Congress Must Act as Abuses of Executive Power Escalate

New York City Bar Association Follow-Up Report Documents Escalating Constitutional Violations

The New York City Bar Association (City Bar) has released an update to its December 2025 report on presidential abuse of power, documenting a sharp escalation of constitutional violations by President Donald J. Trump and his Administration since that report was issued, and calling on Congress to act immediately, including by considering impeachment, to hold the President and his appointees accountable.

“The question is no longer if, but when: Congress must act immediately to curb these abuses — including the illegal acts of aggression and unauthorized war against Iran launched on February 28, 2026 — and hold those responsible to account,” the report states.

The update, titled “The Crisis Deepens: Congress Must Act Now to Address Escalating Abuses of Executive Power,” documents a wide range of intensifying constitutional abuses, including the militarized occupation of Minneapolis by federal immigration agents, unlawful acts of military force against foreign nations, and attacks on voting rights.

Minneapolis

The report describes in detail the deployment of thousands of ICE and CBP agents in military combat gear — masked, armed with high-powered weapons, and transported by military vehicles and helicopters — into Minneapolis, where they conducted raids without judicial warrants on homes, schools, places of worship and businesses. The report documents several shootings of civilians, including two apparently unprovoked killings of American citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and notes that the Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for Minnesota found that ICE openly violated at least 96 federal court orders in Minnesota in January alone.

On the prospect that presidential pardons might shield those responsible, the report states that “any such use of the pardon authority would, like the January 6 pardons previously issued by the President, constitute a grave abuse of Presidential power and a grave betrayal of the most basic principles underlying our republic.”

The report is equally direct about the structural conditions enabling the violence: “The deliberate failure to train these federal agents wielding weapons of war makes their deadly behavior predictable. Guardrails like body cameras are unlikely to curb this behavior.”

Unlawful Military Action Abroad

The City Bar also condemns the Administration’s conduct in foreign affairs, including the unauthorized military seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, threats against NATO ally Denmark over Greenland, and the launch of military strikes against Iran without Congressional authorization.

“It is a major violation of U.S. and international law to order an unprovoked military attack against a foreign nation that has neither attacked nor threatened the U.S. or its military forces,” states the report. “Put simply, the threat to use force against a state as a bargaining chip in international negotiations is not only illegal but also a dangerous and irresponsible abuse of the power given to the President under our Constitution.”

Attacks on Voting Rights

The report also documents the Administration’s accelerating efforts “to undermine the 2026 midterm elections, and free and fair elections in this country thereafter.” The President has called on Republican officials to “take over” and “nationalize” voting procedures in fifteen largely Democratic states, in direct conflict with the Constitution’s direction that elections be administered under state law. The Attorney General separately offered to withdraw ICE agents from Minnesota in exchange for confidential state voter roll data — a “ransom request” Minnesota officials rejected.

The report further describes the FBI’s seizure of Fulton County, Georgia election records from the 2020 election, an action taken under the direction of an out-of-state Acting U.S. Attorney one day after the sudden departure of the head of the FBI’s Atlanta field office (the same office that had investigated Fulton County election results for the 2020 election and found no evidence of any material fraud or irregularities).

Congress Must Act Now

In its December report, the City Bar concluded that President Trump’s conduct met the constitutional standard for impeachment. “It is now clear that the President’s abuse of his office has only accelerated, both at home and abroad, and that he and his appointees will, if permitted, continue to undermine our nation’s fundamental rights and institutions, and to jeopardize the health, safety and security of the American people,” the new report states.

The City Bar is now calling on Congress to invoke all available remedies without delay, including suspension of DHS appropriations for ICE and CBP, appointment of an independent special prosecutor, and invoking the impeachment process.

“The time has come for Congress to use that Constitutional authority and, by so doing, insist that even our President — especially our President — must not so gravely abuse the powers entrusted to him by the citizens of our nation,” the report states.

The full report is available here.

About the Association
The mission of the New York City Bar Association, which was founded in 1870 and has over 20,000 members, is to equip and mobilize a diverse legal profession to practice with excellence, promote reform of the law, and uphold the rule of law and access to justice in support of a fair society and the public interest in our community, our nation, and throughout the world. www.nycbar.org