Schumer calls Trump ‘extremely sick person’ in response to social media post saying that a ‘whole civilization will die tonight’
Chuck Schumer, the top Senate Democrat, has called Donald Trump an “extremely sick person” in response to the president’s recent post on Truth Social – in which he said “a whole civilization will tonight” if Iran fails to meet his 8pm ET deadline to reopen the strait of Hormuz.
“Each Republican who refuses to join us in voting against this wanton war of choice owns every consequence of whatever the hell this is,” Schumer added.
Other Democrats have slammed Trump’s most recent comments, hours before he promises to make good on his threat to target civilian infrastructure and power plants in Iran. Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator who sits on the foreign relations committee, said that Trump’s plan is to “murder thousands of innocent Iranians and hope for a civil war that somehow ends up with the strait of Hormuz reopening”. Murphy also also highlightedd the global energy crisis that has spiralled since the war began and oil prices spiked.
Key events
Jakub Krupa
During a press conference in Budapest with Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán, vice-president JD Vance is asked how the military goals in Iran can be achieved if the US continues its attacks on the country.
Vance was also asked about reports about US attacks on Kharg Island. The vice-president said the plan was to hit “some military targets” there and “I believe we have done so.”
“The president’s deadline has been followed by us and everybody else,” Vance said. “We’re not going to strike energy and infrastructure targets until the Iranians either make a proposal that we can get behind or don’t make a proposal. But he’s given them until Tuesday at 8.”
The vice-president also noted that the news about Kharg Island doesn’t represent a change in strategy from the preisdent.
He then joked about Iran leaders being “not the fastest negotiators,” but said he hopes to get an answer by the this evening’s cutoff point.
One note, we were expecting a Pentagon press conference today with defense secretary Pete Hegseth and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Dan Caine, but that has now been cancelled.
This comes as US-Israeli strikes have hit the key Iranian oil export terminal of Kharg island, according to state media.
“The American-Zionist enemy has carried out several attacks on Kharg island, and several explosions have been heard there,” Iran’s Mehr news agency reported.
My colleagues on our dedicated Middle East blog are covering the latest developments in the region.
Trump says a ‘whole civilization will die tonight’ ahead of deadline for Iran to reopen strait of Hormuz
In a staggering post on social media, Donald Trump wrote that a “whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again”, ahead of his 8pm ET deadline for Iran to reopen the strait of Hormuz.
The president maintains that if a deal isn’t reached, the US will escalate a bombing campaign to civilian and energy infrastructure, that would amount to a violation of international law. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” he wrote. “However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?”
This comes after Trump said that all of Iran could be “taken out” in one night at a press conference on Tuesday. There, he re-affirmed his expletive-laden Truth Social post. “Every bridge in Iran will be decimated” by midnight ET on Wednesday, he said at the White House, and “every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding and never to be used again.”
Donald Trump is in Washington today. He’ll spend most of the day in policy meetings, before welcoming the ambassador to India, Sergio Gor, to the White House for a dinner reception at 7pm ET. However, these events won’t be open to the press. We’ll keep an eye out if any of that changes.
Donald Trump said he was “not at all” concerned about committing possible war crimes as he again threatened to destroy Iran’s bridges and power plants if Tehran does not meet his Tuesday 8pm ET deadline to reopen the strait of Hormuz.
“I’m not worried about it,” the US president said. “You know what’s a war crime? Having a nuclear weapon.”
Speaking at the White House, Trump refused to say whether any civilian targets would be off-limits. Iran on Monday rejected a 45-day ceasefire proposal and said it wanted a permanent end to the conflict.
“We only accept an end of the war with guarantees that we won’t be attacked again,” Mojtaba Ferdousi Pour, the head of the Iranian diplomatic mission in Cairo, told the Associated Press.
At a news conference, Trump said all of Iran could be “taken out” in one night “and that night might be tomorrow night”, referring to Tuesday. Without an agreement with Tehran, he said, “every bridge in Iran will be decimated” by midnight ET on Wednesday and “every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding and never to be used again”.
Israel and the US carried out a wave of attacks on Iran on Monday, killing more than 25 people. Iran responded with missile fire on Israel and its Gulf Arab neighbours.
Vice-president JD Vance has arrived in Hungary in a bid to turn the tide of an election campaign where long-serving prime minister Viktor Orbán, a close ally of president Donald Trump, is trailing in the polls.
Vance’s two-day trip, where he is scheduled to hold an official visit with Orbán and later appear at one of his campaign rallies, offered the clearest sign yet that the Trump administration is going all-in for an Orbán victory when Hungarians go to the polls on Sunday.
Verónica García de León
Mexico is facing a “toxic crisis” and has become a “garbage sink” for the US, exposing Mexican communities to dangerous pollution, a UN expert has warned.
In an interview with the Guardian and Quinto Elemento Lab, an investigative outlet, Marcos Orellana, an environmental specialist, said pollutants ranging from imported waste to dangerous pesticides are affecting people’s right to live healthy lives.
Orellana, whose title is UN special rapporteur on toxics and human rights, conducted an 11-day investigative mission in Mexico last month to learn about toxic threats facing its population. He said he found lax environmental standards and a lack of oversight, which have allowed pollution to accumulate over the years.
“Where standards are weak, what you get is legalized pollution,” he said, adding that imports of hazardous and plastic waste from the United States are worsening the situation.
“US overconsumption and economic activity are using Mexico as a garbage sink.”
Wisconsin votes in crucial supreme court race amid threat of midterm election attacks
Rachel Leingang
Meanwhile, Wisconsin voters on Tuesday will select a state supreme court judge to replace an outgoing conservative in a race that could further solidify the liberal majority on the bench ahead of the midterms, when Trump and his allies could try to overturn election results again.
Justice Rebecca Bradley, a conservative, is retiring, giving liberals a chance to further consolidate their hold on the high court ahead of the next presidential election, when the swing state is sure to see challenges to election results.
Chris Taylor, a liberal judge on the state’s court of appeals who previously served as a Democratic lawmaker, is running against conservative Maria Lazar, who is also on the court of appeals and a former deputy state attorney general.
A win from Taylor would give liberals a 5-2 bloc on the bench. Taylor is seen as friendly to voting rights, while Lazar’s views align more closely with Republicans pushing for policies that could hinder voting access and impact. Lazar has continued to defend maps in Wisconsin that were gerrymandered to lead to more Republican victories, which have since been overturned.
Bradley wrote the court’s opinion that banned dropboxes, a frequent target of false election fraud claims about mail ballots, though liberals overturned that decision once they held control of the court. She has served on the state supreme court since 2015.
While this year’s court election has not garnered anywhere near the level of attention as the previous two, advocates for voting rights say voters should continue to stay engaged with the court’s makeup.
Voters head to polls in Georgia runoff election for Marjorie Taylor Greene’s House seat
Voters in northwest Georgia go to the polls on Tuesday in a congressional race between a moderate Democrat and a Republican backed by president Donald Trump, in a test of Trump’s sway over his base and a possible barometer for the November midterms.
The two-way race is to fill a US House of Representatives seat vacated in January when conservative Republican firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned after a public break with Trump, exposing divisions within his Make America Great Again movement, Reuters reports.
The contest pits Clay Fuller, a Trump-endorsed former district attorney and US Air National Guard veteran, against Shawn Harris, a moderate Democrat who has been trying to win over disaffected Trump voters in one of the state’s most conservative districts.
Fuller is favored. The runoff was triggered after no candidates secured an outright majority in a 10 March special election, with Harris winning 37.3% of the vote and Fuller topping a crowded Republican field of a dozen contenders with 34.9%.
Record-breaking partial government shutdown rolls on as Mullin considers pulling ICE from sanctuary city airports
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
The record-breaking partial government shutdown has now entered its eighth week, with little end in sight.
Congress is on recess, and isn’t set to return until 13 April. Yesterday, House lawmakers again took no action to pass a Senate bill to fund affected Department of Homeland Security (DHS) subagencies during its scheduled procedural session.
It comes after Republican leadership in both chambers announced a compromise to fund the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the US Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa), but withhold funds from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and part of Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Their plan is to subsequently fund immigration enforcement through a reconciliation bill that would only require a simple majority in the Senate, and therefore skirt the filibuster.
However, House speaker Mike Johnson is facing pushback from hardline GOP lawmakers over the Senate-passed legislation. They argue that Republicans are ultimately conceding to Democrats’ demands, after they refused to pass a wider DHS funding bill without guardrails on ICE and CBP after federal officers fatally shot two US citizens during the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.
Meanwhile, homeland security secretary Markwayne Mullin said he’s considering pulling US customs agents from airports in sanctuary cities – a move that could upend international travel to and from some of the country’s busiest airports.
Mullin said he was considering the change because “I believe sanctuary cities is not lawful.”
In other developments:
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Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed into a law a bill that allows the state to designate terrorist groups, then punish those who promote them. Critics say the law will threaten free speech, especially on school campuses. The bill specifics bars the state’s courts from enforcing foreign religious laws, specifically naming Sharia Law. Florida courts enforce secular laws passed in the state, however.
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Representative Yassamin Ansari, an Arizona Democrat, will introduce impeachment articles next week against defense secretary Pete Hegseth. “Only Congress has the power to declare war, not a rogue president or his lackeys,” Ansari said in a statement.
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Donald Trump reiterated his threats to bomb Iranian energy and civilian infrastructure if the White House does not reach a deal to reopen the strait of Hormuz 8pm ET today. “The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night,” Trump said during a 90-minute press conference Monday afternoon.
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District court judges have been increasingly issuing strong rulings challenging the legality of many of Trump’s policies and power grabs, blocking key ones at least temporarily, and sparking angry responses from the president, former judges and prosecutors say.
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Trump threatened to jail a journalist – or journalists – who reported that a second US airman was missing after being shot down by Iran on Friday in an effort to identify their source. The badly injured airman hid in a mountain crevice to avoid capture before being rescued by a US recovery team that received heavy fire.
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