Republican Senator Breaks With Trump After Iran War Crimes Threat

At least one Republican senator is finally speaking out against President Trump’s genocidal threats against Iran. 

“I am hoping and praying that President Trump … [that] this really is bluster. I do not want to see us start blowing up civilian infrastructure. I do not want to see that,” conservative Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson said on an episode of the John Solomon Reports podcast released Monday. “We are not at war with the Iranian people. We are trying to liberate them.” 

While this statement is stronger than that of most congressional Republicans, Johnson’s dreams of liberation have been all but deferred. On Tuesday, Trump warned that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” 

While former MAGA acolytes like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alex Jones have criticized  Trump’s threats—even calling for his removal—Johnson is one of the few Republicans in Congress to voice a similar opinion. Other than him, Rand Paul has been the only Republican senator to try to rein in Trump’s war.

In fact, many Republicans spent their Tuesday morning doing incredibly unconvincing damage control.

“The new threat from the president is that a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. You say the president doesn’t want to do it. Does being reluctant to end a civilization make it OK?” CNN’s John Berman asked GOP representative and staunch Israel supporter Mike Lawler on Tuesday.

“I don’t think we’re talking about ending a civilization, the issue—”

“Do you say you don’t believe the president’s threat?” the host said, interrupting Lawler. 

“It is their energy infrastructure and their civilian infrastructure, including roads and bridges. That will cripple the Iranian regime and certainly their economy,” Lawler said, deflecting. “It is not something we want to do.… We are not at war with Iranian people, we want them to be free from this oppression and tyranny that they have lived under for 47 years. But if the president has to take necessary action to strike their energy and infrastructure, that is going to cripple the regime. 

“You don’t take him at his word that he will end a whole civilization?” 

“He is talking about the energy and civilian infrastructure,” Lawler replied.

“He said ‘never to be brought back again.’ He just means the bridges and the infrastructure?” 

“Again John, we’re talking about taking decision action against Iran’s energy and civilian infrastructure. That is what the president is talking about. He’s not talking about obliterating innocent people.” 

This is sad and pathetic. We’re watching politicians trying to rationalize the president’s genocidal intent by arguing full-throatedly that he doesn’t actually mean it when he says, “A whole civilization will die tonight.” Trump has already bombed multiple civilian targets beyond bridges, including a school full of girls on the first day of the war. Why would we put anything past him at this point?

Once a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump, conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson has fully turned against him over the war in Iran, going as far as to liken Trump to the Antichrist on his eponymous podcast.

“Could there be a spiritual component to this?” Carlson said on The Tucker Carlson Show on Monday. “Is it just a conventional escalation ladder in a badly thought out war … [or] could it be something bigger? Is it possible what you’re watching is a very stealthy yet incredibly effective attack on what, from a Christian perspective, is the true faith: belief in Jesus?”

Carlson went on: “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?”

Trump responded in a typically petulant manner to Carlson’s comments on Tuesday morning. “Tucker’s a low IQ person that has absolutely no idea what’s going on,” he told the New York Post’s Caitlin Doornbos. “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.”

Carlson, a former Fox News host, aggressively campaigned for Trump during both of his winning presidential bids; Trump even told reporters in 2024 that he was considering picking Carlson as his vice president. But since the president’s reelection, Carlson has soured on Trump on issues such as the Epstein files and, in particular, the war on Iran.

On Easter Sunday, Carlson described Trump’s expletive-laden threat towards Iran’s civilian infrastructure as “vile on every level.” In his Monday podcast, he also criticized the president’s frequent disparaging of Islam: “No president should mock Islam. That’s not your job. This is not a theocracy. We don’t go to war with other theocracies to find out which one is more effective. We are not a theocracy, and God willing, we never will be.”

With millions listening to his show each week, Carlson is undoubtedly the most popular figure within a Christian isolationist sect popular with young, online Republicans, and that is increasingly unhappy with the president.

In fostering this crowd, Carlson has cozied up to white nationalists and Holocaust deniers such as Nick Fuentes and James Fishback. This has led to bipartisan criticism (though not, notably, from Trump himself, who apparently prefers to bash Carlson only when he feels personally slighted). Some expect Carlson to launch a presidential campaign himself in 2028, and he hasn’t yet ruled it out.

The willing publicization of some of the more sensitive information pertaining to Donald Trump’s White House ballroom has caused federal prosecutors to wonder if he’s inserting himself into the project’s legal filings.

Former assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn Kirschner spoke at length about the issue on his podcast Justice Matters Monday, arguing that certain details spelled out in the filings—such as the national security additions intended to be built beneath the 90,000-square-foot dance hall—were so naïvely included that he wondered if Trump hadn’t picked up his “beloved Sharpie” to edit the documents himself before they were submitted to the judge.

“I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it’s kind of curious that this public court filing is announcing not just to the American people, but to the world, including our enemies, exactly what kind of ‘top secret facilities’ this ballroom will contain,” Kirschner said.

“I find it impossible to believe that a legitimate, self-respecting Department of Justice attorney authored this garbage,” he continued. “It’s embarrassing. It’s an insult to the court. And more importantly, it’s an insult to the American people because that’s whose interests DOJ attorneys are supposed to represent.”

The filings make mention of planned bomb shelters, a hospital, a medical area, protective partitioning, and “top secret” military installations. They also clarify some of the building materials, which include missile-resistant steel columns, drone-proof roofing materials, and bullet-, ballistic-, and blast-proof glass.

The court filing is also riddled with typos and unconventional grammar choices, more akin to the president’s litany of social media posts than a judicial filing submitted by the DOJ. The first page is doused in exclamation points, improper capitalization, misplaced parentheticals, redundant synonyms for emphasis, rhetorical flourishes, and run-on sentences.

Trump’s idea to build a ballroom on the White House grounds larger than the executive estate itself has been riddled with problems and colored by lies since he first announced the project in July. Initially, Trump pledged that the development would “be near but not touching” the White House East Wing.

Months later, his construction teams completely razed the FDR-era extension, plowing forward without prerequisite approval from the National Capital Planning Commission or the express permission of Congress, both of which were conveniently unavailable at the time due to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

The ballroom’s estimated price tag has been similarly difficult to nail down. Trump originally claimed that the project would cost $200 million, but a decision to tack on extra construction to the site doubled its expenses to $400 million. The new building will have 40-foot ceilings, be able to accommodate up to 1,000 seated guests, and would constitute 22,000 square feet of the 90,000-square-foot development, according to projections offered by East Wing ballroom architect Shalom Baranes in January.

New Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin wants to punish “sanctuary cities” for refusing to cooperate with Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda by stripping them of customs and immigration services.

Mullin floated the idea in a Fox News interview with Bret Baier Monday night, saying that he believes “sanctuary cities is not lawful.”

“Some of these cities have international airports. If they’re a sanctuary city, should they really be processing customs into their city? Seriously, if they’re a sanctuary city, and they’re receiving international flights, and we’re asking them to partner with us at the airport, but once they walk out the airport, they’re not going to enforce immigration policy?” Mullin said.

“So, you’re saying that big cities that are sanctuary cities that have a big airport, they might lose their customs?” Baier replied.

“Well, I’m saying we’re gonna have to start prioritizing things at some point,” Mullin said, blaming Democrats for shutting down Customs and Border Protection. “Who processes those individuals when they walk off the plane? I’m going to have to be forced to make hard decisions. Who’s willing to work with us and partner with us?”

Such a move would be catastrophic for the busiest airports in the U.S., such as those in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago, and cause major disruptions in international travel. Several commentators on social media pointed out that this could tank the economy and would be catastrophic ahead of the World Cup this summer.

Removing customs processing from cities deemed hostile to Trump’s agenda would likely be met with immediate lawsuits and an outcry from most Americans, not just over the economic impact but also because people who don’t live near these airports often depend on them for connecting flights. If the security lines are bad at airports now with the partial government shutdown, removing customs processing would only make them exponentially worse. If this is how Mullin’s tenure at DHS is beginning, we’re about to see a whole new level of incompetence from the Trump administration.

President Trump warned Tuesday that “a whole civilization will die tonight” in Iran, raising concerns about his potential use of nuclear weapons in the country. Now some of his former MAGA allies are trying to get him to back away from the nuclear ledge.

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. 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?” Trump wrote Tuesday on Truth Social in perhaps his most abhorrent and disgusting statement since the start of the war five weeks ago. “We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!”

It’s unclear how God can bless the “great people of Iran” when Trump is threatening to kill their “whole civilization.” Multiple high-profile right-wingers have warned that Trump is close to using nuclear bombs, and even called for invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment—in which the vice president, Cabinet, and Congress can declare a president unfit to serve.

“Wake up: he is calling for A NUCLEAR STRIKE,” former White House comms director Anthony Scaramucci warned. “Seek his removal immediately.”

In his show a day earlier, Tucker Carlson warned that someone in the White House needs to learn the nuclear codes to stop him. “If you work in the White House … now is the time to say, ‘no, absolutely not,’ and say it directly to the president. Military, now it’s time to say no, absolutely not, and say it directly to the president, no. In case you’re thinking about using some weapon of mass destruction against the population of Iran, in whose name we liberated Iran, we killed their religious leader for their benefit. Do you remember that? This was last month,” the former Fox News host said.

“Those people who are in direct contact with the president need to say, no, I’ll resign,” he continued. “I’ll do whatever I can do legally to stop this because this is insane. And if given the order, I’m not carrying it out. Figure out the codes on the football yourself because everything hangs in the balance right now. This is not hysteria, this is 100 percent real.”

“25TH AMENDMENT!!! Not a single bomb has dropped on America. We cannot kill an entire civilization,” former MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Green wrote on X following Trump’s threat. “This is evil and madness.”

Even Alex Jones weighed in.

“How do we 25th Amendment his ass?” Jones mused on his show Monday evening. After the president’s threat Tuesday morning, Jones posted, “WAR CRIME ALERT!!- Trump on Iran: ‘A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. The definition of genocide is destroying an entire civilization/people! Trump literally sounds like an unhinged super villain from a Marvel comic movie. This IS NOT WHAT WE VOTED FOR!!!”

These reversals are damning, and representative of a very real and growing schism between the neocons in Trump’s ear and the “America First,” “end to endless wars” crowd that makes up a significant portion of Trump supporters. And they’re right—what Trump is suggesting would have immediate, devastating impacts on the people of Iran, the Middle East, and the entire world for decades.

Donald Trump has hatched a heinous plan for Iran.

The president hinted at the scale of devastation that awaits the Middle Eastern nation via Truth Social post Tuesday morning, promising to completely annihilate one of the world’s oldest continuous civilizations if Iran’s leaders refuse to give him what he wants.

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Trump wrote. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”

“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?” he continued. “We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!”

Trump has repeatedly escalated his threats against Iran since Sunday, demanding that the country’s leadership either reopen the Strait of Hormuz—a vital tradeway in the region that only closed because of Trump’s intervention—or face total annihilation, highlighting various possible strike targets such as Iran’s power plants and bridges. The president said this despite the fact that doing so would constitute a war crime.

Targeting non-combatants such as civilians and civilian infrastructure is a blatant violation of International Humanitarian Law. Exterminating a “whole civilization” would break several components of the Geneva Conventions, which the U.S. played a foundational role in creating.

Trump pledged on social media that Iran had the opportunity to act until Tuesday 8 p.m., but the president appears to have jumped his own timeline. By Tuesday morning, bombs were already raining on the nation’s railways.

Iranian media responded just after 9 a.m. EST, announcing through diplomatic channels that talks with the U.S. had stalled in the wake of Trump’s explicit threats.

Vice President JD Vance backed Trump’s response Tuesday morning, telling an assembly in Budapest that he hopes Iran makes the “right response,” highlighting America’s needs for free flowing oil.

“They’ve got to know, we’ve got tools in our toolkit that we so far haven’t decided to use,” Vance said. “The president of the United States can decide to use them, and he will decide to use them if the Iranians don’t change their course of conduct.”

It was not clear exactly which “tools,” capable of erasing an entire civilization, Vance was referring to.

The flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz was not an issue until Israel and the U.S. jointly attacked Iran in late February. In the weeks that followed, Iran sealed off the waterway, which funnels approximately one-fifth of all global crude oil shipments.

The ramifications of closing the chokepoint have been felt around the world. In the U.S., the price per oil barrel has exploded due to the strait’s closure, pushing gas over $4 per gallon in most states (in some areas of California, gas has leapt past $7 a gallon). Diesel shot up by 20 cents over the last week alone.

Trump has waffled on the strait’s significance to American markets. Last week, the president rapidly cycled through his opinions on the transit point, claiming in succession that he didn’t care if the strait remained closed, and that he needed it reopened.

The pressure to reopen the strait likely comes from his own party, which has become increasingly anxious over the economic fallout of the war. Republicans—particularly in vulnerable districts—have stressed that the war could wreak havoc on their election results come November.

That alone has amped up enough pressure on the White House to seek a near-immediate conclusion to the war, though it does not appear that Trump will have it.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, is already bolstering itself for another grinding Middle East conflict: last month, Politico reported that military strategists in U.S. Central Command requested the Pentagon supply support for their operations in Iran through at least September.

This story has been updated.

President Trump reached out to the crew of the Artemis II spacecraft Monday night, but ended up having a call that was so awkward it quickly went viral. 

“America is a frontier nation, and the four brave astronauts of Artemis II are a modern-day, you really are modern-day pioneers, all of you,” Trump said, starting out with a congratulatory message. But then, he made things weird for one crew member. 

“And one of them happens to be a neighbor, you know who that is, right? You have a special person over there, a neighbor, and uh, we like our neighbor,” Trump continued. 

The “neighbor” in question happened to be Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, a member of the Canadian Space Agency. Trump can’t seem to be able to hide his feelings about the country, which he has antagonized by saying it should be the fifty-first U.S. state. Perhaps that’s why he couldn’t even bring himself to say the word “Canada,” even with a large Canadian flag clearly visible in the video feed from the crew alongside an American flag. 

Trump said he spoke to Canadian ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, whom he called a “very special person,” and Prime Minister Mark Carney, and only then did he even say “Canada,” claiming to have many friends there.  

“You have a lot of courage doing what you do, a lot of bravery, and a lot of genius. But they are very, very proud of you,” Trump said.

But after that, Trump went silent and the astronauts sat awkwardly during more than a full moment of silence.

“Yeah, I think we might have gotten cut off. It is a long distance.… Reception has been great,” the president said.

In the midst of an unnecessary war, a poor economy, and high gas prices, people around the world are looking at the Artemis II mission, which has brought humans further in space than ever before, as a source of inspiration. Does Trump see it that way, as well? 

The Israel Defense Forces are ordering Iranian civilians not to use the trains, warning that their lives would be at risk if they do so even ahead of President Trump’s 8 p.m. E.T. “deadline.”

“Urgent Warning to Users and Train Passengers in the Country of Iran. Dear Citizens, for the sake of your security, we kindly request that from this moment until 21:00 Iran time, you refrain from using and traveling by train throughout Iran,” the IDF Farsi account posted on X. “Your presence on trains and near railway lines endangers your life.”

Trump warned on Easter Sunday—and on the following day—that all bridges and power plants in Iran would be bombed if the country did not make a deal and reopen the Strait of Hormuz by Tuesday evening. But it appears that deadline wasn’t so firm, as bridges across the country are already being targeted. So far, bridges near the Qom, Kashan, and the Tabriz-Zanjan highway have all been struck.

The U.S. also bombed Kharg Island, a key oil export hub for Iran, overnight.

Now, according to the IDF, civilians can’t even take the train to travel within their own country. Remember when these people wanted to liberate Iranians?

President Donald Trump wants to cut more than $1.5 billion—and thousands of jobs—from the Transportation Security Administration’s budget after subjecting its employees to weeks without pay. 

The Trump administration wants to gut 9,400 workers from the 60,000-person agency, according to budget documents reviewed Monday by Reuters. 

The 2027 White House budget suggests small airports rely on private security screeners, instead of the TSA, and claims this change would cut 4,500 jobs.

“The airports that already use this program have demonstrated savings compared to Federal screening operations,” the White House budget documents stated. “The move would yield cost savings compared to Federal screening and begin reform of a troubled Federal agency.”

 Airports that used privatized security avoided longer lines caused by the partial government shutdown, but using private companies risks compromising traveler safety and has been condemned by union leaders. 

“It’s very important that people understand what privatization is,” Johnny Jones, secretary treasurer for AFGE TSA Council 100, told CNN.  “It has nothing to do with your security or your safety. It has everything to do with somebody making a profit.”

The Department of Homeland Security has also pitched ending staffing at exit lanes, which would cut another 4,800 jobs. 

Last month, Trump rejected a plan to pay TSA workers amid a partial government shutdown, because Democrats wouldn’t agree to fund the president’s reckless federal immigration enforcement. Republican lawmakers had also made efforts to stall funding TSA in order to continue the fight over immigration funding. 

Finally, last week, Trump signed an executive order to pay workers at the TSA, which has been hemorrhaging employees as paycheck after paycheck has gone unpaid, causing severe disruptions at airports across the country. 

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a vague law Monday that gives a handful of state officials—including him—the ability to denote groups as terrorist organizations and revoke their nonprofit status. Any college student who supports said terrorist organization can be expelled under the new law.

Florida’s House Bill 1471 appears to be targeted at Muslim organizations in the state, and DeSantis said as much in a press conference before signing the bill, calling it a means to protect against “sharia law” and boost “public safety, our culture, and our security.”

“We don’t want money flowing to these groups that are appendages of terrorist groups,” DeSantis added, mentioning the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations by name. “We’ll do millions for public safety, millions for education but never one red cent for jihad.”

CAIR is an organization whose mission is to protect the civil rights of American Muslims, and is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with chapters in states all across the country. In a statement, the executive director of CAIR-Florida, Hiba Rahim, called out DeSantis for having “falsely labeled CAIR as terrorists without lawful authority or evidence” four months before in a different bill that was later blocked in court.

“This is not just about CAIR. This expanded and deeply flawed framework can attack any organization that dares to dissent,” Rahim said about the new law. “As Floridians, together, we’ll watch how this unprecedented law is enforced, and whether it is used or abused.”

References to sharia law in the bill could also prevent Muslim schools from receiving state vouchers if they are determined to be affiliated with a group labeled a terrorist organization. Conspiracy theories over sharia law have been a right-wing fixation for decades, with conservatives falsely claiming that Muslims are trying to set up a religious legal system.

The bill doesn’t include any method for oversight of how groups would be designated as terrorist organizations, either by the courts or by Florida’s legislature.

“There is no requirement for legislative approval,” Representative Rita Harris, a Democrat, said while the bill was being debated. “There is no independent judicial finding before the designation takes effect. There is no built-in meaningful oversight mechanism to ensure transparency or review. In our system of government, we do not place sweeping, labeling authority in the hands of a few executive officials without guardrails.”

The bill will likely face legal challenges over violations of the rights to freedom of speech and religion enshrined in the First Amendment, and may not survive in court. Islamophobia, on the other hand, seems to persist in American political discourse even as its mouthpieces are consistently exposed as bigots.