Celebrating the Fourth: Let the Declaration of Independence Decide if Trump is a Tyrant

Celebrating the Fourth

Happy Fourth of July, y’all! Let’s have some good old fashioned snarky, sarcasticky, profaney American fun!

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

Declaration of Independence

The Fourth of July is the anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. We all know the Declaration, right? It has those famous words: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Hoo doggies, that’s good stuff straight off the BBQ grill!

They went on to say that if these unalienable rights were violated, then dissolving our political association was justified. We all know that, but it is more implied, more of a “Yeah, right, I knew that.” But few people really know that they did more. They listed twenty-seven specific ways that King George III had harmed the colonies as justification for our revolution, which they didn’t want to have. They just wanted to be treated fairly. They just wanted to be loved by old King George.

The Grievances against King George in the Declaration

Let’s take a deep dive into those twenty-seven complaints and see how El Gran Jefe Estúpido does on the uniquely American tyrant test? Okay, maybe all twenty-seven won’t be so much fun since (a) that’s a lot and (b) they all don’t apply. We’re in a very different situation after all. So, we’ll put our pedantic petulant nature aside and focus on the top few.

Implementing Laws Necessary for Public Good

Grievance #1: “He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.” Grievance #2: “He has forbidden his Governors 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.”

Back in 1776 the colonial legislatures handled the mundane stuff like dog catcher licenses, court structures, banking rules, but all that had to signed off on by the royal governors. Then, King George got his self a bright idea, every colonial law had a “suspending” clause. It couldn’t become law unless and until it made the round trip across the Atlantic to the King’s desk, got his official okay-dokay, and was returned to the colonies.

Imagine that you’re so proud of having solved the pesky who can be the dog catchers problem in your colony, wrote it up as a law, convinced your fellow legislators to pass it, and, with a tear in your eye, you watch as it begins its long dangerous six-week voyage colonists to the King’s desk. You sit in your office trying not to worry about what might have happened to your bill. You know that a watched calendar never boils, so you try not to check the date, but can’t help yourself. Finally, eight long weeks have passed — the shortest amount of time it could possibly take. You sit at your window overlooking Boston harbor, your heart leaping with every ship that enters and dashed when they leave again with your bill. You wait, and wait, and wait. Finally, you’re forced to admit it. You’ve been ghosted by the king.

King George just did nothing. He never thanked the colonists for their efforts. Never explained why he didn’t think the bill should become a law. Nothing. The colonial bills may have well ended up at the bottom of the ocean, a millstone tied around their necks. The king was abdicated their responsibility as executive of the government. The colonies were left hanging.

The ROAD to Housing Act, the SAVE Act, and Impoundment

Trump’s version: It comes as no surprise that Trump is abdicating their responsibility as the executive of the government. He’s not governing, but this complaint is about laws. He’s still signing laws or vetoing them with some explanation as to why, right? Sometimes. He did say that he would just not sign any bill into law if the SAVE Act wasn’t passed.

Apparently, Trump forgot that as long as Congress is in session, any bill reaching his desk becomes law after ten days (excepting Sundays). So, when he jilted the ROAD to Housing Act at the lectern, he was just TACOing out. Congress may be on recess, but it is still in session.

But, the more grievous and most analogous thing that Trump does is he impounds money that Congress allocated for specific tasks. The GAO — Congress’ very own independent nonpartisan agency — found that in the first half of 2025, Trump blocked $430 billion intended for EV charging stations and school energy-efficiency funds. Over the past eighteen months, they have refused to allocated research moneys because the research doesn’t match their specific policy goals.

It is the same petulant approach to governance, just more flagrant. George let their silence speak for him. Trump brays about it as loudly as he can. Same intransigence, though.

Accommodating Large Districts of People

Grievance #3: “He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.”

In 1776: As colonial population centers grew and shifted westward, they needed new legislative districts to have proportional representation. George III and his governors would refuse to authorize these unless the population agreed to give up representation rights first. Hunh? The people in those legislative districts had to give up access to basic government services and functions –Mail delivery? Courts and sheriffs? — unless they agreed to NOT be represented in the colonial legislature. George was limiting the voice and consent of the governed as the price of receiving his benevolence. One wonders if this all extended to taxes. Probably not. As Jefferson noted, representation is “formidable to tyrants only,” meaning the only people who fear a population having its fair voice are people planning act against that population’s interests.

Gerrymandering

Trump’s version: Famously, Trump personally initiated the current wave of gerrymandering by calling Texas governor, Greg Abbott, and urging him to have Texas Republicans redraw districts specifically to protect the GOP’s House majority ahead of the midterms. That kicked off retaliatory redistricting nationwide — Missouri, Ohio, Florida, Tennessee joining Texas on the Republican side; California and Virginia attempting Democratic counters. Nonpartisan trackers estimate Republicans could net around five seats purely from redistricting math, even though the underlying population data hasn’t changed since 2020, meaning the “representation” is being resized to fit the desired political outcome rather than the other way around. That’s about as literal a fit as you’ll get for “large districts of people” being denied fair representation as a matter of engineered procedure rather than population change.

His handpicked Supreme Court Justices went out of their way to gut Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and set off even more mad gerrymandering across the slave states in an attempt to silence the voices of most of their Black voters.

What was it that Jefferson said? Representation is “formidable only to tyrants” because they plan on violating the people’s interests?

Sending Hither Swarms of Officers — Tax Collectors vs ICE

Grievance #10: “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance.”

King George sent tax collectors to kick in doors, falsely accuse colonists, take their possessions, and haul them off to unfair trials without juries. Trump sent ICE to kick in doors, falsely accuse people, leave their cars idling in the streets, children abandoned on street corners, and pets starving at home. The only real difference is that ICE does it all without showing their faces or badges. Neither needed a warrant, apparently.

ICE uses underhanded tactics just like George’s tax collectors, too. We’re talking masked agents in unmarked vehicles, arrest quotas handed down like sales targets, and a hiring binge that’s ballooned the agency into something closer to a paramilitary strike force than a law enforcement operation. Courthouses, elementary schools, church parking lots, there is no place that is off limits anymore, because the point was never public safety. Like George’s tax collectors, the point was fear, oppression, compliance. Each seeks to make an example of their victims to the wider population. No one wanted their means of income taken away — the “eating out their substance” part of the grievance. Jefferson wasn’t imagining ski masks and no-knock tactics at the local Home Depot parking lot, but he’d recognize the mechanism instantly: swarms of officers, unaccountable to anyone but the man who sent them, harassing the population into submission. Some grievances just don’t age.

Pretended Offenses — Deportation without Due Process

Grievance #19. “For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.”

Jefferson’s colonists were terrified of being shipped to England for trial, far from friends, witnesses, and any jury of their peers. That would be a nightmare. Now imagine skipping the trial part entirely. Under the Alien Enemies Act — an 18th-century wartime statute dusted off for a war that doesn’t exist — the administration has deported people not to face justice somewhere else, but to escape it altogether, shipping them to a third countries with no hearing, no evidence requirement, and functionally no way back. They are out of sight, and Trump hopes, out of mind. Due process didn’t get slow-walked here; it got skipped. All with the Supreme Court’s blessing or tacit approval for all but the most egregious offenses. King George wanted unfavorable colonists tried somewhere friendlier to the Crown. Trump just wanted them gone, trial optional, and found a loophole with fewer paperwork requirements than a library card.

Domestic Insurrection

Grievance #27. “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us…”

Jefferson accused the Crown of stirring up violence against the colonies from slaves and Native Americans, arming both groups. Trump managed something more impressive: inciting an insurrection against his own government, then pardoning the people who stormed it. Six January wasn’t a protest that got out of hand — it was a mob sent to stop a certified election, seeking to hang the vice president, and instead of accountability, the ringleaders got clemency and a hero’s welcome. “Excited domestic insurrections” doesn’t require a foreign king pulling strings from London. It just requires someone with enough power and enough grievance to point a crowd at the Capitol and let go. Jefferson thought insurrection was something done to a free people. Turns out it works just as well done by the person supposedly protecting them.

Trump is just as tyrannical as King George III was a the time of the revolution. If these grievances were sufficient grounds for dissolving our political association with England, then they are sufficient for getting rid of Trump and the Republican Party. Now, that’s a Fourth celebration I could really get behind.

Image Attribution

This image was found on Peter Roan’s Flickr page and has a Creative Commons license.