Wednesday, April 08, 2026
Donald Trump Commited A War Crime Tuesday Morning April 7th 2026
With Threat to Wipe Out Iran’s Civilization, Trump’s Rhetoric Goes Beyond Bluster
"The president’s violent rhetoric risks damaging his credibility as a negotiator and the country’s standing in the world.
By Katie Rogers
Katie Rogers is a White House correspondent. She reported from Washington.
It was a stunning threat that promised to eliminate Iranian civilization, delivered with all the casual callousness that has become President Trump’s preferred style of communication.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
And that is what passed as a normal Tuesday-morning update from the Trump White House: a warning of mass destruction and what international law would define as war crimes, blithely delivered on Truth Social, posted alongside ads for bullet-shaped pens, patriotic hats and a gala dinner at Mar-a-Lago.
“However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?” Mr. Trump wrote in his message. “We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.”
The message arrived two days after Mr. Trump marked Easter Sunday by calling on the Iranians to end its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah,” he wrote.
In the minds of the president and his supporters, the post is all part of Mr. Trump’s chaotic negotiation style, intended to prompt an end to his self-inflicted conflict and persuade Tehran to open the strait. Some of the president’s advisers saw Mr. Trump’s escalating rhetoric as a negotiating tactic that suggested he was more interested in finding a way out of the war than following through with a devastating attack.
On Tuesday evening, Mr. Trump had toggled back to diplomat mode, announcing that he had agreed to a proposal by Pakistan that calls for a two-week cease-fire and the immediate opening of the Strait of Hormuz.
The president said that the United States would work on finalizing an agreement with Iran. “It is an Honor to have this Longterm problem close to resolution,” he wrote.
Even for Mr. Trump, who has a long history of comments that fly far beyond the pale, his latest comments bear the mark of an impulsive leader who is used to getting his way through coercion and unpredictability, but who is not getting his way now.
Alex Wellerstein, a historian who studies nuclear conflicts, said that even if Mr. Trump does not carry out the extent of his threat, the president’s violent rhetoric damages his credibility as a negotiator and his country’s standing in the world.
“You’re talking about a world that largely increasingly sees the United States as unhinged and dangerous, and not a reliable partner,” he said, “where all of the countries that typically align with democracy and freedom are on the other side of the United States.”
Some of Mr. Trump’s most fervent supporters have joined the usual chorus of critics in recent days. Tucker Carlson, the right-wing podcaster, said that the president’s Easter message had “shattered” the holiest day on the Christian calendar.
“It is vile on every level,” Mr. Carlson said on his podcast. “It begins with a promise to use the U.S. military, our military, to destroy civilian infrastructure in another country, which is to say to commit a war crime, a moral crime against the people of the country, whose welfare, by the way, was one of the reasons we supposedly went into this war in the first place.”
The president responded by calling Mr. Carlson a “low I.Q. person,” and continuing on with his war. Ever a reality television producer, Mr. Trump is trying to program this war like he does everything else — through cliffhangers and wait-and-see diplomacy. As such, Mr. Trump created an 8 p.m. Eastern deadline Tuesday for Tehran to comply. Mr. Trump announced “a double sided CEASEFIRE” about 90 minutes before his self-imposed deadline.
Americans have seen versions of this playbook before: Mr. Trump makes increasingly escalatory threats, secures some semblance of a deal and walks away declaring victory. In January, Mr. Trump threatened to send in U.S. forces to capture the Danish territory of Greenland. He settled for an agreement to increase the number of American troops there.
With Iran, though, there is still little evidence that Mr. Trump is going to ultimately get what he wants. Ebrahim Zolfaghari, a spokesman for the Iranian military, has said that Iran would retaliate “crushingly and extensively” if its civilian infrastructure were attacked.
Even with a cease-fire, Mr. Trump is far from achieving his larger strategic objectives.
The president’s increasingly violent messaging betrays a degree of frustration that he has not gotten what he wanted after pushing back an earlier deadline to barrage the country’s infrastructure. His threats to level power plants and oil installations and bridges have seemed to have the opposite effect on some Iranians, who have formed human chainsaround points of infrastructure that support civilian life.
Even some people who have supported Mr. Trump in the past see his strategy on Iran, to the extent that there is one, as damaging and dangerous.
“Trump believes he is threatening Iran with destruction, but it is America that now stands in danger,” Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned in March, wrote on X. “If he attempts to eradicate Iranian civilization, the United States will no longer be viewed as a stabilizing force in the world, but as an agent of chaos — effectively ending our status as the world’s greatest superpower.”
Several Republicans in Congress, who are absent from Washington during a two-week recess, criticized the president’s rhetoric, although many of them have stayed mum.
Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a close ally of Mr. Trump’s, left room for the possibility that Mr. Trump was posturing: “I hope and pray that President Trump is just using this as bluster.”
Mr. Trump’s message also alarmed top Democrats, who quickly promised to force another vote on a resolution to rein in the use of the military in Iran.
“This is an extremely sick person,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, wrote on X after Mr. Trump sent his threat. “Each Republican who refuses to join us in voting against this wanton war of choice owns every consequence of whatever the hell this is.”
Other Democrats have called to remove Mr. Trump from office over his threats, with some calling for impeachment and others pointing to the 25th Amendment, which provides a process for a president to be stripped of power if he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
They were joined by Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former Republican representative who has shifted from being one of Trump’s staunchest allies to being one of his most vocal detractors.
“25TH AMENDMENT!!!” she wrote on X. “Not a single bomb has dropped on America. We cannot kill an entire civilization. This is evil and madness.”
Tyler Pager, Michael Gold and Robert Jimison contributed reporting.
Katie Rogers is a White House correspondent for The Times, reporting on President Trump."
Tuesday, April 07, 2026
Iran War Live Updates: Trump Announces Two-Week Cease-Fire, Backing Down From Threats of Imminent Devastation - The New York Times
Iran War Live Updates: Trump Announces Two-Week Cease-Fire, Backing Down From Threats of Imminent Devastation
"President Trump announced a deal with Iran shortly before his deadline for Iran to agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face the death of a “whole civilization.”
The United States and Iran reached an 11th-hour cease-fire deal on Tuesday evening, hours after President Trump threatened to start wiping out a “whole civilization” if the Iranians did not allow commercial shipping to pass safely through the Strait of Hormuz.
The agreement was announced by Mr. Trump in a post on social media hours after Pakistan, a mediator in the dispute, urged Mr. Trump to stand down from the 8 p.m. Eastern time deadline he had set for Iran to accede to his demands. Pakistan proposed that each side observe a two-week cease-fire, and that during that time Iran allow oil, gas and other vessels to proceed unmolested through the economically vital waterway."
Analysis: Is that legal? Trump threatens bridges, power plants and a ‘whole civilization’ | CNN Politics
Is that legal? Trump threatens bridges, power plants and a ‘whole civilization’
A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.
"There’s nothing in the military’s 1,200-page Law of War Manual about whether it’s legal to end a civilization, perhaps because nobody could have imagined an American president would make such an apocalyptic threat.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post Tuesday morning, referencing his 8 p.m. deadline for Iran to cry “Uncle” to the US and open the Strait of Hormuz.
Ever the reality TV showman, Trump timed his deadline for Iran to prime-time TV hours in the US. Never one to let international law get in the way, he is flirting with ordering the US military to commit war crimes by undertaking civilizational erasure.
Maybe those words are bombast or a “madman theory” negotiating tactic – nobody knows exactly what he’ll do. Maybe they are the obvious result of a president being told by the Supreme Court he has immunity from all law for his official acts as president.
Trump is largely immune from US laws. What about the military?
The same immunity may not exist for everyone under his command. Rep. Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat, told CNN’s Kasie Hunt that members of the military have an obligation not to follow illegal orders.
“If you’re asked to target civilians, if you’re asked to kill women and children, you’re asked to kill noncombatants, you’re asked to bomb a school, you’re asked to bomb a civilian power plant, that would be a war crime,” Crow said. Service members, he said, have independent obligations to follow the law of armed conflict.
There is bipartisan concern. Right-wing podcaster Tucker Carlson, for instance, said officials in the administration should say no if Trump orders the killing of civilians.
Wasn’t this war launched to guard against mass destruction?
The US launched the war, along with Israel, for the stated reason of making sure Iran never obtained nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Now Trump sounds prepared to unleash mass destruction, although he has not talked publicly about using nuclear weapons.
What he has talked about is plunging Iran’s 90 million citizens into darkness by destroying their power plants and restricting their movement by destroying their bridges.
“I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” he said in the social media post, which offers Iran a binary choice of negotiating with the US or facing some kind of extinction.
As of this writing, Iran has answered by reportedly encouraging civilians to shield power plants and bridges with their bodies.
Trump, somewhat ironically given his stated disdain for international law, told NBC News that civilian shields would violate the laws of war.
“Totally illegal,” Trump told NBC Tuesday. “They’re not allowed to do that.”
International outrage and ‘war crimes’ warnings
Trump’s threats to go after power plants have already drawn international condemnation and warnings.
“I urgently call on parties to spare civilians and civilian objects in all military operations,” said International Committee of the Red Cross President Mirjana Spoljaric in a published statement. “It is their obligation under international humanitarian law.”
“Canada expects all parties in this conflict, in any conflict, to respect international laws,” Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters Tuesday.
More than 100 US legal experts signed onto a statement saying that the entire war, launched preemptively, violated the UN’s charter, and that targeting energy infrastructure “could entail war crimes.”
Another international law expert, Ryan Goodman of New York University’s School of Law, was much more pointed.
“This isn’t legal analysis. It’s idiocy,” Goodman wrote on X, sharing a Wall Street Journal report with the headline: “Top Aides Advise Trump Blasting Iran’s Infrastructure Is Fair Game.”
Goodman, who is also a top editor at the website Just Security, took issue with the idea cited in the story that power plants are legitimate targets because they could foment unrest that could topple Iran’s regime.
Power plants have been targeted before
Others argue there is plenty of room for the targeting of power plants and bridges and that the US has done so before.
Eugene Kontorovich, a professor at the Antonin Scalia School of Law at George Mason University, pointed out on X that the US has targeted power plants before.
“The notion that international law prohibits attacking bridges or power stations in war is ludicrous, and the U.S. and its allies did so extensively in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War and even the 1999 air campaign against Yugoslavia, which left most of Serbia without electricity,” Kontorovich wrote.
That Yugoslavia example was actually a NATO operation, according to CNN’s report at the time. The air campaign included the US military, which struck a Serbian coal plant as it sought to drive the Serbian army out of Kosovo. The United Nations did not authorize the air campaign, but it did authorize a subsequent ground peacekeeping force. Trump and Israel launched their war without input from either NATO or the UN.
The Trump administration disdains international law
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who goes by his Trump-bestowed secondary title secretary of war, has said the war with Iran would be conducted without “stupid rules of engagement.”
The military’s manual on the law of war does talk about targeting bridges and power plants, and it makes clear that both can be targeted at certain times.
When is it OK to target power plants and bridges?
There is a two-part test for determining whether a country’s infrastructure is a legitimate military target.
First, according to the US war manual, the target must make an effective contribution to the enemy’s military; second, destroying it must offer a distinct military advantage.
But there is another issue, as the international law experts worried about the US committing war crimes point out — that of “proportionality.”
“The proportionality principle prohibits attacks expected to cause incidental civilian harm that would be excessive in relation to the military advantage,” they wrote.
This is Trump’s message to the world
Certainly, destroying a large portion of the power plants in a country twice the size of Texas would cause civilian harm. Control of power, on the other hand, has become a tool of the US government; an embargo on Cuba has largely turned off the power on that island after the US decapitated Venezuela’s government and put new restrictions on its oil exports to Cuba earlier this year. The administration hopes the harm will force Cuba into submission.
“The kind of mass force that the president is threatening (on Iran) … every bridge, every railway station, don’t seem to qualify as legitimate military targets,” Steven Cook, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said on CNN News Central on Tuesday.
But the threats convey something else important, he said.
“What it says to the world is something that the world has already understood, which is the United States has strayed from many of the norms and principles by which we like to believe that we live,” Cook said.
For Americans who heretofore viewed the US as the country that upheld international law, their conception of American civilization is also up for review."
Child immigrant suffered alleged sexual abuse in federal custody, family says
Child immigrant suffered alleged sexual abuse in federal custody, family says
“A 3-year-old girl, separated from her mother at the U.S.-Mexico border, allegedly suffered sexual abuse while in federal custody. Her father, a legal permanent resident, faced delays in her release due to stricter immigration policies and was unaware of the abuse until he filed a lawsuit. The girl was eventually released to her father after legal intervention, but the incident highlights the dangers of prolonged detention for immigrant children.
An immigrant family is grappling with the ordeal suffered by a 3-year-old girl who endured alleged sexual abuse while her father fought for five months for her release from federal custody
McALLEN, Texas -- For five months, the young father waited for his 3-year-old daughter’s release from federal custody after she crossed the U.S.-Mexico border with her mother, hoping through delays for their safe reunion.
Only when he turned to the courts as a last resort did he learn that the girl had suffered alleged sexual abuse at the foster home where she’d been placed after immigration officials separated her from her mother.
“She was so long in there,” said her father, who is a legal permanent resident in the United States. “I just think that if they would have moved faster, nothing like that would have happened.” He spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to prevent identifying his daughter as a victim of sexual abuse.
President Donald Trump’s administration began targeting detained immigrant children, like the man’s daughter, last year when it implemented new rules and procedures, which were immediately followed by a dramatic jump in detention times. The federal government intensified efforts to expand family detention indefinitely by motioning to terminate a cornerstone policy ensuring the protection of immigrant children in federal custody.
For months after the girl was placed in foster care, her father’s attempts to be reunited stalled as the government told him it couldn't make an appointment to take his fingerprints.
During that time, according to court documents, the girl said she was sexually abused by an older child staying with her in foster care in Harlingen, Texas. A caregiver noticed the child’s underwear was on backward, according to the lawsuit. The girl then told the caregiver she was abused multiple times and it caused bleeding. Federal Office of Refugee Resettlement officials told the father that there had been an “accident” and his daughter would be examined, he told the AP in an interview.
“I asked them, ‘What happened? I want to know. I’m her father. I want to know what’s going on,’ and they just told me that they couldn’t give me more information, that it was under investigation," the father said.
The girl underwent a forensic exam and interview. Although the father wasn't told of the outcome, the older child accused of the abuse was removed from that foster program, according to the lawsuit.
The girl was forensically examined and interviewed, according to the lawsuit. The abuse allegations were reported to local law enforcement, said Lauren Fisher Flores, the lawyer representing the girl. The Associated Press does not typically name people who have said they were sexually abused.
“To have your child abused while in the government’s care, to not understand what has happened or how to protect them, to not even be told about the abuse, it is unimaginable,” Fisher Flores said. “Children deserve safety and they belong with their parents.”
The ORR and its parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, were named in the child's lawsuit but did not respond to emails seeking comment.
The girl and her mother illegally crossed the border near El Paso on Sept. 16 of last year. When her mother was charged with making false statements and they were separated, the toddler was sent to the custody of the ORR, which cares for immigrant children in shelter or foster settings.
Children in ORR's care are released to parents or sponsors who submit to a rigorous process that has grown more extensive under the Trump administration.
Stricter rules were imposed on documentation required for sponsors, border agents started pressuring unaccompanied children to self-deport before transferring them to shelters and Immigration and Customs Enforcement started arresting some sponsors in the middle of the release process.
Legal advocates filed lawsuits challenging the policy changes, anticipating that they would result in prolonged detention.
Average custody times for children cared for by ORR grew from 37 days when Trump took office in January 2025 to almost 200 days this February. The total number of children in ORR custody fell by about half during the same time period.
Attorneys are now turning to habeas petitions, which function as emergency lawsuits, to expedite the release of children to their parents and sponsors.
Fisher Flores, legal director of the American Bar Association’s ProBar project, said that this year the organization has worked on eight habeas corpus petitions representing children who have been held in federal custody for an average of 225 days. They had not filed these kinds of petitions for children before the start of this Trump administration.
Fisher Flores said that legal intervention helped prompt the federal government to respond to the father’s sponsorship application.
After the monthslong delay, attorneys sent the government a letter in February and prompted them to allow the father to receive appointments for a fingerprinting background check, a home visit and a DNA test. Then ORR stalled again, offering no timeline on her expected release.
Attorneys filed the habeas petition in federal court and two days later, ORR released the girl to her father.
It was while the attorneys prepared the lawsuit that the father realized that the “accident” officials had told him about was alleged sexual abuse.
“Increasingly, we have to turn to the federal courts to challenge these harmful legal violations and demand that children be released,” Fisher Flores said.
The fingerprinting policy was challenged during the first Trump administration by legal advocates including the National Center for Youth Law. Other nationwide lawsuits are opposing more recent changes affecting the custody and care of immigrant children.
“This represents yet another version of family separation,” Neha Desai, managing director at Children’s Human Rights and Dignity at the National Center for Youth Law, said of the 3-year-old girl’s case.
“A bipartisan Congress designed protections around the simple principle that children should be released to their family quickly and safely. This administration has been consistently flouting its legal obligations to release children to their families, profoundly jeopardizing children’s health and well-being,” Desai added.
When the father finally reunited with his daughter, he cried. His daughter was happy to see him, too.
But after her five months in detention, he started noticing changes: She had nightmares and was easily upset. “She was never like that” before, her father said.
The pair now live in Chicago with the girl's grandparents while her case moves through the immigration court.“
Trump threats cause dilemma for US officers: disobey orders or commit war crimes
Trump threats cause dilemma for US officers: disobey orders or commit war crimes
“Donald Trump’s threats to bomb Iran’s civilian infrastructure, including power plants and bridges, present a dilemma for US military officers. Legal experts argue that such attacks would constitute war crimes, placing service members in a challenging situation where they must choose between obeying orders and committing war crimes. The extremity of Trump’s threats, coupled with his growing desperation, raises concerns about the potential use of nuclear weapons.
Donald Trump’s threats to carry out mass bombing of civilian infrastructure in Iran present US military officers with a dilemma: disobey orders or help commit war crimes.
It is an urgent matter for the US chain of command. In an expletive-laden threat, Trump set a Tuesday 8pm Washington time deadline for the Iranian government to open the strait of Hormuz or face “Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one”.
He wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday: “There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell.”
Three days earlier, the president had made clear what he meant by “Power Day”.
“We are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously,” he said in prepared remarks that were amplified by the state department’s social media accounts.
There is little debate among legal experts that such an attack on the life-supporting infrastructure for 93 million Iranians would constitute a war crime.
“Such rhetorical statements – if followed through – would amount to the most serious war crimes – and thus the president’s statements place service members in a profoundly challenging situation,” two former judge advocate general (JAG) officers, Margaret Donovan and Rachel VanLandingham wrote on the website Just Security on Monday.
“As former uniformed military lawyers who advised targeting operations, we know the president’s words run counter to decades of legal training of military personnel and risk placing our warfighters on a path of no return.”
They noted that Trump’s boast that he would bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages”, and the order by his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, to show “no quarter, no mercy” were not just “plainly illegal” but they also represented a rupture from the moral and legal principles that US military personnel had been “trained to follow their entire careers”.
Charli Carpenter, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said there were many historical examples of service-members questioning orders, refusing to obey, passively disobeying or even intervening to stop war crimes.
She cited as an example US soldiers who refused to take part in the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam, including a helicopter pilot who threatened to shoot the perpetrators.
In his court martial, the officer who ordered his men to gun down hundreds of Vietnamese villagers, 2nd Lt William Calley, argued that he was only obeying orders, but the court ruled that was no defence as such orders were “palpably illegal”.
The question is whether officers who carried out orders to bomb Iranian power stations and bridges could argue that they did not know it was “palpably illegal”.
When Democratic members of Congress published a video message in November telling US service members “you can refuse illegal orders, you must refuse illegal orders”, Trump went on Truth Social to accuse them of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH”.
“There are many factors that make it hard to say ‘no’ or stand up to stop war crimes, especially where there are grey areas in the law,” Carpenter said.
“What the law requires of enlisted troops is to disobey only ‘manifestly unlawful’ orders – orders so egregiously unlawful that a person of ordinary understanding would know they were wrong.
“However, this skill and moral judgment is not drilled into troops in the same way as they are taught to follow the chain of command and go along with their small units, and troops can also be court-martialled for insubordination if they guess wrong.”
Since taking office last year, Hegseth has made it harder for officers in the chain of command to find legal advice by firing the Pentagon’s top JAGs, and dissolving the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response unit set up by the Biden administration.
Ordinary soldiers have the last-resort option of calling a “GI rights hotline” and calls have reportedly risen sharply under the Trump administration.
A survey led by Carpenter last year found that most service members can distinguish between legal and illegal orders.
“A majority of them understand their duty to disobey, and can give concrete examples of situations where they should,” she said.
“Recognising those situations in real time and acting appropriately is harder than in a survey experiment, but one thing we know is that when one person stands up, it’s easier for others to do so.”
In recent days, Trump has amplified his threats, telling an ABC reporter that if Iran does not meet his demands “we’re blowing up the whole country”.
Asked if anything was off limits, he replied: “Very little.”
Pressing the threat on Monday, Trump said: “The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night.”
The extremity of Trump’s threats, coupled with his growing desperation to find a way out of the conflict, has increased fears that a volatile president could try to use a nuclear weapon.
Under the US system, a US president has sole authority to order a nuclear launch. To do so he would summon a security conference call of the National Military Command Center, which would typically involve top officials such as the defence secretary, the armed forces commander, but it would depend who was available at short notice.
A military aide who is always close to the president would open the “nuclear football”, a briefcase containing nuclear strike options as well as the codes to confirm his presidential authority.
The only way to stop the order would be for those in the chain of command to deem it illegal.
In January 2021, the then chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley, was so concerned about Trump’s volatility that he reportedly told his senior officers to make sure he was involved in any nuclear decision.
Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear weapons expert and professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, said Trump had previously shown respect for the devastating consequences of nuclear use, but he added: “I don’t know how strong that respect is when he is losing the war and his mind at the same time.”
In a 2018 book, The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States, Lewis sketched out a scenario in which Trump started a war through misjudgment.
At one point in the book, the military aide carrying the “nuclear football” tries to stop the president getting his hands on it and is disciplined for his actions.
Asked what confidence he had that someone in the chain of command now would intervene to stop Trump, Lewis simply replied: “None.”
“He has consistently purged the military of anybody who he thinks would stand up to him or resist him,” he said.“
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