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For antiwar progressives in Congress, public disgust with Donald Trump’s violent, fumbling presidency has presented them with a specific challenge: confronting Trump’s brutality at home and abroad, while pressing a global reset button on human rights. With voters angry about tax dollars funding genocidal carnage overseas, and her Chicagoland district among the many communities reeling from Trump’s brutal deportation raids, Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois is pushing fellow Democrats to pick a side ahead of the midterm elections.

Flanked by allied lawmakers and groups from an array of social movements, Ramirez introduced a sweeping House resolution on May 13 that builds on her prior call to dismantle the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the parent organization of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The resolution calls to redirect massive military spending toward pro-peace initiatives and create an unprecedented independent federal commission to monitor human rights violations by the United States at home and abroad.

Titled the Renewed Mandate for Human Rights, Ramirez admits that, at 32 pages, the resolution is long. But she says it would put members of Congress on the record about issues on the top of voters’ minds, including excessive military spending amid spiraling anxiety about the climate crisis, health care, and public education.

“This is the kind of resolution that invites members of Congress and candidates on the campaign trail to really ask themselves, who are they, and what are they running on?” Ramirez told Truthout in an interview. “For me, it’s really about transparency and calling out systems of exploitation, and also what we want to replace those systems with.”

A child of working-class immigrants and a champion of raising the federal minimum wage to $25 an hour, Ramirez told Truthout the resolution is not a pie-in-the-sky wish list for progressives. She calls it a human rights mandate that draws a line in the sand for Democrats, and a critical framework for transforming Congress and the federal government at a time of rapidly rising authoritarianism and state violence.

House Democrat Says Abolishing ICE Isn’t Enough — DHS Must Go, Too

“ICE needs to be abolished,” Ramirez said. “We need to create a human rights commission, a body that could do the work to dismantle the systems of oppression that have ruled this country since its founding, and turn this country into the kind global partner that really prioritizes the human rights and liberation of all people.”

The resolution acknowledges that state-led violence directed against civilians has tripled worldwide since 2020. The most glaring example is in Gaza and broader Palestine, where Israeli forces have killed more than 75,000 people and displaced millions from their homes. Diana Duarte, the........

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