadership control, committee processes, and party discipline determine whether a vote occurs at all and therefore whether the majority threshold becomes the decisive barrier or merely a symbolic one [7] [9].
5. Bottom line and reporting limits
Bottom line: to impeach a secretary of defense the House must adopt articles of impeachment by a majority vote of the House — a simple majority is the constitutional requirement [1] [2]. Precise numeric counts (for example, “218 votes”) are not asserted here because the cited reporting and institutional primers describe the requirement as a majority of the House without fixing a particular seat count; the exact number needed in practice depends on the number of Members voting and any vacancies or “present” votes at the time the roll is called [2] [3]. After impeachment in the House, conviction and removal remain a separate Senate process requiring a two‑thirds vote [1] [4].