This calling of your Congressional representatives seems so inadequate to the moment, Now. Which isn’t even a moment because it’s constantly on the move. In motion. Also, actually depressing.
Especially after reading the clarifying and robust statement of Mike Brock. Surely, We the People have other Alternatives. Surely. Were I to make a call as you and so many other every-bodies suggest; my “soul” would depart my body for breach of contract. Or: if we aren’t of a substance to be separated. I’d simply extinguish.
“The fact that removal is procedurally difficult does not dissolve the moral and constitutional obligation to demand it.” Exactly! Thank you, Mike. This is a critical post you have written and needs to be shared widely, including with the people we elected to represent us in Congress.
I suggest you send the following letter to your governor. State power is what we have now. If you are curious, this is based on the work of Chris Armitage's Existentialist Republic:
Letter to the governor
Governor Newsom,
The people of California, call upon you — with the full weight of your office and the authority vested in you by the Constitution of the State of California — to immediately declare a State of Emergency in response to the unprecedented threats posed by the federal government to our state's sovereignty, institutions, and residents.
The federal government has made clear its willingness to weaponize federal authority against the citizens, communities, and elected representatives of California.
These are not abstract threats.
They represent a direct assault on the rights and protections that Californians depend upon.
Furthermore, crimes have been committed within the borders of our state that the federal government has either refused to investigate, actively ignored, or deliberately declined to prosecute.
This abdication of federal duty leaves our residents without justice and without recourse.
The State of California cannot and must not allow this vacuum of accountability to stand.
We therefore demand you take the following immediate actions:
1. DECLARE A STATE OF EMERGENCY — formally recognizing the threat to California's legal, civic, and institutional integrity posed by current federal actions and directives.
2. DIRECT THE ATTORNEY GENERAL to open full, independent state-level investigations into all crimes committed within California that the federal government has failed to prosecute — regardless of the political sensitivity of those crimes or the individuals involved.
3. MOBILIZE STATE RESOURCES — law enforcement, legal counsel, and legislative authority — to defend California residents from any unlawful federal interference, overreach, or coercion.
4. COMMUNICATE PUBLICLY AND TRANSPARENTLY with the people of California about the specific threats we face and the steps being taken to protect us.
Governor Newsom you were elected to protect this state.
The moment to act is now.
History will not look kindly on silence in the face of threats to democracy, justice, and the rule of law. California is watching.
As “Board of Piece” of the action biz partners, Iran talks failing is a win for Kushner-Witkoff backers & BoP mbers Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, & UAE. BoP needs a war to make money, ie reconstruction of Gaza, Ukraine, Iran ... Right, DT?💰
Trump is using the military and treasury of the U.S. to further the goals of his other job, Chairman of the Board of Peace grift. IMPEACH!!
I'm sorry, but you're standing up in a whorehouse and screaming that fucking is immoral and has to stop.
Stopping all business in Congress to demand impeachment doesn't win Members campaign contributions and it doesn't win votes except perhaps and in the bluest of districts.
If you want to action on this topic it has to start with millions of people coming out in the streets. Demanding that members of Congress be faithful to their oaths of office is a completely vain exercise.
I have more faith in the American people than you do, clearly. They just want someone to tell them the fucking truth. Not fucking talking points about "affordability".
How many books, talk shows, comedians, substacks, are needed? The truth about Trump has been declared. The truth for Trump and his cohorts is to just "make it up."
The American citizenry has been told the Truth. The man and his cronies in power, don't give a rat's ass about what is right. Who voted him into office: TWICE.
Mike, you know, I think, the old saying: "Fuck me over once, shame on you. Fuck me over twice, shame on me." How many times does anyone need to put their hand on a red hot stove?
How many of the adults in the US of voting age watch the news for an hour a day or read a periodical or newspaper or make a comment on a substack.
You see what you want to see, and you hear what you want to hear.
I liked your commentary, despite not understanding your point: "just tell them the fucking truth." They have seen it, felt it, heard it and ignored it, and if not, the reaction of going to a No Kings demonstration and believing that a show of 7 or 14 million Americans out of 348,488,643 will change something is naivete. God, I wish it wasn't.
I don’t have the sources nor the time to look them up this moment but I recall Indivisble and other groups sharing the theory (based on modern historical movements) that if 3-5% of a populace “commits” (to a cause and makes it publicly known, although seemingly small, that’s enough to begin to shift awareness of the whole into change. Granted I don’t think a dopamine addicted, tech-dominated society, and democratic republic on life-support were part of those equations. But the point is a small percentage can, like a drop of blue dye in a mason jar, impact and affect the whole.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.” –Margaret Mead
I am a Pollyanna, despite others thinking that I'm cynical and giving up.
I've been a cancer doctor for 63 years, dealing with horrendous malignancies in people's lives that have been totally turned upside down. And I've always dealt with any such patient with calmness and with the approach, let's look at everything and see what we can do and try to fix things, even if it's little by little until we make a big dent in this disease.
I have taken patients with end-stage cancer and turned their lives around to where they lived a normal life. I used a new protocol for testicular cancer. Back in the late 70s or early 80s, it turned a young man's life from being terminal to being fully functional. And a woman with widespread ovarian cancer throughout her abdominal cavity to being cured. I am not a Pollyanna. I know enough of history, both medical and non-medical, to see how the thinking and doing by one person can change the world.
I also know how one person can destroy the world or cause mass destruction, such as Trump's role model, Adolf Hitler.
But please hear me, when someone is holding all the aces in a deck and the rest of the players are holding deuces, even though there may be 50 other players to the one person holding the aces, he that holds the aces wins the hand. We have allowed Trump to take over every major aspect of the control of the President, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the legal system, the military. All the departments are run by Trump acolytes. Our Department of Justice is not independent of Trump. They are an employee of Trump. When will the American public realize that they can't turn this around by trying to put out all the fires that Trump has started? They have to go after some of the larger gears that are moving his political machinery, and the one that is most fallible is the Republican Congress.
How to do this? Every American should get on the phone every day and call 10 senators and a congressman. And don't give a lame message. Tell them what you think. Our country is being destroyed. Freedom is being lost. Democracy is being replaced by a fascist regime. And many of you who have taken an oath of allegiance to the Constitution have abandoned your morality. Your children and my children and our grandchildren and generations to come will be harmed in a way that we can't possibly imagine. I am asking you as my representative in this country to take the moral path toward that which is right and good, not that which is flagrantly and overtly evil. Do not throw away the baby with the bathwater. An ethical Congress has a possibility of overturning the unlawfulness of President Trump and what has happened and is happening in the Executive Cabinet. Please do your job and remember your oath to the Constitution. That's what I would leave as a message. You have to shorten it, because it'll cut you off. But take the salient parts and leave that message. Write it down and repeat it, and do that ten times a day. There are 348 million Americans in this country. If 200 million Americans were to do this, we would have a chance to effect change.
As suspected, it was Netanyahu who convinced Trump to join Israel in going to war with Iran. So a nation of just under 10M people dictates America’s military decisions when our own Congress isn’t even consulted and the vast percentage of 330M Americans disapprove of war with Iran. Israel gets billions of $$$ in annual aid from America, most of its weapons, and now it gets to spend American blood and tax dollars because it has Trump in its back pocket? Because Kushner and Witkoff have deals to be closed with Israel in Gaza? To be closed in the Arab Gulf states who’ve wanted Shia Iran destroyed for decades? Although Dems don’t have the numbers in Congress for successful impeachment of Trump, even with a third attempt, this regime should properly end with Trump’s impeachment and Senate conviction followed by his trial and conviction for high treason…
Unfortunately impeachment though absolutely necessary is still not enough.
IMPEACH
CONVICT
PROSECUTE
INCARCERATE
And then the hard work begins. After the Revolution the founders realized we needed a government that could somehow be both effective and constrained. After the Civil War it became obvious the constraints of the Bill of Rights must be extended to all if they were to mean anything. Over our existence as a nation we have made some progress toward the vision of our founders but also failed in instantiating it . We now find that what was once the freest nation on earth has serious constitutional work to do to
At a minimum, the call for Impeachment is important for the reason you suggest. A historical accounting. But now I’m imagining the destruction of historical records in a near future. The opposite of data collection. Humanities entirety of its past mostly destroyed along the same. Archival Upheaval. Like we were never here. What a tremendous Waste.
Also, don't forget how the US has been starving Cuba deliberately since the start of this year (right around the same time that the US kidnapped Maduro) in order to force regime change there, and are now planning to let some oil shipments (from Venezuelan fields now controlled by US oil companies) through to "relieve the humanitarian crisis": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Cuban_crisis
The US caused the humanitarian crisis it is now purporting to relieve. Just another move in the hissy fit they've been throwing since their chosen dictator got overthrown in the late 1950s. (Just like how they've been throwing a nearly half-century-long tantrum about how the current Iranian regime overthrew the dictator they worked so hard to install after Mohammad Mosaddegh said he was going to nationalise Iran's oil.)
(None of this is to say that either the Cuban communists or the Iranian clerics are good. They aren't. But it's clear where the US animosity came from.)
The regime in Iran killed thousands of people, deprived and destroyed the lives of millions. I do not cry for them. But the war indeed unconstitutional and there is no strategy and clear goals. Trump doesn’t understand anything. The military can execute orders, but can not define political or geopolitical goals. I strongly believe, this war in this way is just Trump and Netanyahu plan for their domestic political survival.
I agree with Mike's reporting on Iran. My surmise: It's Trump and Hegseth, in their infantile, big boy video game mode, blowing up people and places as if it were all just a gag.
And behind EVERY thing that Trump & Associates do, look for the deal. The great and experienced diplomat, Jared Kushner, and Steve Wycoff, probably could not get the Iranians to cough up trace minerals or oil or a Trump Hotel, so no deal, then kick their ass. No deal with Zelensky, withdraw support. No deal with Iran, bomb the crap and murder civilians. No deal with Venezuela.... not quite, but what happened to the regime change there??? That was opportunity to more easily do a regime change but Donny said no.
I would hope to see Trump removed from office, by impeachment or by any legal process but legality and justice in the US is a thing of the past and has been going downhill for decades.
Mike, I see your thoughts but even if the Democrats refuse to participate in any form of government business, Trump et al will operate as they are doing: No restraints, No attention to Rule of Law, and full disregard to follow the Constitution. Mike, your playing gin rummy, and they are playing a card game with rules that they have made up. Example: Epstein files release and Bondi's refusal to release more files.
We have met the Fascist, and he has taken over our house. His rules, are now House Rules. The complicit Republican Congress, The corrupt SCOTUS with Alito and Thomas, the lame Democratic Party during the Biden years, and the Founding Fathers who never dreamed that the citizenry could become so apathetic, or naive in who they would vote to be Commander-in-Chief ⇢ The Perfect Storm. Or, as Trump would say, "like you've never seen it before."
ONLY HOPE: massive demonstrations & I mean massive. Non-stop phone and emails to all members of Congress, no matter what state you live in and no matter what party affiliation.
Call and spend 2 hours of your day and make a list of each Senator and Congressman you call.
The Constitution is clear. One individual can not legally start a war: only the Congress can do that. In this millennia every president is guilty. In the last century you have to go back to the Second World War to find a legally declared war.
I have written my Democratic Senators and my spineless Republican weasel of a Representative demanding exactly this.
call, each of us, commit to calling 10 Senators and/or Congressman per day; leave a message if you get voice mail.
⫸ https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Congressmen and Senators- links to Washington, DC, telephone numbers.
https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
This calling of your Congressional representatives seems so inadequate to the moment, Now. Which isn’t even a moment because it’s constantly on the move. In motion. Also, actually depressing.
Especially after reading the clarifying and robust statement of Mike Brock. Surely, We the People have other Alternatives. Surely. Were I to make a call as you and so many other every-bodies suggest; my “soul” would depart my body for breach of contract. Or: if we aren’t of a substance to be separated. I’d simply extinguish.
“The fact that removal is procedurally difficult does not dissolve the moral and constitutional obligation to demand it.” Exactly! Thank you, Mike. This is a critical post you have written and needs to be shared widely, including with the people we elected to represent us in Congress.
I hope you will help me in that endeavor.
I wish they would do that too protect our country. We can’t wait.
I suggest you send the following letter to your governor. State power is what we have now. If you are curious, this is based on the work of Chris Armitage's Existentialist Republic:
Letter to the governor
Governor Newsom,
The people of California, call upon you — with the full weight of your office and the authority vested in you by the Constitution of the State of California — to immediately declare a State of Emergency in response to the unprecedented threats posed by the federal government to our state's sovereignty, institutions, and residents.
The federal government has made clear its willingness to weaponize federal authority against the citizens, communities, and elected representatives of California.
These are not abstract threats.
They represent a direct assault on the rights and protections that Californians depend upon.
Furthermore, crimes have been committed within the borders of our state that the federal government has either refused to investigate, actively ignored, or deliberately declined to prosecute.
This abdication of federal duty leaves our residents without justice and without recourse.
The State of California cannot and must not allow this vacuum of accountability to stand.
We therefore demand you take the following immediate actions:
1. DECLARE A STATE OF EMERGENCY — formally recognizing the threat to California's legal, civic, and institutional integrity posed by current federal actions and directives.
2. DIRECT THE ATTORNEY GENERAL to open full, independent state-level investigations into all crimes committed within California that the federal government has failed to prosecute — regardless of the political sensitivity of those crimes or the individuals involved.
3. MOBILIZE STATE RESOURCES — law enforcement, legal counsel, and legislative authority — to defend California residents from any unlawful federal interference, overreach, or coercion.
4. COMMUNICATE PUBLICLY AND TRANSPARENTLY with the people of California about the specific threats we face and the steps being taken to protect us.
Governor Newsom you were elected to protect this state.
The moment to act is now.
History will not look kindly on silence in the face of threats to democracy, justice, and the rule of law. California is watching.
The people demand action.
Respectfully but urgently
I would support this, to be clear.
DT’S PEACE ENVOYS DIDN’T FAIL
As “Board of Piece” of the action biz partners, Iran talks failing is a win for Kushner-Witkoff backers & BoP mbers Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, & UAE. BoP needs a war to make money, ie reconstruction of Gaza, Ukraine, Iran ... Right, DT?💰
Trump is using the military and treasury of the U.S. to further the goals of his other job, Chairman of the Board of Peace grift. IMPEACH!!
The Man Who Stole America, by Donald J. Trump & fellow criminals. Trump will be selling his book soon.
This is so on point! I just wish we had strong Democratic leadership 😥. We need fighters now more than ever.
Thanks for this excellent article.
I'm sorry, but you're standing up in a whorehouse and screaming that fucking is immoral and has to stop.
Stopping all business in Congress to demand impeachment doesn't win Members campaign contributions and it doesn't win votes except perhaps and in the bluest of districts.
If you want to action on this topic it has to start with millions of people coming out in the streets. Demanding that members of Congress be faithful to their oaths of office is a completely vain exercise.
I have more faith in the American people than you do, clearly. They just want someone to tell them the fucking truth. Not fucking talking points about "affordability".
How many books, talk shows, comedians, substacks, are needed? The truth about Trump has been declared. The truth for Trump and his cohorts is to just "make it up."
The American citizenry has been told the Truth. The man and his cronies in power, don't give a rat's ass about what is right. Who voted him into office: TWICE.
Mike, you know, I think, the old saying: "Fuck me over once, shame on you. Fuck me over twice, shame on me." How many times does anyone need to put their hand on a red hot stove?
How many of the adults in the US of voting age watch the news for an hour a day or read a periodical or newspaper or make a comment on a substack.
You see what you want to see, and you hear what you want to hear.
I liked your commentary, despite not understanding your point: "just tell them the fucking truth." They have seen it, felt it, heard it and ignored it, and if not, the reaction of going to a No Kings demonstration and believing that a show of 7 or 14 million Americans out of 348,488,643 will change something is naivete. God, I wish it wasn't.
I don’t have the sources nor the time to look them up this moment but I recall Indivisble and other groups sharing the theory (based on modern historical movements) that if 3-5% of a populace “commits” (to a cause and makes it publicly known, although seemingly small, that’s enough to begin to shift awareness of the whole into change. Granted I don’t think a dopamine addicted, tech-dominated society, and democratic republic on life-support were part of those equations. But the point is a small percentage can, like a drop of blue dye in a mason jar, impact and affect the whole.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.” –Margaret Mead
I am a Pollyanna, despite others thinking that I'm cynical and giving up.
I've been a cancer doctor for 63 years, dealing with horrendous malignancies in people's lives that have been totally turned upside down. And I've always dealt with any such patient with calmness and with the approach, let's look at everything and see what we can do and try to fix things, even if it's little by little until we make a big dent in this disease.
I have taken patients with end-stage cancer and turned their lives around to where they lived a normal life. I used a new protocol for testicular cancer. Back in the late 70s or early 80s, it turned a young man's life from being terminal to being fully functional. And a woman with widespread ovarian cancer throughout her abdominal cavity to being cured. I am not a Pollyanna. I know enough of history, both medical and non-medical, to see how the thinking and doing by one person can change the world.
I also know how one person can destroy the world or cause mass destruction, such as Trump's role model, Adolf Hitler.
But please hear me, when someone is holding all the aces in a deck and the rest of the players are holding deuces, even though there may be 50 other players to the one person holding the aces, he that holds the aces wins the hand. We have allowed Trump to take over every major aspect of the control of the President, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the legal system, the military. All the departments are run by Trump acolytes. Our Department of Justice is not independent of Trump. They are an employee of Trump. When will the American public realize that they can't turn this around by trying to put out all the fires that Trump has started? They have to go after some of the larger gears that are moving his political machinery, and the one that is most fallible is the Republican Congress.
How to do this? Every American should get on the phone every day and call 10 senators and a congressman. And don't give a lame message. Tell them what you think. Our country is being destroyed. Freedom is being lost. Democracy is being replaced by a fascist regime. And many of you who have taken an oath of allegiance to the Constitution have abandoned your morality. Your children and my children and our grandchildren and generations to come will be harmed in a way that we can't possibly imagine. I am asking you as my representative in this country to take the moral path toward that which is right and good, not that which is flagrantly and overtly evil. Do not throw away the baby with the bathwater. An ethical Congress has a possibility of overturning the unlawfulness of President Trump and what has happened and is happening in the Executive Cabinet. Please do your job and remember your oath to the Constitution. That's what I would leave as a message. You have to shorten it, because it'll cut you off. But take the salient parts and leave that message. Write it down and repeat it, and do that ten times a day. There are 348 million Americans in this country. If 200 million Americans were to do this, we would have a chance to effect change.
Hallelujah. Yes, stand up and speak out. But there's a football game I just can't miss.
ACT: Action, Commitment, Togetherness but don't AIL (apathy, indifference to cause, lack of unity)
Is it already too late for America to escape the vortex of this TRUMP/MAGA/GOP black hole?
Treason is everywhere afoot.
Yet your patriot Reveres are sounding like sad Cassandras!
I wish you luck ... and heroes.
US seems painfully short on heroes
What's needed is not impeachment.
What's needed is a vote of no confidence.
A pity the US developed its political system before it had better examples.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/us/politics/trump-war-iran-israel.html
As suspected, it was Netanyahu who convinced Trump to join Israel in going to war with Iran. So a nation of just under 10M people dictates America’s military decisions when our own Congress isn’t even consulted and the vast percentage of 330M Americans disapprove of war with Iran. Israel gets billions of $$$ in annual aid from America, most of its weapons, and now it gets to spend American blood and tax dollars because it has Trump in its back pocket? Because Kushner and Witkoff have deals to be closed with Israel in Gaza? To be closed in the Arab Gulf states who’ve wanted Shia Iran destroyed for decades? Although Dems don’t have the numbers in Congress for successful impeachment of Trump, even with a third attempt, this regime should properly end with Trump’s impeachment and Senate conviction followed by his trial and conviction for high treason…
Restacked with this comment:
Unfortunately impeachment though absolutely necessary is still not enough.
IMPEACH
CONVICT
PROSECUTE
INCARCERATE
And then the hard work begins. After the Revolution the founders realized we needed a government that could somehow be both effective and constrained. After the Civil War it became obvious the constraints of the Bill of Rights must be extended to all if they were to mean anything. Over our existence as a nation we have made some progress toward the vision of our founders but also failed in instantiating it . We now find that what was once the freest nation on earth has serious constitutional work to do to
At a minimum, the call for Impeachment is important for the reason you suggest. A historical accounting. But now I’m imagining the destruction of historical records in a near future. The opposite of data collection. Humanities entirety of its past mostly destroyed along the same. Archival Upheaval. Like we were never here. What a tremendous Waste.
Also, don't forget how the US has been starving Cuba deliberately since the start of this year (right around the same time that the US kidnapped Maduro) in order to force regime change there, and are now planning to let some oil shipments (from Venezuelan fields now controlled by US oil companies) through to "relieve the humanitarian crisis": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Cuban_crisis
The US caused the humanitarian crisis it is now purporting to relieve. Just another move in the hissy fit they've been throwing since their chosen dictator got overthrown in the late 1950s. (Just like how they've been throwing a nearly half-century-long tantrum about how the current Iranian regime overthrew the dictator they worked so hard to install after Mohammad Mosaddegh said he was going to nationalise Iran's oil.)
(None of this is to say that either the Cuban communists or the Iranian clerics are good. They aren't. But it's clear where the US animosity came from.)
The regime in Iran killed thousands of people, deprived and destroyed the lives of millions. I do not cry for them. But the war indeed unconstitutional and there is no strategy and clear goals. Trump doesn’t understand anything. The military can execute orders, but can not define political or geopolitical goals. I strongly believe, this war in this way is just Trump and Netanyahu plan for their domestic political survival.
I agree with Mike's reporting on Iran. My surmise: It's Trump and Hegseth, in their infantile, big boy video game mode, blowing up people and places as if it were all just a gag.
And behind EVERY thing that Trump & Associates do, look for the deal. The great and experienced diplomat, Jared Kushner, and Steve Wycoff, probably could not get the Iranians to cough up trace minerals or oil or a Trump Hotel, so no deal, then kick their ass. No deal with Zelensky, withdraw support. No deal with Iran, bomb the crap and murder civilians. No deal with Venezuela.... not quite, but what happened to the regime change there??? That was opportunity to more easily do a regime change but Donny said no.
I would hope to see Trump removed from office, by impeachment or by any legal process but legality and justice in the US is a thing of the past and has been going downhill for decades.
Mike, I see your thoughts but even if the Democrats refuse to participate in any form of government business, Trump et al will operate as they are doing: No restraints, No attention to Rule of Law, and full disregard to follow the Constitution. Mike, your playing gin rummy, and they are playing a card game with rules that they have made up. Example: Epstein files release and Bondi's refusal to release more files.
We have met the Fascist, and he has taken over our house. His rules, are now House Rules. The complicit Republican Congress, The corrupt SCOTUS with Alito and Thomas, the lame Democratic Party during the Biden years, and the Founding Fathers who never dreamed that the citizenry could become so apathetic, or naive in who they would vote to be Commander-in-Chief ⇢ The Perfect Storm. Or, as Trump would say, "like you've never seen it before."
ONLY HOPE: massive demonstrations & I mean massive. Non-stop phone and emails to all members of Congress, no matter what state you live in and no matter what party affiliation.
Call and spend 2 hours of your day and make a list of each Senator and Congressman you call.
That's the glimmer of hope as I see it.
Now we have hit rock bottom.
I too am concerned about the powers of an individual to begin a war. Which other USA Presidents have done this, legally or otherwise?
The Constitution is clear. One individual can not legally start a war: only the Congress can do that. In this millennia every president is guilty. In the last century you have to go back to the Second World War to find a legally declared war.
Not a great set of precedents then! (from UK)
The “legal” wars were the same horror. Just hoop jumping.
This executive is just hoop skirting. Same result.