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US-POLITICS-TRUMP-EASTER-EGG ROLL
Opinion

Trump’s Homicidal Easter Threat—Who Will Stop This Mad Man?

Opinion

Trump and Netanyahu: Two Madmen Playing God

Opinion

This Is Not Just a War on Iran. It Is a War on American Democracy.

Opinion

While Distancing from AIPAC, Most 2028 Democratic Hopefuls Are Still Embracing Israel

Opinion

The Political Opportunity of a Lifetime—Don't Blow It

Opinion

Cheap Drones and the Iran War Blowback Threat

The former East Wing
Further

Staircase to Nowhere: MAGA's Crowning Achievement

In a perhaps unprecedented dark time for America and the world, let us take solace in our indomitable Dear Stable Genius, who remains unwaveringly focused on taking care of shiny business: Gold social security cards like Elvis, a $400 million, lopsided shed/ballroom with gaudy columns but no main entrance, and of course gold toilets - which all keeps him so busy he hardly has time to threaten Iran with war crimes. What a time to be alive, barely.

In actual good news, No Kings Day 3.0 drew between 8 and 12 million people, thus hovering tantalizingly close to the 3.5% of a nation's populace historically required to overthrow an authoritarian regime. So good work, patriots. The over 3,000 protests, aka per Mike Johnson "Hate America rallies," ranged from Alaska's Utqiaġvik, the country's northernmost city (7 people) to Ele'ele, Kaua'i, the westernmost, from over 100,000 in New York City to nine stalwarts on Maine's Monhegan Island. Thousands of Trump's neighbors in Palm Beach turned out, ending with a twilight march to Mar-A-Lago, or as close as they could get.

Their signs were brutal: "Elect A Rapist, Expect To Get Fucked. How Many Deaths For the Epstein War? Worst President Since Trump. Criminals Belong Behind Bars, Free Balls for Members of Congress Who Lost Them, Trump Rapes Kids, Impeach Pedolf Shitler, Putin's Bitch, The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived. According to The Borowitz Report, Trump, furious about the large protests, argued they'd be much smaller if you subtract all Elon Musk's kids there because they hate him: "People are saying their number (was) much higher than 400, thousands, maybe millions. You take away Elon’s kids and almost no one was there."

There were also "half-dozens to dozens of Americans" at One King co unter-protests, reports The Fucking News, who put the number at "many-ish...Organizers say there were barely any organizers," with attendees ranging from "a tiny number of young people to a die-hard faction of dying people." In Palm Beach, one man carried a heavy sign that read, "Deport the white liberals"; masked to protect himself "against the vindictive left," he said he left soon after he was "attacked" by a woman who denied touching him; her comrades said the guy just dropped his sign "because he was too weak to carry it."

Their small numbers did face competition from "the incredible shrinking CPAC," also meeting that day in Grapevine, Texas with a turnout of "barely thousands." Once a MAGA "center of political gravity," this year's event drew neither Trumps nor presidential candidates. One possible ick factor: MC was (still) CPAC chair Matt Schlapp, who in 2024 settled a pricey sexual misconduct lawsuit from a guy working on Hershel Walker’s (LOL) Senate campaign, who charged Schlapp groped him. The event did boast Todd Chrisley, a reality TV star doing 12 years in prison for massive fraud till Trump pardoned him. Here’s his welcome.

There was also a big contingent of South Korean “stop the steal” activists and supporters of former president Yoon Suk Yeol, impeached last year and now serving life in prison for insurrection. Still, the whole thing was a bit of a slog. Organizers tried to jazz up session subjects - a panel titled "Fraud" became “Ilhan Omar ‘Family’ Values"; Mercedes Schlapp beseeched factions not to "divide from within," which is how you divide; and when Schlapp asked them, the clueless CPAC "crowdette" mistakenly, hilariously cheered the prospect of impeachment proceedings by what could be a newly-Democratic-controlled House. SAD!

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Poor deplorable MAGA. Maybe they're disheartened by Trump's well-deserved plunging approval rating, now at barely 33%. Maybe it's because their regime is such a half-assed shitshow and their people are such self-serving, hypocritical dickwads. As in: Amidst a government shutdown that's seen TSA agents (starting salary $34,454) compelled to work without pay as Congress takes a two-week recess (pay over $170,000) on the taxpayers' dime, TMZ urged readers to send in photos of vacationing pols, and here comes Lindsey Graham at Disney World, “The Most Magical Place On Earth," gaily twirling a Little Mermaid bubble wand yet. America and Megyn Kelly: WTF.

Or maybe it's because Commander-In-Chief Private Bonespurs started another forever quagmire without legal or political justification, and it turns out wars in the Middle East are hard and complex and above his pay grade - like health care! - to solve, and now with no good options he's spewing up only staggering incoherence for strategy, like hailing "great progress" in imaginary "serious discussions" while pivoting to rabidly threatening to "conclude our lovely 'stay’ in Iran" by "obliterating" their civilian infrastructure, electricity, energy and drinking water, which is a war crime. But talks are going “unbelievably well."

Serious discussions with Iran Serious discussions with IranImage from Australia's The Shovel

Anyway, his true passion is turning every crass, stupid thing he or Elvis can think of fake gold like the Oval bordello and even Social Security cards, and slathering his repulsive name on structures, coins, currency, and building trashy, illegal monuments to himself like an obscene, unapproved, un-permitted, $400 million ballroom twice the size of the White House, because, "They’ve always wanted a ballroom," except now it's suddenly, "essentially a shed for what goes under it," a massive military complex, presumably a bunker where, as merciful history would have it, he'll finally free us of him, "and we're doing it very well."

He's so ballroom-enraptured that on Air Force One he just pulled out a swath of drawings to show reporters, explaining, "I thought I’d do this now because it’s easier. I’m so busy...fighting wars and other things." Quick mindless pivot to "hand-carved, beautiful, Corinthian columns" - "Corinthian wut" - he's also reportedly re-imagining for the White House facade, a change deemed "at odds with universally held historic preservation standards." Same, experts say of "barely scrutinized" ballroom plans, "riddled with design flaws" - disproportionate, pillars block windows, grand staircase to nowhere. WH lackey on "the best builder in the world": "The American people can rest well knowing this project is in his hands.” We feel better already.

Trump's "plan" for his oversized shed/ballroom Trump's "plan" for his oversized shed/ballroomImages from New York Times


And then there's his new gold toilet, mounted on a 10-foot throne near the Lincoln Memorial. The new masterwork of Secret Handshake (Best Friends Forever), it celebrates the renovation of the White House Lincoln Bedroom bathroom, all in gold, and "what this President has actually accomplished." The toilet's plaque reads, “In a time of unprecedented division, escalating conflict, and economic turmoil, President Trump focused on what truly mattered: remodeling the Lincoln Bathroom....This, his crowning achievement, is a bold reminder that (he) isn’t just a businessman, he’s taking care of business. It stands as a tribute to an unwavering visionary who looked down, saw a problem, and painted it gold.”

A Throne Fit For a King. A Throne Fit For a King. Photo from Secret Handshake

Further
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President Trump And EPA Administrator Zeldin Make An Announcement From The White House
News

'Game Over Zeldin': 160+ Climate and Health Groups Say EPA Chief Must Go

A month after President Donald Trump and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced what they celebrated as the "single largest deregulatory action in US history," a coalition of over 160 civil rights, environmental, faith, health, and labor groups came together Tuesday to call for the EPA chief's ouster.

Zeldin was confirmed by Senate Republicans and a trio of Democrats just over a week after Trump returned to power in January 2025. The "Game Over Zeldin" coalition, led by the Climate Action Campaign (CAC) and Moms Clean Air Force, argued in an open letter that no other EPA administrator "in history—Democratic or Republican—has so brazenly betrayed the agency's core mission" to "protect human health and the environment."

"Zeldin has dismantled protections that keep our kids, families, and climate safe, and our air and water clean," the letter notes. "He slashed vital funding, gutted agency staff, and has rigged the system to put corporate polluters first, at the expense of our health. Zeldin's EPA has rejected science and health data—and is refusing to count the value of human lives and health—in order to erode commonsense public health safeguards. He has decimated environmental justice programs and hard-fought progress—entirely eliminating the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights."

Dominique Browning, director and co-founder of Moms Clean Air Force, pointed out in a Tuesday statement that "in just the past few months, he has supported the Trump administration in using taxpayer money to prop up the coal industry; he has made it easier for polluters to spew mercury—a potent neurotoxin that damages the developing brains of babies—into our air and waterways; and he has rolled back the endangerment finding in an attempt to sabotage EPA's ability to cut climate pollution."

The 2009 endangerment finding underpins all federal climate policy. David Arkush of the watchdog Public Citizen—which is also part of the diverse coalition behind the new letter—warned at the time that if allowed to stand, the repeal "will hamstring the government's ability to combat the most terrible environmental threat in human history, harming Americans and the world for decades to come."

Young Americans and a coalition of environmental and public health organizations swiftly filed a pair of lawsuits over the rollback. Another group of 24 states, joined by various US cities and counties, sued last week. The most recent filing is expected to be consolidated with the first coalition's case, according to The New York Times, "making for one of the largest legal challenges to date against the Trump administration's unraveling of federal climate policy."

The new letter stresses the consequences of that unraveling, stating that "because of Zeldin's directives, we will suffer more health-damaging air pollution and be exposed to more toxic chemicals in our homes, in our food, in our products, and in our water. Zeldin's rollbacks will lead to more carbon dioxide and methane pollution that will contribute to worsening climate disasters."

"Families across the country, whether rural or urban, are already struggling with the consequences of Zeldin's actions," the letter adds. "The damage he is doing will span generations. Zeldin is deepening environmental injustices and will leave a terrible legacy for our children and grandchildren."

We refuse to stay silent while Lee Zeldin treats our lives like a line item to be deleted. The EPA is for the people, not polluters. His time is up; Lee Zeldin must go. #GameOverZeldin www.gameoverzeldin.com

[image or embed]
— Physicians for Social Responsibility - National (@psr.org) March 24, 2026 at 12:12 PM

CAC director Margie Alt declared Tuesday that "the wreckage of Lee Zeldin's EPA will be measured in lives lost, jobs destroyed, the costs of illnesses that could have been prevented, and communities devastated. We will be paying the price for decades to come."

"Zeldin ignored science as well as the legal and moral precedent," she said. "Instead, he looked at the numbers and made a choice: He decided that corporate bottom lines matter more than our lives. He decided you and your family are expendable. After a year on the job, it is clear that Zeldin is either unable or unwilling to uphold his oath of office or the EPA's fundamental mission. So let us be clear: Our lives are not expendable. Our health is not expendable. Our climate is not expendable. Lee Zeldin must go."

Other organizations that signed on to the letter include Beyond Plastics, Cherokee Concerned Citizens, Clean Air Council, Clean Water Action, Climate Hawks Vote, Earthjustice, Environmental Working Group, Environmental Protection Network, GreenLatinos, Indivisible Action Coalition, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Service Employees International Union, Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), and more.

"Administrator Zeldin's established pattern of placing polluter profits above the health and safety of people across the country cannot stand," said UCS president and CEO Gretchen Goldman. "The science establishing harm to human health and the environment from global warming emissions is undeniable. The unprecedented, climate-fueled heatwave a large swath of the United States has been experiencing is only the latest example."

"The public deserves an EPA administrator who will face the challenge of the climate crisis and fossil fuel and toxics pollution head on with proven policy solutions," she argued, "not actively serve as an agent of destruction beholden to the whims of oil, gas, and chemical industry executives and an authoritarian, anti-science US president."

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Seven Mile Beach, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands
News

‘A System Rigged’: Untaxed Wealth of Richest 0.1% Is More Than Assets of World’s Poorest Half

The richest 0.1% of people on Earth are hiding more than $2.8 trillion in offshore accounts to avoid taxes. That money alone is more wealth than is owned by the entire bottom half of humanity, more than 4.1 billion people.

These findings were published in a report released Thursday by Oxfam International on the 10th anniversary of the 2016 Panama Papers, which provided an unprecedented look at how the world's most powerful capitalists, financiers, political leaders, celebrities, and criminals exploited offshore tax havens to stash their money.

"Ten years on, the superrich are still sequestering oceans of wealth in offshore vaults,” said Christian Hallum, Oxfam International’s tax lead.

The percentage of untaxed wealth in offshore accounts has dropped in the past 10 years, in large part due to global reforms like the adoption of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Automatic Exchange of Information framework (AEOI), which allows revenue authorities around the world to easily share information and crack down on cheats.

However, many nations in the Global South are excluded from this system, even though they need the tax revenue the most.

Oxfam found that a staggering $3.5 trillion, more than 3.2% of the global gross domestic product, still remains in untaxed accounts. That's more than the entire GDP of France and is more than twice the combined wealth of the world's 44 poorest nations.

And while the percentage of untaxed wealth is shrinking, that doesn't mean inequality has shrunk.

On the contrary, the December 2025 "World Inequality Report" found that the richest 0.001% of humanity—fewer than 60,000 multimillionaires and billionaires—now have three times as much wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population combined.

Inequality has surged around the world in part due to taxation policies and pandemic recovery packages that overwhelmingly favor the rich. The most glaring was adopted in the world's financial hub, the United States, last year.

The megabudget passed by Republicans and signed into law by President Donald Trump handed a $1 trillion tax cut to America's wealthiest 1% while slashing more than $1 trillion in spending from Medicaid, food assistance, and other safety net programs. It has been described by some economists as the largest upward transfer of wealth in US history.

While the global top 0.1% holds about 80% of untaxed offshore wealth, an even smaller group of uber-wealthy individuals does most of the cheating. The world's richest 0.01%, who hold at least $50 million apiece, control about half of all money in global tax shelters—$1.7 trillion.

According to the Tax Justice Network's Corporate Tax Haven Index, Caribbean islands under UK ownership, including the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, and Bermuda, are among the worst offenders. Other notable tax havens include Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong, Ireland, and the Netherlands.

A February Oxfam report on Elon Musk, who is well on his way to becoming the world's first trillionaire, found that his company, Tesla—which managed to pay zero dollars on its $2.3 billion income in 2024—has not published a country-by-country report on its taxes and that it has subsidiaries in many countries considered to be tax havens.

Big Pharma companies, including AbbVie and Merck, also used tax shelters to lower their total tax expense in 2025 by more than $1 billion, according to a report released earlier this month by the Financial Accountability & Corporate Transparency Coalition.

"This isn’t just about clever accounting—it’s about power and impunity," Hallum said. "When millionaires and billionaires stash trillions of dollars in offshore tax havens, they place themselves above the obligations that bind the rest of society."

"The consequences are as predictable as they are devastating," he continued. "We see our public hospitals and schools starved of funds, our social fabric shredded by rising inequality, and ordinary people forced to shoulder the costs of a system rigged to enrich a tiny few.”

Even a fraction of the money currently stashed away by the world's wealthiest could alleviate untold amounts of suffering.

In November, the United Nations' World Food Program estimated that extreme hunger, which currently affects more than 318 million people around the world, could be eradicated by 2030 with investments of about $93 billion per year, but that global hunger programs instead remain “slow, fragmented, and underfunded."

According to a 2021 UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report, investments of around $114 billion per year would similarly be enough to ensure that everyone on Earth has access to safe drinking water and sanitation.

Oxfam called on governments around the world to increase coordination to prevent the wealthy from hiding their riches from tax authorities. It also urged them to adopt more aggressive policies to tax the 1%'s wealth at home, including taxes on income and on extreme wealth.

News Economy
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'America Deserves Better': Top Trump FEMA Official Continues to Claim He's Being Teleported By God

The man appointed by President Donald Trump to lead America's disaster recovery will not stop talking about teleportation. It's leading many people to question whether he's fit for the job.

Even before this past week, many concerns had already been raised about Gregg Phillips, who Trump tapped as associate administrator for the Office of Response and Recovery at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in December.

Phillips had no formal experience in disaster management prior to being given a senior role overseeing billions of dollars to help victims of floods, hurricanes, and wildfires.

But he did have qualifications that are evidently more important to the second Trump administration: a long history of echoing the president's baseless claims about election fraud, including that millions of noncitizens illegally voted in 2016 and that an elaborate operation involving ballot stuffing “mules” helped former President Joe Biden beat Trump in 2020.

Because Phillips was a presidential appointee, Congress was not given the opportunity to scrutinize these statements or others he's made, including his description of himself as a "very vocal opponent of FEMA," the very agency he was chosen to help lead. Nor did it have the opportunity to examine accusations that he directed millions in government contracts to his own personal businesses and associates while working in the Texas and Mississippi governments.

But months into his tenure, Phillips is finally getting some attention for comments he made on multiple podcasts, in which he claimed to have been involuntarily "teleported," including to a Waffle House in Georgia.

Phillips discussed the supernatural experience in a January 2025 episode of the podcast Onward, hosted by fellow election conspiracy theorist Catherine Engelbrecht. CNN first reported on the conversation earlier this month:

"I was with my boys one time and I was telling them I was gonna go to Waffle House and get Waffle House. And I ended up at a Waffle House—this was in Georgia—and I end up at a Waffle House like 50 miles away from where I was,” Phillips said...

"And they said, ‘Where are you?’ and I said, ‘A Waffle House.’ And, 'A Waffle House where?’ And I said, ‘Waffle House in Rome, Georgia.’ And they said, ‘That’s not possible, you just left here a moment ago.’ But it was possible. It was real.”

“Teleporting is no fun,” Phillips added. “It’s no fun because you don’t really know what you’re doing. You don’t really understand it, it’s scary, but yet um—but so real. And you know it’s happening but you can’t do anything about it, and so you just go, you just go with the ride. And wow, what, just an incredible adventure it all was.”

Phillips said this was not the only time he'd been teleported. In another case, he described his car being “lifted up” and dropped in a ditch outside a church in Albany, Georgia.

CNN reported on other controversial and violent statements made by Phillips as well, including one on the same podcast in which he said he'd like to "punch [Biden] in the mouth" and that he "deserves to die." In a 2024 Truth Social post, Phillips also urged listeners to learn how to shoot firearms and warned them that migrants were "coming here to kill you."

But it's his tales of teleportation that have drawn the greatest ridicule. And Phillips has only continued to double down, according to a report out Wednesday from CNN's KFile.

“Haters gonna hate,” Phillips wrote on Truth Social in a post that now appears to be deleted.

"I know what I’ve experienced, I know Who I serve," he continued, in a reply to one of his detractors on the right-wing social media site owned by Trump.

To another, he said: “I have no regrets for my words nor my faith in my Savior, Jesus Christ. The Bible has many examples of the power of God."

Given the enormity of FEMA's responsibility, especially with the climate crisis increasing the number of billion-dollar disasters in the US in recent years, Phillips' tenuous grasp on the fabric of reality has led some to worry that the agency is in suboptimal hands.

“With over 340 million people in this country, you’d think we could find people grounded in reality to run our government programs," said Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii). ”And yet, here’s another powerful official who exists on lies and conspiracy theories. America deserves better.“

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84% of Democrats and 55% of Independents Support Impeaching Trump a Third Time

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Democrats File Sweeping Lawsuit to Stop 'Unlawful' Trump Attack on Mail-In Voting
News

Democrats File Sweeping Lawsuit to Stop 'Unlawful' Trump Attack on Mail-In Voting

President Donald Trump's executive order placing restrictions on mail-in voting in the US is now facing a sweeping lawsuit from the Democratic Party.

In a complaint filed Wednesday with the US District Court for the District of Columbia, the Democrats argued that Trump "has tried again and again to rewrite election rules for his own perceived partisan advantage," this time going after mail voting, which he has baselessly claimed cost him the 2020 presidential election.

The Democrats contended, however, that Trump has no constitutional authority to single-handedly rewrite election laws, noting that the US Constitution explicitly gave states the power to administer their own elections.

"Our Constitution’s framers anticipated this kind of desire for absolute power," the complaint states. "They recognized the menace it would pose to ordered liberty and the ways in which it would corrode self-government like an acid... They left most election authority with the states, permitted state regulations to be displaced only upon the agreement of both chambers of Congress, and established an independent judiciary to repel threats to individual rights."

The complaint then dives into the contents of Trump's order, which it says "seeks to impose radical changes to the manner and conditions under which citizens may cast absentee or mail-in ballots," and would "imminently threaten to disenfranchise lawful voters."

Specifically, the lawsuit argues that Trump is asking the US Postal Service to "take actions unrelated to the agency's statutory mandate that run roughshod over established protections for voters who rely on the mail to exercise their fundamental right" to vote in US elections.

Given that the order doesn't "stem either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself," the complaint continues, "it is an unlawful exercise of authority that must be declared invalid."

A joint statement released by Democratic leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), accused Trump of trying to restrict mail-in voting as a last-ditch effort to stop voters from ousting his Republican congressional allies.

"The American people are fed up with Republicans’ price-spiking, healthcare-gutting agenda and are ready to vote them out," they said. "That’s why Donald Trump is desperately trying to rig our elections by making it harder to vote for seniors, Americans with disabilities, members of the military, rural communities, and other working families who rely on vote-by-mail. This move is blatantly unconstitutional, and we will fight against it."

Shortly after the Democrats filed their lawsuit, the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy Defenders Fund filed a complaint against the Trump executive order on behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Secure Families Initiative, and Arizona Students’ Association.

Danielle Lang, vice president of voting rights and the rule of law at the Campaign Legal Center, said that the suit was necessary to block Trump's "unprecedented" effort to "unconstitutionally assert total authority over our elections."

"Attempts to command the US Department of Homeland Security to work with independent agencies on efforts to disenfranchise eligible voters... are simply unconstitutional and violate long-standing protections for Americans," Lang added.

Elections expert Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, argued in a Wednesday op-ed for Slate that lawsuits against Trump's executive order would probably prove successful and that it "likely will be found unconstitutional by courts."

However, Hasen also warned that the order could still create enough chaos and uncertainty to throw the outcome of close elections into doubt.

"Trump is engaging in election denialism theater," Hasen explained. "It makes voters of all sides mistrust the election process and the virtues of democracy. It convinces his supporters that Democrats have to cheat to win, something that will come in handy should Democrats take back control of the House in November with the intent of beginning investigations and potentially impeachment."

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US President Donald Trump answers questions after signing an executive order to limit mail-in voting in the Oval Office of the White House on March 31, 2026 in Washington, DC.
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As Search for US Airman Continues, Trump Issues Latest 'Countdown to Massive War Crimes'

As the US military's frantic search continued Saturday for an airman who was aboard an F-15E fighter jet when it was downed by Iranian forces a day earlier, and analysts and Iranian media alike suggested the Trump administration has lost control of its war against Iran, President Donald Trump issued his latest threat against the country—once again appearing to threaten tens of millions of Iranians with war crimes.

Renewing his demand that Iran "MAKE A DEAL or OPEN UP THE HORMUZ STRAIT," the president said he was giving the Iranian government "48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them," appearing to confuse the word "reign" with "rain."

"Time is running out," said Trump in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social.

In his post, Trump did not directly address the ongoing search for the airman, who was one of two who ejected from the fighter jet when Iran reportedly used new air defense systems to shoot down the plane. One crew member was found and rescued on Friday.

Iranian officials were also looking for the missing airman on Saturday, raising concerns that the service member could be taken as a hostage and used as leverage.

The president has said little about the ongoing search, but spoke briefly to The Independent in a phone call Saturday about the possibility that Iran could find the service member first.

"We hope that’s not going to happen,” he said.

Trump's comments on social media, meanwhile, appeared to signal "a countdown to massive war crimes," said New York University law professor Ryan Goodman.

The president has also previously warned Iran with an ultimatum, only to delay the threatened action. He said on March 22 that the US would "hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!" if officials did not reopen the strait—prompting critics to condemn him as a "maniacal tyrant."

The March 22 threat was likely a reference to Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, the vicinity of which was struck by a projectile on Saturday, prompting condemnation from the International Atomic Energy Agency. Human rights experts have repeated warnings in recent weeks that striking power plants would constitute war crimes.

At least five people were killed and 170 were injured in airstrikes on a petrochemical hub in Iran's Khuzestan province on Saturday morning, in addition to the Bushehr attack.

After his initial threat, Trump later said direct strikes on energy infrastructure would not be launched until April 6, and demanded that Iran open the key waterway before then.

Despite Trump's increasingly belligerent threats of "hell" and destruction of civilian infrastructure, a number of media critics noted on Saturday that mainstream Western news outlets including The New York Times, The Economist, and Bloomberg described Iran's use of air defense systems to shoot down US war planes involved in the invasion as an "escalation from Iran's leadership."

"Does Iran have a right to defend itself? Does Palestine? Does Lebanon?" asked commentator Hasan Piker, noting that the US and Israel have claimed they launched the invasion of Iran to "defend" themselves against an imminent attack, contrary to US intelligence analysis. "Or is it just Israel and America who get to claim self-defense as they engage in wars of conquest?"

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