Democratic members of Congress have filed articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth while nearly 100 congressional Democrats are calling for the president’s removal from office over his threats to Iran.
Rep. John Larson of Connecticut has filed 13 articles of impeachment against Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors, including the president’s “criminal lawlessness” that has “invited blowback against the United States and its citizens risking 9/11 2.0.”
The congressman accuses Trump of a “serial usurpation of the congressional war power” and “commission of murder, war crimes and piracy” with attacks in Iran, Venezuela and in international waters against alleged drug-running boats and elsewhere.
His proposal also accuses the president of illegally militarizing law enforcement and surging immigration officers into U.S. cities to unlawfully detain and deport “citizens or immigrants based significantly on race or ethnicity or political opposition.”
“Donald Trump has blown past every requirement to be removed from office. And it’s getting worse,” Larson said in a statement.
“His illegal war in Iran is not only driving up prices for American families — it has cost American lives,” he added. “He’s becoming more unstable by the day.”
The congressman’s proposal was drafted by consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader and constitutional law scholar Bruce Fein, who called the war “flagrantly unconstitutional” in The American Conservative this week.
“Trump’s attack on Iran in partnership with Israel was not in self-defense. It is a criminal war of aggression, plain and simple, including a violation of the United Nations Charter,” wrote Fein as he urged Congress to “do its job” and swiftly block spending and troop deployment.
White House spokesman Davis Ingle called Larson’s proposal “pathetic.”
“Democrats have been talking about impeaching President Trump since before he was even sworn into office,” he told The Independent. “The Democrats in Congress are deranged, weak, and ineffective, which is why their approval ratings are at historic lows.”
Larson’s articles of impeachment follow similar legislation targeting Hegseth.
The proposal from Democratic Arizona Rep. Yassamin Ansari, who is the daughter of Iranian immigrants and the first Democratic member of Congress of Iranian descent, accuses Hegseth of “repeatedly violating his oath of office and his duty to the Constitution.”
“Only Congress has the power to declare war, not a rogue president or his lackeys,” she said in a statement. “Hegseth’s reckless endangerment of U.S. servicemembers and repeated war crimes, including bombing a girls’ school in Minab, Iran and willfully targeting civilian infrastructure, are grounds for impeachment and removal from office.”
On Tuesday, less than two hours before his self-imposed deadline to begin launching attacks that he said would destroy a “whole civilization,” the president announced a two-week pause in fighting while negotiations with Iran continue.
In an Easter message, Trump told Iran to “Open the F****’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell.”
“The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night,” Trump said Monday.
The next morning, he wrote: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”
His threats drew a wave of demands from congressional Democrats for the Trump administration to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove the president from office.
Several influential right-wing personalities — including Alex Jones, Candace Owens and Marjorie Taylor Green — also called on the administration to invoke the 25th Amendment, while Tucker Carlson advised military officials to reject the president’s plans.
At least 87 Democratic members of Congress, including several senators, publicly demanded Trump’s removal, according to The Independent’s review of their statements.
“Donald Trump's instability is more clear and dangerous than ever,” wrote former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “If the Cabinet is not willing to invoke the 25th Amendment and restore sanity, Republicans must reconvene the Congress to end this war.”
The 25th Amendment, which provides for the line of presidential succession, allows for the vice president and a majority of the cabinet to declare the president unfit to serve.
Rep. Jasmine Crocket wrote a letter to Vice President JD Vance, claiming that the president is “deranged, likely suffering from dementia, and has now brought the United States to the precipice of committing one of the largest war crimes in modern history.”
“The United States now stands isolated as the world awaits whether America will brazenly commit genocide or whether the Vice President, the Cabinet, and the Congress will put an end to the chaos caused by a frail and likely demented American president,” she wrote.
The proposals are unlikely to go anywhere under the current Republican-controlled Congress, and the president has built his cabinet around ironclad allegiance to him.
Democratic leadership did not call on their Republican counterparts this week to bring lawmakers back to the Capitol to pass a war powers resolution to curb the president’s actions, and GOP leadership in the House and Senate are unlikely to do so when they return.
But Trump, who was impeached twice in his first administration, has publicly mused about his potential impeachment if Republicans lose control of both chambers after midterm elections this fall.
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