Happy Veterans Day. If there’s a Veteran in your life, I hope you get to tell them thank you today. Last week, voters sent a new class of Veterans to Congress, and six of them are in this edition. One is a three-star admiral Pete Hegseth fired without ever telling her why. In January, she’ll be sworn in to the House.
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The Admiral Hegseth Fired Is Headed To Congress
Nancy Lacore went to college on an ROTC scholarship, learned to fly Navy helicopters, and spent 35 years working her way up to three-star admiral. In August 2024, she became Chief of the Navy Reserve and its roughly 59,000 sailors.
On a Friday afternoon in August 2025, the Navy’s top admiral called her into his office. “Secretary Hegseth had said I was to be removed from my position immediately,” she recalled. An hour later, she walked out of the Pentagon. Nobody ever gave her a reason. “It was the last time I wore a uniform,” she said.
Lacore went home to Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, but she wasn’t done serving. In January, she announced she was running for the seat left open by GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, who ran for governor and lost. It’s a district state lawmakers redrew to favor Republicans, where Trump won by 13 points.
On election night, she pulled ahead by about 3,300 votes—just enough to avoid an automatic recount. Then last Friday night, the AP called the race for Lacore. The morning after the election, she said, “We knew it wouldn’t be easy, but we also knew that South Carolinians are frustrated, tired, and looking for some change.”
Pete Hegseth was too much of a coward to tell an admiral who had served in the Navy for 35 years why he fired her. In January, she’s sworn in as a congresswoman and gets to help investigate every move he’s made since. Assuming Hegseth still has a job by then.
Three Veterans Just Flipped Republican Seats
At just 17 years old, JoAnna Mendoza enlisted in the Marine Corps. She deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, serving for 20 years—including as a drill instructor. She’s a single mom who’s the daughter of farmworkers. On November 3, she beat two-term GOP Rep. Juan Ciscomani in Arizona, taking 53% of the vote. “Step one, we’ve won, so goodbye Mr. Ciscomani,” she said at her watch party.
Rebecca Bennett was a helicopter pilot in the Navy. She’s a 39-year-old mother of two. In New Jersey, she just beat GOP Rep. Tom Kean Jr., who was absent from Congress for months this year. After she won, she said, “This is the moment we begin to turn the page on the Trump era!”
Cait Conley spent 16 years in the Army and earned three Bronze Stars. In New York, she beat infamous GOP Rep. Mike Lawler, who conceded on election night. This September, she went on CNN and called Hegseth “a hazard to American national security and a disgrace to the office.”
In September 2025, Pete Hegseth stood in front of America’s generals and said women might not measure up for some combat jobs. Three women Veterans just took three House seats from his party. Hegseth could never measure up to any of them.
The Prosecutor Who Walked Out Won A Trump District
On November 3, Zach Dembo took about 53% of the vote and flipped a central Kentucky district that Trump won by 15 points. When his campaign started, he was considered a longshot. On election night, he told his supporters, “Tonight, we together have sent a clear message: the status quo isn’t working.”
Dembo’s family has lived in Kentucky for nine generations. He spent more than four years as a Navy lawyer, then became a federal prosecutor, and eventually came home to Lexington to try cases.
He worked at the Justice Department through almost all of Trump’s first term and figured the second would go about the same. “And boy, was I wrong,” he told the Courier Journal. In May 2025, he quit. “I swore an oath to the Constitution and not any one person,” he said when launching his campaign.
His GOP opponent Ralph Alvarado had bragged about the fact he stood with Trump “every single time.” By late August, his campaign deleted his photo of Trump from the homepage of his website.
Zach Dembo wouldn’t bend for Trump, so he walked out of the DOJ. Now he’s walking into Congress, where he can hold the regime accountable.
Veterans Are About To Put Hegseth On Notice
In Virginia Beach, Elaine Luria—who spent 20 years in the Navy—took her old seat back. Her opponent, Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans, told a radio host this spring that she fully backed Trump’s war in Iran. On November 3, in the district with the most military personnel in Virginia, Luria beat her 51.5% to 46.1%. That night, Luria said the race was about “ending this illegal and reckless war in Iran.”
In January, Democrats take charge of the House, the Senate, and every committee. That gives them power to subpoena Pentagon leaders and have them testify under oath. But Hegseth didn’t get the luxury of waiting until January for the pushback.
On Monday, GOP Rep. Thomas Massie, who lost in the primary after Trump backed his opponent, filed eight articles of impeachment against Hegseth on the House floor. “I think the odds went up because of the election,” Massie told the Washington Sun.
Last night, Republicans voted 211 to 204 to bury the impeachment in a committee before it ever got a vote of its own. Massie was the only Republican who voted against burying it. Every other Republican who voted to protect Hegseth is now on the record.
Today Veterans will march near the Capitol. Army Veteran Kris Goldsmith, founder of Veterans Fighting Fascism, is one of the organizers. Goldsmith wants more than impeachment, stating Hegseth “needs to be convicted and disqualified from holding future office.” I couldn’t agree more.
In January, the Veterans he belittled or pushed aside will sit in the majority that can subpoena him, even if Trump fires him first.
In just 53 days, a new Democratic-led Congress will be sworn in. Until then, Republicans will do their best to run the place into the ground. They’ll try to bury things like the SAVE Act, a voter suppression bill, inside their defense bill.
When the new Congress gets sworn in, every member will literally swear to support and defend the Constitution. The Veterans in this edition already made that promise once—in uniform. They’re about to make it again. Our job is to hold every member to their promise, no matter the party.
That’s why our pressure campaign exists. Our community has sent more than 921,000 letters and made countless calls to Congress in the last two years on dozens of issues. We are already organizing for the new Congress but we’re also keeping watch over the next 53 days to stop Republicans from abusing their power on the way out.
Yesterday, our Lame Duck Watch launched a joint messaging push using #HoldTheCrooksAccountable, which generated hundreds of millions of impressions and trended on multiple social media platforms, including Bluesky and X. Our pressure campaign has now sent more than 17,700 letters to members of Congress demanding they impeach Hegseth, and we’re not even close to being done.
Trump hopes we will take it easy—he figures we’re too tired to keep watch. But we’re not letting our guard down, not for a single second.
We have no billionaires or corporate influence here, and that independence allows us to do this work. Paid subscribers fund it—our investigating, organizing, and reporting. We need all hands on deck, so if you haven’t yet, join us here:
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Onward!
Scott
Who’s the Veteran in your life you’re thinking about today?
Should Pete Hegseth be impeached?
Republicans buried Pete Hegseth’s impeachment by seven votes last night, 211 to 204. In January they lose the House. These letters build the to-do list for the new Congress. Each one takes 30 seconds:
Bring back Hegseth’s impeachment: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-impeach-pete-hegseth/
Investigate the Trump family’s Pentagon deals: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-investigate-the-trump-familys-pentagon-deals/
Subpoena the unredacted Epstein files on day one: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-the-new-congress-subpoena-the-unredacted-epstein-files-on-day-one
Impeach Clarence Thomas: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-impeach-clarence-thomas-3/
Tell me below which ones you sent!
Watching veterans take these seats after everything this year feels like the right kind of full circle. Feeling grateful!