*Post-publishing update: He changed his mind.
Invoking the 25th?
Some Democratic members of Congress are doing what they can to sound the alarm about an unhinged president threatening to make good on his social media promise that “a whole civilization will die tonight,” including urging Trump’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment and calling for impeachment.
Democratic leadership has not yet joined in. There is reportedly some talk of sending a letter to Cabinet officials or attempting to force an impeachment vote in the House, Axios reported. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) is keeping his messaging focused on an upcoming war powers vote that the party wants to try to force in the House.
It’s not clear what tonight will bring. As my colleague Hunter Walker reported, Trump’s latest threats against the “whole civilization” of Iran and Iranian civilian infrastructure have helped grow the divide among the isolationists in Trump’s MAGA base who are not backing his actions in Iran, and other, more mainstream Republicans who are.
The Democratic members of Congress who Trump threatened to charge with sedition over a video they posted on social media have put out strong statements today doubling down on their guidance to the military, reiterating that service members have a duty to not follow illegal orders. Their initial offer of that advice originally prompted Trump to suggest they had committed an offense that was punishable by hanging.
“I know that our service members up and down the chain of command know their duty and the law to refuse illegal orders. Even as the Commander-in-Chief tells the world otherwise,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) posted on Twitter this afternoon. “It’s moments like these that are why we made the video to service members last year. And I hope and believe our troops — especially those in command — will have the moral clarity to push back if they are given clearly illegal orders.”
Slotkin, other Democrats, legal experts and former military officials have been warning all day that if Trump acts on his threats to target civilian infrastructure in order to punish the Iranian regime for not reopening the Strait of Hormuz, he will have committed war crimes — based on both the Pentagon’s own Law of War manual and international laws established by the first Geneva Convention. While the U.S. has avoided, at least up until this point, directly targeting civilian infrastructure, the U.S. and Israel’s combined attacks have killed an estimated 1,400 civilians in Iran since Trump dragged the U.S. to war there in February, according to a recent report put out by human rights groups.
Jameel Jaffer, a longtime human rights lawyer and lecturer at Columbia University, said Trump’s latest threat to extinguish a “whole civilization” meets the “very definition of terrorism — to seek to achieve political ends through violence or threats of violence directed at civilians.”
He noted that the Pentagon’s own law-of-war manual clearly prohibits threats of violence whose primary purpose is to spread terror among civilians. “Military personnel,” Jaffer said, “have an obligation not to carry out orders they know to be unlawful.”
Until now, the United States largely has been hitting military targets in Iran such as ammunition depots, ballistic missile manufacturing facilities, mobile launchers and naval ships. But Trump has threatened that, as of Tuesday 8 p.m., he will order the military to target clearly civilian facilities and do so indiscriminately, rather than weigh whether each is a valid military target whose destruction would not cause undue civilian harm.
“If the President takes the actions he has threatened to take, countless Iranian civilians will die, it will massively escalate this war, and the United States will be seen as a country without a moral or ethical compass,” said Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), another Democrat who participated in the video last year who has been targeted by not just Trump, but Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth personally. “That will make Americans less safe right now and risk the lives of thousands of service members. The consequences will have a lasting and damaging effect on our nation.”
WTF Are Republicans Saying?
While many Republicans in Congress are either downplaying Trump’s rhetoric as a negotiation tool — Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), a retiring moderate who often breaks with Trump, shrugged the whole thing off as “negotiating Trump style” — or not saying anything, a few have urged the president to maybe think twice here.
- Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), for example, told the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that Trump would lose him as an ardent defender in Congress if he makes good on his threat to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages,” calling his threats “a huge mistake.” “I hope and pray that President Trump is just using this as bluster,” he said.
- Rep. Nathaniel Moran (R-TX) limply implied in a tweet that targeting civilians might be unconstitutional: “So, let me be clear: I do not support the destruction of a ‘whole civilization.’ That is not who we are, and it is not consistent with the principles that have long guided America,” he wrote.
- ??? “President Trump is trying to actually turn the temperature down,” Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-NC) told Fox News.
- Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) suggested in a Twitter post that Congress might need to consider taking some action to either authorize or conduct oversight on Trump’s actions in Iran: “Congress has a responsibility to conduct oversight with respect to ongoing military operations and our obligations under both U.S. law and international agreements to which we are a signatory,” he said.
- Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) bravely calls for de-escalation: “The oppressive, terror-spreading regime of the Islamic Republic must be distinguished from the people and the civilization of Iran. Everyone involved — especially the President and Iran’s leaders — must de-escalate their unprecedented saber-rattling before it is too late.”
Trump Dismisses Tucker
Tucker Carlson suggested that Trump was the anti-Christ and begining the “first step toward nuclear war” on Monday evening, adding hysteria to the evangelical and Christian right’s tendency to label most foreign policy moves either by Trump or other presidents as the beginning of the End Times.
“Is it possible that the president sees this in bigger terms? Sees this as the fulfillment of something? An elevation of some higher office beyond president of the United States?” Tucker pondered.
“Tucker’s a low IQ person that has absolutely no idea what’s going on,” Trump told the New York Post Tuesday. “He calls me all the time; I don’t respond to his calls. I don’t deal with him. I like dealing with smart people, not fools.”
In Case You Missed It
The latest from Hunter Walker: ‘WAR CRIME ALERT!!’ MAGAworld Is Split Over Trump’s Threat To Destroy Iran’s ‘Whole Civilization’
Morning Memo: Trump: ‘A Whole Civilization Will Die Tonight’ … Maybe
Josh Marshall: Tactical Victories, Strategic Calamities—Another Day in Trump’s Iran War
Re-upping this from Sarah Posner this week: Trump’s Evangelical Leaders Are Working Overtime to Spin the Iran War
Yesterday’s Most Read Story
New Video of ICE Shooting Undermines Agents’ Account
In the “before,” “normal” times this would be at least somewhat reassuring, however SCOTUS said anything he does within the duties of his office is NOT illegal. Soooooo, as Commander in Chief it would appear any order of his is “legal” per SCOTUS. PLEASE, prove me wrong.
IMHO if he has or threatens to commit genocide, that is not within the scope of his presidential duties and is illegal. We need a constitutional lawyer here to set us straight.
For a guy who said he ended 8 wars and deserves the Nobel, this sure doesn’t get him anything but jail time.
Someone oughta read the First Felon’s threats but replace Iran in the narrative with the United States and then read it to a GQP or even a Dem and ask them how they would respond to this threat were it directed here.
We’re still not learning the lesson of 9/11. We are vulnerable. And someone could just decide they’ve had enough of all of this and start laying waste to portions of the US, or even to some of our overseas bases.
It’s getting real close to a point where there will be retribution, but it won’t be the First Felon that’s exercising it.
TACO ! He listened to Pakistan. But Iran says “It is emphasized that this does not signify the termination of the war,” the statement said. “Our hands remain upon the trigger, and should the slightest error be committed by the enemy, it shall be met with full force.”
Iran’s explanation of the 10-point plan included its claimed that the Strait of Hormuz would be subject to “regulated passage … under the coordination of the Armed Forces of Iran.”
It added that would be “thereby conferring upon Iran a unique economic and geopolitical standing.” It also would receive full sanctions relief.
Nothing about fees to go through the strait.