The House impeachment resolution targeting Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has not moved in nine days. No committee markup is scheduled. No floor motion is pending. [1] Yesterday's paper noted the thread had formally gone dormant; Thursday's check confirms the dormancy is procedural, not tactical. The caucus did not choose to wait. It chose not to proceed.

The one variable that could reanimate the thread sits in the DC district court, where a consolidated suit from several former Pentagon officials challenges Hegseth's March firings and reassignments as violations of Title 10 whistleblower protections. Judge Amy Berman Jackson scheduled a summary-judgment hearing for early May and has indicated in a preliminary order that the plaintiffs have cleared the standing threshold. [2] A ruling before the May recess would put facts on the record — depositions, internal memos — that House investigators have not been able to produce through their own subpoena process.

House Armed Services chair Mike Rogers's office, asked Thursday, referred questions to the committee's public schedule, which lists no Hegseth-related markups through May. [3] A senior committee Democrat, speaking on background, said the caucus is "waiting for the court record" before re-litigating the impeachment vehicle. That is a rational posture. It is also a passive one: the impeachment is no longer on a track the caucus controls.

Hegseth himself posted to X Thursday that the Pentagon is "focused on winning the war, not on Beltway theater." The statement is standard-issue messaging; the paper notes it because Hegseth has been notably more active on the press-credential litigation than on impeachment discourse, suggesting his own staff regards the press fight as the live exposure and the impeachment as settled. [4]

The thread's status today: one court docket entry away from alive, zero congressional actions away from dead. If Judge Jackson issues a bench ruling before May 15, expect the impeachment caucus to reemerge with new counts. If she takes the matter under submission, expect the thread to remain dormant through summer. Either way, Congress has outsourced its oversight instrument to an Article III judge — the same institutional failure the Section 702 cliff story carries this week.

What the paper will watch: the Jackson docket, HASC markup schedule revisions, and any committee staff departures that would signal the caucus has given up on the vehicle altogether. None of those moved Thursday.

-- SAMUEL CRANE, Washington