250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence
The charges of 1776, re-exhibited against the present holder
of executive power in the republic they founded
Preamble
In 1776, the representatives of thirteen colonies charged the King of Great Britain with a systematic course of tyranny and submitted those charges to the judgment of the world. The republic they subsequently founded has endured for two hundred and fifty years.
In the two hundred and fiftieth year of that republic, its citizens find that every charge then levelled against a foreign monarch now applies, in documented particulars, to the executive of their own government. The Declaration's authors wrote that a decent respect to the opinions of mankind required that the causes of their action be declared. The same respect requires that this correspondence be set before the world.
The charges of 1776 are republished below, unchanged. Against each, the evidence of 2025 and 2026 is recorded.
The Assertion of Rights
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all persons are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among the People, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter it, and to institute such changes as shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that established institutions should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to provide new Guards for their future security.
Such has been the patient sufferance of the citizens of this republic. And such is now the necessity which constrains them to reassert the constitutional terms of their government. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
The Charges
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has withheld congressionally appropriated funds from enacted legislation — including the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, foreign assistance appropriations, and public health programmes — declaring them void by impoundment, a power Congress specifically abolished in 1974. Federal courts found this conduct "fundamentally undermines the distinct constitutional roles of each branch." He has additionally vetoed legislation for punitive political reasons, including water infrastructure funding for a congressional district whose representative had opposed him.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has revoked California's congressionally authorised authority to set vehicle emissions standards, stripping ten additional states of their right to follow suit. He has conditioned federal education and healthcare funding on state compliance with presidential ideological requirements, threatened to withhold funds from states maintaining sanctuary policies, filed federal suit against Maine for legislation protecting transgender citizens, and deployed DEI certification requirements to schools as a precondition for federal grants — all blocked by courts.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He signed an executive order on his first day purporting to end birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to non-permanent residents — in direct contradiction of 125 years of constitutional interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment — blocked by federal courts. He has manipulated census and apportionment methodology to reduce the legislative representation of immigrant communities. Puerto Rico's 3.2 million American citizens continue to have no vote in Congress; his administration withheld hurricane relief funds and obstructed Inspector General investigations into that withholding.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He threatened to forcibly adjourn Congress under an Article II power never previously invoked in the republic's history, to manufacture a recess for unilateral appointments. When the Senate eventually recessed — after exhausting resistance — it was driven through marathon overnight sessions: thirty-three amendment votes across ten consecutive hours ending at dawn, under an artificial July 4 deadline. Senators described the proceedings as "insane." The bill passed 51–50, the Vice President casting the tie-breaking vote. One Republican senator who had resisted for days capitulated with the observation: "At some point you have to recognize reality."
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has dissolved by executive order and administrative action the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the United States Agency for International Development, and substantial portions of the Department of Education — all created by statute, none repealed by Congress. He fired seventeen Inspectors General in a single night. He impounded congressionally appropriated funds to nullify the effect of legislation he could not repeal. He dismissed the heads of the Federal Trade Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Merit Systems Protection Board in defiance of the statutes protecting their independence.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has left the National Labor Relations Board without a quorum for 345 days by firing its members, depriving 59,000 workers of access to union elections. He has left 75% of presidentially appointed oversight positions vacant, with an average vacancy of 477 days. The Treasury Inspector General has been vacant since 2019. Of 28 vacant oversight positions, only 5 had pending nominations as of October 2025.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has signed an executive order reinterpreting birthright citizenship, blocked by multiple federal courts. He has extended travel bans to 39 countries, covering one in eight people on earth. He has cancelled Temporary Protected Status for 1.5 million people from Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, and others. He has set refugee admissions at 7,500 — a reduction of 94% from the prior ceiling — reserving all slots for white South Africans. He has abolished the CBP One legal asylum pathway. He has launched a campaign targeting 100 to 200 denaturalization cases per month, against a historical average of eleven per year.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has arrested a sitting federal judge in Milwaukee for a courtroom decision; she was convicted of a felony and resigned. He has called by name for the impeachment of judges who ruled against him on social media, prompting the Chief Justice to issue a rare public statement that "impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement with a judicial decision." He has withheld evidence from state prosecutors investigating the killing of American citizens by federal agents, physically blocking investigators from the scene. He has defied orders of the Supreme Court, including a unanimous order to facilitate the return of a man unlawfully deported to a foreign prison.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has fired immigration judges for the content of their decisions, reducing the immigration judiciary by 15%. On June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court — three of whose six-justice conservative majority are his appointees, confirmed on terms he arranged — overturned ninety-one years of precedent in Humphrey's Executor, making all commissioners of independent regulatory agencies dismissable at presidential will. Justice Sotomayor's dissent stated plainly: "today the majority reshapes our Government."
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has created, by Day 1 executive order and without statutory authorisation, the Department of Government Efficiency — staffed by unelected, unconfirmed private-sector loyalists, embedded across federal agencies, with access to all federal personnel and financial systems, and no congressional oversight or accountability mechanism. ICE and Border Patrol agents have conducted 115,000 arrests in the first half of 2025 alone, with operations at churches, schools, and hospitals. There have been 32 deaths in ICE custody in the first year — the deadliest such year in two decades.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has deployed more than 10,000 National Guard and active-duty military personnel to American cities — Los Angeles, Washington DC, Portland, Chicago, New Orleans — without congressional authorisation, at a cost exceeding $496 million, continuing through 2026. He has created a 170-square-mile National Defense Area at the southern border by presidential memorandum alone, converting civilian territory into a military installation and authorising soldiers to arrest, detain, and search American residents living within it. A federal judge found the Los Angeles deployment violated the Posse Comitatus Act, calling the stated rationale "contrived" and finding no rebellion existed.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has fired 24 generals and admirals — 60% of them Black or female, including the Army Chief of Staff for refusing to remove minority officers from promotion lists. His Secretary of Defense has declared the military's doctrine to be "maximum lethality not tepid legality." He has launched a war against Iran without declaration or congressional authorisation, claiming the War Powers Resolution is itself unconstitutional. Both chambers of Congress passed resolutions under that Act — the first time in its history both had done so simultaneously. He called them "meaningless."
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
National Guard and Marine units have been stationed in six American cities. Residents of the southern border National Defense Area live within an armed military perimeter authorised to conduct civilian law enforcement without congressional consent. Operatives of the unstatutory Department of Government Efficiency slept on cots in federal agency offices while executing mass personnel terminations.
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
Stephen Miller broadcast to ICE agents: "You have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties." Vice President Vance claimed the officer who killed US citizen Renee Good enjoyed "absolute immunity." The federal government withheld evidence from state prosecutors investigating the killings of Good and Alex Pretti — both US citizens, both killed by federal agents, both on video contradicting the official account — physically blocking investigators from the scene of Pretti's death. Minnesota prosecutors called their lawsuit for access to evidence "unprecedented in American history." Neither officer has been charged. Good's car remained shrink-wrapped in an FBI warehouse, unexamined.
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
On April 2, 2025 — "Liberation Day" — he imposed tariffs on virtually every trading partner on earth, raising the average effective rate to 22.5%, the highest since 1909 and the most sweeping tariff regime since Smoot-Hawley deepened the Great Depression. Global trade policy changed more than fifty times in fourteen months. The United States simultaneously suspended its contributions to the World Trade Organization's budget and maintained its blockade of the WTO Appellate Body — ensuring that no binding international ruling on any of these restrictions could be made.
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
$264 billion in tariffs were collected in 2025 without a congressional vote — the largest tax increase as a percentage of GDP since 1993, amounting to $1,500 per American household. The Supreme Court confirmed in Learning Resources v. Trump (February 2026) that "the power to impose tariffs is very clearly a branch of the taxing power" belonging to Congress, and that "the Framers intentionally denied the executive any part of this authority." New tariffs were imposed within hours of the ruling. Americans bore 94% of the cost. No vote was taken.
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — a wartime statute unused outside declared war for its entire prior history — was invoked to deport individuals by executive proclamation without judicial hearing. The president stated: "We cannot give everyone a trial." The administration formally considered suspending habeas corpus. On his first day, he pardoned all 1,600 persons convicted of or charged with offences related to January 6 — including more than 600 convicted of assaulting police officers and 170 convicted of using deadly weapons — retroactively nullifying the verdicts of their juries. Federal judges preserved the trial records as "immutable truth."
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
Rümeysa Öztürk, a Fulbright doctoral scholar, was seized by six masked plainclothes officers on a public street and transported 1,500 miles to a Louisiana detention facility — in defiance of a court order — for co-authoring a student newspaper editorial. Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident, was transported to Louisiana for his role as a protest negotiator at Columbia University. Unsealed records confirmed both were targeted solely for constitutionally protected speech. Immigration proceedings against Öztürk were terminated: the court found the government had failed to establish any legal basis for removal. Under the "Catch and Revoke" programme, nearly 2,000 student visas were cancelled by May 2025, many for social media posts.
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary Government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
He has contracted with El Salvador's President Bukele — who has suspended constitutional rights, mass-imprisoned 90,000 without trial, replaced the Supreme Court with loyalists, and extended his own term in violation of the constitution — using that arbitrary system as an instrument of American enforcement beyond domestic legal constraint, paying $6 million to quarter US-processed detainees at CECOT. A 60 Minutes investigation found no criminal charges against 179 of the 260 persons sent there. In the Oval Office, Bukele told him: "You have 350 million people to liberate. But to liberate 350 million people, you have to imprison some." The recorded response: "Who gave him that line? You think I could use that?" He subsequently proposed, in public and in writing confirmed by the White House, to extend this system to American citizens.
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
He has nullified by executive order the operating charters of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, USAID, and the Department of Education — none repealed by Congress. He has abolished by non-enforcement the Impoundment Control Act and the War Powers Resolution, and undermined by executive reclassification the civil service merit protections established by the Pendleton Act of 1883. He has reclassified 8,000 career civil servants as at-will employees under a new hiring criterion: applicants must now answer how they would advance the President's executive orders. The architects of this programme stated their aim: "to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will." The Supreme Court has overturned ninety-one years of independent agency law.
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has withheld congressionally appropriated funds, conducted war without congressional authorisation, imposed taxes by executive order, and issued twenty-six executive orders on his first day legislating across every domain of public life. He has declared the statutes constraining him — the Impoundment Control Act, the War Powers Resolution, the Civil Service Reform Act — to be void against his Article II authority. During his first term he stated: "I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president." The Federal Circuit, ruling on his tariff authority, described the power claimed as "unbounded in scope, amount, and duration." The Declaratory Act of 1766 claimed that Parliament could bind the colonies "in all cases whatsoever." That Act was among the specific provocations the Declaration of Independence was written to answer. The same claim, in the same words, is now advanced by the executive of the republic founded to resist it.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has withdrawn the United States from the World Health Organization, the Paris Agreement, UNESCO, and multiple international bodies. He has threatened to withhold NATO's Article 5 collective defence guarantee from member states unless they meet his payment demands, and has described the alliance as a commercial arrangement rather than a mutual security commitment. He launched a war against Iran on February 28, 2026, without declaration of war, without authorisation of the use of military force, and without compliance with the War Powers Resolution — claiming unlimited executive war-making authority.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us.
On January 6, 2021, having lost the presidential election, he directed a crowd to march on the Capitol during the constitutional certification of that result, resulting in the violent disruption of a proceeding the Constitution mandated. He subsequently pardoned all 1,600 participants, including the leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys convicted of seditious conspiracy, described them as "hostages" and "patriots," and invited them to the White House. He has pardoned the architects of the post-election legal campaign to overturn the certified result, including those who drafted the plan to substitute false slates of electors.
Conclusion
In every stage of these Oppressions, the citizens of this republic have sought redress through legitimate means — through courts, through elections, through the regular procedures of constitutional government. Petitions have been answered with contempt. Court orders have been defied. The legislature has been bypassed, impounded, and declared irrelevant to the will of the executive. A person whose conduct is marked in every particular by every act which may define a Tyrant is unfit to hold the office the Constitution entrusts to him.
The Declaration of Independence was not a declaration of grievance. It was a declaration of constitutional principle: that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed; that when it becomes destructive of that principle, the people have not merely the right but the duty to say so, and to act upon it.
In 1776, the only remedy available was independence. In 2026, within the constitutional order the founders established, the remedy is reassertion: the reassertion by the Congress of its legislative supremacy; by the courts of their independence; by the civil service of its professional obligation to law rather than to loyalty; and by the people, at every election and in every lawful form of civic action, of their sovereignty over the government they created.
The question of the two hundred and fiftieth year is the question of 1776: whether self-government is possible, or whether power, once concentrated, will remain concentrated. The founders gave their answer. They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honour in its defence.
The answer has not changed. Only the defendant has.
July 4, 2026
Two hundred and fifty years after the original.