The eight articles of impeachment

Section 2(c) of the War Powers Resolution says the President may introduce U.S. forces into hostilities only under a declaration of war, a specific statutory authorization, or a national emergency created by an attack on the United States. The resolution says none of those three existed on February 28, 2026, when the United States and Israel launched what the Pentagon called Operation Epic Fury.

It also disputes the administration's "imminent threat" claim, citing the March 17, 2026 resignation letter of Joe Kent, then Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, who wrote that Iran posed no imminent threat to the nation and that he could not in good conscience support the war.

The two specific abuses alleged: executing the order to commence hostilities without any lawful predicate, and then continuing to commit the Department's personnel and resources to those hostilities with no subsequent authorization from Congress.

Section 5(c) provides that when U.S. forces are engaged in hostilities abroad without a declaration of war or statutory authorization, those forces "shall be removed by the President if the Congress so directs by concurrent resolution." Under the resolution's account, the House agreed to House Concurrent Resolution 86 on June 3, 2026 and the Senate agreed on June 23, 2026, the first time in U.S. history both chambers have passed such a measure.

The resolution charges that on June 26, 2026 and continuously since, Hegseth kept directing U.S. forces into hostilities with Iran, refused to take the steps within his authority to withdraw them, and directed the Department to treat Congress's action as if it did not exist.

This is the article the site's home-page counter tracks: the number of days U.S. forces have remained in hostilities after Congress formally directed their removal.

On March 2, 2026 the President transmitted a letter to Congress "consistent with the War Powers Resolution" reporting the Iran hostilities that began February 28. That report starts a 60-day clock under section 5(b): unless Congress declares war, authorizes the use of force, or extends the period by law, the use of U.S. forces "shall" be terminated.

The resolution says Congress did none of those things; the 60 days ran out on May 1, 2026; the President never sent the written certification of "unavoidable military necessity" that could add a further 30 days for withdrawal; and even if he had, that period would have ended June 1, 2026. Hostilities continued past both dates.

It further charges that the extra 30 days, where they exist, are for bringing troops home, not for pursuing "additional military objectives not authorized by Congress," which is what the resolution says the Department did.

Article IV alleges a "scheme or course of conduct" that degraded the Department's civilian-protection infrastructure before the Iran war began. Among the specifics charged: a May 29, 2025 legislative proposal to repeal 10 U.S.C. § 184, the statute requiring civilian-protection systems; stalling and reversing the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan; eliminating funding for the Army's civilian casualty-tracking database; cutting more than ninety percent of civilian-harm mitigation staff at combatant commands; removing the senior Judge Advocates General of the Army, Navy and Air Force; and issuing a 2026 National Defense Strategy with every reference to civilian protection removed.

The resolution pairs those actions with Hegseth's own public statements about "stupid rules of engagement" and "maximum lethality, not tepid legality," and with the expulsion of the traditional Pentagon press corps.

It then describes the strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, Hormozgan Province, within the first hour of the war on February 28, 2026: three Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from U.S. Navy warships hit the school on a Saturday, the first day of the Iranian working week, while students were inside. According to the resolution, at least 156 civilians were killed, including at least 120 schoolchildren and 26 teachers, with roughly 95 others wounded. The resolution's position is that under the law of armed conflict, an attack can be unlawful for want of verification and precaution even if civilians were not deliberately targeted, and that the verification failed because Hegseth had gutted the systems designed to perform it.

Beginning September 2, 2025, according to the resolution, the Department struck 67 vessels in 63 separate attack events, 44 in the Eastern Pacific and 17 in the Caribbean, killing at least 221 people, mostly in international waters. Congress, it notes, made maritime narcotics offenses federal crimes to be handled through interdiction, arrest and trial in district court (46 U.S.C. §§ 70503–70504), assigned that job to the Coast Guard, and restricted the military's direct participation in law enforcement (10 U.S.C. §§ 274–275).

The resolution describes an August 5, 2025 Execute Order that used "Designated Terrorist Organizations," a category not created by Congress, as the targeting basis; required only "reasonable certainty" of affiliation rather than the "near certainty" standard used for drone strikes on al-Qaeda; and did not require weapons or narcotics to be aboard.

Two incidents are singled out. On September 2, 2025, the resolution says, a first strike capsized a boat with 11 aboard and, about 45 minutes later, a second strike killed the two survivors clinging to the wreckage. On December 30, 2025, three boats were struck roughly 400 nautical miles southwest of Ocos, Guatemala; no rescue assets had been positioned, help arrived about 45 hours later, and all eight shipwrecked survivors had died. The resolution characterizes this as denial of quarter and failure to rescue, and warns it invites adversaries to treat American service members the same way.

It also alleges that a classified interagency legal memorandum was assembled to declare a "non-international armed conflict" with 24 Latin American organizations and to argue the strikes were not "hostilities" because the boats could not shoot back, a theory the resolution says would mean no drone strike anywhere ever counts as hostilities.

On November 18, 2025, Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, a retired Navy captain and former astronaut who sits on the Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, said in a video to service members: "Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders." The resolution notes that this is consistent with United States v. Keenan (1969) and United States v. Calley (1973).

What followed, according to the resolution: a November 24 Department post on X threatening that Kelly could be recalled to active duty for court-martial; a November 25 directive to the Secretary of the Navy to review him; a January 5, 2026 Secretarial Letter of Censure that listed among the offenses saying he would always defend the Constitution and criticizing military leadership for surrounding itself with "yes men"; and a threat of criminal prosecution or reduction of his retired grade if he kept it up.

When Kelly sued on January 12, 2026, the resolution says the Department argued in court that a retired officer serving in the Senate has diminished First Amendment rights, that its actions were unreviewable military personnel decisions, and that Kelly had to exhaust military administrative remedies before an Article III court could hear him. The resolution's conclusion: had that position prevailed, the speech of nearly a fifth of Congress and of millions of retired service members would sit at the discretion of the Department of Defense.

According to the resolution, the operation put more than 200 U.S. special-operations personnel on the ground in Caracas, backed by more than 150 aircraft and drones and a naval force that included the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group and the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group. It suppressed Venezuelan air defenses, struck multiple targets, inserted a ground force, seized Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, killed at least 83 people including civilians, and produced regime change.

The resolution charges three violations: committing acts of war without a declaration by Congress; exercising Congress's exclusive power to "make Rules concerning Captures on Land" where Congress had made none; and entering hostilities in Venezuela in contravention of section 2(c) of the War Powers Resolution.

It also quotes the President's remarks immediately afterward about running Venezuela and sending in American oil companies to argue the operation's actual purpose extended well beyond apprehending a narcotics defendant.

The resolution says Operation Rough Rider ran from March 15 to May 6, 2025, comprised more than 1,100 strikes, and caused an estimated 224 civilian deaths along with roughly 500 to 600 Houthi fighters killed. It notes that in under eight weeks the campaign caused nearly as many civilian deaths in Yemen as U.S. military action there had in the preceding twenty-three years.

Three charges: initiating hostilities without any of the section 2(c) predicates; continuing them after March 17, 2025 even though the required 48-hour report to Congress was not transmitted until March 28; and, most pointedly, acting in the acknowledged absence of an imminent threat.

For that last point the resolution quotes the leaked Signal group chat: the Vice President saying there was a strong argument for delaying a month; Joe Kent saying nothing time-sensitive was driving the timeline; CIA Director Ratcliffe saying a delay would not hurt; and Hegseth himself writing "we can easily pause" before listing the only immediate risks he saw, that the plan would leak and look indecisive, or that Israel would act first. The resolution's reading: a threat you can easily pause is not imminent, and the concerns that actually drove the timing were optics and another country's affairs.