The House of Representatives on Tuesday blocked a vote on Rep. Thomas Massie’s articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth along party lines, with the exception of Massie himself, who voted with the Democrats to proceed with the vote.

In an interview with CNN on Monday night, Massie insisted that his resolution was not motivated by political disagreements or the belief that Hegseth has been ineffective. In fact, Massie said, Hegseth was effective: effective at killing 200 school children in Iran, effective at extrajudicial killings of people in boats in the Caribbean, and at the unconstitutional kidnappings in Venezuela. The problem, instead, he said, is that these things are all illegal!

Unsurprisingly, Hegseth, in a rare press conference Tuesday morning, puffed out his chest and lied that everything was, indeed, constitutional, and that on the issue of Iran, for example, “[Trump] did the tough right thing, not for politics, but for the safety and the security of the American people. That’s leadership. He did not kick the can. He kicked their teeth in,” the oaf said. (What part of the Constitution is that in?)

With the impeachment of Hegseth off the table, at least for the remainder of the Congressional session, attention now shifts to defeating Section 1217 of the NDAA, an effort that is gaining steam. On Tuesday, Sen. Chris Van Hollen and 11 other Senate Democrats wrote a letter to House and Senate leadership urging that the provision for merging U.S.–Israel military technology and intelligence be blocked.