Trump’s Vulgar Iran Post Raises Alarm: “A Deeply Unwell Man”

 

President Donald Trump drew a wave of backlash on Easter Sunday after posting an expletive-laced ultimatum to Iran that threatened strikes on the country’s power plants and bridges if Tehran does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a key maritime chokepoint for global energy shipments, amid the ongoing war.

The post quickly dominated political reaction in Washington, with critics warning the language could escalate the conflict and raise fresh concerns about whether the U.S. is signaling attacks on civilian infrastructure.

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F*****’ Strait, you crazy b*******, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The post and the blowback to it partly overshadowed the widely hailed Saturday rescue of a missing U.S. airman in Iran and the reaction to that earlier on Sunday, which drew praise from both sides of the aisle. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Among Republican lawmakers allied with the president, there was little direct comment on the post itself. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who pushed for the Iran war, wrote of Trump on Sunday on X: “He is deadly serious when it comes to his ultimatum to Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz or face a massive military response against vital infrastructure.”

Far‑right political activist Laura Loomer, who has a history of anti‑Muslim remarks, wrote: “This is what I voted for. Bomb jihadis back to the Stone Age where their mentality permanently lives. Trump said he’s going to bomb their infrastructure in Iran, and then he said ‘Praise be to Allah’. On Easter. Amazing. Just amazing. Strategic bombing wins wars.”

‘Threatening Possible War Crimes’

The backlash to Trump’s post was swift on X. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, described the post as the president “ranting like an unhinged madman on social media” as Americans “head off to church and celebrate with friends and family.” 

Schumer warned Trump was “threatening possible war crimes and alienating allies.”

Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, also condemned the message, calling it “the ravings of a dangerous and mentally unbalanced individual” and urging Congress to act to end the war.

Trump’s estranged niece, Mary Trump, wrote: “It’s not that Donald sent this as awful as it is; it’s that nobody felt they could stop him or, worse, nobody thought they should.”

Senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, responded simply: “Threatening war crimes. Unhinged, clueless, and embarrassing.”

Senator Patty Murray, a Washington state Democrat, wrote: “This is a deeply unwell man on a dangerous power trip, threatening possible war crimes. This is not how the President of the United States should be speaking about sending our servicemembers into harm’s way. Republicans should join Democrats to end this war immediately.”

President Donald Trump speaks from the Cross Hall of the White House on April 1 in Washington, DC.

‘A National Security Threat to Our Country’

Some lawmakers responded by bringing up the 25th Amendment, which allows a Cabinet to remove the president from office, and replace him with the vice president, under certain conditions. 

“If I were in Trump’s Cabinet, I would spend Easter calling constitutional lawyers about the 25th Amendment,” Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, wrote on X. “This is completely, utterly unhinged. He’s already killed thousands. He’s going to kill thousands more.”

Representative Yassamin Ansari, an Arizona Democrat, similarly posted: “The 25th Amendment exists for a reason. The President of the United States is a deranged lunatic, and a national security threat to our country and the rest of the world.”

Former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican who was once a Trump ally, also criticized his post, writing to administration officials on X: “I know all of you and him and he has gone insane, and all of you are complicit.”

Politically, the backlash signals that arguments about the war’s legality, proportionality, and congressional oversight are likely to intensify—especially as lawmakers point to potential humanitarian impacts and the risk of widening the conflict.

-Steve Mollman, NewsBreak

A brief history of how decades of mistrust and bad blood led to open warfare between the US and Iran

 

With U.S. bombs raining down on Iran and Tehran’s leaders responding by hitting targets across the Persian Gulf and restricting transit through the Strait of Hormuz, it is fair to suggest that the present moment represents a low in relations between the two countries.

But the bad blood isn’t new: The U.S. and Iran have been in conflict for decades – at least since the U.S. helped overthrow a democracy-minded prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, in August 1953. The U.S. then supported the long, repressive reign of the Shah of Iran, whose security services brutalized Iranian citizens for decades. The two countries have been particularly hostile to each other since Iranian students took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in November 1979, resulting in economic sanctions and the severing of formal diplomatic relations between the nations.

Since 1984, the U.S. State Department has listed Iran as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” alleging the Iranian government provides terrorists with training, money and weapons. Some of the major events in U.S.-Iran relations highlight the differences between the nations’ views, but others arguably presented real opportunities for reconciliation.

1953: US overthrows Mossadegh

In 1951, the Iranian Parliament chose a new prime minister, Mossadegh, who then led lawmakers to vote in favor of taking over the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, expelling the company’s British owners and saying they wanted to turn oil profits into investments in the Iranian people. The U.S. feared disruption in the global oil supply and worried about Iran falling prey to Soviet influence. The British feared the loss of cheap Iranian oil.

President Dwight Eisenhower decided it was best for the U.S. and the U.K. to get rid of Mossadegh. Operation Ajax, a joint CIA-British operation, convinced the Shah of Iran, the country’s monarch, to dismiss Mossadegh and drive him from office by force. Mossadegh was replaced by a much more Western-friendly prime minister, handpicked by the CIA.

Demonstrators in Tehran demand the establishment of an Islamic republic. AP Photo/Saris

1979: Revolutionaries oust the shah, take hostages

After more than 25 years of relative stability in U.S.-Iran relations, the Iranian public had grown unhappy with the social and economic conditions that developed under the dictatorial rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Pahlavi enriched himself and used American aid to fund the military while many Iranians lived in poverty. Dissent was often violently quashed by SAVAK, the shah’s security service. In January 1979, the shah left Iran, ostensibly to seek cancer treatment. Two weeks later, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile in Iraq and led a drive to abolish the monarchy and proclaim an Islamic government.

Iranian students at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran show a blindfolded American hostage to the crowd in November 1979. AP Photo

In October 1979, President Jimmy Carter agreed to allow the shah to come to the U.S. to seek advanced medical treatment. Outraged Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, taking 52 Americans hostage. That convinced Carter to sever U.S. diplomatic relations with Iran on April 7, 1980.

Two weeks later, the U.S. military launched a mission to rescue the hostages, but it failed, with aircraft crashes killing eight U.S. servicemembers.

The shah died in Egypt in July 1980, but the hostages weren’t released until Jan. 20, 1981, after 444 days of captivity.

An Iranian cleric, left, and an Iranian soldier wear gas masks to protect themselves against Iraqi chemical weapons attacks in May 1988. Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images

1980-1988: US tacitly sides with Iraq

In September 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, an escalation of the two countries’ regional rivalry and religious differences: Iraq was governed by Sunni Muslims but had a Shia Muslim majority population; Iran was led and populated mostly by Shiites.

The U.S. was concerned that the conflict would limit the flow of Middle Eastern oil and wanted to ensure the conflict didn’t affect its close ally, Saudi Arabia.

The U.S. supported Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in his fight against the anti-American Iranian regime. As a result, the U.S. mostly turned a blind eye toward Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against Iran.

U.S. officials moderated their usual opposition to those illegal and inhumane weapons because the U.S. State Department did not “wish to play into Iran’s hands by fueling its propaganda against Iraq.” In 1988, the war ended in a stalemate. More than 500,000 military and 100,000 civilians died.

1981-1986: US secretly sells weapons to Iran

The U.S. imposed an arms embargo after Iran was designated a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984. That left the Iranian military, in the middle of its war with Iraq, desperate for weapons and aircraft and vehicle parts to keep fighting.

The Reagan administration decided that the embargo would likely push Iran to seek support from the Soviet Union, the U.S.’s Cold War rival. Rather than formally end the embargo, U.S. officials agreed to secretly sell weapons to Iran starting in 1981.

The last shipment, of anti-tank missiles, was in October 1986. In November 1986, a Lebanese magazine exposed the deal. That revelation sparked the Iran-Contra scandal in the U.S., with Reagan’s officials found to have collected money from Iran for the weapons and illegally sent those funds to anti-socialist rebels – the Contras – in Nicaragua.

At a mass funeral for 76 of the 290 people killed in the shootdown of Iran Air 655, mourners hold up a sign depicting the incident. AP Photo/CP/Mohammad Sayyad

1988: US Navy shoots down Iran Air flight 655

On the morning of July 8, 1988, the USS Vincennes, a guided missile cruiser patrolling in the international waters of the Persian Gulf, entered Iranian territorial waters while in a skirmish with Iranian gunboats.

Either during or just after that exchange of gunfire, the Vincennes crew mistook a passing civilian Airbus passenger jet for an Iranian F-14 fighter. They shot it down, killing all 290 people aboard. The U.S. called it a “tragic and regrettable accident,” but Iran believed the plane’s downing was intentional. In 1996, the U.S. agreed to pay US$131.8 million in compensation to Iran.

1997-1998: The US seeks contact

In August 1997, a moderate reformer, Mohammad Khatami, won Iran’s presidential election. U.S. President Bill Clinton sensed an opportunity. He sent a message to Tehran through the Swiss ambassador there, proposing direct government-to-government talks.

Shortly thereafter, in early January 1998, Khatami gave an interview to CNN in which he expressed “respect for the great American people,” denounced terrorism and recommended an “exchange of professors, writers, scholars, artists, journalists and tourists” between the United States and Iran.

However, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei didn’t agree, so not much came of the mutual overtures as Clinton’s time in office came to an end. In his 2002 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush characterized Iran, Iraq and North Korea as constituting an “Axis of Evil” supporting terrorism and pursuing weapons of mass destruction, straining relations even further.

Technicians enriched uranium inside these buildings at the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran. AP Photo/Vahid Salemi

2002: Iran’s nuclear program raises alarm

In August 2002, an exiled rebel group announced that Iran had been secretly working on nuclear weapons at two installations that had not previously been publicly revealed. That was a violation of the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which Iran had signed, requiring countries to disclose their nuclear-related facilities to international inspectors. One of those formerly secret locations, Natanz, housed centrifuges for enriching uranium, which could be used in civilian nuclear reactors or enriched further for weapons.

Starting in roughly 2005, U.S. and Israeli government cyberattacks together reportedly targeted the Natanz centrifuges with a custom-made piece of malicious software that became known as Stuxnet. That effort, which slowed down Iran’s nuclear program was one of many U.S. and international attempts – mostly unsuccessful – to curtail Iran’s progress toward building a nuclear bomb.

2003: Iran writes to Bush administration

An excerpt of the document sent from Iran, via the Swiss government, to the U.S. State Department in 2003 appears to seek talks between the U.S. and Iran. Washington Post via Scribd

In May 2003, senior Iranian officials quietly contacted the State Department through the Swiss embassy in Iran, seeking “a dialogue ‘in mutual respect,’” addressing four big issues: nuclear weapons, terrorism, Palestinian resistance and stability in Iraq.

Hardliners in the Bush administration weren’t interested in any major reconciliation, though Secretary of State Colin Powell favored dialogue and other officials had met with Iran about al-Qaida. When Iranian hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran in 2005, the opportunity died. The following year, Ahmadinejad made his own overture to Washington in an 18-page letter to President Bush. The letter was widely dismissed; a senior State Department official told me in profane terms that it amounted to nothing.

Representatives of several nations met in Vienna in July 2015 to finalize the Iran nuclear deal. Austrian Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs/Flickr

2015: Iran nuclear deal signed

After a decade of unsuccessful attempts to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the Obama administration undertook a direct diplomatic approach beginning in 2013. Two years of secret, direct negotiations initially bilaterally between the U.S. and Iran and later with other nuclear powers culminated in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, often called the Iran nuclear deal.

Iran, the U.S., China, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom signed the deal in 2015. It severely limited Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium and mandated that international inspectors monitor and enforce Iran’s compliance with the agreement.

In return, Iran was granted relief from international and U.S. economic sanctions. Though the inspectors regularly certified that Iran was abiding by the agreement’s terms, President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in May 2018.

2020: US drones kill Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani

On Jan. 3, 2020, an American drone fired a missile that killed Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force. Analysts considered Soleimani the second most powerful man in Iran, after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. At the time, the Trump administration asserted that Soleimani was directing an imminent attack against U.S. assets in the region, but officials have not provided clear evidence to support that claim. Iran responded by launching ballistic missiles that hit two American bases in Iraq.

A billboard featuring a portrait of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images

2023: The Oct. 7 attacks on Israel

Hamas’ brazen attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, provoked a fearsome militarized response from Israel that continues today and served to severely weaken Iran’s proxies in the region, especially Hamas – the perpetrator of the attacks – and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

2025: Trump 2.0 and Iran

Trump initially saw an opportunity to forge a new nuclear deal with Iran and to pursue other business deals with Tehran. Once inaugurated for his second term, Trump appointed Steve Witkoff, a real estate investor who is the president’s friend, to serve as special envoy for the Middle East and to lead negotiations.

Negotiations for a nuclear deal between Washington and Tehran began in April, but the countries did not reach a deal. They were planning a new round of talks when Israel struck Iran with a series of airstrikes on June 13, forcing the White House to reconsider is position.

On June 22, in the early morning hours, the U.S. chose to act decisively in an attempt to cripple Iran’s nuclear capacity, bombing three nuclear sites and causing what Pentagon officials called “severe damage.” The war lasted 12 days, during which Trump declared that Iranian nuclear sites had been “totally obliterated” – a claim denied by Tehran.

2026: Simmering conflict turns into hot war

In early 2026, successive rounds of indirect talks took place between Iran and representatives from the U.S. administration. They followed major unrest in Iran during which Trump told protesters that “help is on its way.” Then, on Feb. 28, the U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran in an operation the U.S. called “Epic Fury.” In the initial wave of airstrikes, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other senior members of the Islamic Republic were killed. Tehran responded by hitting targets across the Gulf, turning the conflict into a wider, regional affair.

The Conversation. This is an updated version of a story originally published on June 17, 2025.

 

“The American president has lost his mind"

 

Easter Sunday, President Donald J. Trump’s social media account posted: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F*ckin’ Strait, you crazy b*stards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP”

There are many things that could be going on with this ultimatum, which actually doesn’t sound like Trump’s usual style, in the same way the post of yesterday morning didn’t. The post appears to be threatening to commit war crimes by attacking civilian infrastructure, and it appears to suggest Trump is considering using tactical nuclear weapons. He emphasized the production of such weapons in his first administration. 

He seemed to encourage this interpretation in an interview with Rachel Scott of ABC News today. She said Trump “told me the conflict should be over in days, not weeks but if no deal is made, he’s blowing up the whole country with ‘very little’ off the table. ‘If [it] happens, it happens. And if it doesn’t, we’re blowing up the whole country,’ he said. I asked if there’s anything off limits. ‘Very little,’ he said.”

In 2023 a book by New York Times Washington correspondent Michael Schmidt alleged that in 2017, when Trump was warning North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on social media that North Korea would be “met with fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before,” behind closed doors he was talking about launching a preemptive strike against North Korea and of using a nuclear weapon against the country and blaming someone else for the strike.

Schmidt reports that Trump’s White House chief of staff at the time, retired U.S. Marine Corps General John Kelly, brought military leaders to try to explain to Trump why that would be a bad idea and finally got him to move away from the plan by telling him he could prove he was the “greatest salesman in the world” by finding a diplomatic solution to his fight with the North Korean leader.

In his own book about that period, journalist Bob Woodward wrote: “The American people had little idea that July through September of 2017 had been so dangerous.” But Trump’s secretary of state Mike Pompeo told Woodward: “We never knew whether it was real or whether it was a bluff.” And that is another way to look at the post from Trump’s social media account: that he is panicked that he has not been able to bully other countries into fixing the mess he created by attacking Iran and precipitating the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and is now simply trying to bully Iran. 

In The Guardian last Monday, Sidney Blumenthal noted that Trump “has declared ‘victory’ more than eight times,” says he has “won” more than ten times, and said Iranian forces have been “obliterated” or suffered “obliteration” more than six times. Blumenthal noted Trump is now threatening to “obliterate” Iran’s power grid and has used the words “decimate” or “decimation” at least six times.

Trump’s crazy post does, after all, push back yet again the deadline for his threats to rain destruction on Iran, which he then extended again in another post at 12:38 P.M. saying: “Tuesday, 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time!”

This dynamic was not lost on Allison Gill of Mueller, She Wrote, who noted: “It was March 23rd. Then March 27th. Then March 30th. Then he gave that weird address on April 1st. [N]ew deadline April 4th. Then April 6th at 7 AM. Then April 7th at 8 PM. And now another address tomorrow at 1 PM. The chaos is intentional.” She also noted that his deadlines and his abandonment of them often seem tied to the rhythms of the stock market.

In an interview with Barak Ravid of Axios today shortly after this morning’s post, Trump reiterated that “if they don’t make a deal, I am blowing up everything over there” but also said the U.S. is “in deep negotiations” with Iran and that he thinks a deal can be reached. Trump told Ravid that his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—not Secretary of State Marco Rubio—are talking with the Iranians. Sources told Ravid that mediators from Pakistan, Egypt, and Türkiye are facilitating the talks.

But Iranian officials are refusing to deal with Witkoff and Kushner after they apparently misunderstood earlier negotiations and instead told Trump the talks weren’t going well before he launched strikes. Neither Witkoff nor Kushner is a trained diplomat, and both have deep financial ties to the Middle East. Notably, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), who urged Trump to start the Iran war, has invested at least $2 billion in Kushner’s private equity firm.

On March 13, Rob Copeland and Maureen Farrell of the New York Times reported that Kushner is trying to raise $5 billion or more for his private equity firm from Middle East governments at the same time as he is also supposed to be negotiating peace in the region.

But Stephen Kalin, Eliot Brown, and Summer Said of the Wall Street Journal reported today that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has already cost the Saudis about $10 billion, and the grand plans of MBS were already falling short of money. Some of those plans were U.S. investments. The reporters note that even before the war, the Saudi’s sovereign-wealth fund, the same one that invested in Kushner’s private equity firm, had sold much of its U.S. stock portfolio. Last year, MBS promised to invest up to $1 trillion in the U.S. Those investments are now under review.

Regardless of the inspiration for Trump’s post, by itself it tells a very clear story. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s former assistant director for counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi posted: “The American president has lost his mind.” Journalist Steven Beschloss wrote: “This is an actual post. This is not funny. This is beyond desperate. This is a deeply unwell man who doesn’t belong anywhere near the levers of power. Every member of his cabinet and Congress is complicit in not demanding his removal now.”

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) posted: “If I were in Trump’s Cabinet, I would spend Easter calling constitutional lawyers about the 25th Amendment. This is completely, utterly unhinged. He’s already killed thousands. He’s going to kill thousands more.”

The 25th Amendment establishes a process through which a majority of the Cabinet and the Vice President, or another body Congress designates, can remove a president deemed “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

Murphy was not the only one thinking along those lines. Hollie Silverman of Newsweek reported that on the prediction market platform Kalshi, which allows traders to buy “yes” or “no” shares on the question “Will the 25th Amendment be used during Trump’s presidency?” “yes” has moved in recent days from 28.6% to 35.1%.

—Heather Cox Richardson

Donald Trump has faced sharp criticism after threatening to wipe out Iran’s power plants and bridges in an expletive-riddled social media post yesterday.

The US president told Iran they would “be living in Hell” if they didn’t open the strait of Hormuz. He separately suggested there was a “good chance” of an agreement to end the five-week war today telling US media that negotiations were happening.

Trump’s post drew criticism from Capitol Hill. Chuck Schumer, a senior Senate Democrat, said: “The president of the United States is ranting like an unhinged madman on social media … He’s threatening possible war crimes and alienating allies. This is who he is, but this is not who we are. Our country deserves so much better.”

How has Iran reacted? Iran’s parliament speaker responded with a warning that the US president’s “reckless moves” would mean “our whole region is going to burn”.

This is a developing story. Follow the liveblog here.

-The Guardian

The Continuing Destruction of America

 

It sure is starting to smell like Vietnam… If you’re not old enough to remember the early days of the Vietnam war, ask somebody who was; the bravado, the bullshit coming from the SecDef, the president who’s afraid of being criticized as “weak” by “conservatives” if he doesn’t “win the war,” and the skepticism of the American people are all echoing so loudly it’s impossible to miss. Whiskey Pete, the wife-abusing alcoholic Fox “News” B-lister Trump put in charge of our military because he “looked strong” is proving to be every bit as incompetent and disastrous as the guy who appointed him. 

The most unqualified and frankly disastrous leader of our military in history — openly bragging about committing war crimes while trash-talking the Geneva Convention with his insane riffs about “no quarter” and “no woke rules of engagement” — just purged the top ranks of our military again. 

He just canned Army Chief of Staff General Randy George, four-star general David Hodne, and Major General William Green Jr., the top Army chaplain. Nobody’s sure exactly why (or if the timing of Bondi’s firing was designed to distract us from this) but speculation largely falls to two explanations. 

These are competent professional military men who most likely told Whiskey Pete and Trump the truth about what a disaster attacking Iran would be, and how it would be illegal to do it without congressional authorization, so they had to be removed. 

As Senator Chris Murphy noted, “It’s likely that experienced generals are telling Hegseth his Iran war plans are unworkable, disastrous, and deadly.” Only toadies, lickspittles, and sycophants allowed here. 

The other possibility is that they objected to Petey inserting himself into the promotion process explicitly to stop women and Black men from rising into the most senior ranks. Or both. Whatever it is, following on his gutting the JAG corps (which advises officers about what are and are not war crimes) and his previous attacks on Blacks and women, this is the lowest point for our military in my lifetime, and probably yours, too.

Who was General George, who Whiskey Pete just fired? General Randy A. George enlisted in the Army in 1982, fought his way into West Point, and then spent a career in the active duty infantry from platoon leader in the 101st Airborne in Desert Storm to multiple combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, commanding battalions, brigades, a division, and I Corps before becoming the 41st Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army. Along the way he earned a Bronze Star with three oak leaf clusters, a Purple Heart, a Combat Infantryman Badge, a Ranger tab, and a senior parachutist badge with a combat jump; the résumé of someone who has led from the front and bled with his soldiers. 

Whiskey Pete, on the other hand, essentially bankrupted two small veterans' charities that he was supposed to be running while he was busy getting drunk and cheating on his wife.

Is the Supreme Court about to become even more bizarre and corrupt than it already is? Speculation is rife in DC that Sam Alito and possibly Clarence Thomas — the two most extreme neo-fascists and on-the-take betrayers of the rule of law — are planning to retire this summer, giving Trump the opportunity to turn the Court into a 5-4 Trump-appointed majority. Alito has apparently penned a book, which some see as a sign he’s paving the way for his departure. 

Since Mango Mussolini is furious right now with his own appointees because they didn’t appear to roll over for his Birthright Citizenship scam attempt, odds are anybody he puts forward will be even more extreme than anybody currently there. Aileen Cannon, anyone? Or Matthew Kacsmaryk? The former helped Trump avoid prosecution in Florida for stealing and disseminating Top Secret documents essential to national security, and the latter tried to outlaw abortion pills nationwide. And there’s always John Eastman, even though he’s already been disbarred; with Trump, anything is possible. Get ready.

Gas prices got you down? A new report by Democratic members of the Joint Economic Committee finds that just during the first month of Trump’s criminal war against Iran American drivers paid fully $8.4 billion more at the pump for gas than they would have had the war not driven up the price of oil. 

While he’s borrowed over $7 trillion in our names and given it to his billionaire buddies as tax cuts and run up our national debt higher and faster than any president in American history, Trump appears determined to drain every last cent he and his greedy buddies in the fossil fuel industry can get from average working people. 

He took billions from us in tariffs, and now they’re screwing us on the price of gas and diesel, since their costs haven’t gone up a penny but they’re sure happy to use the war as an excuse to jack up prices. This after killing off the VA program that kept over 10,000 veterans in their homes (with another 90,000 facing foreclosure in the coming month or two), gutting food aid, decimating Medicaid, and telling us all this past week that he really doesn’t have the time and America doesn’t have the budget for Medicare. 

When billionaires first declared war on the American working class with the Reagan Revolution in 1981, most people just thought it was a labor dispute with the air traffic controllers and an “adjustment” to tax rates; now the naked attack the morbidly rich have spearheaded against our middle class is impossible to ignore.

JD Vance (or whatever his name is this week) is now in charge of Project Screw Blue States. Trump named him the “fraud czar” yesterday and told him to go after Democratic-run states, specifically “California, Illinois, Minnesota, Maine, and New York.” In an announcement unconsciously rich with irony and double entendre, Trump began the announcement on his failing, Nazi-infested social media site with this line for the ages: “Vice President JD Vance is now in charge of ‘FRAUD’ in the United States.” Couldn’t have said it better myself....

-Thom Hartmann

"You're Fired"

 

Donald Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi this week, 14 months into her tenure at the Department of Justice, where she trampled longstanding norms and seemed to work not for the American people but for the president.

“In a single year, Pamela Jo Bondi’s brazen, lawless tenure as Attorney General ‘lost’ the ‘trust [in the Department of Justice] that ha[d] been earned over generations’; ‘destroyed’ ‘the presumption of regularity’; and ‘lost the trust and confidence’ of legal communities and the public — according to various federal judges. Bondi should have to bear the shame and infamy her actions brought her for at least as long as the decades (if not more) it will take to rebuild the institutions she tore down.” 

— Leah Litman, professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School and co-host of Strict Scrutiny.

“At her confirmation hearing, Pam Bondi told senators that, if confirmed, she would ‘work to restore confidence and integrity to the Department of Justice’ and that ‘America must have one tier of justice for all.’ Her actions belied these promises, starting with her announcement last March in the Department’s Great Hall that she was ‘so proud to work at the directive of Donald Trump.’ She sought to appease the president by prosecuting political enemies and giving favorable treatment to his allies; forcing out long-time career attorneys with irreplaceable experience; and turning her back on victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s decades of sexual abuse. Pam Bondi’s disservice to the department and the people of this country will be her legacy.” 

— Mary McCord, executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, former acting assistant attorney general for national security, and former principal deputy assistant attorney general for national security.

“Pamela Jo’s tenure was a master class in how NOT to be an attorney general. Her weaponization of the DOJ at the behest of her client, Donald Trump, destroyed centuries of independence and integrity. Bondi must have to account for her violations of ethics, laws, and rules of professional conduct.” 

— Katie Phang, lawyer, political commentator, podcaster, and former host of The Katie Phang Show on MSNBC

“The end of Pam Bondi’s tenure as attorney general was as inevitable as it was embarrassing. But what I can’t stop asking is why she’d be willing to debase not only herself but also the rule of law and justice itself in service to someone as profoundly undeserving as Donald Trump. Bless her heart.” 

— Joyce Vance, law professor, legal analyst, former U.S. Attorney, and co-host of Sisters in Law and Cafe’s Insider

“Bondi is a symptom of a problem that emanates from the White House; shuffling deck chairs is meaningless if policies and practices remain the same.” 

— Andrew Weissmann, former assistant U.S. attorney (1991-2006), lead prosecutor in Robert S. Mueller’s Special Counsel’s Office, chief of the Fraud Section in the Department of Justice, general counsel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and author of the forthcoming “Liar's Kingdom: How to Stop Trump's Deceit and Save America”

“An attorney general who prosecutes for revenge, sanctions wildly unconstitutional attacks on free speech, throws people in foreign cells without due process, and uses our hard-fought civil rights laws for government-mandated discrimination is a disgrace to the office. Our freedom and our basic rights depend on a government bound by the law, and Pam Bondi shredded that cornerstone of our constitutional democracy.”

— Mike Zamore, National Director of Policy & Government Affairs at the ACLU 

-The Contrarian

The Constitution Is Clear on Birthright Citizenship. The Question Is Whether the Court Will Be

 

Sometimes showing up is a mistake. Donald Trump made that mistake today, becoming the first president to sit in on an oral argument before the United States Supreme Court, which heard the birthright citizenship case, Trump v. Barbara, today. He only made it through his side of the case, leaving midway through the argument shortly after the ACLU’s Cecilia Wang began, which just isn’t done.

Trump showed just how poorly he understands the dynamic with the Supreme Court. These aren’t people who need his approval. “Thank you again. Thank you again. I won't forget it”—the words Trump uttered to Chief Justice John Roberts at the State of the Union Address in 2025—make the justices cringe. This is why they have life tenure, so they can rule as they will, not as the person or the party who put them on the bench wants them to. We all understand the times we live in and the concerns about some members of this Court. 

But Trump’s brazen attempt to intimidate the Justices is the worst possible way he could go about it, and it showed. Trump can attack justices in his social media posts like he did over the weekend (“The World is getting rich selling citizenships to our Country, while at the same time laughing at how STUPID our U.S. Court System has become (TARIFFS!). ‘Dumb Judges and Justices will not a great Country make!’”) and again today (below), but ultimately, there’s not much he can do if he doesn’t like their decisions. They know that. And the birthright citizenship case is this term’s nadir, a train wreck of a case whose weaknesses were on full display today.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer’s opener: Birthright citizenship is about slaves, not illegal aliens. Children of temporary visitors aren’t citizens. “Unrestricted birthright citizenship” contradicts practice in other countries.

Sort of.

The Fourteenth Amendment, which, if you recall our earlier conversations, is the constitutional source of birthright citizenship, was the fix for the injustice worked by the Dred Scott case. Its rule is clear: People born in the United States are citizens, with rare exceptions for people like babies born to foreign diplomats who aren’t subject to U.S. law. 

The Court underscored that principle in United States v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898, holding that a child born in the United States to non-citizen parents automatically acquires U.S. citizenship at birth. That’s been the state of the law and our understanding of it ever since.

Donald Trump made his views on the subject plain before he had even returned to the White House: “We’re going to end that because it’s ridiculous.” That’s what he told NBC’s Kristen Welker during an interview for Meet the Press. The executive order he issued upon returning to office is inconsistent with the plain language of the 14^th Amendment, which the Supreme Court has always interpreted as doing precisely what its language suggests: guaranteeing citizenship to people born in this country.

Every serious legal challenge since then has run into the same wall: the Constitution. This one seems headed in that direction too. And Trump did nothing to improve the case by showing up in such a rank, performative manner. He could have sat in the Oval Office and listened to the argument online like the rest of us.

As for Sauer’s argument that birthright citizenship “contradicts” how other countries handle it, it took me a moment to pick my jaw up off the floor after that claim. Did the ultra-conservative Solicitor General of the United States really encourage the justices to take into account other countries’ laws that conflict with our own? That’s strictly verboten in Federalist Society parlance. What’s next? An appeal to Sharia Law? Gasp. (Seriously, I just can’t overstate how hypocritical this is).

Conservative justices, including Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, have all strongly opposed using foreign law to interpret the Constitution, rejecting it as undercutting our democratic sovereignty. 

Conservative justices objected to the use of foreign precedents when they were the dissenters in cases involving the death penalty for juveniles and laws regulating sexual conduct. But now, and in a case where it’s the opposite of U.S. law, the Solicitor General felt free to call upon foreign precedent.

Chief Justice Roberts at his confirmation hearing: “In foreign law you can find anything you want,” Chief Justice Roberts said. “Looking at foreign law for support is like looking out over a crowd and picking out your friends.” Justice Alito at his: “We have our own law. We have our own traditions. We have our own precedents. And we should look to that in interpreting our Constitution.”

I’m belaboring this relatively minor point from the argument to show just how far this Justice Department, including the Solicitor General’s office, which is uniquely powerful and traditionally independent, has gone off the rails in service of what Donald Trump wants. Sauer’s willingness to wade in with this argument shows how willing this Justice Department is to contort itself into pretzel logic in service of Trump and abandon long-established conservative beliefs. But it’s also unlikely that this argument scored points with any of the justices who weren’t already inclined to go along with it no matter how contrary to existing law. It was a show for the audience of one who reclined in the courtroom, where he didn’t belong.

And in any event, isn’t the point that birthright citizenship is uniquely American and helps define our multicultural democracy and its values? We are a country like none other, fueled by immigrants and immigration. Birthright citizenship is part of our unique promise, a bright promise, not something to be afraid of, at least for those of us who welcome new people, new ideas, and new infusions of culture, food, and traditions. People who aren’t afraid of the promise displayed on the Statue of Liberty from Emma Lazarus’ 1883 poem:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Justice Gorsuch worried about the difficulty of determining each person’s immigration status based on indeterminate factors and about whether Congress could further restrict who qualifies for citizenship in the future. Justice Barrett was concerned about the fate of children born and raised here with no ability to influence their place of birth. Justice Alito asked about the “humanitarian” issues that would arise for people who have lived their lives here.

There was this exchange:

JUSTICE GORSUCH: “Do you think Native Americans today are birthright citizens under your test?”

SOLICITOR GENERAL SAUER: “Uhh... I think so? I have to think that through.”

And this one:

SAUER: “We’re in a new world where 8 billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who’s a US citizen.”

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: “It’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution.”

You get the idea of how the argument went. It was a bad day for the government, but it was their own fault in insisting on a case that is contrary to law and that no solicitor general exercising independent judgment would have allowed to go forward.

At the end of her argument for keeping birthright citizenship as it now exists, Justice Kavanaugh asked Wang about her path to victory: “I think Mr. Sauer acknowledged that, and you mentioned this in your opening, that if we agree with you on how to read Wong Kim Ark, then you win. So that could be a -- if we did agree with you on Wong Kim Ark, that could be just a short opinion, right, that says the better reading is Respondents' reading, government doesn't ask us to overrule, affirmed? Is that …”

Wang responded, “Yes.”

This is how experienced Supreme Court advocates do it. The answer was perfect.

Kavanaugh continued, pointing out that Wang made one argument based on a statute and one based on the Constitution. He asked Wang which of her arguments the Court should rule on, pointing out that the Court typically rules on a statutory basis when that is sufficient to decide a case, rather than interpreting the Constitution, which it does only when necessary.

Kavanaugh: “Why would we address the constitutional issue…our usual practice, as you're well aware, of course, is to resolve things on statutory grounds and -- and not to do a constitutional ground.”

Wang: “Sure. You know, I think we obviously have these two paths to a win here. We're happy to win on either or both of them.”

There was laughter in the courtroom. It’s hard to predict with this Court, but the President’s presence today didn’t make his case any stronger. It may have been the final nail in the coffin.

You can read the full transcript from the argument here.

Cases can turn on oral argument—but the coverage doesn’t always capture what actually mattered in the room. I try to walk you through what happened and explain how it landed, based on years of arguing cases in the Courts of Appeals. If you appreciate this kind of analysis, subscribe to Civil Discourse and support independent journalism that isn’t afraid to take the administration on when it matters the most.

We’re in this together,

Joyce Vance

 

Trump's Other War Against Elections

 

US Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday accused President Donald Trump of trying to sabotage the 2026 midterm elections as his illegal war on Iran jacks up gas prices and threatens higher inflation throughout the economy, angering voters across the political spectrum.

The Massachusetts Democrat’s warning came shortly after Trump signed an executive order aimed at restricting mail-in voting, a move that was widely seen as unconstitutional. Warren wrote on social media: “Trump knows his war with Iran is unpopular. Trump knows Americans are angry that he’s made everything more expensive. Instead of reversing course, Trump is trying to rig the next election. It’s illegal—and we will fight back.”

Ben Raderstorf, a policy advocate at the nonprofit group Protect Democracy, said that “just like the war in Iran, the war against the midterms is extremely dangerous and will do so much damage to our elections and our democracy.”

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Tuesday evening found that 66% of US voters—including 40% of Republicans—want a quick end to Trump’s war on Iran, even if his administration doesn’t achieve its vague and constantly shifting objectives, which have ranged from thwarting an imminent threat that analysts say was not present, to full-scale regime change, to destroying a nuclear weapons program that US intelligence has repeatedly found does not exist.

Reuters reported that two in three respondents to the new survey “said they ⁠expected gas prices to worsen over the next year, including 40% of Republicans.”

While oil prices fell sharply on Tuesday after Trump declared that US forces would end their assault on Iran in “two weeks or maybe a few days longer,” the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) estimated last week that the gas price surge stemming from the war was on pace to cost American drivers an additional $9.4 billion per month.

“Alabama is the most affected state in the nation, with residents spending an extra $52 per person, per month,” ITEP found. “Other heavily impacted states include Mississippi ($51), Wyoming ($49), Kentucky ($47), and New Mexico ($44).”

Trump is expected to address the nation on the Iran war at 9 pm ET on Wednesday, more than a month into a military campaign that was not authorized by lawmakers and that has sparked a regional conflict, killing thousands and displacing millions.

The president told reporters on Tuesday that Iran “doesn’t have to make a deal” to end the war, and Trump has privately told aides that he’s willing to end the assault without securing the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

“We leave because there’s no reason for us to do this,” Trump said.

-Common Dreams