The redrawing of legislative district boundaries. A 1967 federal law requires House members be elected from single-member districts that (within each state) have nearly identical populations. House maps must be redrawn after reapportionment but before the first congressional election of each decade, based on population changes in each state revealed by the census.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on October 28, 2026.
Just days after a historic midterm election in which everyday Americans sent a clear, undeniable demand for political accountability and transparency, the halls of Congress have devolved into a new theater of crisis. Republican Representative Thomas Massie’s introduction of eight articles of impeachment against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has thrown the Department—and the nation’s fragile democratic norms—into uncharted territory.
Massie, a longtime Trump critic who plans to retire from Congress at the end of the year, accuses Hegseth of bypassing Congress and violating constitutional limits on war powers.
Speaking on the House floor, Massie argued that Hegseth had overstepped his authority through U.S. military action involving Iran. Hegseth “has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as secretary of defense,” Massie said, adding that he “has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with his duties and the rule of law.”
According to Massie’s announcement, the first article “charges Secretary Hegseth with waging the Iran war despite no declaration of war, statutory authorization, attack on the United States, or imminent threat.” The article further asserts that “it establishes that the war was unlawful from its inception.”
There is little doubt that Hegseth's turbulent tenure deserves fierce criticism. From allegations of bypassing the War Powers Resolution by launching unauthorized military actions in Iran and Yemen, to the tragic strike on an Iranian school that resulted in mass civilian casualties, his leadership has operated on a doctrine of unilateral defiance. Add to that the extrajudicial targeting of crews in the Pacific, the reckless capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and chilling threats to prosecute critics like Senator Mark Kelly for exercising free speech, and we see an administrator who treats international law and constitutional constraints as mere suggestions. Hegseth’s ongoing assault on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives has already compromised internal national security and alienated the very communities that make our military strong. By any objective metric of steady governance, his record is an absolute failure.
But as a journalist and advocate for systemic democratic reform, I am compelled to look past the political theater and ask the central, sobering question: Does Pete Hegseth legally deserve impeachment?
Under Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, impeachment requires a threshold of "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." The legal case brought by Massie holds genuine structural merit, particularly regarding the separation of powers. Waging unauthorized warfare in direct violation of statutory law and intentionally subverting Congressional oversight represent exactly the kind of executive overreach the Founders sought to curb.
Yet, history and recent political reality remind us that impeachment is rarely a purely legal exercise—it is inherently a political instrument. As Jonah Goldberg recently noted in The Fulcrum regarding the broader debates surrounding accountability in this administration, the line between constitutional duty and political strategy is dangerously thin. If the House moves forward with a vote within the required 48 hours, it risks hyper-politicizing what should be a sober legal process. With House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries signaling a united Democratic front and the slim Republican majority teetering on a knife's edge, a vote to impeach might satisfy a desperate public hunger for accountability, but it could further fracture an already broken legislative branch.
Which brings us to the final dilemma: Should Donald Trump fire him?
For the sake of our national security and global standing, the answer is an unequivocal yes. President Trump has spent the days following the midterms trapped in an alternate-reality delusion, refusing to accept that voters delivered a devastating verdict on his administration’s chaotic governance. Defending Hegseth as the victim of a "political sham" only deepens this blindness.
True leadership requires recognizing when a cabinet official has become a liability to the republic. Leaving Hegseth at the helm of our military forces further isolates America on the world stage and erodes domestic trust. Trump should fire Hegseth immediately to restore structural integrity to our defense institutions—not to appease Congress, but to show that his administration can, for once, prioritize the stability of our democracy over personal loyalty.
Because Massie introduced the measure as a privileged resolution, House Republican leaders must bring the impeachment articles to the floor within two legislative days. GOP lawmakers could also move to table or dismiss the measure, but doing so would require support from a majority of the House.
The House needs only a simple majority to approve the articles of impeachment. If adopted, the matter would then move to the Senate, where senators would decide whether to convict Hegseth and remove him from office.
Hugo Balta is the executive editor of The Fulcrum and the publisher of the Latino News Network
Voters cast their ballots inside a polling location at the Bridge of Hope Church on November 3, 2026 in Youngstown, Ohio.
Turnout and free exercise of the vote, including in many super-gerrymandered districts, was decisive on November 3, despite various attempts at suppression. Fear and hate mongering, floods of disinformation, avalanches of political cash, and coercive deployment of federal agencies in the runup to November 3 did not stop Americans from speaking loudly for change.
That expression was safeguarded by officials in the multitude of US election jurisdictions and by over 600,000 poll workers and ballot counters. Civic groups, electoral candidates, and political organizations assisted registration and voting with hotlines, door-to-door engagement, and pollwatching. In many places citizen groups organized protection efforts outside the polls to encourage voters and impede interference.
The elections were also guaranteed by rapid, decisive court decisions against unconstitutional federal interference. That was the result of cases brought by states attorneys general and lawyers representing individual voters, unions, civil rights and other citizen groups. And, many sources spoke across numerous platforms to reassure voters that their votes would count.
In short, the architecture of American democracy withstood substantial attempts to dismantle it.
That’s not to say that the battle with authoritarianism is nearly over or that the system does not need reinforcing and reform. So-called election deniers - who in reality are election subverters - will likely double down where they can. Plus, the ideologues of MAGA-ism still control the executive branch and will quickly turn to planning even as recriminations echo through their ranks. Steven Miller’s ascent to White House Chief of Staff proved the point.
Nonetheless, American democracy won the midterms every bit as much as did Democratic candidates. And, diligence is needed to deliver positive change across the policy spectrum, including buttressing trustworthy elections.
The “Blue Tsunami” encompassed major voting shifts by practically every democratic group. It swept across the country and struck up and down the ballot. Price rises for groceries, gas and diesel fuel - driven by consequences of an illegal war in Iran and irrational tariffs - combined with broader economic complaints. But, exit polls showed that voters also rejected MAGA immigration brutality, which was illustrated in deeply personal ways by hundreds of people placing their “I Voted” stickers on the makeshift memorials for victims of ICE murders in Minnesota, Texas, and Maine.
The state of democracy was also a significant concern noted in exit polls, and voters demonstrated that through referendum results concerning voter rights on a number of issues. The historic firsts among Senators, Governors, and other elections of African American, Native American, Muslim, and LGBTQ+ candidates - including razor thin Senate races in Alaska and Mississippi - and the number of victories for women candidates, illustrate that the majority of voters stood up against racist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, and misogynistic attacks.
This is a moment to celebrate the workings of democracy and rededicate ourselves to making democracy work for everyone.
That was the resounding message sent by midterm voters. With decisive majorities in both houses of the US Congress, a majority of State governorships, the increased number of states where both governors and legislatures were freed from MAGA control, there is a crucial opportunity to demonstrate that the mandated change can be accomplished. That change can be realized only if citizens demand it.
We must demand accountability of those who promise economic affordability and accountability for the brutality, corruption, and gross power grabbing that we’ve been experiencing in our country. In other words, we should exhale a bit, party a little, and rise to meet the responsibilities of citizenship.
Pat Merloe provides strategic advice to groups focused on democracy and trustworthy elections in the U.S. and internationally. He has engaged with those promoting credible elections in more than 60 countries over four plus decades.
A daughter of Cultural Revolution survivors argues U.S. school book bans are about power, not protection, and how a freedom-to-read law offers a way forward.
At the start of this school year, a Texas schoolteacher from my home school district went nationally viral. In a video, Darius Williams sobbed as he explained that after he “gave them the answers,” his high school seniors still could not complete an exercise comprising two sentences to read and one to write. But even as reading scores in the country languish at a twenty-year low, officials in Texas and other states have renewed vows to pull purportedly “dirty, filthy, and vulgar” books from shelves.
Since 2021, book bans have reached a level “never before seen in the life of any living American” (34,000 total in public schools across the country, according to PEN America). Some institutions are even preemptively removing materials to avoid controversy, a phenomenon termed “soft censorship.”
To justify these bans, many decision-makers cite the need to police “inappropriate” content. But the types of books yanked from shelves tell a different story: they tend to center people of color, LGBTQ+ characters, or neurodivergent or disabled ones.
Before my parents immigrated to the United States in 1993, they lived through a severe book ban themselves. China’s Cultural Revolution included a campaign to rid the country of symbols and artifacts that did not comport with Maoist thought. My dad was born into a village recovering from famine. He grew up toiling in the fields. At school, which he was fortunate to attend at all, he read propaganda materials and traded a handful of war novels favorable to China with his friends.
The efforts to keep other reading materials out of circulation separated his family from the communities and the events occurring over the mountain pass. My maternal grandparents in the city, meanwhile, were compelled to carry the Little Red Book to work every day.
Elsewhere, the Red Guards burned illicit titles—both Western literature and ancient Chinese texts were considered “bourgeois.” And they terrorized and killed the intellectuals who were their keepers.
Historically, censorship tends not to be about morality at all, but power. So, Nazis also destroyed “un-German” materials, and Apartheid South Africa burned books that challenged racial segregation. Today, countries like China and Iran continue to imprison writers who step outside the bounds of permissible thought.
Similarly, there is good reason to believe that bans across the United States are less about policing vulgarity than about targeting legally protected groups.
Far from corrupting me, many of the top banned books shaped my moral center. Reading The Kite Runner, I understood that the world was bigger than the suburbia in which I grew up, setting me up for the years I would spend in the Middle East learning a new language, teaching English, and working on refugee-related issues. Reading Beloved, I meditated on how hard circumstances beget unfathomable choices. Through Slaughterhouse-Five, I understood that some choices, like war, beget total destruction.
Moreover, the obscenity standard cited to remove books has yielded increasingly haphazard results. One Texas school district has banned the Bible. Another has zealously removed over 700 titles, including those by Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison and award-winning authors Judy Blume and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Yet another’s list of “indecent” materials includes the works of Shakespeare, Homer, and three living presidents.
Of course, some materials may legitimately be age-inappropriate at different grade levels. That’s why states must ensure trained educators and librarians have a prominent voice in collections policies.
States might look to Massachusetts, which recently enacted a “freedom to read” law. It requires local school boards to hold transparent public hearings and remove a book only after finding that a title “is devoid of any educational, literary, artistic, personal or social value or is not age appropriate.” Such a standard presumes that reading materials should be let in, not kept out. Finally, to prevent abuse, local school boards should ensure near unanimity about a book’s lack of any value before they ban it.
Libraries are democratizing institutions. Each visitor may share equally in their bounty. Their books help us articulate our values and celebrate our communities—or ponder their pain points. Reading, like democracy, is a way to participate in the big conversation we’re all having.
My family’s experience with book bans convinces me that they have no place in a healthy republic. To keep ideas circulating, donate to your libraries, attend library and school board meetings, volunteer for reading initiatives, support independent bookstores, press for “freedom to read” laws, and take the time to enjoy a good book.
Katherine Fang is an attorney and graduate of Yale Law School. She is a Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project in partnership with the Paul & Daisy Soros Foundation. This op-ed reflects personal views only.
An emergency doctor with 28 years on the front lines explains why HBO Max's award-winning drama "The Pitt" isn't Hollywood exaggeration, but an urgent, accurate look inside America's buckling healthcare safety net.
In its first two seasons, the HBO Max series “The Pitt” about the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, has received over 30 nominations and has won 11 Emmy’s including Outstanding Drama Series for the last two consecutive years. It may be fair to say, “The Pitt” has connected.
People ask me constantly: Is "The Pitt" real?
They ask it half-joking, expecting me to laugh and say, “Of course not,” at Hollywood's usual over-the-top exaggeration and glamorization of a busy emergency department.
But when it comes to "The Pitt," I don't laugh, I nod.
The response I immediately get is universal. “Wait, what, are you serious?”
After working in emergency departments for 28 years, I see this show is less entertainment with a medical backdrop, and more like a documentary with a script. And that distinction matters, because "The Pitt" has quietly become something unique in American television-- a modern-day canary in the coal mine.
In the late 1800s, British physiologist John Scott Haldane began investigating why coal mine explosions kept killing miners even when no fire or blast ever reached them. He traced it back to carbon monoxide, a gas with no color and no smell, invisible until it was fatal. The canary became an early-warning instrument, making an invisible danger visible before it became lethal.
That's precisely the role "The Pitt" is playing now. For years, emergency medicine has been trying to describe an invisible gas: ED boarding and a safety net stretched past its design limits. It took “The Pitt” putting crisis in front of 11 million viewers, in real time, over a single continuous shift, to make the connection.
"The Pitt" doesn't dramatize emergency medicine so much as it exposes it with uncomfortable accuracy. That includes admitted patients “boarding” in hallways because there are no inpatient beds to admit. So a physician must decide, in real time, whom to see first when everyone needs to be seen now. None of this is exaggerated for drama. If anything, it's restrained.
That's the deeper truth the show gets right: the emergency department has become the place where the breakdown of the American health care system eventually lands. The patient who can't get a primary care appointment for six weeks comes to the emergency department instead.
The patient with no insurance, no stable housing, uncontrolled diabetes, or a mental health crisis with nowhere else to go comes to the emergency department. Emergency departments have become the safety net of last resort, and the show captures what it feels like to be the thread that net is fraying on.
“The PITT” offers proximity. Watch the fictional Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch played by Noah Wyle, try to hold his department together for 12 straight hours, and something clicks. Entertainment succeeds where advocacy alone often stalls, because it makes people feel what you’re saying: this system is buckling, and it's buckling in front of patients who have nowhere to go.
"The Pitt" now dramatizes for a national audience that the ED isn't just where emergencies happen. It is where health inequity becomes visible, measurable, and, if we pay attention, addressable.
The U.S. healthcare ecosystem needs capacity, emergency departments need capacity, and without it systems become overwhelmed. The traditional economics of supply and demand are not optimal when it comes to the healthcare sector because healthcare is not the same as widgets.
It is critical then to think outside the box to make an inefficient system more efficient. That starts with creating operational capacity across our entire healthcare ecosystem.
There is not one single all-encompassing solution, but likely a path forward that involves small but impactful actions such as efforts around optimizing patient flow, streamlining operations, and leveraging data without relying on the creation of more inefficient systems.
"The Pitt" has done its job; it has made the invisible visible. Now it's up to the healthcare collective – policymakers, administrators, medical staff, advocates, volunteers, patients, funders--to fix the air, not just admire the canary that warned us.
Dr. Heather Prendergast is a Professor of Emergency Medicine, Attending Physician, and Vice Dean of Clinical Affairs at the University of Illinois College of Medicine , and a Public Voices Fellow of the OpED Project at the University of Illinois.
