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The Record Speaks for Itself: Pete Hegseth Must Go
By Catalina Clarke, Editor-in-Chief
Start with the plainest fact of this week. The United States military has moved its aircraft out of a second airbase in Britain because Iran threatened them. The Wall Street Journal reports the planes were diverted from RAF Mildenhall; weeks earlier, American bombers were withdrawn from RAF Fairford for the same reason. Britain insists its bases are safe. Perhaps they are. But the United States Air Force is not acting as though it believes that — it is moving its aircraft first and letting the statements follow.
On Tuesday, Tehran announced it has lifted the self-imposed 2,000-kilometre limit on its ballistic missiles — the range that reaches from Iran into the heart of Europe. The threats no longer stop at rhetoric. They are being given the range to back them up, while American aircraft retreat from allied soil to stay out of the way of them.
Americans who never hear a shot fired are paying for this war every week. The national average price of gasoline is $3.97 a gallon — nearly a dollar above the $3.03 of a year ago — and analysts say the price still carries a premium from this conflict. That is the war, itemised at every filling station in the country.
None of this fell from the sky. It is the latest chapter of a record that began in March 2025, when the Secretary of Defense posted details of impending strikes in a Signal group chat that included a journalist — and then shared sensitive information again in a second chat that included his wife and his brother. An inspector general’s review followed. The pattern was set at the very beginning: at the top of the Pentagon, judgment about what keeps Americans safe was casual exactly where it needed to be exact.
Impeachment is a grave instrument, and this page does not reach for it over policy disagreement. A secretary may be hawkish or dovish; that argument belongs to elections. Impeachment exists for the different case — when an officer’s continued tenure is itself the risk. A defense secretary under whom strike details travel by group chat, and under whose watch American aircraft are pulled out of allied bases under enemy threat while the enemy extends its reach, has made his own record the issue. The record needs no embellishment. It speaks for itself.
The cleanest end is the honourable one: Pete Hegseth should offer his resignation, and the President should accept it. If neither man will do what the record plainly asks, the House of Representatives should open impeachment proceedings and let that record be heard in the open.
It is time to move on.
— Catalina Clarke, Editor-in-Chief
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