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It is long overdue for the Democrats in Congress to lay the groundwork for impeaching President Donald Trump and removing him from office.
Tyrant Trump’s favorite snarl is “You’re Fired!” That was his bellow on "The Apprentice" television program. Subsequently, he told hundreds of thousands of federal civil servants and contractors, “You’re Fired!” Shame on the pitiful Democratic Party that allowed him to regain the presidency last year.
It is long overdue for the Democrats in Congress to lay the groundwork for impeaching President Donald Trump and removing him from office. Trump provides them with the impeachable evidence openly and brazenly every day. No president in history has ever declared that “then I have Article II, where I have the right to do anything I want as president.” No president has ever dared to say, as did Trump in an interview with Reuters on January 15, 2026, that “…when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election” and meant it.
Based on their detailed declaration against King George III in the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the congressional safeguards in the Constitution drafted in 1787, our Founders, were they members of Congress today, would unanimously vote articles of impeachment against Trump for rampant constitutional lawlessness.
Here are 17 articles of Impeachment against dictator Trump that many constitutional law scholars would endorse, drafted by constitutional law specialist and practitioner, Bruce Fein. (For the full text of the articles of Impeachment, here.)
Ask these lawmakers if they are waiting for Trump to use the Insurrection Act to order the military to seize the state voting machinery and repress the vote in the contested states or districts?
ARTICLE 1—WAR POWER-MURDER-PIRACY
ARTICLE 2—MILITARIZATION OF DOMESTIC LAW ENFORCEMENT
ARTICLE 3—SERIAL UNCONSTITUTIONAL DETENTIONS AND DEPORTATIONS
ARTICLE 4—BRIBERY
ARTICLE 5—RETALIATION AGAINST CONSTITUTIONALLY PROTECTED SPEECH OR ASSOCIATION
ARTICLE 6—ABUSE OF THE PARDON POWER—SABOTAGING THE RULE OF LAW
ARTICLE 7—ILLEGALLY CRIPPLING OR DEFUNDING PROGRAMS TO PROTECT CONSUMERS, THE NEEDY, WORKERS, AND THE ENVIRONMENT
ARTICLE 8—USURPATION OF THE CONGRESSIONAL POWER OF THE PURSE
ARTICLE 9—CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS—SECRET GOVERNMENT
ARTICLE 10—PERVERTING LAW ENFORCEMENT TO PERSECUTE POLITICAL OPPONENTS AND BENEFIT FRIENDS
ARTICLE 11—SUSPENDING OR DISPENSING WITH LAWS
ARTICLE 12—FLOUTING SECTION 1 OF THE 14TH AMENDMENT
ARTICLE 13—SPECIOUS NATIONAL EMERGENCY—FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION DECLARATIONS
ARTICLE 14—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN EMOLUMENTS CLAUSES
ARTICLE 15—CHRONIC DECEIT AIMING AT DICTATORSHIP
ARTICLE 16—TREASON
ARTICLE 17—MEGALOMANIA-HUBRIS
Already, a growing majority of the American people want Trump Impeached. They are feeling the impact where they live, work, and raise their families of Trump’s dictatorial, corporatist regime, which is endangering, weakening, and wrecking America! The criminal, illegal, unconstitutional war against Iran and the continuing full backing of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocide against the Palestinians and the Israeli bombing of Lebanon’s civilian population and occupying southern Lebanon will only increase the hardships on the American people. US soldiers are also being ordered to illegally obey illegal orders. Six Members of Congress who served in the military issued a video statement that said, “You must refuse illegal orders.” Representatives said in the video, “No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.”
Send these articles of Impeachment with your own thoughts and demands to your two senators and your representative by letter, email, or voicemail. (The Congressional switchboard number is 202-224-3121). You can also call local congressional offices to voice your concerns to your member of Congress. Ask them when will they exercise their constitutional duties. What further criminal outrage, program, and police state power will move them to catch up with the demands of the people back home?
Ask these lawmakers if they are waiting for Trump to use the Insurrection Act to order the military to seize the state voting machinery and repress the vote in the contested states or districts? He has already noted this limitless power in his first term and more recently.
There are only 535 members of Congress. Flood them with your demands to literally save our Republic and the Constitution for which it stands. Otherwise, WITH TRUMP AND HIS DANGEROUSLY UNSTABLE PERSONALITY, IT IS ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE, MUCH WORSE, HERE AND ABROAD.
Take charge, people, one by one, citizen group by citizen group! Use your sovereign power under the Constitution.
Trump has consistently tried to change the subject whenever the issue of the Epstein scandal crops up, but nothing as dramatic as starting a war... until now.
On Christmas Day in 1997, Wag the Dog, a dark political satire directed by Barry Levinson and co-written by David Mamet, opened in theaters across the country. Hardly typical Christmas fare, the movie centered on crisis-management expert Conrad Brean, played by Robert De Niro, and Hollywood producer Stanley Motss, played by Dustin Hoffman, who fabricate a war to distract public attention from a presidential sex scandal.
Sound familiar?
In the film’s opening scene, presidential adviser Winifred Ames (Anne Heche) and other administration staff summon Brean to the White House to help clean up a mess. The president had just met with a group of teenage Firefly Girls from Santa Fe, they explain, and one of them expressed an interest in seeing a Frederick Remington sculpture in the Oval Office. The president escorted her there and sexually assaulted her.
The story leaked, and not only was The Washington Post about to run with it, but the president’s opponent also was about to air a TV commercial referencing it. With less than two weeks to go until election day, the story could derail the president’s reelection bid.
His attack on Iran will always be remembered as Trump’s war, a war started, in his own words, by a president who apparently “has absolutely no ability to negotiate.”
“We have to distract them” with a fake crisis, Brean tells the staffers, and after brainstorming a bit, hits upon a solution: “We have to go to war with somebody.” He concocts a story that Albania, a “shifty” country that “wants to destroy our way of life,” has smuggled a nuclear suitcase bomb into Canada and plans to sneak it across the border. He then enlists the help of Motss, and together they bamboozle the news media, the CIA, and the general public into believing the country is at war. The Oval Office sex scandal story gets lost in the shuffle and the president’s approval ratings rebound in time to win the election.
President Donald Trump also has a sex scandal that he wants to go away.
After simmering for months, the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking story reached a full boil in February following the Justice Department’s January 30 release of 3.5 million additional file pages. On February 9, the department granted members of Congress access to unredacted files for the first time, and the next day, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told Axios that he found more than a million references to Trump. On February 11, Raskin and other members of the House Judiciary Committee grilled Attorney General Pam Bondi about the files, attracting quite a bit of attention even though she avoided answering their questions.Then, on February 24, came the potential coup de grâce. NPR reported that the Justice Department removed documents that mention Trump from the public Epstein database, including files related to allegations that Trump had sexually abused a minor.
NPR’s investigation found that a specific allegation only appeared in copies of the FBI list of claims and a Justice Department slideshow. Its details are explosive. As spelled out by NPR: “The woman who directly named Trump in her abuse allegation [to the FBI] claimed that around 1983, when she was around 13 years old, Epstein introduced her to Trump, ‘who subsequently forced her head down to his exposed penis which she subsequently bit. In response, Trump punched her in the head and kicked her out.’”
Four days after the NPR story ran, the United States and Israel attacked Iran and poof, the Epstein sex scandal story disappeared from the headlines. Unlike Wag the Dog, however, Trump started a real war, and as of this writing Al Jazeera was reporting that more than 1,000 Iranians are dead and more than 6,000 are wounded, according to Iranian state media.
Of course, the launch of Trump’s war at a time of heightened public interest in the Epstein files could be merely coincidental. The administration has offered various rationales for the attack, from regime change to eliminating Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missiles, neither of which posed an imminent threat. Others have speculated that Trump is retaliating for alleged Iranian attempts on his life or squeezing China’s oil supplies to force it to rely more heavily on Saudi Arabia. Even so, there are at least two other notable examples of presidential attempts to divert attention from a politically damaging event by attacking another country.
One example was cited in Wag the Dog. In a scene in which Brean reassures Ames that a fake crisis would distract the public, he says, “That was the Reagan administration’s M.O.: Change the story.” Twenty-four hours after 240 Marines were killed in Beirut, he explains, Reagan invaded the tiny Caribbean nation of Grenada.
It is doubtful that many people are going to forget about Trump’s role in the Epstein saga. His victims are certainly not going to forget.
Brean was referring to an incident that happened on October 23, 1983, when a truck bomb destroyed the US Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 American servicemen. That same day, President Ronald Reagan approved final plans to invade Grenada during an attempted coup, ostensibly to protect 600 American medical students who, as it turned out, were not in any danger. On October 25, just two days after the Beirut bombing, US forces invaded Grenada. Story changed.
The second example falls into the category of life imitating art. According to Michael De Luca, production head at New Line Cinema when the studio released Wag the Dog, screenwriter David Mamet “was trying to think of something that would never happen in real life, like a president diddling a Girl Scout.” Just a few weeks after the film opened in US theaters, however, news of an eerily similar incident broke.
On January 17, 1998, the Drudge Report reported that Newsweek editors had killed a story exposing President Bill Clinton’s relationship with a 22-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. Four days later, the story of their tryst appeared in, ironically, The Washington Post.
On August 17, 1998, Clinton appeared on television following his testimony before a grand jury and finally acknowledged that he had “inappropriate intimate contact” with Lewinsky. Three days after that—the same day Lewinsky testified for a second time to the grand jury—Clinton launched 75 to 100 Tomahawk missiles at al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in retaliation for the terrorist group’s August 7 bombings of US embassies in East Africa. Many said the timetable was more than a mere coincidence.
Trump has consistently tried to change the subject whenever the issue of the Epstein scandal crops up, but nothing as dramatic as starting a war. Even abducting Venezuela’s president doesn’t compare. But the stakes are now much higher than when Reagan invaded Grenada or Clinton hit back at al-Qaeda. The Iran conflict has quickly spiraled out of control. In less than a week, it involves at least 11 countries besides the main combatants Iran, Israel, and the United States.
It is more than ironic that Trump, who fancies himself a virtuoso dealmaker, started this unnecessary war. After all:
From the looks of it, Trump lied that Iran posed an imminent threat and—like Bush—has just destabilized the Middle East. It’s reminiscent of that line about the “Pottery Barn rule” attributed to Bush’s secretary of state, Colin Powell: “You break it, you own it.” His attack on Iran will always be remembered as Trump’s war, a war started, in his own words, by a president who apparently “has absolutely no ability to negotiate.”
Finally, keep in mind that despite Clinton’s attack on al-Qaeda, no one forgot that he perjured himself about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, which ultimately led to his impeachment. Likewise, it is doubtful that many people are going to forget about Trump’s role in the Epstein saga. His victims are certainly not going to forget. It only remains to be seen if it—along with his other transgressions—brings down his presidency.
This article first appeared at the Money Trail blog and is reposted here at Common Dreams with permission.
Our Constitution cannot defend or protect itself. Not when Trump and his administration keep violating their oath to defend and protect it. It’s up to us to do that.
President Donald Trump’s illegal, unconstitutional war on Iran is not only a moral and humanitarian disaster, but also the latest assault on our way of life. Trump and his enablers count on us to endure their ever escalating egregious abuses of power that imperil our democracy, potentially fatally. We must prove them wrong. We can and must overcome these clear and present threats to our lives, liberty, and way of life.
Our Constitution cannot defend or protect itself. Not when Trump and his administration keep violating their oath to defend and protect it. It’s up to us to do that. We the People must not fail to meet this crisis. We must not let these abuses of power go unchecked. The Congress and the American people must hold Trump and all those complicit in the Trump administration accountable for their escalating attacks on the rule of law.
These intertwined crises require us to act! We must pressure all members of Congress, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike, to uphold their oath of office to defend and protect our Constitution. Contact your representative and both of your senators now. Call the US Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121, and ask the operator to connect you directly to the office of your senators and representative.
Ask to speak to the chief of staff or another staffer. Leave a message if they’re not available. Be firm but calm. Identify yourself as their constituent, and tell them:
Trump and his administration have repeatedly broken the law and arrogantly refuse to abide by the limits on the power clearly laid out in the Constitution. The Constitution offers one and only one remedy: impeachment, followed by removal from office. I demand that [official’s name] take immediate action to impeach and remove Trump and all complicit Administration officials.
We must do much more than that, however. Contacting Congress is necessary but not sufficient. While the House may vote to impeach Trump for a third time, the Constitution requires two-thirds of the Senate to vote to convict and remove Trump and complicit officials. This is highly unlikely, at least for now. We have to change the arithmetic through concerted, decisive action.
Several Republicans must put our republic above partisanship. For that to happen, we must relentlessly demand action. Every American who cares about our constitutional democratic republic must pressure their senators and representative by phone, email, social media, and in‑person visits.
We must demand that Congress impeach Trump again, but this time also vote to remove Trump and all complicit administration officials from power. We must do this, even though we have little confidence that enough Senate Republicans will act honorably. We must make them do so, or else replace them with people who will. That means getting active in the primary elections, already underway.
Support independent media like Common Dreams. Volunteer with Progressive Democrats of America to help lead on the effort to replace feckless politicians with strong leaders.
To increase pressure on the current Congress, organizations and individuals across the country must initiate and maintain ongoing nonviolent protests and civil disobedience.
Act now! Contact everyone who will listen. Work with decision-makers and members of any organization you know and persuade them to join the struggle.
Start or join boycotts targeting Trump-friendly corporations. Delay purchase of any non‑essential goods and services. Organize walk outs, sick outs, and other intentional non-participation. Urge everyone you know to do the same.
We need mass participation by individuals amplified by unions, as well as civic, religious, labor, social, and other organizations. We the People must stand up now in concerted, courageous, continuous opposition to oppression and tyranny. Nothing less will ensure the survival of our constitutional republic.