🚨 Hakeem Jeffries just called for Pete Hegseth to resign and he didn’t mince words:
— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) July 9, 2025
“When you limit Ukraine’s ability to be successful in the war of aggression that Russia has launched against a sovereign country, you undermine America’s national security interests. And that’s… pic.twitter.com/7PyFoqXObA
As Jeffries suggests, Pete Hegseth is completely unqualified to be Defense Secretary, Ukraine is our ally (or should be), and Russia is our enemy (or should be). However, we remember when after an incident at a federal detention center in Newark, NJ in mid-May, the House Minority Leader
hammered the Trump administration for threatening to arrest Democratic members of Congress, saying such a move would constitute a clear case of executive overreach.
“It’s a red line,” Jeffries told reporters in the Capitol. “They know better than to go down that road.”
Four weeks later, a federal grand jury
indicted Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., on three criminal counts, after the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey alleged that she broke the law when Congress members' visit to an immigration detention facility ended in a physical altercation….
The indictment lists three counts of "assaulting,
resisting, impeding and interfering" with federal officers, with a
potential prison sentence if McIver is convicted.
Evidently, the Administration, undeterred by Jeffries' threat, did not "know better than to go down that road."
And as with Jeffries, Representative Don Bacon (R-NE) also recognizes that Hegseth should resign or be fired.
BREAKING: In a stunning moment, Republican Don Bacon just came out and said that Pete Hegseth should resign. This is huge. pic.twitter.com/e3FiMM34X1
— Democratic Wins Media (@DemocraticWins) July 10, 2025
But stunning? It was not stunning, nor is it any more significant that Hakeem Jeffries' threat turned out to be. Don "the pig"* Bacon, the US Representative from Nebraska's C.D. 2 was re-elected in November as Kamala Harris became the 4th (she, Biden, Obama twice) Democrat to win the district in a state which awards one electoral vote to the winner of each of its two congressional districts, as well as two for victory statewide.
This is not a conservative district. Yet
In a trend, Nebraska’s Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District Rep. Don Bacon vocally pushed back, expressing concerns about the Senate version of the bill’s proposed cuts to Medicaid, emphasizing that he had received reassurances the bill would not degrade the quality of healthcare for people covered by Medicaid.
He even said he won’t support the Senate’s reconciliation bill if it cut the Medicaid provider tax rate.
But in the end, he voted for it. Bacon defended his vote, like the rest of the delegation, by emphasizing the preservation of the Trump tax cuts.
“I wish they had done the house … version,” Bacon told CNN, “But I have an opportunity to protect taxpayers … from a 20% tax increase.”
And then Don Bacon announced his retirement. Some Republicans are assumed to be concerned about the working and middle classes, yet voted for the President's megabill because they were intimidated by the prospect of Trump supporting an individual to challenge them in a primary (or "to primary" them, as the grammar-challenged would have it).
Yet, the moderate Don Bacon, from a blue-ish district, called it quits. Three days before passage of Trump's megabill, the Nebraskan
announced his retirement from the House to a group of local reporters Monday, confirming leaks that emerged late last week in Washington, D.C., and Omaha, that his fifth term representing the Omaha area in the U.S. House would be his last.
“I hope to be remembered for … I’m a Christian, first … American, second … somewhere down here being a Republican,” Bacon told reporters. “It’s about doing the right thing … I’m a traditional conservative at heart.”
Bacon was right about one thing- the bill, expected to increase the national deficit by $3.4 trillion over the next decade, is a traditionally conservative one because Republicans have eagerly exploded the debt, hence multiplying the debt, since at least the days of President Reagan. Also conservative:
Wealthy Americans would benefit far more from the tax package than those lower on the income scale, according to a Tax Policy Center analysis of the Senate bill.
While all households would see their taxes reduced, some 60% of the benefits would go to those making $217,000 or more (the top 20%). These folks would receive an average tax cut of $12,500, or 3.4% of their after-tax income, in 2026, the analysis found.
But the lowest-income households, who earn about $35,000 or less, would receive an average tax cut of only $150, less than 1% of their after-tax income. Middle-income households would see their taxes reduced by about $1,800, or 2.3% of their after-tax income, on average.
This analysis does not take into account the historic cuts to the nation’s safety-net program, which would hurt lower-income Americans. They would see their income reduced after factoring in the changes to Medicaid and food stamps, according to a report from the Budget Lab at Yale.
In another Ronald Reagan special, the bill does shovel wealth upward, because that has been the guiding principle of the GOP for the last half-century.
So, perhaps I'm being unfair to Hakeem Jeffries. Jeffries merely threatens what he cannot deliver. Republican members of Congress range from the truly repugnant to the those who make The Wizard of Oz's cowardly lion look like a pillar of bravery, and without the lion's compassion. Pete Hegseth, nominated by Donald Trump because he looks good on television, should not be anywhere in the federal government. It has been a hostile takeover of the federal government- and perhaps others to follow- which will provide tremendous fodder for future historians of authoritarianism.
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