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war powers
In Refusing to Impeach Trump, Congress Has Failed the American People and the World
Where would we be if the opposition party had followed through on that vote in April? What if DOGE; illegal firings of federal workers; and wildly destabilizing, illegal tariffs had been enough for Congress to begin asserting their power?
Mar 04, 2026
Over a year into President Donald Trump’s second lawless, unconstitutional administration, Congress is only “considering” reasserting themselves as a co-equal branch of government. They have mounted no meaningful response to repeated usurpation of war powers and purse, ignoring continued obstructions of justice and violations of civil liberties. Congress has been so desperate to avoid imposing accountability on this administration that the mere idea of impeachment sent them into a “frenzied rage” throughout 2025.
This inaction bears rotten fruit again and again. The president’s unilateral declaration of war on Iran in February of 2026 can be traced directly to congressional inaction after Trump’s unilateral strikes on Iran in May of 2025. At that time, Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) forced a vote on H.Res 537, impeaching Donald J. Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors. Congress voted to table the resolution. By refusing to impose consequences eight months ago, Congress has effectively green-lit this war, including the murder of more than 50 schoolgirls.
American voters across the nation and in swing districts have supported impeachment for nearly a year. Today mainstream grassroots groups like 50501 have joined the call for Congress to impeach Trump. Imagine if Congress was leading this effort instead of fighting it. What could we accomplish if we had our nominal leaders on our own side, rather than fighting against us at every step?
Today, individual representatives say they support impeachment, but they throw up road blocks: insisting it is a process (Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)), that there should be an inquiry first (Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI)), that they need to have leadership’s buy-in (Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY)), or that they must wait for the midterms (Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)). These are all lies.
The American people like cowards even less than they like fascists. As a result, Democrats today are less popular than Donald Trump.
Impeachment is a privileged resolution, and that means any member can introduce articles of impeachment at any time through Rule IX and demand that the House address it within 48 hours. Congress is missing the will to act.
The first impeachment articles of Trump’s second term were filed in April of 2025 by Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.), after Citizens’ Impeachment (then Operation Anti-King) coordinated a grassroots campaign to push for impeachment. H.Res 353 incorporated Citizens’ Impeachment’s article on tyranny and was filed under Rule IX to force a vote. The backlash—from Democratic leadership and from his own party—was so intense that Thanedar withdrew the articles from the floor five minutes before the vote. The resolution has been with the Judiciary Committee, untouched, for the last 10 months.
Where would we be if the opposition party had followed through on that vote in April? What if DOGE; illegal firings of federal workers; and wildly destabilizing, illegal tariffs had been enough for Congress to begin asserting their power?
Rep. Thanedar has since learned to use the drafting of impeachment articles as a political tool instead of the desperately needed accountability that the nation requires. In December of 2025, Thanedar’s office asked Citizens’ Impeachment to endorse H.Res 935 impeaching Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for the murder of two shipwrecked survivors. Citizens’ Impeachment did so, with the caveat that simply drafting articles was not enough—the articles needed to be filed under Rule IX and brought to a vote as soon as possible. Rhetoric was escalating, military assets were being moved into position, and it was clear that military action was imminent.
Had Rep. Thanedar forced a vote then, when Hegseth’s murder of shipwrecked survivors was in the news and Congress had just reminded military members that they must refuse illegal orders, he would have brought consequences to bear on one of the least popular members of Trump’s cabinet, and possibly forestalled the Venezuela strikes. Instead, President Trump and Secretary Hegseth once again usurped congressional war powers without consequence. H.Res. 935 remains with the Judiciary Committee, irrelevant and ignored.
Similarly, Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) spent months requesting an impeachment inquiry into Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s behavior before Robin Kelly (D-Ill.) decided to just write up the articles and make it happen. A full 187 members of Congress have now endorsed H.Res 996, an impeachment resolution for Noem. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) even claimed he would pursue impeachment if Noem wasn’t fired “immediately.” Without a vote though, even those actions are empty. Jeffries made that promise one month ago. Noem is still in office, H. Res 996 remains in committee, and Noem’s federal paramilitary forces continue their occupation of American cities unabated.
Articles of impeachment record the lawlessness of this administration, but they aren’t magical. The real power that every member of the House has is to force votes on those articles, putting their colleagues on record for their endorsement of the Trump administration’s repeated constitutional violations. And with the exception of Rep. Green, they absolutely refuse to use it.
In perhaps the most baffling abdication of both power and good sense, only two members of Congress have even considered impeachment for the Department of Justice's inept and corrupt handling of the Epstein Files. No articles have been written or filed though, despite the nearly unanimous vote to release the Epstein Files; the enormous, bipartisan outrage of the public at the Epstein Class; the blatant cover-up and obstruction of justice at the hands of Attorney General Pam Bondi; and pre-written articles of impeachment sent directly to Congress by thousands of constituents. Congress cannot seem to connect the dots to realize that not only would impeachment be good for the country, it would be overwhelmingly popular, even as midterms loom on the horizon.
The American people like cowards even less than they like fascists. As a result, Democrats today are less popular than Donald Trump.
What’s new here is that Congress already knows it can and should do more. As early as July 2025, one anonymous representative admitted it to NBC, saying of their constituents: “They aren’t buying that just because we are in the minority, we can’t do anything. The truth is we can. And we should.”
With the midterms coming up, voters have a chance to do something about this toxic dynamic. There are more than 100 pro-impeachment candidates on the ballot this election cycle, including prominent contenders like NJ-11 Analilia Mejia, former national political director for Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign and a member of former sPresident Joe Biden’s Department of Labor
The 435 members of the House are the only people with the power to begin impeachment proceedings. The 100 members of the Senate are the only people who can convict and remove Trump and his enablers from power. For a year, these powerful people have refused to take action. They have chosen to delay, and wait, and defer, allowing ever more harm to come to America and its people. In 2026 we should replace them all—they do not have the courage to meet this desperate moment for the country.
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Experts Pillory Trump Case for War on Iran: 'Flimsiest Excuse for Initiating a Major Attack' in Decades
"What they posed as the threat they were trying to preempt—an attack by Iran against US forces—is so extremely implausible, it is also laughable," said one analyst.
Mar 01, 2026
Senior Trump administration officials attempted during a briefing with reporters on Saturday to make their case for the joint US-Israeli military assault on Iran that has so far killed hundreds and plunged the Middle East into chaos.
According to experts who listened to the briefing, which was conducted on background, the justification for war was incredibly weak. Daryl Kimball, president of the Arms Control Association, told Laura Rozen of the Diplomatic newsletter that the administration's argument was "the flimsiest excuse for initiating a major attack on another country without congressional authorization, in violation of the UN Charter, in many decades."
During his early Saturday remarks announcing the attacks, President Donald Trump claimed that "imminent threats from the Iranian regime" against "the American people" drove him to act. But Kimball said that administration officials "provided absolutely no evidence" to back that assertion during the briefing.
"What they posed as the threat they were trying to preempt—an attack by Iran against US forces—is so extremely implausible, it is also laughable," said Kimball.
Following the start of Saturday's assault, which Trump explicitly characterized as a war aimed at overthrowing the Iranian government, unnamed administration officials began leaking the claim that Trump feared an Iranian attack on the massive US military buildup in the Middle East, prompting him to greenlight the bombing campaign in coordination with Israel and with a nudge from Saudi Arabia.
Kimball, in a social media post, took members of the US media to task for echoing the administration's narrative. "Reporters need to do more than stenography," he wrote in response to Punchbowl's Jake Sherman.
"The American people were lied to about Iraq. The American people are being lied to again today—and once again, it is ordinary people who will pay the price."
Trump and top administration officials also repeated the longstanding claim from US warhawks that Iran is bent on developing a nuclear weapon, something Iranian leaders have publicly denied—including during recent diplomatic talks. Neither US intelligence assessments nor international nuclear watchdogs have produced evidence indicating that Iran is moving rapidly in the direction of nukes, as claimed by the administration.
Rozen noted that some remarks from administration officials during Saturday's briefing "suggested Trump’s negotiators"—a team that included Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff—"may not have had the expertise or experience to understand the Iranian proposal to curb its nuclear program." Rozen reported that one administration official kept misstating the acronym for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog.
Trump administration officials, according to Rozen, seemed astonished that Iranian negotiators would not accept the US offer to provide free nuclear fuel "forever" for Iran's peaceful energy development, viewing the rejection as a suspicious indication that Iran was opposed to a diplomatic resolution—even though, according to Oman's foreign minister, Iran had already made concessions that went well beyond the terms of the 2015 nuclear accord that Trump abandoned during his first stint in the White House.
Experts said it should be obvious—particularly given Trump's decision to ditch the previous nuclear accord—why Iran would not trust the US to stick by such a commitment.
The administration's inability to provide a coherent justification for war tracks with the rapidly shifting narrative preceding Saturday's strikes—an indication, according to some observers, that Trump had made the decision to attack Iran even in the face of diplomatic progress and left officials to try to cobble together a rationale after the fact.
In a lengthy social media post, Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth insisted war was necessary because Iran "refused to make a deal" and because the Iranian government "has targeted and killed Americans," hardly the claim of an imminent threat push by the president and other administration officials.
Brian Finucane, a senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, noted in response that the Trump administration has "sidelined anyone who could articulate... a coherent argument, partly because expertise is deep state and woke and partly because they just don't care."
The result is another potentially catastrophic war that runs roughshod over US and international law, puts countless civilians at risk, and threatens to spark a region-wide conflict.
"President Trump, along with his right-wing extremist Israeli ally Benjamin Netanyahu, has begun an illegal, premeditated, and unconstitutional war," US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement on Saturday. "Tragically, Trump is gambling with American lives and treasure to fulfill Netanyahu's decades-long ambition of dragging the United States into armed conflict with Iran."
"The American people were lied to about Vietnam. The American people were lied to about Iraq," Sanders added. "The American people are being lied to again today—and once again, it is ordinary people who will pay the price."
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As Trump Marches US Toward Iran War, Critics Ask: Where's the 'Pushback' From Dems and Media?
"It's astonishing that we're building up for a significant military clash, and Congress isn't involved, no real case is being made to the public, and the average American has no clue."
Feb 18, 2026
Amid reports that President Donald Trump is pushing the US toward a "massive" war in Iran, critics have found themselves shocked by the lack of "pushback" from top Democrats and mainstream media institutions.
Barak Ravid reported for Axios on Wednesday that, with a deal between the US and Iran appearing increasingly out of sight, "the Trump administration is closer to a major war in the Middle East than most Americans realize" and "It could begin very soon."
Sources told the outlet that "A US military operation in Iran would likely be a massive, weeks-long campaign that would look more like full-fledged war than last month's pinpoint operation in Venezuela."
"Such a war would have a dramatic influence on the entire region and major implications for the remaining three years of the Trump presidency," Ravid wrote.
However, with Congress on recess and the media largely distracted by a whirlwind of other issues, he noted, "there is little public debate about what could be the most consequential US military intervention in the Middle East in at least a decade."
As columnist Adam Johnson pointed out on social media, Trump's sabre-rattling toward Iran was underway well before Congress left town.
Despite this, Johnson said, the "two most powerful Democrats in the country," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), "have once again not leveled a single word of substantive pushback," as was the case when Trump conducted strikes against Iran over the summer.
He said the top Democrats have only acknowledged Trump's threats "when asked by reporters" and have made only "process criticisms" rather than criticizing the merits of the war itself.
Last month, as Trump threatened to carry out massive strikes in retaliation for Iran's brutalization of protesters, Schumer limited his criticism to the fact that Trump had not consulted Congress.
“It has to be debated by Congress. Something like that, the War Powers Act, the Constitution, requires a discussion in Congress. We’ve had no reach-out from the administration at this point,” he told reporters.
More recently, Jeffries—a member of Congress who is briefed on national security matters—was asked on CBS's Face the Nation what he knew about the war plans or what he would want to know.
He did not answer that question, but vaguely lamented that Trump "has been slow to provide information... to the Gang of Eight members of Congress" and "hasn't provided a significant amount of information to Congress in general."
"When it comes to sanctions, perma-war, and bombings, we do not have an opposition party," Johnson said. "We have sleepy AIPAC-funded hall monitors paid to get wedgies and vaguely object after the craters are smoking in the ground."
New York Times columnist David French agreed: "It's astonishing that we're building up for a significant military clash, and Congress isn't involved, no real case is being made to the public, and the average American has no clue. If this gets serious, it will be a shock for lots of people."
There is little hunger in the American public for a war with Iran. A YouGov survey from early February found that 48% said they strongly or somewhat opposed military action in Iran, compared with just 28% who supported it and 24% who weren't sure.
Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said in an interview with Democracy Now! on Wednesday that, despite the public's broadly anti-interventionist attitudes, "their voices are more or less not being heard in the mainstream media."
"We’re seeing exactly what we saw during the Iraq War, in which a large number of pro-intervention Iraqi voices were paraded through mainstream media in order to give the impression that not only is this something that is supported by the overwhelming majority of the Iraqi society, but also that this is the morally right thing to do," Parsi said.
Drop Site News founder Ryan Grim said that when compared with the invasion of Iraq, which was built up over the course of more than a year through persistent propaganda to get the public on board, the Trump administration's effort to sell a war with Iran is laughable.
"We don’t even get the respect of being lied into war anymore," he said. "He’s just going to do it."
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