Here is a selection transcribed into modern English in the US National Archives:
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 erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
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:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
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:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us.
What is quite stunning to see is how they reapply 250 years later, apparently with the support of about a third or more of the population and without a civil war breaking out. Trump is responsible for it all. What he wasn’t able to accomplish in his first term has been achieved barely fifteen months into his second. Surrounded by sycophants and a terrified GOP in Congress, he is essentially ruling by decree and ignoring the courts when decisions go against him.
He is guilty of behaving exactly like King George III in the 1770s, a man who certainly became mad later, if he wasn’t already well on the way in 1775. He lost America, and now Trump is repeating the process.
On the war in Iran, a president has the constitutional power to launch military action without the approval of Congress, but he must seek approval if it goes on for more than 60 days. That period ended last Friday, and this was Trump’s dismissive reaction:
Q: Why are you not seeking congressional approval? TRUMP: Because it's never been sought before. They consider it totally unconstitutional. But we're always in touch with Congress. Nobody has ever asked for it before.
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 1 May 2026 at 17:26
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Even on something as important and costly as a war, he’s happy to sideline Congress. Trump really thinks he’s King. It's untrue that nobody ever asked for Congressional approval before.
And it isn’t just domestic law he’s flouting. Drug dealers and innocent fishermen alike are being summarily killed in the Caribbean while he upends international trade with tariffs which are imposed, changed and lifted on a personal whim. Trump has admitted that the USA is behaving like “pirates” in the Persian Gulf, seizing ships and cargo at will. It is, he claims, a “very profitable” business, as it was for Britain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. International law is equally meaningless in Trumpland.
Meanwhile, the six Republican justices on the Supreme Court have finally gutted the 1964 Voting Rights Act which will help to disenfranchise black voters in southern states. We will soon be back to slavery becoming legal again.
Apart from the seizing of power, the profound ignorance of virtually every topic, the weaponisation of government against his political opponents and the massive corruption, he is clearly bonkers. He boasts about having taken three cognitive tests, which are normally taken to show you have no serious mental impairment. He thinks they are IQ tests!! One recent poll shows 55% of Americans think he's mentally unfit to be president.
All of this is a direct result of Project 2025, the Mandate for Leadership, published by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. It misinterprets Article II of the US Constitution, arguing that "....executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America” means bypassing the normal checks and balances and permitting the "modern conservative president" to "limit, control, and direct the executive branch on behalf of the American people."
Conservatives have been working towards this end for decades. Appointing ever more far-right judges to the Supreme Court and allowing corporations to effectively ‘invest’ in corrupt politicians. They wanted a King, and now they’ve got one who is crazy enough to do their bidding.
For a quarter of a millennium, America grew rich, not always holding strictly to the principles in the Constitution. Still, the administrations before Trump usually tried or pretended to try and uphold the ideals set by the founding fathers. Trump simply doesn’t care. The corruption is egregious and open.
Amazingly, a British monarch had to remind America about what democracy is in 2026.
However, note that Project 2025 talks of these executive powers only being used by modern 'conservative' presidents. Allowing a Democrat as POTUS the same far-reaching powers is completely unthinkable.
Watch out for a lot of election gerrymandering when the mid-term elections take place in November.
