curated news excerpts & citations
Aaron Rupar and Thor Benson: Trump’s war crime campaign, explained by an expert
… And Trump went even further on Thursday, first in a Truth Social post bragging about blowing up a bridge (a strike that reportedly killed at least eight civilians) and then in another post threatening even worse crimes to come.
As former State Department lawyer Brian Finucane pointed out when Trump made a similar threat days earlier, attacking civilian infrastructure as part of a punishment campaign is a textbook war crime.
(Aaron Rupar and Thor Benson more…)
Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – April 4, 2026
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Michael R. Gordon and Alexander Ward of the Wall Street Journal reported today that Trump’s aides have been telling him Iran’s civilian infrastructure is a legitimate wartime target, despite the understanding among experts that such attacks are illegal. …
Ryan Goodman of Just Security commented: “That would be an F on a bar exam.” He observed, “This isn’t legal analysis. It’s idiocy.”
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
Lauren Kent @ CNN: Iran’s ‘new’ regime looks much the same, only harsher
Eliana Silver and Imogen Garfinkel @ Daily Mail: Inside Iran’s underground missile cities that enabled them to defy Trump: How fortresses buried in granite mountains protect huge arsenal of weapons and hidden rocket launch ports
Stephen Kalin, Robbie Gramer and Alexander Ward @ WSJ: Iranian Strike on U.S. Embassy Caused More Damage Than Disclosed
Two drones hit the Saudi compound, sparking a fire that raged for hours
Steve Walsh @ NPR: Evacuation of U.S. troops from Mideast base sends community groups scrambling to help
NPR has learned that hundreds of sailors were evacuated back to the United States from their base in Bahrain after the base was attacked by Iranian missiles and drones. In addition to the base in Bahrain, NPR has learned that there have been evacuations at other U.S. military bases in the region, though the exact details are unknown at this point.
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Steven Beschloss: How Much Do You Value Expertise?
When you’re a passenger in a car, you want a skilled driver. When you’re flying in a plane, you want a skilled and experienced pilot. When facing surgery, you want to know that the surgeon knows exactly what he or she is doing. These things are obvious.
So why wouldn’t we want a skilled and experienced president and a skilled and experienced Defense Secretary? And why wouldn’t we want to be sure they have surrounded themselves with the best and brightest advisers to make the best possible decisions? This too would be obvious, at least in a sane world.
In that world, Americans wouldn’t have elevated an arrogantly ill-informed and reckless man to make the gravest possible decisions for our nation. Nor would the U.S. Senate, once known as the world’s greatest deliberative body, confirm men and women deeply ill-equipped to perform their duties. Such “leaders” would recognize their responsibilities to enhance education, advance science and promote the best among us to lead our nation. They would not have removed the skilled and experienced in fealty to a White House occupant who despises people of color and believes in antiquated ideas that the military should only be led by white men.
Yesterday Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired Gen. Randy George, the Army Chief of Staff who was known as an innovative combat leader, an unsettling move in the midst of the war in Iran. Among the reported reasons: George reportedly believed Hegseth was “interfering unnecessarily” in decisions about Army personnel, including removing skilled and experienced military officers based on their connection to “woke” culture. In fact, last week Hegseth refused to promote four Army officers to one-star generals, two of whom are Black and two women, each of whom has reportedly provided “exemplary service.”
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Timothy Snyder: The Next Coup Attempt
… If we know the coup scripts in advance, we know when to take the stage — and where to take the rage.
So here are the scenarios:
- The Steady Hand. A war is going on, is the claim here, and so we should not change leadership, regardless of what happens in an election. …
- Bonapartism. In this tactic the aspiring dictator says: I know that you would like democracy at home, and so let us prove our ardor together by fighting a war for democracy abroad. …
- Bismarckian Unification. Here the ruler no longer pretends to care about democracy (so far so good for Trump), but speaks about bringing the nation together. …
- Fascist Sacrifice. The fascist leader kills enough of his own people in a major campaign so that the survivors begin to accept the worldview: that all is struggle, that enemies are everywhere, that the world is a conspiracy against us, etc.
- Exploitation of Terror. This gambit (or one variant of it) depends on something happening during a war. …
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A coup attempt is not at all unthinkable; Trump has done it before, and he makes it very clear that he is thinking about it now. When we think about it now, about how it might take shape, we make it less likely; indeed, we deter it. Knowledge of history can change the future. If we remember what history shows us is possible, we can prevent a coup from succeeding — and turn any such attempt against its instigator.
(Timothy Snyder more…)
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Adrian Carrasquillo @ Bulwark: Welcome to Miami: America’s Most ICE-Besieged City
POP QUIZ: WHICH CITY is leading the nation in ICE arrests so far this year? It’s not the Twin Cities, which clocked in at over 5,000 arrests from mid-December to mid-March. And it’s not Chicago or Los Angeles, which were targeted by Donald Trump aggressively last year; they have had, respectively, about 4,900 and 3,300 arrests so far this year.
It’s Miami. The ICE field office in that city led the nation in arrests from December to March, with about 9,900. That comes to roughly 120 a day, more than Dallas, Atlanta, and San Antonio, which follow on the list. Since Trump took office last year, the total number of arrests made by the Miami field office is over 41,000, more than 35 percent higher than the next highest city (Dallas), according to New York Times data.
It’s a remarkable distinction considering Miami’s status as a metropolis that became MAGAfied thanks to Trump’s gains with Latinos. Yet the destabilization that ICE has caused in this bilingual, bicultural South Florida city has received scant media coverage and little attention from the rest of the country—at least compared to what accompanied ICE raids in Minneapolis and Chicago and L.A.
(Adrian Carrasquillo @ Bulwark more…)Marianne Dhenin @ truthout: Nurses Forge Alliances to Protect Patients From Trump’s Immigration Crackdown
Dissent in Bloom: The Children of Dilley: Inside the Human Rights Crisis at Texas’s Largest Family Detention Facility
Al Jazeera Death toll and injuries live tracker
ICE Accountability Project
ICE deaths 2026 – They deserve remembrance and justice.
- March 16: Royer Perez-Jimenez
- March 14: Naseer Paktiawil
- February 25: Nurul Amin Shah Alam
April 1 – Jennifer Peltz and Jake Offenhartz @ AP: Death of a refugee left at a Buffalo doughnut shop by Border Patrol is ruled a homicide - January 24: Alex Pretti
- January 14: Heber Sanchaz Dominguez
- January 14: Victor Manuel Diaz
- January 9: Parady La
- January 7: Renée Good
- January 6: Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz
- January 5: Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres
- January 3: Geraldo Lunas Campos
- December 31, 2025: Keith Porter
Suffering Under President Obama
NACDL Criminal Case Tracker
Texas Tribune: A Walk for Peace: photos of Fort Worth monks’ journey to Washington
Walk for Peace – Dhammacetiya – The Ancient Sacred Buddhist Scripture Stupas
Margaret Chase Smith: Declaration of Conscience
NPR: January 6, 2021: A visual archive
Accountability Initiative ICE List
GriftMatrix
Trump Action Tracker
Timeline: Tracking the Trump Justice Department’s Anti-Voting Shift
Tracking the Lawsuits Against Trump’s Agenda
Trump Pardons Database
Project 2025 Tracker
DOGE Tracker
ProPublica: Elon Musk’s Demolition Crew
Wired: 6 Tools for Tracking the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Civil Liberties
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