At 5:30 p.m. ET today, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s impeachment will be the subject of a key procedural vote on the House floor. If Republicans are unable to kill the resolution outright, Rep. Massie’s articles of impeachment will go through committee for a potential floor vote on Wednesday.
Rep. Mike Levin, Appropriations Committee member and Co-Chair of the End Corruption Caucus, joins Jen to explain why Hegseth’s actions in Iran warrant impeachment. As a former member of the Veteran’s Affairs Committee, Rep. Levin relays his challenge in forcing a floor vote of his veterans’ support legislation, due to roadblocks from Mike Johnson.
Rep. Mike Levin is the Democratic Congressman for California’s 49th District. He is a member of the House Committee on Appropriations.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of the Contrarian. I am delighted to welcome with us Representative Mike Levin, who is the representative from the 49th District of California. Welcome, Congressman!
Rep. Mike Levin
Thank you, Jen. Great to be with you.
Jen Rubin
It’s lovely to be here. We are recording this on Tuesday morning, and later today, there will be a vote on articles of impeachment for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. First of all, what do you make of the 8 articles of impeachment that you’re going to be voting on?
Rep. Mike Levin
Well, I think they were very well crafted by Tom Massie, and, you know, Rep. Massie and I have certainly disagreed on plenty of things over the years, but he’s done a great service, to the country, and, you know, brought forward, I, I felt, very well-argued, articles. And I’ve said now for some time, will I see the, threshold for impeachment as being quite high, the, the, high crimes and misdemeanors you know, not easy to determine that, but in the case of Hegseth, I think between the violations of the War Powers Act and the War Crimes Act, I think it’s a pretty clear-cut case, and I think the Constitution and the law, you know, ultimately have been violated repeatedly. Massie lays it out quite well. And, you know, I think that impeachment is warranted. Now the question, Jen, is whether Mike Johnson’s going to sit on it. I think that we will impeach Hegseth. The question, I think, is, you know, will those articles get sent to the Senate so they can deliberate and have a trial as precedent in the Constitution? requires, or will Mike Johnson effectively just run out the clock And, you know, for me, it would be sort of a fitting capstone, sort of a good, symbolic ending, or a fitting symbolic ending, to Johnson’s tenure as Speaker, which has been all about just doing whatever Trump wants. Consequences for the Congress as an institution, as a co-equal branch of government. be damned. He just wants to, you know, bend the knee to Trump, and doing this with Hegseth, slow rolling or delaying the delivery of those articles of impeachment to the Senate, would be just, I think, the capstone to a pretty bad speakership.
Jen Rubin
Hegseth at his very rushed press conference, which I think was a, hurried whisper note to Donald Trump to save him, said something peculiar. He said no… well, he said many things that were peculiar, but one thing he said was, no Secretary of Defense has been removed for following legal orders. The problem is that these orders were not legal. Talk to us a little bit. About, for example, the killings on the high seas, or the failure to take precautionary measures so that we didn’t wind up hitting a girl’s school, which he then has estidiously refused to investigate.
Rep. Mike Levin
Well, those of us, Jen, that have had the opportunity to review the Office of Legal Counsel’s guidance on this know that it’s just full of holes, and, you know, we review it in a classified setting, so I can’t tell you everything that I read, but I can tell you what wasn’t in there. What wasn’t in there was any sort of legal justification for them to have used military force, either with the purported drug boats, or, or, you know, the Venezuela operation writ large. You know, the notion that, somehow the drugs themselves are the weapons of mass destruction. You know, it just stretches the, you know, previously understood definitions of, armed conflict, and I think at the end of the day, very shaky. Legal ground, if not, you know, just, you know, totally… you know, illegal for them to have done what they did in Venezuela. And we know from all public reporting and from what we’ve seen that you had a situation where you had people literally surrendering who were then You know, our country that I love, then chose, its leadership chose to commit extrajudicial killings. Which is fundamentally, at odds with our history and our traditions. And then, you know, just the same, what we saw with the initial strike on the elementary school. And, and really the, entire approach to the war, Jen, since February 28th, has been a complete and total disregard of the Congress of the United States. We got one briefing behind closed doors, I think, the weekend after, or excuse me, the week after, I think the Epic Fury was on a Friday, as I recall. And then we got briefed in Washington, D.C. the following week. It was the worst brief I’ve had in 8 years. It was a pathetic, pathetic brief, from Hegseth on down the list. And I have great respect for our military, and I’m honored to represent our Marines and our sailors. Today is the 251st birthday of the United States.
Jen Rubin
Yes!
Rep. Mike Levin
They’re incredible. They’re incredible. And they’re going to do what they are told is in the best interest of the United States, but we’ve had a lack of clarity of mission and of purpose. I’ve had many of my constituents stuck on, for example, the USS Abraham Lincoln, and when I came home, speaking to some of those young men and women, speaking to their families. very clear that when Hegseth was at his press conference this morning, I think he doesn’t understand the extent to which that internally, within the United States military, there are young men and women who are unclear what the mission is, what the purpose of all of this is, and how victory will be achieved. And that’s, at the end of the day, what they want to know. Even those who were on the Lincoln, they wanted for me as their representative to think less about the conditions on… on board, and more about the lack of a clear mission. And here we are, what, 8 months later, Jen, and there’s still no clarity of mission.
Jen Rubin
It’s not clear whether we’ve won the war, or whether we need to resume the war to win it again, as far as the president is concerned.
Rep. Mike Levin
They refused to call it a war for a period of time. Then they said, we’ve won the war. And, you know, if you watch Trump on 60 Minutes, which I did, I forced myself to sit through the whole thing, and he said, you know, we’ve won, we’ve won, we’ve won. Well, okay, if we’ve won, send everyone home. Right. And if we haven’t defined how we’re going to win.
Jen Rubin
Regardless of how the impeachment turns out, there have been a lot of other damaging things that have happened at the Pentagon. men and women who are either Black or Hispanic, who have not been promoted. There’s been a real across-the-board violation of the First Amendment. There’s been the misuse of National Guard troops. There’s a lot that’s gone wrong at the Pentagon. How dedicated, how committed is this new Congress going to be to oversight at the Pentagon to get at some of these systemic problems, which a lot of people are very concerned are undermining our… National security, our preparedness, and are really just serving our men and women in uniform.
Rep. Mike Levin
I think the Congress of the United States is about to be very engaged in all aspects of oversight and investigations in a way that Republicans have refused for the past two years. It’s not to say that we’re going to end our focus on bringing down costs for the average American, because that’s ultimately, I think, the biggest thing that Americans expect from us. And I don’t say we have a mandate, I say we have an opportunity. We have an opportunity to begin to restore trust and confidence in the United States Congress, in the institution that has been so weakened by the Republicans these past two years. And it’s not to say it was the most popular thing before Congress of the United States, but the most recent poll I saw suggested only about 9% of Americans had trust in the Congress. So we have our… we call it affordability and accountability, and obviously focusing on holding to account Pete Hegseth, the president, his family, his cabinet, his advisors. Getting, you know, sunlight being trans… the best form of antiseptic, the transparency and accountability that have lacked. And with Hex says specifically, a lot of the information that we get is from good public reporting. Most recent piece related to what you were mentioning. That you had people who had already been advanced by the standard, the merit process, but, secretly, Hegseth, would derail their careers over the fact that they spoke at a Hispanic Heritage Month. celebration, or International Women’s Day celebration, or that they recommended vaccines for the rank and file. Things like that would derail their careers, and I think Hegset, is disgraceful. I think this is antithetical to everything that I understand. To be, you know, good and, and, to be… you know, the embodiment of where we want to take our military. We want them to be prepared and ready for whatever may come, and that means doing all we can to support their warfighting mission, but also their physical, emotional well-being, and that doesn’t just mean injecting testosterone. That means, you know, actually trying to, you know, advance readiness, which includes quality of life.
Jen Rubin
Now, you not only sit on the Appropriations Committee, but you have a great number of veterans who live in the 49th District. Veterans have been harmed immensely by this administration. Everything from cuts at the VA, to rural healthcare cuts that disproportionately hurt veterans, to, really, systemic layout… layoffs in the federal government, again, which disproportionately hurt veterans. Talk to us a little bit about How you see the power of the purse, not just oversight, in restoring our… Really, sacred obligations to our veterans.
Rep. Mike Levin
We’re gonna do everything possible. Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7 requires Congress, authorize, appropriate the funding, not the President doing what he wants to do, and then, you know, Congress finds out after the fact. So they have been violating federal law, in my view, Jen, both the Anti-Deficiency Act, which says the President can’t spend money without Congress, and the Anti… or, excuse me, the Empowerment Control Act, which says the President can’t withhold money Congress has appropriated. So we’re going to be calling them to the carpet on all of the above. And the VA, you know, there has been a quiet effort to privatize, to shift money from VA healthcare away and to private care. That’s not to say that, you know, community care is a bad thing. We want for our veterans to have options, but what we don’t want is to hollow out and undermine the VA healthcare system. to line the pockets of some of the president’s buddies or donors. At the same time, we’ve been trying to advance good common sense policy to help veterans, and we have had, you know, limited success with the Trump administration. There are a few things we were able to work with them on. I served on the Veterans Affairs Committee for 6 years. Prior to joining the Appropriations Committee, and now I serve on the subcommittee, one of my subcomm that oversees the VA budget and helps spend, tax dollars on VA services and… And I will tell you that, you know, we’re going to… we’re going to have Secretary Collins, you know, I think a lot more frequently than the Republicans did. A lot of these guys better get used to our committee room. You know, they better get used to where, where they’re going to be sitting, to take our questions under oath. And they better answer us honestly. And if they refuse to, we’re going to use every tool at our disposal to ensure they comply with the will of the people, and ultimately, we’re going to advocate for, you know, spending our money on VA healthcare wisely and effectively.
Jen Rubin
One of the big, sort of disparities here is, on one hand, you have enormous cuts, for example, to mental health services for veterans. On the other hand, you have contracts that have ballooned $17 billion or more to, for example, Oracle for a system that seems to not be working properly. What’s the degree to which you think you can get into that and figure out where the money is going and if it’s being properly spent?
Rep. Mike Levin
It’s a challenge. VA is a big bureaucracy, obviously the second largest in the government, passed after the Defense Department. But, you know, there has been a long-standing effort, by the Tech Modernization Subcommittee of the VA, committee to try to get to the bottom of what’s happening and to try to you know, figure out how to modernize and how to make systems more efficient. I will tell you, when I was on the VA committee, I took a trip to Muskogee, Oklahoma. Now, you say, why did I go to Muskogee, Oklahoma? Well, that’s where the 1,300 or so people, at the call… the call center, which is a converted grocery store, they… it’s the… I believe it’s the largest employer in Muskogee, Oklahoma. When you call with GI movement questions. If you want to, you know, do anything related to GI Bill, that’s where you call. And I… what I found, this is back in 2019, 2020, what I found was that they were using, systems operating on COBOL, which was a programming language from a long time ago, this, you know, 60s, 70s, and that they had not modernized their system. So we did engage With both the first Trump administration and then finally the Biden administration that got it fixed. To go in and modernize those systems. You have that same problem across the board, with the, electronic medical records, with, just trying to get the VA into the 21st century, to be honest with you. And we’re already 26 years into the 21st century, but that’s, that’s where things stand. So, I do think that, All the contracts have to be reviewed, given the, you know, frankly, the corruption and the grift that we’ve seen, the willingness of, the president’s family and donors to engage. They accused, during the Obama years, they said, you know, the Republicans said crony capitalism. But they’re really engaging in an unprecedented manner, and I know we’re going to, sadly, see a lot more examples in the coming months and years.
Jen Rubin
Now, just before we came on, you mentioned that there is some legislation that’s coming down the pike that’s going to help veterans, particularly in the disability area. Tell us about that.
Rep. Mike Levin
So, we’ve been working on the Major Richard Starr Act for a long time. Right now, if you’re a disabled vet, there’s a conflict where you may not get your full retirement pay along with your disability, and so just fixing that, making sure that we take care of our our wounded warriors, our disabled vets, you’d think that would be totally bipartisan, right? And it, you know, by and large, has had a lot of bipartisan support, but this is an example of something that Mike Johnson refused to bring to the floor on a standalone basis, for reasons not… Entirely clear to me that it’s such an easy win. And so he brought it to the floor and combined it with some other garbage in a way that we couldn’t support it, and what we had to do is go around Johnson with a discharge petition. And all that means is you get a majority of the members to sign a petition, and then after a requisite number of times… number of days, number of legislative days, then you can bring the thing for a vote anyway. And I think we’re gonna pass it this week by a discharge petition, and we’re going to get those vets taken care of, and the amazing thing is, I think… we have the most successful discharge petitions in this Congress since the New Deal era. And what that tells you is that Mike Johnson has been unwilling to advance good bipartisan policy You know, lest, he, you know, upset a handful of, of extremists. And, you know, we’ve had to go around him time and time and time again. But I’m excited that his days as speaker are numbered.
Jen Rubin
Well, I would be remiss if I did not ask you about some of the monstrosities going on around Washington, D.C. The giant arch that would cast a shadow, literally, on Arlington and block that very iconic sight line. The Potomac is Potomac golf course that Trump wants to rip up and turn into a… high-flying club for he and his cronies. The East Wing. Is the Appropriations Committee gonna do something about all of this?
Rep. Mike Levin
Hell yes, we are, and we’re already discussing behind closed doors, you know, how we can best slow down some of these horrible things from happening. Now, of course, Trump… You know, he’s really not interested in the law, he’s not interested in, civility. You know, he, after saying he wouldn’t touch the East Wing, he went and bulldozed it, to give you an example. So, we’re worried about the Kennedy Center, we’re worried about I… I suppose the reflecting pool is still a problem, I don’t know. He had his closing argument in front of the reflecting pool, what a nightmare that was. But the arch, look. Veterans groups have made very clear, that this would be, you know, a slap in the face. And, you know, they have come out in, you know, strong opposition, and the president is relying on a 100-year-old authorization, which did not authorize the development of that arch. It’s total, a total fabrication to think that the Congress ever, even 100 years ago, envisioned, such a project. And, you know, the reality is John Roberts, allowed him to continue to build the ballroom for now. But that’s rife with corruption when you see the people who funded the ballroom. And, you know, hopefully… Judge Chutkin, I know, just said you had to stop… Trump had to stop construction on the arch.
Jen Rubin
Right?
Rep. Mike Levin
And hopefully the Supreme Court will eventually, knowing Trump, it’s going to be appealed and eventually make its way all the way to the Supreme Court, hopefully they’ll put a stop to that project before it’s too late. You know, and with the ballroom, I think we’re just going to have to take all the gold off the walls, and we’ll have to maybe have a charity auction with all the proceeds from the sale of the the gold on the walls. It’s… I mean, it’s just… it’s so sad to me. It’s so sad to me. But I think, on top of all that corruption going on all around with these projects, all that, running afoul of law and precedent. There are so many things they’re doing that are driving up prices that are deeply corrupt and driving up prices for the average person. So I hope this can connect the dots between Donald Trump and his cronies getting rich. And the American people struggling to get by.
Jen Rubin
And I think that is the goal for the next Congress. Happy Veterans Day, Congressman, which is Wednesday for everyone, so I hope you’ll be going to some nice celebrations, celebrating our men and women who have served this country. Thanks so much for spending time with us, and good luck with the impeachment proceedings.
Rep. Mike Levin
Thank you, Jen. No, I appreciate it, and I don’t take any pleasure in any of this. It’s a serious and somber thing, but for the good of our military, I do think it is warranted.
Jen Rubin
Thanks so much, appreciate your time.
Rep. Mike Levin
Thank you.
