Congress Must Impeach and Remove Trump and Other Key Trump Officials Involved In Flagrant Abuses of Power

On February 28, 2026, Trump, with and through high-ranking members of his administration, by abusing the might of the U.S. military, and in coordination with the Israeli government, carried out an unprovoked, large-scale military attack on the sovereign country of Iran, causing a cascade of violence throughout the Middle East, with catastrophic consequences for civilian lives and regional stability.

In just one day, the Trump administration and the Israeli government bombed multiple sites across 24 provinces throughout the country. Iran’s Red Crescent has reported that at least 200 people are dead and more than 700 injured after the first day of bombings. One of the sites hit: A girls’ elementary school in Minab, with early reports suggesting that 80-100 schoolchildren have been killed, with more missing.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, was targeted and killed in the strikes along with other members of the country’s senior leadership, leaving serious and as-yet unanswered questions about who might fill the vacuum he leaves behind. Iran immediately responded with retaliatory strikes of six neighboring countries, including multiple international airports, ports, and civilian-occupied buildings. Hezbollah has launched strikes against Israel in retaliation and Israel responded by bombing Lebanon. Four U.S. servicemembers based in Kuwait have been killed and five more seriously wounded. And, Trump has warned that more will likely be killed in the coming weeks of his illegal and unconstitutional operation: “that’s the way it is.” Hundreds of people are dead throughout the region, travelers throughout the world are stranded, and oil prices are skyrocketing. The United States and Israel continue to bomb Iran, hitting more than 1,000 targets, while the US Congress, which holds the sole authority to declare war under the war powers clause of the U.S. Constitution, authorized none of this.

This is the second time since taking office in 2025 that Trump unlawfully and unconstitutionally bombed Iran. And it is the second time in just two months that he has ordered and carried out an unlawful, unconstitutional attack on a sovereign nation, after attacking Venezuela in January 2026. Congress should have impeached him after each of these unprovoked, illegal, unconstitutional, and breathtakingly ill-prepared attacks. It failed to do so, in clear dereliction of its obligations pursuant to the impeachment clause. And as a result, Trump remained free to undertake this devastating attack on Iran, embroil the United States in a costly war in terms of money and lives, and undermine stability throughout the Middle East.

Khamenei was not a democratic leader. Over the long course of his reign, he turned Iran into a de facto military dictatorship, entrenching the militaristic theocracy that his predecessor put into place in 1979. His government has brutally repressed protesters who advocate for change. But there is no evidence that Trump acted on behalf of democratic values or to protect the Iranian people. In the months leading up to his attack on Iran, Trump purposefully crippled international democracy movements across the world, including in Venezuela and Iran, by unlawfully shuttering the U.S. Agency for International Development and terminating grants that supported pro-democracy efforts in some of the world’s most totalitarian regimes, including in Iran. In the weeks prior to the attack, Vice President Vance dismissively announced that the United States would welcome a deal with Iran even after Iran massacred thousands of its own citizens, and left the project of democracy up to the country’s civilians: “If the Iranian people want to overthrow the regime, that’s up to the Iranian people.” And Trump is still not promising support to the now bombed and battered country: “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.” There is, in fact, real concern that Trump’s heedless assault on Iran will only entrench the military autocracy that has controlled Iran for more than fifty years.

Whether or not the people of Iran are able to wrest democratic control from a totalitarian regime, these facts do not permit Trump to usurp the war powers authority that were granted solely to Congress by the Framers, who feared that assigning the power to make war to the President “would render the Executive a Monarch, of the worst kind . . . an elect[ed] one.” They sought to avoid precisely what we have seen: an enormous abuse of American military powers without the care, planning, attentiveness to the rule of law, or respect for the value of civilian and military lives that should inform any war into which the United States enters—and which are utterly absent here.

Nor do these facts authorize Trump to violate the international treaties to which the United States is party, or to violate basic human rights. He has again demonstrated a blatant disregard of article 2, section 4 of the U.N. Charter, as well as for the protections afforded to civilians by the  Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. The Charter, the founding document of the United Nations and a treaty binding on the United States, obligates its members to “refrain in their international relation from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” U.N. Charter art. 2 sec. 4. The Fourth Geneva Convention, also binding on the United States, prohibits violence against civilians and affords particular protections to children. Parties to a conflict must treat all civilians (and surrendered or injured soldiers) “humanely,” and prohibits in relevant part “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture.” Geneva Convention IV art. 3. It does not allow for the bombing of civilian targets or the murder of school children.

Under section of article II of the U.S. Constitution, Trump is obligated to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” a requirement that includes treaties (notably, the Supremacy Clause, U.S. Const. art. VI, § 2, confirms that “all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land”). The Trump administration—despite earlier statements to the contrary—has admitted to Congress that there was no intelligence that Iran was planning to attack U.S. forces first. His attack on Iran therefore constitutes an aggressive violation of Iran’s territorial integrity and political independence, in a clear violation of the U.N. Charter and the Take Care Clause of the U.S. Constitution; and his bombing of an elementary school violates the Fourth Geneva Convention.

As we said when Trump bombed Venezuela: “To carry out this attack, Trump committed a breathtaking number of offenses against the U.S. Constitution, U.S. law, the American people, and international law; and he has implicated not only himself but the United States as a whole and the U.S. military in the crime of aggression and other war crimes. Congress’s duty is clear, now more so than ever: in order to protect the United States, it must impeach Trump and any senior official who participated in the unlawful attack . . . .” The same is true now.

The attack on Iran is an egregious abuse of power that warrants impeachment and removal from office. It is a crime of aggression, long defined by the United Nations as “the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations.” Aggression cannot be justified, “whether political, economic, military or otherwise,” and is considered not just a crime against the victim nation, but “against international peace.” See U.N. General Assembly Resolution XXIX. It is a war that has already cost the lives of dozens of school children as a direct result of America’s bombing campaign. It is a crime with tremendous cost for the victim country, for the people of the aggressor country, and for the stability of the region in which the crime is committed. The United States and its allies in the Middle East have already suffered retaliation, massive disruptions to the global economy, and the United States remains at high risk for becoming entrenched in a long-term, rudderless war as an occupying country, the costs of which the American people will bear.

Congress is not helpless. Its continued refusal to abide by the separations of power established by the Framers and its willingness to cede tyrannical control of our country’s military might to an abusive executive is a clear dereliction of its duties to the American people. Congress has an obligation to use the power entrusted to it by the Framers to impeach, convict, and remove leaders who defiantly and egregiously trample over our Constitution. Ignorance of the attack beforehand does not excuse congressional inaction in its aftermath. Inaction is a choice.

For Congress, now as ever: silence is complicity. Inaction is complicity. The United States is bombing a foreign country, has killed its leader, has killed civilian children, has left its allies throughout the Middle East vulnerable, and has no plan to protect the people on the ground in the targeted countries. The attack has harmed the security of the American people, undermined our democracy, and implicated our country in war crimes. If our Congress is committed to the Constitution, to the laws of this country, and to the treaties that secure a global peace, then it must impeach, convict, and remove from office Trump and other key Trump officials involved in these flagrant abuses of power.