Declaration of Independence II

En mass and online assembled, July 4, 2026

The Declaration of the People of the fifty united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with an unfortunate leader, and to re-assume among the powers of the earth, the leading and respected station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their genetics with innate Intelligence, which any just society must nurture to its full extent, and by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, among which are a Health, Education, Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, 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 or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Health, Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established 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 throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these United States; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present occupier of the White House is a history of repeated injuries, injustices and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of a personal Tyranny over these States and their People.

To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world:

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Party Members 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 refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts and groups 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 has called together administrative bodies and personnel 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 has dissolved and decimated established Administrative and Military bodies repeatedly, and dismissed their Personnel, merely for opposing with courage and firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused, for a long time after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected or appointed, with the sole purpose of avoiding or delaying application of the usual Criteria and Experience for their offices; whereby the Legislative and Administrative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People or the Legitimate Representatives 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 endeavoured to prevent the population of these States by Foreigners eager, carefully examined and qualified for that role; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalizing Foreigners and their rights to due process; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands for public purposes and environmental preservation.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for confirming and establishing Judiciary powers and by infringing repeatedly on the rights and powers of People and Officers duly established by Congress.

He has tried to make Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries and has endeavored to influence their decisions by repeated threats, public condemnation, personal pressure and even public prosecution for imaginary crimes.

He has appointed and relied on a multitude of family members and business acquaintances as advisors, and delegates to domestic and foreign political bodies, thereby circumventing established procedures and limits for delegating national powers to individuals.

He has sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies, allegedly for the purpose of controlling immigration, without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power and has appointed grossly unqualified individuals to lead the Military and intelligence services for partisan political purposes.

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 Dispersing large bodies of armed troops among us:
For condoning the attack of some 1,500 our own Capitol on January 6, 2021, with the intent to change our government unlawfully:
For protecting its perpetrators, by an indiscriminate pardon, from punishment for their Murders, assaults and other crimes which they committed on police lawfully protecting the Capitol, on bystanders, and on the offices, property and papers of the legitimate representatives of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world by means of repeated, haphazard, and inconsistent Tariffs and bans on imports and exports:
For imposing Taxes on the poorest and us, and relieving taxes on the richest of us, without our Consent, by dubious regulations and executive orders having no approval from Congress:
For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For trying our Citizens in the public sphere and the press and subjecting them to harassment, persecution and injury or death at the hands of unauthorized private parties:
For transporting allegedly unlawful immigrants beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For threatening to invade and abolish two independent neighbouring Provinces, with military action and occupation and the establishment of an unwanted government, and to enlarge our Boundaries by force or threat of force, without the consent of the people of those Provinces;
For taking away our Charters, abolishing or ignoring our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For attempting to suspend or suppress our own Legislatures in favor of rule by a single Executive, and declaring that Executive to be invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring People out of his favor, including racial and ethnic minorities and recent immigrants, and denying them Protection of the laws and our Government.
He has plundered the seas, ravaged the Coasts of foreign nations without a declaration of war or assent by Congress, burnt their towns, and destroyed the lives of their people.
He has at this time transported large Armies to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens in our Armed Forces to execute people on the high Seas on mere suspicion of inimical or illegal action, and thus to commit crimes against Humanity and violate the Laws of War.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to oppress the Native Americans among us, without regard to their rights and their crucial assistance in past world wars.

He has reduced our public discourse on critical issues of politics and State to the level of a barroom Brawl.

He has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons, thereby risking species self-extinction.

He has consistently disparaged and attempted to outlaw the most modern, least costly and most pollution-free means of generating power, thereby exacerbating the threat of planetary heating and crippling our nation’s engineering and scientific advancement.

He has dismissed experts in science, technology, medicine, warmaking and military intelligence, throughout our national government, and replaced them with unqualified cronies, thereby impeding our nation’s scientific, technical, and economic advancement and endangering our national security.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attention to our Constitution and our own fundamental law. We have warned the Tyrant and his cronies from time to time of attempts by them to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our own emigration and settlement here and the transcendent value and human rights of all our People, including past and present immigrants. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity that compels a Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in Politics and War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these United States, solemnly publish and declare, That these United States and their People are, and of Right ought to be Free, Independent and governed absolutely by their written Constitution; that they are Absolved from all duty to this self-declared tyrant, and that all political connection between them and him, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States and people, they have full power, through their legitimately elected representatives, to terminate the oppressive and unlawful rule of this usurper, to impeach and remove him from office at the earliest opportunity, to send him to the Hague for prosecution for his Usurpations and Crimes against humanity, and to restore our Nation to its former greatness, adherence to law and its Constitution and the principles of the Enlightenment. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Let us all sign here, please! [Note to readers: In drafting this document, I of course started with the original, as transcribed by our National Archives, here. I was surprised, if not astonished, to see how little I had to change to transform the list of legitimate grievances against King George III into those against Donald Trump.

Virtually all of the former have counterparts in the latter, except, of course, those based on the progress of Science (which was just beginning in 1776) and the too-slow interim extension of the Rights of Man to former slaves and Native Americans. The other thing that astonished me was how similar were the transgressions against humanity, justice, Reason, proper procedure, the rule of law, and democratic principles.

King George III probably did not suffer from the same abject stupidity, advancing senile dementia and malignant narcissism as Trump. At least King George’s narcissism was probably not much more striking than that of any king of his era. And King George III seems to have lacked the gross vulgarity, crudity and simplicity of our president. But isn’t the resemblance of the situation and the legitimate personal and societal grievances astonishing?

It remains to be seen whether our Congress, after the Midterms, can act half as courageously as our Founders, do its obligatory job and, with the aid of the several Republican senators whom Trump has made lame ducks, send this vile usurper packing. If not, our nation, with all its precarious wealth and erstwhile promise, will probably follow ancient Rome down into the dustbin of history, with characteristic “Warp Speed.”]