Hegseth Impeachment Push, Trump Holds Off Iran Strikes, Congress Summons Nvidia's CEO

Good morning, Leyla. Good morning, Steve. You know we're starting late? I mean, obviously it's your fault, though. Obviously, we were chatting, but it was important stuff. It was valuable things. We solved everything. Yeah. That our audience will never forget. World peace, everybody. Wouldn't it be great to just make an announcement? Up first, we'll only be five seconds long. Peace out! The House may vote this week on impeaching defense secretary Pete Hengset. President Trump says he's standing by him with Republicans still in control of Congress. Is there enough bipartisan support to put Hengset on trial? I'm Steve Innscape. That's Leyla Faddle. And this is up first from NPR News. Trump says he's holding off on striking Iran as talks continue. We're just keeping it the status quo. And we're doing that really at the behest of countries that are their neighbors. How long will the United States hold back? And the woman in video's CEO admitted to having an affair with worked for a company reportedly being investigated for sharing restricted chips with China. Now, Congress wants Jensen Huang to answer questions behind closed doors. Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day. The House could vote this week on a resolution to impeach defense secretary Pete Hengset. The Constitution's as officials can be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors. One of the crimes Hengset is accused of is illegally waging war on Iran. On Monday, President Trump said he's standing by the defense secretary. He won the war in two places. Two big places, very important, very impactful. And they were one as the president said. Hengset is expected to address the charges against him later this morning. NPR Congressional reporter Sam Greenglass joins us now to talk about this good morning, Sam. Hey Leyla. So why is this happening now? Okay, so let me ask you to think back to September. That is when outgoing Republican Congressman Thomas Massey of Kentucky first filed these articles of impeachment. But before the House would have to deal with this speaker, Mike Johnson sent members home early until after the election. But now this can could not be kicked down the road forever. The House is back and Massey is trying to force the House to take them up. Now, what's Hengset accused of? So there are eight articles for focus on Hengset, circumventing or ignoring Congress's authority overwaging war mostly with regard to the war in Iran, but also Yemen. One article accuses Hengset of committing extra judicial killings when the administration carried out strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea. Another claims Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro was seized without legal authority. And another focuses on Hengset retaliating against Senator Mark Kelly, who encouraged members of the military to disobey illegal orders. Hengset is also accused here of ignoring laws to minimize civilian casualties. What is Hengset and President Trump said about all this? Yeah, so Hengset has called these articles of impeachment a sham. And in a video message to US troops on Sunday, he chalked up the effort to a partisan attack. Don't blink. Ignore the noise. Never hesitate. You see, all this is politics. And as of last night, Trump says Hengset still has his support. I mean, I'll note there, though, that this was all started by a Republican who's now a critic of Hengset and Trump. Republicans still control both chambers of Congress until next year. How likely is it that Hengset gets impeached this week and then removed from office? Only a few Republicans need to support impeachment in the house, so it is possible that would then kick this over to the Senate for a trial. Actually, booting Hengset from the Pentagon would take 67 senators, which will not be easy even next year once Democrats take the Senate. But Massey told reporters he feels it's doable not only because the politics at home will sway some Republicans, you know, opposition to the war having contributed to this blue tsunami last week. But he also believes some members have now come around to thinking Congress has to do something to reassert its authority over war powers. Somebody's going to put their foot down and say, "Are we going to follow the laws that are on the books? Are we going to follow the Constitution?" And the best way to do that is to have an impeachment against Pete Hengset. How unusual is the impeachment of a cabinet official? Only two cabinet secretaries have been impeached. President Grant's War Secretary in 1876 and President Biden's Homeland Security Secretary neither were convicted in the Senate. Should this spill into next year, Leila, I think Democrats are down to see Hengset's ouster through, but I've heard from Democrats also wary of getting bogged down by impeachments, given how hard they campaigned on taking action to make life more affordable. That's NPR Congressional reporter Sam Greenglass. Thank you, Sam. You're welcome. President Trump admitted the war that he started in Iran affected his party in the midterm election. Trump spoke about the war following a meeting with Qatar's Prime Minister. Iran, militarily, is effectively over. NPR White House correspondent Deepa Shivrom joins us now. Good morning. Good morning. Okay, so how do those remarks we just heard fit in with what Trump had been saying? Yeah, just as a reminder, Trump said weeks before the election, that he was going to hold off on any strikes in Iran. Though I will say as he campaigned all over the country, he was sort of musing at his rallies on how to proceed with the war, teasing that he could do something big to end it. No. Now though, Trump is saying that there's no need to strike Iran again if talks are ongoing. Here he is in an interview on 60 minutes that aired Sunday. And it's his first formal interview since the midterm elections last week. So you're not going to escalate the war and have it the midterm? Well, I'm not looking to. I don't think there's any reason to. I don't think there's any reason to look. They still have nuclear material, right? They have nothing. It's buried under thousands of tons of rubbed. In that interview, Trump did not answer on how he sees the conflict ending and what that timeline would look like. Which I suppose means, among other things, he's keeping his options open for what to do as time goes on. Yeah, I mean, Trump has been shifting around on his rhetoric since the war started. You know, I've talked about this, right? So it's within the realm of possibility that Trump picks back up on military action. If he isn't getting a deal that he wants, he said that the US is still "locked and loaded if needed." At the same time, Trump has acknowledged that the war played a part in Republicans losing control of Congress, saying he knows that high prices because of the war were a big issue for voters this year. But he also continues to dig his heels in and say the war was necessary and he would do it over again. He said in that same interview that even if the war isn't popular today or tomorrow, he said, historically, it's a good decision. And I think that highlights an important bit here, which is that Trump is starting to shift focus for these last two years of his presidency to line up his legacy. He's trying to frame up this really unpopular war as a success by saying Iran's nuclear stock has gone and that really was what his goal was. Okay, well, help us reset where the president stands then. He does have these two years to go. After January, he's not going to be passing any legislation unless he deals with Democrats who are going to control Congress. So what does he mean to do? Yeah, I mean, in terms of what his priorities are, he's trying to cement his legacy and that comes in a lot of different ways, right? It's physical changes around DC. He's still very intently focused on his ballroom at the White House. He's attempting to try to build an arch in DC. But Trump also sees himself as a deal maker and a peacemaker. And that's a big part of this too. It comes down to things like ending Russia's war in Ukraine. The administration recently kicked off another round of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi this week. And next week Trump is headed to the Philippines and China for two summits. He's set to meet with Chinese leaders Xi Jinping again. And maybe also meet with Xi and Russian leader Vladimir Putin together. And that's interesting. Trump says he wants to talk about denuclearization and ending the Iran war. It's not yet clear if the meeting will happen. And if anything tangible would come out of it. But keep in mind, this is the president who loves a photo op and that's part of his legacy building too. Deepa will be covering that trip to Asia. And Pierce Deepa Chevron, thanks so much. Thank you. News that the AI chipmaker in video is investigating its own CEO is reverberating from Wall Street to Capitol Hill. The company stock slipped yesterday after the CEO Jensen Wong admitted to having an affair. News reports say it was with a woman, the US intelligence agency suspect of spying for China. And PR tech correspondent John Ruich joins us now to talk about this. Hey, John. Good morning. Good morning. So just how bad has the fall out been so far for Nvidia? Yeah, it's not great. Nvidia's share price dropped around four and a quarter percent yesterday. Meanwhile, Nvidia's main competitor in AI chips, the number two player AMD left more than 13% on the news. Three committees in the House of Representatives have summoned Jensen Wong to a joint closed-door session next week to answer questions about the allegations. You know, Nvidia has a huge market share in the chips that are used to build and run AI. But a question that investors are starting to think they may have to grapple with is if this snowballs, what does Nvidia look like without Jensen Wong at the helm? I mean, he co-founded the company and put it on the map. Now, President Trump is friendly with Jensen Wong. And as you've reported, has traveled to China with him recently. What's Trump saying about all this? Well, the president says he's known Jensen Wong for a long time. People I've spoken with say, Huang has been a prominent voice in Trump's ear on policy. There are expert controls in place to prevent cutting edge chips from being exported to China and Huang has been a critic of those controls. Yesterday at a press conference Trump called him an honorable guy and said he thought he'd be in good shape in all this. And he said the two had actually talked by phone. I asked him today because I didn't speak to him today just to see if he's feeling all right, how you do it. And I asked him about that. And he said he had absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy. Whether or not Huang knew the woman that he admitted to having an affair with might have been on Beijing's payroll is kind of beside the point, though. Nvidia is at the heart of the competition between the US and China over AI. So it's not really a stretch to think that Beijing would be interested in just about anything Jensen Huang says or that his company does. Now I know there's been some reporting that US government agencies had concerns about Nvidia's best chips getting into China for some time. What have we heard about that? Yeah, the center of all this is the question of whether a company Nvidia was working with was helping Chinese firms get around chip export controls. That company is a Singapore-based company called mega speed. And the woman Huang admitted to having an affair with was an executive there. The New York Times has reported that mega speed was being investigated here in the US by the Commerce Department and that the woman was passing information to Beijing. It said the president was briefed on it and chose not to do anything. NPR has not independently confirmed these reports. I reached out to mega speed and haven't heard back but they previously have denied any wrong doing. President Trump was asked yesterday if he knew about this case when he went to Beijing in May, a trip that Jensen Huang was also on. And he said no. I reached out to the White House and the Commerce Department to ask what actions they took once they were aware of the intelligence on the company and the woman but I haven't heard back. Chris McGuire worked on AI in the national security council for the Biden administration and he's now with the council on foreign relations. He says it'll be crucial to find out who knew what when. The biggest story here in the most lasting story is why the government sat on this and did nothing. So where do things go from here? I mean, how secure is Jensen Huang at Nvidia? Nvidia has said that even though it's conducting this investigation, its board has no reason to believe that national security or corporate secrets were compromised. The board has said it has confidence in Huang and so he's still in charge for now. That's NPR's John Rewich reporting from Silicon Valley. Thank you, John. You bet. And that's up first for Tuesday, November 10th. I'm Layla Faldon. And I'm Steve Enskew. Today's up first was edited by Jason Breslow, Emily Cobb, Rebecca Metzler, Mom at Albert DC, and Alice Wolfling. It was produced by C. Ed Butch and Neo Dumas. Our director is Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Nisha Heines and Patrick Murray. And our technical director is Margaret Luther. Our supervising senior producer is Vince Pearson. [BLANK_AUDIO]