Trump Brags About His Plan to Commit War Crimes in Iran

Donald Trump announced his intent to commit acts tantamount to war crimes in Iran in a Fox News interview that aired Tuesday evening.

Asked whether recent U.S. strikes against Iran will “expand,” Trump said, “Ultimately, we’ll hit energy targets.” He vowed to hit Iran “very hard” this week, and warned that “next week comes the power plants. Next week comes the bridges. We’re going to knock out all their power plants. We’re going to knock out all their bridges, unless they get to the table and negotiate.”

International law prohibits such deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure. The Geneva Conventions protect “objects indispensable to civilian survival” from attacks or reprisals, and they bar the sort of indiscriminate, blanket strikes the president described.

This is far from the first time Trump and his military officials have made, or boasted about following through on, such threats.

For example, Trump has previously threatened to “take out … power plants that create the electricity, that create the water” and to “do things that would be so bad they could literally never rebuild as a nation again.” After bombing a highway bridge near Tehran in April, he said there was “much more to follow.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had promised the previous month to give Iranian troops “no quarter.”

And of course, also in April, Trump infamously threatened a genocide of Iran’s more than 90 million people, posting, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

Hundreds of federal prosecutors are begging the Senate not to confirm Todd Blanche, arguing that the acting attorney general has increasingly placed his loyalty to Donald Trump over his duties to the country.

Mimi Rocah and Perry A. Carbone, two prosecutors that worked with Blanche in the Southern District of New York and “once considered him a close friend,” published a scathing indictment of the acting attorney general in MS NOW Wednesday, writing that it has been “painful” to watch someone they once regarded highly continually bow to Trump’s whims.

“As federal prosecutors, we were taught that our duty was to pursue justice fairly, impartially and independently—not to bring or win cases at all costs, to advance political agendas, or to serve powerful individuals,” wrote Rocah and Carbone. “In our view, Blanche has turned his back on these principles.”

The duo elaborated that their concern was not political, but rather institutional, questioning whether the Justice Department would continue to exist as an entity that serves the American people—and whether the American people would continue to have faith in its abilities to serve them—if it remains under Blanche’s control.

They cited Blanche’s willingness to fire career prosecutors and FBI agents to satisfy Trump’s political interests, his belief that Trump has a “right” and a “duty” to shape federal probes, as well as the DOJ’s $1.8 billion slush fund as examples that have so far tanked their faith in Blanche’s abilities to remain independent of the White House.

Earlier this week, a federal judge ruled that the massive slush fund was illegitimate, as it had been created through an arrangement between two entities—Trump’s personal attorneys and Trump’s administration—effectively acting in cahoots. In doing so, the judge dismantled months of Blanche’s handiwork, killing the taxpayer-funded reparations intended for Trump’s supporters, and also nixing the addendum Blanche had penned that granted Trump and his family unusual immunity from tax claims.

The judge also referred all the attorneys involved—including Blanche—to state bar agencies for potential disciplinary proceedings.

Rocah and Carbone further flamed Blanche for giving a platform to Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend and a prolific sex trafficker in her own right, to lie about her experiences, and then rewarding her with a cushy prison transfer.

“Todd Blanche has shown himself unable or unwilling to stop prioritizing the interests of Donald Trump above all else,” the attorneys wrote.

They are far from alone in their criticism. More than 1,200 former DOJ employees sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday in unified opposition to Blanche’s confirmation, writing that Blanche has “utterly failed” his oath to support and defend the Constitution.

“The consequences of Blanche’s attacks on DOJ’s apolitical workforce radiate beyond the halls of Main Justice, affecting the entire country. They’ve meant that much of the department’s vital work isn’t being done, or isn’t being done as well—leaving communities less safe, Americans’ rights less protected, and our national security more vulnerable,” the letter reads.

“The culture of fear Blanche has instilled within DOJ’s workforce must end. Respect for career professionals must return,” the letter continues. “Would-be job applicants need to believe the Justice Department lives up to the virtue in its name. And instead of exhibiting fealty to the president, the attorney general must heed John Adams’s admonition that our republic remains a ‘government of laws, not of men.’

“For the sake of the institution where we once proudly served, we urge you to reject Todd Blanche’s nomination,” the cohort concluded.

President Trump took to Truth Social to tell Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to continue doing traffic stops after the third person was killed in an immigration enforcement operation in the past week.

“The men and women of ICE are doing a GREAT job, one that has to be done. CRIME IS WAY DOWN IN AMERICA, in many cases with numbers that haven’t been seen in decades. The Open Border Policy of Sleepy Joe Biden allowed 25,000,000 people to pour into our Country, unchecked and unvetted. Many were Criminals, and we have to get them out. In order to do this, we must be strong, tough, and smart, and we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” Trump wrote early on Wednesday morning.

ICE announced Tuesday that it would temporarily end traffic stops after an ICE agent shot and killed Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian man who was here legally, while he drove with his three-year-old daughter in Maine. And the next day, a man in Florida was struck and killed by a tractor trailer while being chased by ICE.

Last Tuesday, an ICE agent shot and killed longtime Houston resident and father of three Lorenzo Salgado Araujo while he was driving, claiming that he tried to ram the officers—a claim the other men in the car have denied.

And yet Trump is still pressing for ICE to continue this particularly fatal exercise as he continues to struggle to reach his delusional goal of one million deportations.

“In speaking with numerous ICE sources today, most are expressing frustration that this will cause their arrest numbers to fall off a cliff while in effect. A large majority of their arrests involve vehicle stops. They will now largely have to rely on court arrests, detainer transfers, USCIS interviews, or ‘consensual encounters’/roving patrols on foot to make arrests in bigger numbers,” Fox News’s Bill Melugin wrote on Tuesday. “ICE prefers to target people in their vehicles instead of their homes because homes require a judicial warrant to enter, and vehicles are considered safer (someone can run into a home and grab a weapon, etc.) and targets can be followed to public areas where warrants aren’t required.”

These killings have led to wide, renewed calls for ICE to either be abolished or overhauled. But Trump wants the terror to continue, as it seems he couldn’t care less that at least 11 people have been fatally shot during his second-term immigration crackdown.

“The Radical Left Dumocrats would like to see this done, but it won’t happen on my watch. I.C.E., be judicious, fair and smart, and go back and do your very important job. Keep those Crime Stat Records coming!” Trump continued. “Remember, you are loved and respected in America. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

After Paramount Skydance secured its multibillion-dollar merger with Skydance Media, it gave Federal Communications Commission officials who approved the deal some very pricey gifts. 

ProPublica reports that the company gave away expensive tickets to the Kennedy Center honors gala worth thousands of dollars. Commissioner Olivia Trusty, whose vote was needed to approve the merger, went to the black-tie event with a guest, thanks to tickets gifted by Paramount worth $12,000. FCC Chair Brendan Carr got even more expensive seats for himself and his wife: private skybox tickets with Paramount CEO David Ellison and other company executives worth $125,000 each. 

These weren’t the first gifts from Paramount to FCC commissioners. Ethics disclosures show that the company has gifted tickets to the gala to seven of the 10 commissioners over the last decade, a glaring conflict of interest for government employees responsible for regulating broadcasting companies like Paramount. Carr has accepted Kennedy Center tickets at least seven times since his appointment in 2017, totaling $63,000, according to his financial statements.  

Ethics experts told ProPublica that gifts like these compromise the impartiality of the FCC, and that commissioners who accepted them shouldn’t take part in any decisions concerning Paramount’s merger. 

“There’s no way that any top federal regulator should ever, ever accept a gift from a regulated company with interests their work will foreseeably affect,” Walter Shaub, director of the Office of Government Ethics from 2013 to 2017, told ProPublica. “The appearance of taking gifts like that is terrible. What’s at stake is nothing less than the public’s trust in government.”

The FCC’s final seal of approval is one of the last barriers to Paramount’s takeover of Warner Bros., which would put one company in charge of the networks CBS and CNN, the streaming services Paramount+ and HBO Max, and dozens of other media entities. Critics fear it could hand a powerful media conglomerate over to David and Larry Ellison, staunch supporters of President Trump who would likely force CNN to produce right-wing news coverage. 

Twelve Democratic-led states sued to stop the merger on Monday, and the Writers’ Guild, a union representing 18,000 media workers, also filed a lawsuit the next day against the deal in federal court, saying that it threatens the workers’ livelihoods. The British government signaled last month that it would investigate whether the new entity would hurt competition in the entertainment industry. 

Like many business deals in Trump’s second term, this one has a whiff of corruption. The FCC has been tainted, and Trump openly supports a deal that could stifle critical news coverage of him, while giving his supporters control of a large swath of the entertainment industry. His own FCC appears to be in Paramount’s pocket. 

The ICE agent who shot and killed a 26-year-old Colombian immigrant in Biddeford, Maine, Monday morning had been with the agency for just a few short months.

The agent who killed Joan Sebastián Guerrero, the father of a three-year-old daughter, has not yet been identified, but a senior administration official who spoke with The Atlantic Tuesday on the condition of anonymity said that the agent was hired this year. The agent had previously been employed by the Department of Veterans Affairs Police, and had worked within the fold of federal law enforcement since 2017.

It was the second such shooting within the span of a week. Last week, another ICE agent killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo—a 52-year-old Mexican father of three and a local small-business owner—during a traffic stop in Houston. DHS officials have claimed that Salgado Araujo attempted to hit the federal agents with the front of his van, but eyewitnesses have directly contradicted that narrative. Bystanders who spoke with Representative Sylvia Garcia said that the agent fired his gun through the front passenger side window, and that federal agents were never in front of the vehicle.

The offending officer in the Houston shooting has not yet been publicly identified, either.

The two deaths prompted ICE to suspend all vehicle stops “effective immediately,” according to an email notice issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement official Liana Castano to ICE supervisors around the country. The directive came from Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin with support from ICE acting Director David Venturella, reported The Atlantic.

There have now been 11 fatal shootings by ICE agents since Donald Trump returned to office and made mass deportations a cornerstone of his second-term agenda.

In January, federal agents shot and killed 37-year-old mother Renee Nicole Good and, days later, ICU nurse Alex Pretti. Both were U.S. citizens. Their deaths sparked national outrage and further incensed the local pandemonium in Minneapolis that started weeks prior with Trump’s sudden decision to occupy the city with federal agents.

It’s been over six months since their deaths, but still virtually nothing has come of the federal investigation into the extrajudicial killings. Instead, Washington has reportedly utilized its heft to stow critical evidence—such as Good’s vehicle—away from the local and private detectives attempting to hold their killers accountable.