Declaration of Independence Reaffirmation Act of 2026

[Congressional Bills 119th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 9589 Introduced in House (IH)]

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119th CONGRESS
  2d Session
                                H. R. 9589

 To reaffirm the Declaration of Independence as an Organic Law of the
                             United States.

_______________________________________________________________________

                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                              July 2, 2026

Mr. Van Epps (for himself, Mr. Carter of Georgia, Mr. Moore of Alabama,
Mr. Mann, Mr. Schmidt, Ms. Maloy, Mr. Fuller, Mr. Hunt, Mr. Palmer, Mr.
 Huizenga, Mr. Bacon, Mr. McDowell, Mr. Haridopolos, Mrs. Harshbarger,
 Mr. Fine, and Mr. Luttrell) introduced the following bill; which was
               referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL

 To reaffirm the Declaration of Independence as an Organic Law of the
                             United States.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Declaration of Independence
Reaffirmation Act of 2026''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    Congress finds the following:
            (1) On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the
        Declaration of Independence.
            (2) The Declaration of Independence announced that the
        United States of America were free and independent States.
            (3) The Declaration of Independence declares that all men
        are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
        certain unalienable rights, and that governments derive their
        just powers from the consent of the governed.
            (4) The Declaration of Independence is recognized among the
        Organic Laws of the United States.
            (5) The Northwest Ordinance was adopted by the Congress of
        the Confederation in 1787, and was thereafter reenacted by the
        First Congress in 1789, so that it could continue to have full
        effect under the Constitution of the United States.
            (6) Congress has authority to recognize, reaffirm, and
        carry forward the foundational laws and principles of the
        American political order.
            (7) The 250th anniversary of American independence calls
        upon Congress to reaffirm the Declaration of Independence as
        the charter of American sovereignty, natural rights, equal
        citizenship, and government by consent.
            (8) The Constitution of the United States gives lawful form
        and enduring structure to the principles of republican self-
        government announced in the Declaration of Independence.
            (9) The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of
        the United States together establish a political order in which
        the people are sovereign and public officers are their
        servants.
            (10) The Declaration of Independence presupposes that
        Americans are ``one people'' with the right to govern
        themselves as a distinct political community, to preserve their
        national independence, and to secure the rights and liberties
        of their own citizens.

SEC. 3. REAFFIRMATION OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

    Congress reaffirms and re-adopts the Declaration of Independence as
an Organic Law of the United States and as the enduring charter of
American independence, national sovereignty, natural rights, equal
citizenship, and government by consent.

SEC. 4. TEXT OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

    In commemoration of the 250th anniversary of American independence,
Congress sets forth the text of the Declaration of Independence as
follows:
    ``The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of
America,
            ``When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary
        for one people to dissolve the political bands which have
        connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of
        the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of
        Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to
        the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the
        causes which impel them to the separation.
            ``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.--That to secure these rights,
        Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just
        powers from the consent of the governed,--That whenever any
        Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
        Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute
        new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and
        organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most
        likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed,
        will dictate that Governments long established should not be
        changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all
        experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to
        suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves,
        by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when
        a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the
        same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute
        Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off
        such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future
        security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these
        Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them
        to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the
        present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries
        and usurpations, all having, in direct object, the
        establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To
        prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
            ``He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and
        necessary for the public good.
            ``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.
            ``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.
            ``He has called together legislative bodies at places
        unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of
        their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them
        into compliance with his measures.
            ``He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for
        opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the
        people.
            ``He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions,
        to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers,
        incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large
        for their exercise; the State remaining, in the meantime,
        exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and
        convulsions within.
            ``He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these
        States; for that purpose, obstructing the Laws for
        Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to
        encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions
        of new Appropriations of Lands.
            ``He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by
        refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
            ``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 harass 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 is, at this time, transporting large Armies of foreign
        Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and
        tyranny, already begun, with circumstances of Cruelty and
        perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and
        totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
            ``He has constrained our fellow Citizens, taken Captive on
        the high Seas, to bear Arms against their Country, to become
        the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall
        themselves by their Hands.
            ``He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has
        endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the
        merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare is an
        undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.
            ``In every stage of these Oppressions, We have Petitioned
        for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions
        have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose
        character is thus marked by every act which may define a
        Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
            ``Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British
        brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts
        by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction
        over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our
        emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their
        native justice and magnanimity, and We have conjured them, by
        the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations,
        which would inevitably interrupt our connections and
        correspondence. They, too, have been deaf to the voice of
        justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in
        the necessity which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as
        We hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
            ``We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States
        of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the
        Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions,
        do, in the Name and by the Authority of the good People of
        these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United
        Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent
        States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the
        British Crown; and that all political connection between them
        and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally
        dissolved; and that, as Free and Independent States, they have
        full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances,
        establish Commerce, and do all other Acts and Things which
        Independent States may of right do.
            ``And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm
        reliance on the protection of divine Providence, We mutually
        pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred
        Honor.''.
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