White House Struggles to Defend Trump’s Threat to Commit War Crimes

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that President Trump is “not afraid” to commit war crimes against innocent Iranian civilians.

“The president posted this morning … he [threatened] ‘blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells and Kharg Island, and possibly all desalinization plants.’ Under international law, striking civilian infrastructure like that is generally prohibited,” NBC’s Garret Haake asked Leavitt at her Monday briefing. “Why is the president threatening what would amount to potentially a war crime with the U.S. military, and how do you square that with the administration repeatedly saying that the U.S. does not target civilians?”

“The president has made it quite clear to the Iranian regime at this moment in time—as evidenced by the statement that you just read—that their best move is to make a deal. Or else the United States Armed Forces has capabilities beyond their wildest imagination,” Leavitt replied. “And the president is not afraid to use them.”

“Including potential war crimes?” Haake responded.

“That’s not what I said, Garrett. And you’re saying the word ‘potential’ for a reason. I’m sure some experts are telling you that in your ear to try to ask me that question. Of course this administration … will always act within the confines of the law,” Leavitt said.

That has not been the case. Aside from waging an illegal war in the first place, the Trump administration—along with Israel—has already killed more than 1,500 civilians in Iran. Haake’s question was valid, as Trump very much threatened to bomb access to clean water and electricity on Monday morning. That is illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

University of Manchester international law professor Yusra Suedi told Al Jazeera that Trump’s post “reinforces the climate of impunity around collective punishment in warfare.”

“This is clearly an act of collective punishment, which is prohibited under international humanitarian law. You can’t deliberately harm an entire civilian population to pressure its government,” she said.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s outrageous order to immigration officials may have sparked the confrontation that killed an American citizen. 

During one of his many furious morning calls with immigration enforcement officials, Miller demanded that federal agents be dispatched to certain areas of Minneapolis in order to “force confrontations” with anti-ICE protesters, two senior DHS sources told the Daily Mail. 

Miller repeatedly urged federal agents to engage with protesters in order to win a “PR battle,” one official told the outlet. 

He told officials that anti-ICE could not be viewed as successful, and repeatedly said that demonstrators “need to be vanquished by any force necessary,” another DHS source told the Mail.  

Federal immigration agents would later shoot and kill Alex Pretti, a 36-year-old ICU nurse, sparking nationwide outrage and unrest. Miller claimed that Pretti was an “assassin” when he was simply filming agents while exercising his Second Amendment right.  

Miller’s hard-line mass deportation agenda is reportedly falling out of fashion with the fascists, as mounting leaks have detailed his erratic behavior in backing his soft ethnic cleansing. 

The U.S. Army is investigating why two AH-64 Apache attack helicopters flew over a No Kings protest in Nashville, Tennessee, on Saturday, and then performed low-altitude maneuvers near the home of musician Kid Rock.

In a statement, Major Jonathon Bless, public affairs officer for the 101st Airborne Division, said, “Fort Campbell leadership is aware of a video circulating on social media depicting AH-64 Apache helicopters operating in the vicinity of a private residence associated with Mr. Robert Ritchie (also known as ‘Kid Rock’). The command has initiated an investigation to review the circumstances surrounding this activity.

“The 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and Fort Campbell maintain strict standards for aviation safety, professionalism, and adherence to established flight regulations. We take all concerns regarding aircraft operations and their impact on the surrounding community seriously,” the statement continued.

Bless later told local TV station NewsChannel 5 that the reason the helicopters flew over the protest was not known.

“Our pilots do regularly fly routes outside the Fort Campbell area,” the spokesperson said. “We just don’t know if it was incidental or if it was deliberate.”

Ritchie gloated over the flyover at his home, posting video taken from his rooftop to X while taking shots at California Governor Gavin Newsom for some reason.

“This is a level of respect that shit for brains Governor of California will never know. God Bless America and all those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to defend her 🇺🇸 🙏,” the performer wrote.

It’s normal for police helicopters to fly over large crowds or protests, but very unusual for the military, which is prohibited from engaging in domestic law enforcement by the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. And flying over the home of a minor, pro-Trump celebrity in the Nashville suburb of Whites Creek is a waste of military and taxpayer resources at best. As of 2022, an Apache helicopter costs $5,171 to operate per hour.

The Trump administration is citing a racist confederate lawyer who argued for “separate but equal” segregation and Jim Crow law in its attempt to end birthright citizenship.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear the Justice Department’s attempt to argue that being born in the United States doesn’t make you a citizen, contrary to what the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment states. A friend-of-the-court brief from the Chinese American Legal Defense Alliance, or CALDA, highlighted that the DOJ is, in its own briefs, “recycling the losing arguments” of Alexander Porter Morse, who unsuccessfully argued before the Supreme Court in the 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark that U.S. children born to Chinese immigrant parents had no right to citizenship.

According to The Washington Post, Justice Department lawyers specifically referenced Morse’s argument that the Constitution “exclude[s] the children of foreigners transiently within the United States” from qualifying for citizenship.

Morse believed that Chinese people were “uncivilized,” didn’t want Black people to have the right to vote, and opposed Reconstruction. It’s deeply troubling yet unsurprising that the Trump administration is using his views to support its case.

“In Wong Kim Ark, Wharton, Morse, and Collins lost. And that loss was deserved. Their arguments were built on a racist foundation, attempting to use anti-Chinese sentiment to relitigate, rather than interpret, the Citizenship Clause,” CALDA wrote. “A Supreme Court made up of people who themselves harbored anti-Chinese racist beliefs nevertheless stood up to that moment and defended the Constitution.”

CALDA compared the historic ruling to one far more shameful decades later, upholding Japanese internment. “In Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court allowed fear and bigotry to subjugate the Constitution, a mistake that this Court would later say was ‘wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and—to be clear—has no place in law under the Constitution.’

“This is another moment for the Court,” CALDA continued in its brief. “Will it follow the path this Court blazed in Wong Kim Ark? Or will it issue another Korematsu?”

After Israel’s military killed three journalists in a strike on Lebanon Saturday, they took to social media to gloat about the death of one in particular.

“ELIMINATED: For years, Ali Hassan Shaib operated as a Hezbollah Radwan Force terrorist under the guise of a journalist. Turns out the ‘press vest’ was just a cover for terror,” the official X account for the Israel Defence Forces wrote.

The post was accompanied by a collage of Shoaib (the correct spelling of his last name, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ), which showed him dressed half in a press vest and half in a military uniform.

When questioned about the image by Fox News’s chief foreign correspondent, Trey Yingst, the IDF admitted that the image of Shoaib in a military uniform was faked.

“Unfortunately there isn’t really a picture of it, it was photoshopped,” the IDF said.

Shoaib was a reporter for Lebanese TV station Al-Manar TV. The station is affiliated with Hezbollah, an Islamist political group that has been at war with Israel since late 2023.

Al Jazeera reported that the strike consisted of three precision missiles, which hit a “clearly marked press vehicle” that also contained siblings and media members Fatima and Mohammed Ftouni. Another precision missile later hit the same vehicle, killing a paramedic who had arrived to assist the victims.

The Israeli government admitted that it had targeted Shoaib but has not provided evidence that he was a terrorist, or even a combatant in the war, according to CPJ. Instead, the IDF said the strike that killed Shoaib “is being further investigated.”

Eleven media members have been killed in Lebanon since the Israel-Gaza war began in 2023. Two hundred fifty-nine have died in the conflict altogether, CPJ reports, of whom 256 were killed by Israeli forces.