As Democrats begin measuring for new drapes in the House Speaker's office, questions are swirling over which of President Donald Trump's Cabinet officials will be investigated or impeached first.

The New York Times' Susan Glasser discussed some of the most significant problems facing the Trump administration as looks toward his last lame duck session of Congress during a Saturday conversation with Mona Caren for The Bulwark.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has already presented articles of impeachment against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who has stood behind the president through a series of military actions that could qualify as war crimes.

In addition to defying Congress over the Iran War, Massie's eight-article resolution also targets Hegseth over U.S. military operations in Venezuela and Yemen, and accuses him of illegally directing the operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro without congressional authorization. The measure further accuses him of carrying out extrajudicial killings.

Under the Constitution, Cabinet secretaries face the same two-step process as a president: a simple majority of the House can impeach, while removal requires the votes of two-thirds of the senators present at a trial. Absent action by House leadership or the full chamber, articles brought by a single member are typically referred to committee, where they can stall.

Glasser said that while Democrats may have internal disagreements over specific policies on the war in Iran, that will not matter when it comes to going after Hegseth. She went so far as to call his “stewardship of the Defense Department ... a national and an international embarrassment.”

Glasser predicted that the optics will be horrific for the Trump administration as uniformed generals and military officials appear on Capitol Hill to explain what advice they gave to both Trump and Hegseth.

“So, you're going to see that, I think, no matter what, even if Democrats don't take back the Senate, if they do take back the Senate, we're already hearing a very robust debate here in Washington about what approach should they take to accountability and to investigations. Is impeachment ruled off the table? Instead of impeaching Donald Trump this time, will they take the course that Republicans took?” she asked, referring to the attempted impeachment of former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

That was a reference to February 2024, when House Republicans impeached Mayorkas over his handling of the and the Democratic-led Senate dismissed the articles without holding a trial.

“I think the real ironic thing about Pete Hegseth's potential impeachment from being secretary of defense is six of those eight articles are about Pete following illegal orders from the president,” said Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a retired Navy captain, speaking with a host at the September Atlantic Festival in New York. “If he'd just listened to us, he would not have found himself as now ... [as] the first cabinet member where a member of his own party has tried to impeach him and throw him out of office.”

No Cabinet secretary has ever been convicted and removed from office by the Senate. The only one the House has ever impeached, War Secretary William Belknap in 1876, resigned before his trial, and the Senate acquitted him.

Meanwhile, reporting has made clear that Trump is both annoyed and bored with the Iran war and looking to move on. Democrats could not only press ahead with Hegseth's impeachment, but they could also strike a deal with Trump: he could save face by throwing Hegseth under the bus, allowing the president to dodge blame for so much failure, as one opinion columnist suggested back in April. The near-term markers, either way, are procedural: whether the House acts on Massie's articles at all, and whether uniformed officers are called to Capitol Hill to give an account of their advice, as Glasser anticipates.