The office of Rep. Ilhan Omar slammed the Trump administration on Thursday over its reported plot to have the Minnesota Democrat stripped of her US citizenship.
On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the raid on Omar’s home carried out earlier this week by Department of Homeland Security agents was part of and effort to build “a case to strip her of her US citizenship and ultimately deport her.”
“The multipronged effort is focused at least in part on how Omar obtained her citizenship after she arrived in the US from Somalia decades ago,” the Journal explained. “Investigators are focused both on the congresswoman and actions of her deceased father.”
Omar spokesperson Jackie Rogers responded to the report by accusing President Donald Trump of engaging in “desperate attempt to justify his extraordinary abuse of power.”
“This is politically motivated and an escalation of Trump’s personal vendetta against her lasting over a decade,” Rogers told HuffPost. “He has lied about her family, about her immigration history, and about her love of this country.”
Rogers also accused Trump of acting like a dictator by singling out a member of the opposition party for punishment.
“This isn’t a legitimate law enforcement action,” said Rogers, “it is an authoritarian move to silence an opponent right before an election where he and his party will be rejected by Americans in historic proportions… To Trump, no American value or principle is too important to be shredded for his own personal gain.”
Author John Ganz on Thursday published an analysis of the reported Omar deportation plot, which he said is “undoubtedly driven by racial and religious animus” and also “a serious assault on the constitutional order being carried out through the executive branch’s legal and bureaucratic machinery.”
Ganz argued that a serious attempt to strip Omar of her citizenship and remove her from the country would be a major escalation from the Trump administration toward establishing an outright totalitarian state.
“Authoritarian governments suppress political opposition and deprive their subjects of particular rights,” Ganz explained. “Totalitarian movements aspire to something much more radical: the destruction of the independent political and juridical personhood. They attack not merely the liberties of particular citizens they seek to repress, but the concept of citizenship itself—and then, ultimately, the concept of shared humanity.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) is seen at a press conference with other members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus on funding for and efforts to reform the Department of Homeland Security, in Washington, DC on, January 13, 2026.
(Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Trump and other Republicans have called for Omar to be stripped of her citizenship and deported for years.
Following years of threats from President Donald Trump and other Republicans to deport Rep. Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota congresswoman’s Washington, DC home was raided on Monday morning by agents with the Department of Homeland Security.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has confirmed that the raid was carried out as part of a judicially authorized warrant, which it said was part of an ongoing criminal investigation.
Fox News, which first reported news of the raid, said it was part of a probe into the naturalization paperwork filed by Omar’s late father when she became a US citizen in 2000 after immigrating to the US as a refugee from Somalia in 1995.
In September, The New York Post reported that federal investigators were examining whether Omar may have been older than 17 when she obtained citizenship through her father as a minor in 2000. The allegation, which stems partly from a discrepancy in historical records of her birth year, has not been substantiated.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a fellow at the American Immigration Council, argued that the case was “even weaker than it already seems,” since federal immigration law includes a waiver for people who obtain legal status through fraud they were unaware of.
Joyce Vance, who served as the US attorney for the Northern District of Alabama under President Barack Obama, noted that the raid took place just weeks before the November 3 midterms, inside the 60-day window where DOJ typically avoids such dramatic actions.
“To state what’s obvious to prosecutors here, we are within the period before an election where DOJ doesn’t take overt steps in an investigation that might influence its outcome,” she said, adding that it was “another hard norm out the window.”
Omar has not yet commented on the raid as of Monday morning, and the DOJ has not indicated what, if any, specific charges have been filed against her.
The search comes after years of demands from Trump and other Republicans for Omar—who has served in the US House of Representatives since 2019—to be deported, imprisoned, or otherwise removed from office.
In a statement Monday morning, Joel Payne, a spokesperson for the progressive advocacy group MoveOn condemned the raid on Omar as a political attack.
“Rep. Omar is a dedicated public servant and a true ally for working families, and Donald Trump has done nothing but use racist tropes and stereotypes to attack her,” he said. “Now, he’s abusing his power to physically intimidate and harass her.”
Last November, Trump remarked that Omar should be thrown out of the country because she is “always complaining” and referenced her religious attire, referring to it as a “swaddling hijab.” In another post that day, he called for the US to “denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility.”
He also said Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American member of Congress, should be “sent back” along with Omar after the two protested his state of the Union address in February.
Trump has often referenced Omar while calling for all Somali immigrants to be deported from the country—even though most are US citizens. Trump has referred to Somalis collectively as “garbage” and said they have “low IQs.”
Last week, Trump called for the people of Minnesota to “fight back” against Somalis living there in a post on Truth Social, which was widely interpreted as an incitement to violence.
In March, Vice President JD Vancesaid on a podcast that the administration believed Omar had “definitely committed immigration fraud against the United States of America” and that he’d discussed with senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller—who is not a federal prosecutor—how to “go after” her.
Beau Tremitiere, counsel and deputy director of impact programs for Protect Democracy, told Common Dreams that “raiding the home of a prominent critic and longtime target of President Trump’s racist attacks on the eve of an election is an obvious attempt to intimidate the opposition.”
“This administration already has a long track record of failed political prosecutions,” he said. “Each new one should both anger and stiffen the spine of those standing up for our democracy.”
Several Republican members of Congress have referenced Omar’s religion and political viewpoints as reasons for her to be stripped of citizenship and deported.
Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.), who introduced a resolution to expel Omar from Congress last year, referred to her as a “Muslim terrorist” because of her outspoken criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and said she should not “be a citizen.”
Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) has also called for her deportation, claiming she helped to facilitate the “invasion” of the US after she discussed informing Somali American residents of her district of their constitutional rights should they encounter immigration officers.
In a statement Monday, House Democratic leadership called the raid on Omar’s residence “deeply disturbing” and said it “raises serious questions about the continued corrupt weaponization of the federal government against Donald Trump’s adversaries.”
“For years, Donald Trump and far-right extremists have relentlessly targeted Congresswoman Omar with vile personal attacks and baseless accusations,” they said. “Now, less than 30 days until the midterm election, his violent mass deportation machine has descended upon the home of a duly elected Member of Congress and her family.”
They added that “the American people deserve transparency, and we will deliver full accountability for the rogue abuse of power from the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice.”
In this photograph released by the U.S. Navy, military planes stand on the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, July 4, 2024, in the South China Sea. [AP Photo/Seaman Ryan Holloway
The Trump administration is preparing a major new bombing campaign against Iran, according to reports published Wednesday and Thursday by The Atlantic, Axios, NBC News, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
While reports published in the last two weeks indicated that Trump was making plans to attack after the November 3 midterm elections, the latest reports indicate Trump could launch the attacks even sooner. “The White House has asked the Pentagon to develop strike options against Iranian targets that could be exercised ahead of the midterms,” The Atlantic magazine reported Wednesday afternoon, citing two administration officials.
Next month’s election takes place amid broad popular opposition to the war. Trump said in his September 22 address to the United Nations that Iran was “waiting to see how I do in the midterm election.” He added: “I gave absolutely no credence and will not give credence to the election when it comes to Iran. It doesn’t even enter my mind.”
Axios reported Wednesday evening that, according to US officials, the Pentagon had instructed the military command in charge of the war “several days ago to conclude preparations for resuming major combat operations in Iran.” If combat resumes, Axios wrote, it is “expected to include massive bombing of Iranian energy, infrastructure and nuclear targets” and would most likely involve the Israeli military.
Trump said of a deal with Iran at a rally in San Antonio, Texas, on Wednesday night: “I think the deal isn’t really something that I want to do, but they’re willing to offer us anything to stop.”
The new bombing would intensify the war of aggression that the United States and Israel opened against Iran on February 28. According to official figures cited by Al Jazeera, the US and Israeli militaries had killed 3,527 people inside Iran by August 28 without bringing down the government in Tehran or forcing it to accept Washington’s terms. Washington has answered each failure by preparing a larger assault.Available from Mehring BooksThe struggle against imperialism and for workers’ power in IranA pamphlet by Keith Jones
The New York Times wrote Thursday that the Pentagon, “on Mr. Trump’s orders,” had developed plans to strike “Iran’s drone and missile arsenal, energy facilities and other military sites.” The plans “center on a short, intense campaign lasting about three days,” the Times reported.
“U.S. military commanders are ready to begin larger operations in the coming days, in case the president shifts again,” according to the Times.
Axios reported Thursday that US officials had briefed the chief of staff of the Israeli military, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, on Tuesday about preparations “for the possibility of resuming major combat operations against Iran within the next three weeks.”
“A fresh aircraft-carrier strike group and Marine expeditionary unit are steaming toward the Middle East, and the Pentagon is weighing sending additional air-defense equipment and munitions to bases in the region,” the Journal reported Thursday, citing officials familiar with the planning. The Associated Press reported October 1 that the United States was “dispatching roughly 9,000 troops aboard a group of ships.”
The assault on Iran is part of a worldwide offensive by American imperialism, aimed above all at Russia and China. Since the 1979 revolution that overthrew the US-backed Shah, Democratic and Republican administrations alike have sought to restore American control over Iran. The war is the latest in more than three decades of US wars, from the 1991 Persian Gulf War through the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.
Vice President JD Vance led a discussion of the plans at the Camp David presidential retreat on October 2, the Times reported.
US forces have not struck inside Iran since September 1, but they have kept up the blockade of Iran’s ports. The US military said October 5 that it had turned back 130 commercial ships since reimposing the blockade on July 14, and that it had “destroyed 13 commercial vessels” over the previous 12 weeks.
The war has killed 19 US service members and wounded more than 800, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.
In an AP-NORC poll conducted September 24-28, 69 percent of Americans said the war in Iran “has not been worth fighting.”
All factions of the US political establishment support the aim of subjugating Iran to US domination. The Democratic Party has criticized Trump’s conduct of the war on the grounds that he has failed to secure the interests of American imperialism. Senator Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat, declared on ABC’s “This Week” on September 27: “We can’t leave the Strait in the hands of the Iranians.”
Senator Ruben Gallego, another Arizona Democrat, said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “is one of the most important reasons why we’re losing this war in Iran,” in a CNN interview his office released October 1.
These criticisms are accompanied by accusations that Trump has been insufficiently aggressive toward Russia and China. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on the House floor on September 16, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin: “Many of us wonder why the President has been so reluctant to aggressively confront the bully of Eastern Europe.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and seven other Democratic senators said in a September 22 statement, ahead of a state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping: “We can’t let President Xi leave stronger than when he arrived. That is not diplomacy, it’s weakness.”
Jeffries and 114 other House Democrats voted for the National Defense Authorization Act on December 10, 2025, and 149 House Democrats voted on January 22, five weeks before the war began, for an $839 billion military appropriations bill. On September 16, 58 House Democrats, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, voted with the Republicans for a bill giving Trump new powers to impose tariffs aimed at Russia and extending sanctions on Iran through 2031.
The Pentagon on Thursday confirmed plans to livestream an execution by firing squad in December—a revelation that came amid fresh calls for the United States to end the death penalty after Tennesseebotched two attempts to kill Christa Pike with injections of pentobarbital.
The US Army announced Wednesday that Nidal Hasan—a former military psychiatrist convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 more in a 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood—will be executed at the Texas base at 1:00 pm Central Standard Time on December 3.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told the right-wing outlet Real America’s Voice News that “we’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that… there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”
Then, other outlets, including The Associated Press, reported that “officials in the Pentagon clarified Thursday that the execution would be livestreamed and that more details would follow.”
The Washington Postreported that “if Hasan’s execution is carried out, it would mark the first US military execution since April 13, 1961, when Army Pvt. John A. Bennett was hanged after being convicted of rape and attempted murder, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, which monitors capital punishment. The military’s last known firing squad execution was carried out by ‘musketry’ on November 9, 1945.”
Hegseth’s comments and the subsequent confirmation from the US Department of Defense were met with disgust and outrage.
“What a sick man,” former National Nurses United communications director Charles Idelson said of the Pentagon chief on social media. “A. Executions have never been proven to be a deterrent to capital crimes. B. The spectacle of a public execution is morbid, it recalls the public lynchings so common during the Jim Crow era. C. If the shooter was white, I don’t believe this would be public.”
Hasan is a US citizen born to Palestinian immigrant parents. Just before he opened fire on soldiers who were set to deploy to Afghanistan, he shouted “Allahu akbar,” an Arabic phrase commonly used by Muslims that translates to “God is great!”
While some critics called out Hesgeth, Obama administration speechwriter-turned-podcaster Jon Favreau took aim at Vice President JD Vance, who recently published a book about his faith journey, including his conversion to Catholicism. Favreau said that “I would like to hear our Catholic vice president explain why they’re intentionally choosing to broadcast the death of a human being for the entire world to see, including children.”
Producer and journalist Simon Thompson wrote: on social media: “Just when I think this administration couldn’t get any worse. Livestreaming executions by firing squad? This administration, a Christian administration apparently, is making a snuff movie and treating it like a [pay-per-view] event.”
Journalist Séamus Malekafzali similarly said, “Content with having desensitized the American public by broadcasting faceless images of Iranian sailors dying and buildings full of people leveled to the soundtrack to Halo, the government is now moving to live-streaming snuff films, faces and all.”
“I know people hate when people make comparisons to American adversaries, but this is literally what ISIS did, save for the live aspect,” he added. “Those executions were also done on camera under the auspices of nominally government institutions, just a different kind of government.”
Although Trump left office the first time after overseeing a federal execution spree, American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick said Thursday, “Jesus Christ, I didn’t think we’d actually get to the ‘public executions’ stage of Trump’s project to roll back the last 100 years of societal development.”
Corbin Trent, co-founder of Justice Democrats, suggested it could backfire for the Republican administration. He wrote: “I’m completely in favor of this. I think more of this would go a long way to ending the death penalty.”
The USS Theodore Roosevelt, left, and the USS Carl M. Levin prepare for a refueling in the Pacific Ocean, Nov. 16, 2025. [Photo: Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Aaron Haro Gonzalez ]
The Trump administration is sending the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and three amphibious warships carrying about 2,000 Marines to the Middle East. The ships will reinforce the US forces arrayed against Iran with as many as 10,000 sailors and Marines, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing US officials.
The deployment follows US President Donald Trump’s threat before the UN General Assembly on September 22 to “annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly” and to “drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations.” Two days later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the General Assembly that Iran’s “murderous regime will be toppled,” declaring: “This evil regime will fall, and we will all celebrate that day.”
The buildup puts the White House on a course to massively accelerate the war following the US midterm elections on November 3, which are expected to reflect the overwhelming unpopularity of the war among workers and young people. But while the Democrats may be the beneficiaries of the elections, they have pledged, like Trump, to ensure the subjugation of Iran to American interests.
The Journal reported September 25 that Trump “has told aides he expects to resume bombing Iran after the November midterms.” The Journal wrote Thursday, citing US officials, that the ships would arrive by late November.
Bloomberg, citing a US official, wrote that the deployment “gives American commanders more options if President Donald Trump chooses to escalate attacks on Iran.”
Axios quoted a US official Thursday as saying the region “could potentially have up to three aircraft carrier strike groups. This is much more firepower.”
The Roosevelt sailed from San Diego on Sunday, and the USS Makin Island amphibious group followed on Monday. Whether the Roosevelt will add to the carriers already in the region or replace one of them has not been decided, Axios reported, citing a second official. The United States already has more than 50,000 troops in the region.
In recent weeks the Trump administration has also sent two more Patriot missile batteries to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Axios reported Thursday, to protect energy facilities “in case President Trump decides to resume major combat operations against Iran.”
On Thursday, as he left the White House, Trump said: “They’ll either sign a very fair deal, or they won’t exist any longer,” The Hill reported.
In an interview with Time magazine conducted Monday and published Thursday, Trump was asked whether he would “ramp up bombing after the midterms.” He answered: “Possible.”
Pressed again, Trump said: “We have a lot of weapons. You know, we’ve been stocking up for the last six months.” Reminded of his threat at the UN to “annihilate” Iran, he said: “Yeah, I would do that. It’s possible.”
Dominant sections of the US media are agitating for an escalation of the war.
In an editorial headlined “The Battle of Hormuz Is Turning,” the Journal’s editors declared Thursday that the US military had “turned around the battle of the Strait of Hormuz.” They wrote: “This is what progress looks like: Iran’s oil is blocked while the world’s oil increasingly gets through.”
The editorial concluded: “The challenge now is to sustain the pressure and push the US tactical advantage to accomplish strategic objectives—finishing the nuclear program or the regime itself.”
At least five tankers have come under attack in or near the Strait since Monday, the shipping news site Riviera reported Friday. On Thursday the Kuwaiti supertanker Kazimah III caught fire after it was struck by what the UK Maritime Trade Operations center called “an unknown projectile.”
The US Navy has blockaded Iran’s ports since July. By Wednesday it had redirected 125 commercial ships, according to the US military, and on September 26 Trump boasted that the blockade was “a wall of steel.”
Reuters reported Thursday, citing three senior Iranian officials and an insider, that Iran is preparing “a broader and more forceful response if the United States resumes large-scale military attacks.” According to the news agency, “Senior commanders are reviewing plans to expand potential targets beyond US-linked assets to countries that support US military operations and possibly to locations outside the Middle East.”
Official figures compiled by Al Jazeera count at least 3,527 people killed in Iran by US and Israeli bombing between February 28, when the two powers launched the war, and August 28. By September 28, the US military had counted 19 American service members dead and 861 wounded.
Leading Democrats spent the past week attacking Trump for losing the war and for “weakness” toward China.
Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona told CNN on Wednesday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should be “figuring out how to win this war in Iran.”
Democratic Representative Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts accused Trump of losing the war in an interview with CNN on September 25. Trump, he said, had sent Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping a message “of appeasement and weakness.”
In remarks on Capitol Hill about Xi’s state visit last week, aired Sunday on “Fox News Sunday,” Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut denounced Trump for “feting and celebrating Xi while he is aiding Iran, which is trying to kill our sons and daughters.” He said he was “shocked and deeply alarmed that the president, in effect, is kowtowing to him and failing to release the money that Taiwan needs to defend itself.”
Democratic Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, interviewed Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” declared: “We can’t leave the Strait in the hands of the Iranians.”
The buildup against Iran is proceeding alongside the escalation of the US-NATO war against Russia, which Moscow has answered with the threat to use nuclear weapons if NATO moves to cut off Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea between Poland and Lithuania.
“Russia would be ready to use all its arsenal, including nuclear weapons, to defend its territory if NATO countries try to isolate Kaliningrad region from the rest of the country,” the Russian embassy in Ireland wrote on September 29.
Russian President Vladimir Putin repeated the threat Thursday at the annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club, a Russian foreign-policy forum. “If it comes to a direct attack on the Russian Federation—in this case, Kaliningrad, although it could potentially involve other territories as well—the question of Russia using all the weapons at its disposal would inevitably and immediately arise,” he said.
Asked about Russia’s warning at a Euronews conference in Brussels on Wednesday, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte responded: “We will defend every inch of NATO territory.”
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President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump before welcoming China’s President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan for tea at the White House, in Washington, DC, on September 25, 2026.
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A House Democrat has filed articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, calling him the “most impeachable president” in U.S. history and accusing him of high crimes and misdemeanors ranging from his war on Iran to his schemes to enrich himself and his allies while in office.
House Judiciary Committee member Rep. Steve Cohen, of Tennessee, introduced 26 impeachment articles on Thursday, covering a broad range of actions from the president since his return to office last year.
Two of the articles focus on Trump’s military aggression, in Iran and in his “extrajudicial killings in the international waters of Venezuela.” Numerous articles are focused on the administration’s actions relating to his mass deportation and anti-immigration agenda, including the administration’s defiance of court orders, imprisonment of immigrants in a notorious torture camp in El Salvador, and deployment of the National Guard to U.S. cities.
Other articles focus on Trump’s attempts to punish his political enemies; his attacks on the press; his alleged misappropriations of federal funds; and his various corruption schemes, including his “profiting personally and directly from the presidency.”
“Trump is clearly the most impeachable President our country has ever endured. His continued presence in office is a danger to our democracy. That the sycophantic Republican majority in Congress is derelict in its duty does not mean that I must abandon my responsibilities,” said Cohen in a statement on the articles. “When historians write about this period, and our constituents ask who stood up to President Trump’s lawlessness, this resolution is the answer.”
Trump has backed down for now in his new bid to control research grants, but his tune could change after the midterms. By Sasha Abramsky , Truthout
September 24, 2026
Like previous attempts to impeach Trump, the articles are doomed to fail under the Republican-controlled Congress.
The latest attempt, by Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), garnered 147 votes to advance the measure, all from Democrats, in a vote earlier this month.
Eighteen Democrats joined Republicans in voting to table the articles, including some of the most conservative Democrats in the caucus like Representatives Jared Golden (D-Maine) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez — who have also twice broken with their caucus to help buoy Republican priorities in recent weeks. Another 46 Democrats voted “present,” including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York).
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) also recently introduced articles of impeachment against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. The eight articles focused on the U.S.’s military campaigns in Iran, Venezuela, Yemen, and in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, while also accusing Hegseth of disregarding civilian safeguards and suppressing the speech of critics. Massie moved to force a House vote on the articles, but was blocked by GOP leaders.
A majority of Americans say that Hegseth should face impeachment, however. Recent polling found that a slim majority, 51 percent, of U.S. voters say that Hegseth should be impeached, The Economist/YouGov found.
25 Years of Truthout: An important fundraising appeal
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Looking to the next 25 years, we launched a special fundraising campaign. We still need to raise $16,000.
We are asking for your support at this juncture because we face greater threats than ever before in our organizational history. Trump and his MAGA allies are determined to control the information ecosystem, and movement-based organizations are subject to dangerous censorship and scrutiny.
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about:blank This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.
Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering international affairs, politics, and labor. She has a master’s degree in environmental studies. She can be found on Twitter and Bluesky.
In truly deranged remarks to world leaders at the UN, Donald Trump declared that “I have a big decision to make,” whether to negotiate a deal with Iran or instead to “annihilate the Islamic Republic” and drive Iran “into hell with no chance of survival.”
He posed it as his personal choice. The fact that the American people are dead set against Trump’s war means nothing. And as for the voters, he added that he gives “absolutely no credence” to the coming midterm elections in deciding on his actions and on Iran’s fate.
The President’s threat to annihilate a member state of the United Nations, delivered from the General Assembly podium, disgraced Trump in front of the world.
Nothing binds this President. He is not bound by law, the Constitution, the UN Charter, or public opinion at home and abroad. When asked at the start of the year whether he has any limits on his power, he said “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
Trump opened his speech with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, hailing America’s freedom. The fact is that Trump’s authoritarianism far outdoes that of King George III, against whom the colonies rebelled. Among the founders’ indictments of Mad King George was that “He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.” Yet our own mad king has decided that the survival of a whole civilization is in his hands alone.
Trump is emboldened in his contempt for Congress because the Republican members of Congress have abdicated their constitutional responsibilities, terrified of their own president, and forsaking their constituents for campaign lucre from AIPAC and the military-industrial complex.
The Constitution is unambiguous regarding Congress’s responsibility. Article I, Section 8 assigns Congress, not the President, the sole power to declare war. That is not a choice or an option. The Constitution doesn’t say that Congress can play dead and let the President declare war. The Framers made this choice deliberately, because they were explicitly rejecting the power of a king to take the nation to war.
In Federalist 69, Hamilton assured the public that the President’s war powers would be far less than the British monarch’s. Madison stated the principle plainly in a letter to Jefferson in 1798: “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Govts demonstrates, that the Ex. is the branch of power most interested in war, & most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature.”
The founders’ careful design has been overturned because of the unconstitutional subservience of the Republican members of Congress to Trump and to the military-industrial-digital complex. And yes, under Democratic presidents, most Democratic members of Congress also looked the other way when those presidents chose to go to war.
The war with Iran is Trump’s folly but Congress’s disgrace for not stopping it. It is a war without a purpose that has created mass suffering in Iran, tens of billions of dollars of direct outlays, and staggering damage to American military bases in eight countries of the Middle East. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has sent world and American prices soaring for oil, gas, fertilizers, and more. And the world has duly noted that Iran can hold its own against US aggression, albeit at great sacrifice to the people of Iran and the region.
America’s much vaunted AI battlefield has been exposed in the most horrifying way. On the first day of the war, an American missile struck the girls’ elementary school there, killing more than 150 people, most of them girls aged seven to twelve, and the military’s own inquiry reportedly found that overreliance on artificial intelligence contributed to the targeting. Trump blamed “Iran or somebody else,” and seven months later the administration has offered no findings, no apology and no compensation to the families.
The President’s threat to annihilate a member state of the United Nations, delivered from the General Assembly podium, disgraced Trump in front of the world. It also violated Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which prohibits even the threat of force against another state. Nearly all the world stands aghast.
I write to you because you cannot simply walk away from Trump’s recklessness, shaking your heads silently. You have a job to do, so do it. The craven Republican Party has to find even a minimal level of guts to tell Trump, “No, you do not have the power to destroy Iran. Any war with Iran depends on us, and we don’t support you and our constituents want this war to stop.” A clear majority of Americans oppose this war, and poll after poll shows that the opposition to the war is growing. A few Republicans have found that courage. Last week three more Republicans broke ranks to support ending the war. Their colleagues should follow.
Many of you receive campaign contributions from military contractors and technology companies deeply involved in the war. Many of you take money from AIPAC, which champions the war that Netanyahu did so much to help launch. This has to stop, as it is a dereliction of your constitutional duty and a violation of your oath.
Congress holds the power of the purse. The fiscal year ends on September 30, and every bill that funds the Pentagon is your opportunity to prohibit funds for unauthorized offensive operations against Iran.
The right course for the US is simple. Congress should cut off funding, and the US should stop further attacks and go home. We need no agreement with Iran or anyone else to stop the war that we started. By ending the war you will immediately restore some sanity and safety to the world energy markets, food supplies, and prices faced by Americans and others around the world.
How America has declined from the glorious moment when John F. Kennedy stood at the same podium at the UN on September 20, 1963, after having negotiated the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union. He told the assembled leaders that the treaty can be a lever, and Archimedes, in explaining the principles of the lever, was said to have declared to his friends: “Give me a place where I can stand—and I shall move the world.” My fellow inhabitants of this planet: Let us take our stand here in this Assembly of nations. And let us see if we, in our own time, can move the world to a just and lasting peace.
Members of Congress, to save our nation’s honor and our Constitution, you must do your duty to stop this war, and stop Trump’s brazen, destructive, and unconstitutional grab for power.
It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits.
It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do.
Many people said we wouldn’t last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong.
Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
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Jeffrey D. Sachs is a University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development. He has been advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Sachs is the author, most recently, of “A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism” (2020). Other books include: “Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, and Sustainable” (2017) and “The Age of Sustainable Development,” (2015) with Ban Ki-moon.
A new poll from The Economist/YouGov found that a majority of registered US voters support impeaching US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, after Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) of Kentucky introduced a resolution to remove him.
The poll, conducted from September 18 to September 21, found that 51% of registered voters surveyed support impeaching Hegseth for starting the war with Iran without congressional authorization, while 34% oppose it. Support for impeachment rises among likely voters to 54%, and opposition rises to 35%.
“This is why [House Speaker Mike Johnson] adjourned Congress to avoid the vote and why the President isn’t defending [Hegseth],” Massie wrote on X in response to the results.
Hegseth before the Senate Appropriations Committee on July 21, 2026 (Pentagon photo)
Massie introduced the articles of impeachment on September 15, and because it was a privileged resolution, a vote had to happen within two days. But Johnson canceled the House’s voting session for September 17, sending lawmakers home early for a long recess that pushes the impeachment vote until after midterm elections.
Impeachment is much more popular among Democrats, with the YouGov poll showing 77% supporting it compared to just 22% of Republicans. But Massie only needs a few Republican votes to pass the impeachment resolution through the House, and seven House Republicans supported the latest War Powers Resolution calling for an end to the war with Iran, signaling that he may get enough.
While the poll asked only about Hegseth’s role in the Iran war, Massie’s eight articles of impeachment also address how Hegseth has ignored US laws designed to mitigate civilian casualties, his role in extrajudicial executions at sea (strikes on alleged drug-running boats), the attack on Venezuela to abduct President Maduro, the bombing campaign in Yemen last year, and his efforts to chill free speech.
Former presidential candidate Ralph Nader listens during a news conference July 2, 2012 at Public Citizen in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
“The Democrats and electorally frightened Republicans pushed Richard Nixon out in 1974 for far, far lesser transgressions than those committed by Trump in a week.”
As Democrats campaign for the November midterm elections after helping kill the latest congressional effort to impeach President Donald Trump, progressive consumer advocate and four-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader this week renewed attacks on the party’s leadership for abandoning their constitutional responsibility to hold the president accountable.
In a September 14 essay published by Current Affairs, Nader argued that Democratic leaders have effectively given up on impeachment even as Trump’s second administration faces continuing allegations of executive overreach and misconduct.
“The chronic prevaricator and delusionist Donald J. Trump knows that the worse his outlaw actions become, the less likely the Democrats in Congress are to impeach him,” the Public Citizen co-founder wrote. “The massive number of blatant, impeachable acts by the lawless, corrupt, violent, systemically racist, unstable, dangerous tyrant increases by the day.”
“The American public knows it,” Nader continued. “The majority of Americans favor impeaching Trump. Among Democrats, it’s 84% in favor, as well as a majority of independents. Polling even shows that most Americans think Trump is a ‘dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy.’”
Yet, “when asked about impeachment, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries [D-NY] replied: ‘We haven’t ruled anything in and we haven’t ruled anything out,’” he noted. “What? Every day, the mega-arsonist is burning down our republic and its Constitution, with tens of millions of Americans suffering and endangered. Yet Jeffries has been noncommittal about whether Democrats would pursue impeachment even if they had a congressional majority.”
In a column republished by Common Dreams earlier this month, Nader wrote, “What must Tyrant Trump be thinking about his opponents’ feeble, weak, cowardly responses to his daily torrent of serious, impeachable offenses?”
“Even his egomaniacal narcissism cannot fully explain his amazing good luck,” he opined.
Earlier this week, the House of Representatives voted 232-147 to table an impeachment resolution introduced by Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), effectively ending the measure’s consideration. Eighteen Democrats joined Republicans in voting to table it, while 46 Democrats—including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries—voted “present.”
Green’s resolution accused Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors arising from the administration’s deadly anti-immigrant crackdown, including alleged violations of civil liberties and due process. Green said before the vote that the Constitution contains no provision requiring Congress to wait before confronting impeachable conduct.
Democratic leaders have attempted to justify their decision not to support Green’s resolution by arguing that impeachment requires a substantial investigative record, hearings, witness testimony, and document review. Jeffries, along with Democratic leaders Katherine Clark of Massachusetts—the House minority whip—and Pete Aguilar of California, the House Democratic Caucus chair, said they would vote “present” because “none of that serious work has been done,” as they jointly explained.
Nader rejects that reasoning. In Current Affairs, he argued that saying Democrats “don’t have the votes” misses the purpose of a sustained impeachment campaign, which he described as a way of building public pressure and organizing voters.
“Impeachment is a mobilizer for get-out-the-vote efforts,” he wrote, as well as “for educating and energizing the people back home.”
Trump has already been impeached twice by the House, although the Senate failed to convict him either time. No other president has been impeached multiple times. Nader has pointed out that Trump’s high crimes and misdemeanors are more grave than those for which then-President Nixon resigned from office in 1974 rather than face impeachment, and that Democrats’ fear of the consequences for impeaching Trump again is no excuse for their cowardice.
“The Democrats and electorally frightened Republicans pushed Richard Nixon out in 1974 for far, far lesser transgressions than those committed by Trump in a week,” he wrote.
The move came after seven House Republicans voted in favor of a resolution to end the Iran war
by Dave DeCamp | September 16, 2026 at 12:54 pm ET
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) announced he has canceled a planned House session for Thursday, sending lawmakers for an early seven-week recess and pushing back a vote to impeach US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth until after the midterm elections.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who introduced the resolution to impeach Hegseth, suspected Johnson might take drastic measures to avoid the vote, so he didn’t inform GOP leadership of his plan to introduce the resolution, which he did on the House floor on Tuesday.
“And there it is. Just as I predicted. They’re canceling Congress tomorrow to avoid the vote on IMPEACHING [Hegseth]. It will also make it harder for us to reach 218 signatures on the Epstein Discharge Petition before the election. We were at 190+ signatures last night,” Massie wrote on X after Johnson canceled the votes.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson talks with reporters about the House finishing votes today instead of on Thursday, in the US Capitol on Wednesday, September 16, 2026. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect)
While Johnson didn’t explicitly say the Hegseth impeachment was the reason for canceling Thursday’s votes, Reese Gorman, a reporter for The Washington Sun, reported right before the cancellation was official that some in House leadership “want to avoid a vote on the Hegseth impeachment set to come up tomorrow since it’s privileged.”
Johnson’s move also came after seven House Republicans voted against the Iran war by voting in favor of a War Powers Resolution that would direct President Trump to end the conflict. The bill passed 220-204, with all 213 Democrats present voting in favor.
The House has held multiple votes on the Iran war, but the Tuesday night vote had the highest number of Republicans supporting a resolution to end the conflict, signaling that Massie may get some Republican support over the Hegseth impeachment since it’s centered on the conflict with Iran.
Both the House and the Senate have already passed a concurrent Iran War Powers Resolution, which, under the 1973 War Powers Act, should direct the president to remove US forces from hostilities with Iran.
Massie argued in his eight articles of impeachment for Hegseth that passing the concurrent War Powers Resolution was one of the multiple ways Hegseth and the administration are breaking the law by continuing the Iran war.
The articles also address how Hegseth has ignored US laws designed to mitigate civilian casualties, his role in extrajudicial executions at sea (strikes on alleged drug-running boats), the attack on Venezuela to abduct President Maduro, the bombing campaign in Yemen last year, and his efforts to chill free speech.
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