Essays
MISSING: Legislative Branch
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BRANCH?
Last Seen: In the United States Capitol, doing its job.
Date of Disappearance: Difficult to pin down, but it has not been spotted in any meaningful capacity in months.
Reward Offered.
On May 14th, 2026, the self-dealing human garbage pile occupying the office of the President of the United States agreed to settle his own lawsuit against his own IRS, using money from his own Treasury, paid to a commission staffed by his own appointees, who will decide which of his own allies are entitled to our taxpayer dollars. The exact figure: $1.776 billion. The contemptuous flourish is, of course, deliberate. The ironic nod from a child-mind to the year of our nation’s founding is enough to turn one’s stomach.
Trump sued the IRS in January 2026 for $10 billion, claiming damages from the 2019 leak of his tax returns by a Booz Allen contractor. The leak was a real crime, and that contractor is currently in federal prison, but the damages claim is pure fiction.
And it became immediately clear why Trump bucked tradition and chose to keep his farcical tax returns a secret.
The leak revealed:
In 2016, the year Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, he paid $750 in federal income tax.
In 2017, his first year enriching himself in office, he paid another $750.
In ten of the previous fifteen years, he paid zero dollars.
Those numbers form the basis of this $10 billion lawsuit. The lawsuit he is now settling for $1.776 billion of taxpayer money.
Read those two numbers next to each other.
$750 and $1,776,000,000.
He paid $750 in federal income tax the year he won the presidency. He is now extracting 2.37 million times that amount, in “damages,” from the US Treasury, which he has contributed next to nothing towards.
Even the federal judge overseeing the case has openly questioned whether Trump and his named defendants, the Treasury Department and the IRS, are “sufficiently adverse” for the lawsuit to proceed.
Translation: Trump is suing entities that report to him, defended by lawyers who report to him, essentially negotiating a shakedown with himself. America is being mugged by a feeble old man.
This proposed settlement is to establish something called the Truth and Justice Commission. Ironic, as Trump has a zero-tolerance policy for the truth, and has gone to great lengths to skirt facing justice for his entire criminal life.
This commission will have five commissioners. Four will be appointed by the Attorney General, who, obviously, reports to Trump. The fifth has not been specified in the public reporting, which means it could very well be King Donald himself. But it hardly matters either way. Naturally, all five are removable by Trump without cause.
No obligation to disclose how decisions are made.
No oversight from any agency.
The commission has “total authority” to hand out its ill-gotten $1.776 billion in taxpayer money to anyone who claims to have been a victim of the Biden administration’s “weaponization” of the legal system and, per ABC News, “entities associated with President Trump himself.”
But this money does not come from a new appropriation. It comes from the Treasury’s existing Judgment Fund, a permanent standing appropriation that Congress passed decades ago to pay court judgments and routine settlements.
So instead of its designated purpose, the Judgment Fund is being siphoned into this phony commission. And that money will pay out to the guilty-but-already-pardoned January 6th insurrectionists, any other political allies who claim victimhood, and of course, those various “other entities” associated with Trump.
It was never designed to pay political cronies.
It has never been used this way.
There is no Congressional vote required to drain it.
There is no Congressional oversight of how it is spent.
Congress, the body that is required by oath to be screaming about this right now, is silent.
Missing.
LAST SEEN: Defending Article I of the US Constitution
The Constitutional design is not subtle. Congress is required to defend its own powers. The Founders assumed that would be the easy part. They built a system in which legislators would vehemently guard their authority against encroachment by the executive branch, because legislators have the power and the executive will always try to take it.
That is just the way of executives.
As such, Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 of the Constitution states, plainly: “No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” The Founders put that clause in the Constitution because they had just fought a war against a king who taxed without representation. They understood that the power of the purse is the power that matters. The branch that controls the money controls the government. Everything else flows from that.
That power belongs to Congress. By design.
James Madison wrote that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” But Congress is not fighting. Congress is not even watching. The institution has gone silent in every chamber that matters.
The Speaker of the House has said nothing.
The Senate Majority Leader has said nothing.
The House Judiciary Committee, which would normally subpoena documents about a $1.776 billion settlement involving the President suing his own agencies, has scheduled zero hearings.
The House Appropriations Committee, which is supposed to defend the power of the purse, has issued no statement.
The Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over the IRS, has not even asked a single question.
A handful of Democrats have spoken. Jamie Raskin called it “a shocking new betrayal of the Constitution.” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called it “corruption” and a “slush fund.” Elizabeth Warren called it “an insane level of corruption, even for Trump.”
But minority complaints are not Congressional action.
Speeches are not subpoenas.
Tweets are not investigations.
The majority, the party that controls both chambers, is silent because this majority is complicit. They have chosen to let this happen. Even worse, they have chosen to let this happen using a constitutional mechanism that exists specifically to prevent it. They are operating under the false belief that they work for the president. They do not. They work for us, the people. Perhaps they need a refresher on elementary civics class that taught us all this distinction.
LAST SEEN: Enforcing Section 7217 of the Internal Revenue Code
Congress passed Section 7217 of the Internal Revenue Code in 1998, as part of the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act. It is the law that makes it a federal crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, for the President or any employee of the Executive Office of the President to “directly or indirectly request that the IRS terminate any ongoing audit or investigation of any particular taxpayer.”
The law exists because of Richard Nixon (R). In the early 1970s, Nixon directed the IRS to audit and harass approximately 600 of his political enemies. The IRS Commissioner refused to comply. When Watergate exposed this scheme, Nixon resigned. Then, two decades later, when previously unreleased Nixon tapes surfaced containing him explicitly stating his plan to use the IRS to “go after our enemies and not go after our friends,” Congress decided the existing protections were insufficient and added Section 7217. The vote was 402 to 8 in the House. 96 to 2 in the Senate. This is what bipartisan consensus looks like when both parties agree that something is permanently off the table. But the Congress that wrote that consensus into law no longer exists. What we have today is just a hollow husk, utterly dysfunctional and completely useless. And the Trump settlement violates that law on two fronts.
First, the settlement negotiations have involved White House officials, possibly Trump himself, communicating with the IRS about Trump’s own audits. The Tax Law Center has flagged this as a likely Section 7217 violation.
Second, the entire commission structure is designed to reward people Trump considers to have been victims of “weaponization,” which is the exact same crime just in reverse: instead of using the IRS against enemies, using the Treasury for friends.
Same prohibited principle.
Same statutory violation.
Congress wrote Section 7217. Congress passed it bipartisanly in response to a Republican president’s abuses. The Congress that wrote that law is the same institution sitting silent today. They wrote the law to stop this exact thing, and they are letting it happen anyway.
LAST SEEN: Actually representing me
The average American household pays approximately $13,000 in annual federal income tax. Which is, obviously, a touch more than $750. I myself have been paying federal taxes for my entire adult life. Every paycheck. Every withholding. Every quarterly estimate. Every April filing. I have written checks to the United States Treasury without complaint because I understood the deal. The Treasury funds the government. The government, through Congress, represents me. The representation is the consideration.
That is the contract.
But that contract has been broken.
My tax dollars are now pumping into a slush fund controlled by a selfish man I did not vote for, distributed to allies I would never approve of, through a commission with no oversight, drawing on a Treasury account that exists because Congress created it but now refuses to defend it.
There has been no Congressional vote on whether this is appropriate.
There has been no Congressional hearing.
There has been no Congressional investigation.
There has been no Congressional invoice for the money being taken from my income to fund the looting of my country.
Congress has failed to honor the terms of their agreement with the people. One side cannot be in breach with the other side still required to adhere. But here we are. I can’t object and abstain, the IRS will come for me if I do. And somehow I will be the one in prison. This same IRS that is being weaponized against the Constitution by a greedy old man will, with full federal authority, enforce my obligation to keep funding this corrupt operation. I am required to be a participant in the very theft that I oppose, by a government that has stopped representing me. And the only body that could intervene on my behalf has gone missing.
This is what taxation without representation looks like in modern times.
The Founders fought a bloody war over a few cents on tea. And we are watching $1.776 billion get siphoned out of the Treasury while the body that exists to stop it is on a milk carton.
So if you have seen the legislative branch, please return it. There is a country here that needs it. There is a Constitution here that requires it. There are 330 million Americans being looted right now with no recourse because it cannot be located.
The reward for its safe return is the restoration of constitutional government in the United States of America.
The deadline for return is November 3rd, 2026.
After that, the search will be called off.
The branch will be presumed gone for good.