I am honored to have former UNSR @davidakaye.bsky.social and the formidable advocate @knundy.bsky.social joining me next Thursday for an IBA Rule of Law Forum discussion about safeguarding the right to freedom of expression - please join us! Registration (free) below👇🏾
www.ibanet.org/conference-d...
It is still a war crime to threaten violence with the intention of instilling terror in civilian populations, TACO or not. It's in the Geneva Conventions and it's in the DoD Law of War Manual. That crime has already been committed.
Here in the U.S. right now we painfully dependent on the willingness of other nations to uphold their international legal obligation not to assist in the commission of an internationally wrongful act. Feeling grateful to UK & Portugal: www.ft.com/content/e7b1...
I told CNN:
Trump's threats to civilian infrastructure are illegal
Iran should keep civilians away from threatened sites
All States must deny the U.S. use of their territory or airspace for illegal attacks, and demand an immediate end to this lawless war.
video.snapstream.net/Play/1ocivPG...
Can't tell you how many members of Congress who *at best* had nothing to say when I asked about the Minab girls school attack. There is a profanely cold detachment inside Capitol Hill, a mode completely unrecognizable to common human decency I wish I could properly convey to you.
"History will judge-" let me stop you right fucking there, history doesn't do fucking shit, I'm a historian, let's be clear here: elected officials need to do their fucking jobs, right now, before it happens, or future historians will judge THEM. Everyone knows and knew who Trump was.
The President is openly threatening genocide. A crime against humanity. He must be removed from office.
The 25th Amendment must be invoked. If not, Congress has to do our damn job. Speaker Johnson, call us into session. War powers & impeachment. Remove this man from office.
Somehow “chickens out”
(as in the possibility that today will be TACO Tuesday) seems like the wrong term for “delays carrying out a threat to commit war crimes.”
This is absolutely black and white - the US president is ordering war crimes and crimes and humanity.
I think Tuesday we get to find out whether the chairman of the joint chiefs, the CENTCOM commander and others are willing to carry out illegal orders.
You think the Pope has someone particular in mind?
I cannot believe this is not the bottom - and yet, it still does not feel like we’re close.
It would be useful if the NYT explicitly stated that the pilot, if captured, would be a POW, that there are laws governing how POWs can be treated, that respect for international law on war shapes how the enemy approaches it, and this is why the US conduct of this illegal war has been so dangerous.
I am never not on message.
Coming at you from spring break at Machu Picchu.
#CloseGitmo
People say Trump has no war strategy, but his strategy is quite clearly a criminal one of destroying Iran's civilian infrastructure (and killing a bunch of people in the process) unless they capitulate. We -- the United States of America -- are a rogue state and global pariah.
All but three (!) of the 1,651 refugees admitted into the United States in the three most recent months we have data are white South Africans.
For comparison, in 2024, the U.S. admitted 100,060 refugees. It's an explicit white supremacist project.
www.rpc.state.gov/documents/Re...
I know it’s competing with an illegal war and 10,000 other major scandals but I feel like people should be making a bigger deal out of the DefSec systematically trying to resegregate the military
$1.5 trillion for the Pentagon.
New memo by Trump's 36-year-old OLC chief, Elliot Gaiser, says Congress's Constitutional power to make laws necessary and proper to regulate how the U.S. government works is actually just a power to "assist" the president--so laws are valid if they increase Trump's power but not if they restrict it.
This is the point - rational people are back cheerleading the court on its skepticism re *birthright citizenship*, literally one of the most straightforward issues it has had to address so far, while the Court consistently burns down institutions/ marginalizes people for the regime in other cases.
As someone who studies politicization of democratic militaries this statement on X is a five- alarm fire. It creates an undeniable permission structure for overt partisan behavior by mil. It's part of a concerted effort by civilian leaders to turn the U.S. military into a partisan aligned force.
Dehumanization and bloodlust gone wild.
So it's been a very long day at Gitmo, a place where there are only long days.
I feel like everyone is struggling in their own niches at the moment, whatever they are, because no one was made for this particular state of the world with such constant bombardment. I loved your book, deffo be kind to yourself :)
Mueller was on our witness list since 2019. I’ll be honest, down here at Gitmo in the disastrous aftermath of the torture program, all I can think of is that he should have had to testify about the FBI’s fight *to* participate in the CIA black sites.
I am here to remind everyone that defense at Gitmo milcomms revealed that Robert Mueller oversaw the insidious collaboration of FBI with the CIA-run torture program, even while publicly (falsely) insisting that the FBI “walked away.” Obits of public figures should be accurate.
This was a grotesque insult for a well-deserved, historic win.
Yeah, but I am starting to despair that we will ever get no a point where the opposition party (Dems or otherwise) eschews “civility” in favor of reinforcing democracy.
