Washington talks about impeachment as if it were a verdict. It is not. It is an accusation, and the Constitution splits the job in two on purpose: the House charges, the Senate decides. Knowing how impeachment works matters this week, because the House holds its first procedural vote Tuesday evening on Rep. Thomas Massie’s eight articles against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Whatever happens on that roll call, the rules below will decide what comes next.
The record is the best teacher. Since 1789 the House has impeached officials 22 times. The Senate has convicted and removed exactly eight of them, and every one of the eight was a federal judge. No president and no cabinet secretary has ever been removed this way. That is not a flaw in the system. It is the system working the way the framers built it.
What the Constitution Actually Says
Any honest look at how impeachment works starts with the text, and the text is short. Article I gives the House “the sole Power of Impeachment” and gives the Senate “the sole Power to try all Impeachments.” Article II, Section 4 sets the target and the standard: the President, Vice President “and all civil Officers of the United States” can be removed on impeachment for, and conviction of, “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
Three details do most of the work. First, the House needs only a simple majority to impeach. Second, the Senate needs two-thirds of the members present to convict. Third, the punishment stops at the job. Under Article I, Section 3, the Senate can remove an official and bar that person from future federal office, but nothing more. Any criminal case belongs in a regular court.
That two-thirds rule is the heart of the design. A bare majority can bring charges for almost any reason. However, removing an officer the voters or the President put in place takes a broad, cross-party consensus. Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 65 that impeachable offenses involve “the abuse or violation of some public trust.” He also warned that impeachment would stir up partisan passions. The supermajority is the firewall.
How Impeachment Works in the House
In modern practice, impeachment usually starts in the Judiciary Committee. The committee holds hearings, gathers evidence, and drafts articles, which work like counts in an indictment. Then the full House votes on the articles. If a majority approves, the House names managers, a team of members who act as prosecutors in the Senate.
There is a second door, and it is the one in use right now. Any member can offer an impeachment resolution on the floor as a “question of the privileges of the House.” Leadership then has to deal with it within two legislative days. Usually that means a motion to table, which kills the resolution, or a motion to refer it to committee, where it can sit untouched.
The privileged route is a pressure tool, not a shortcut to conviction. Rep. Al Green forced three such votes against President Trump. The House tabled them 364-58 in December 2017, 355-66 in January 2018, and 332-95 in July 2019. Each vote told voters where members stood. None of them removed anyone.
Massie is using the same door. He filed eight articles on Nov. 9, covering the Iran war, the War Powers deadline, civilian casualties, the Caribbean boat strikes, the Maduro capture, Yemen and the dispute with Sen. Mark Kelly. He has also said that if the motion to refer fails, he will ask for a separate vote on each article, because some members agree with part of the case but not all of it.
How Impeachment Works in the Senate Trial
Once the House sends articles over, the Senate turns itself into a court. Senators take a special oath. The Chief Justice presides only when the President is on trial; otherwise the presiding officer runs the court. The House managers present evidence, the accused official’s lawyers answer, and senators vote on each article.
Here the math gets hard. With all 100 senators voting, conviction takes 67. In 1868 the Senate acquitted Andrew Johnson 35-19, one vote short. In 2021 it voted 57-43 against President Trump, ten votes short. Even a lopsided majority is not enough if it is a partisan majority. That is the whole point.
The Senate also has a quieter option. In April 2024 it never held a trial on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Instead, it voted 51-48 and 51-49 that both articles failed to allege a high crime or misdemeanor and were therefore unconstitutional. Then it adjourned the court. That move set a precedent: a Senate majority can end a case without hearing it. Conservatives objected at the time, and they were right to. A future majority of either party can now use the same tool.
How Impeachment Works in Practice: The Record
The chart below tracks every House impeachment, grouped by office and by outcome, using the official list from the House historian.
Judges dominate the list with 15 of the 22 cases, and they account for all eight removals. The reason is simple. Federal judges serve “during good behavior” with no election and no term limit. As a result, impeachment is the only way to remove a corrupt or unfit judge. Those cases also tend to involve plain crimes: bribery, perjury or tax evasion. When the facts are that clear, senators of both parties vote together.
Presidents are another story. Johnson, Clinton and Trump (twice) were all acquitted. In each case the vote broke mostly along party lines, and the Senate fell well short of 67.
Cabinet officers are the rarest group. Only two have ever been impeached: Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876 and Mayorkas in 2024. Belknap resigned hours before the House voted, yet the Senate still held a trial and acquitted him. Mayorkas was impeached by a single vote, 214-213, a week after the first attempt failed 214-216. The Senate then dismissed the charges without a trial. Neither man was removed.
“High Crimes and Misdemeanors” Is Not a Policy Dispute
The hardest question in how impeachment works is what counts. In 1970 Gerald Ford, then House Republican leader, famously said an impeachable offense is “whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.” He was describing political reality, not the Constitution’s intent.
The conservative reading is narrower, and history backs it up. Impeachment is meant for corruption, abuse of office and serious lawbreaking. It is not a tool for settling arguments over policy. When Republicans impeached Mayorkas over border enforcement, Democrats called it a policy fight dressed up as a crime. Now the shoe is on the other foot. Several of Massie’s articles turn on whether a war was lawfully authorized, and that is a real constitutional question. Still, it is a question Congress has its own tools to answer.
That point deserves weight. Congress controls the purse. It can repeal authorizations, cut off funding, and pass binding limits on the use of force. Those tools are slower and less dramatic than impeachment, but they are what the framers expected Congress to use first. As we argued in our earlier analysis, the Hegseth impeachment aims at the wrong man if Congress will not own its share of the war.
Why the Bar Should Stay High
Knowing how impeachment works also shows why restraint matters. Every impeachment lowers the price of the next one. Before 1998, the country had gone 130 years between presidential impeachments. Since then the House has impeached presidents three times in 23 years, plus the first cabinet impeachment in 148 years. When a tool once saved for emergencies starts showing up every few years, it loses its force. Worse, it trains voters to see impeachment as just another partisan weapon.
Fiscal conservatives should care for a practical reason, too. Every month spent on a trial that cannot reach 67 votes is a month not spent on the budget, the debt and the debt ceiling. The current House has only a few weeks left before the new Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3, after Democrats’ midterm gains. Spending it on a symbolic vote has a real cost.
That does not mean the power should rust. Impeachment exists because elections alone cannot reach an unelected officer who abuses power, and judges are the proof. The test is whether the conduct is serious enough that a fair-minded member of the other party could vote to convict. If the honest answer is no, the case belongs at the ballot box or in the appropriations process.
What to Watch Next
Here is how impeachment works from this point. If the House tables or refers Massie’s resolution, it is likely dead for this Congress, though a member can always file again. If the motion fails, expect separate votes on each article, which Massie has promised to request. Any article that passes goes to the Senate, where the real question becomes whether 67 senators would ever agree. History says that bar is meant to be hard to clear, and that is exactly why it should stay where the framers put it.
Sources
- Constitution Annotated (Congress.gov): Article II, Section 4, grounds for impeachment
- U.S. House Office of the Historian: List of Individuals Impeached by the House of Representatives
- Office of the Clerk, U.S. House: Roll Call 43, H. Res. 863, impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas (Feb. 13, 2024)
- Congressional Record, Vol. 170, No. 67: Senate proceedings on the Mayorkas articles (April 17, 2024)
- Congress.gov: H. Res. 498 (116th Congress), motion to table agreed to 332-95 (July 17, 2019)
- USA Today: The articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth (Nov. 10, 2026)
