blog

January 5, 2026

Trump Will Try to Defend Aggression Toward Venezuela. It’s Still Illegal.

Forcible regime change and US occupation of Venezuela are also unlawful under the UN Charter.

The Trump administration’s massive military attack on Venezuela, launched with 150 aircraft, reportedly killed upwards of 80 people, including civilians.

In utter defiance of the mandates of the United Nations Charter, U.S. forces launched the attack as they kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, First Lady Cilia Flores, who have been transported to New York, where they face drug trafficking charges.

Read more
December 15, 2025

US Relied on Illegal Sanctions to Seize Venezuelan Oil Tanker

US armed forces’ seizure of the oil tanker constituted an unlawful use of force in violation of the UN Charter.

“We have just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela — a large tanker, very large, the largest one ever seized actually,” Donald Trump told reporters on December 10, describing the escalation of his apparently impending illegal war and regime change in Venezuela. Attorney General Pam Bondi ceremoniously released a video clip of the U.S. Marines and National Guard rappelling down from two helicopters onto the tanker.

In seizing the “Skipper,” the Trump administration relied on sanctions the U.S. had imposed on the Venezuelan oil tanker. Bondi said a seizure warrant was executed by the U.S. Coast Guard, FBI, Pentagon, and Homeland Security Investigations. “For multiple years, the oil tanker has been sanctioned by the United States due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations,” she stated.

But those sanctions are illegal and cannot provide a lawful basis for the U.S. to seize this vessel.

Read more
December 5, 2025

Trump’s Illegal Boat Strikes Recall Duterte’s “Drug War” Mass Killings

Former Philippine President Duterte awaits trial in the ICC for using the pretext of a drug war for his murder campaign. Trump should also be charged with a crime against humanity.

Public outrage is mounting over the Trump administration’s September 2 “double tap” strike, in which the U.S. military bombed a small boat for a second time to kill the survivors of a first strike. This particular strike has garnered significant attention due to its clear violation of U.S. and international law because shipwrecked sailors should never be targeted. But it is crucial to note that Donald Trump’s entire bombing operation against vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific is illegal as well.

Trump’s campaign of extrajudicial violence under the pretext of fighting a “drug war” is reminiscent of the policies of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who is currently in custody in the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands, awaiting trial for murdering alleged drug dealers and users. Like Duterte, Trump’s bombing campaign should be considered a crime against humanity.

Read more
November 25, 2025

Soldiers Must Disobey Unlawful Orders Under Trump — It’s Their Legal Duty

I have been called to testify at courts-martial as an expert witness on servicemembers’ duty to disobey unlawful orders.

The courageous action of six Democratic members of Congress has thrust into the national discourse the duty of military and CIA personnel to disobey Donald Trump’s illegal orders. As the Trump administration continues to unlawfully murder people in small vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, deploy the National Guard to U.S. cities, and ignore court orders, the six lawmakers were moved to act.

In a 90-second video organized by Sen. Elissa Slotkin (Michigan), two senators and four Congress members, all U.S. military or CIA veterans, take turns reading a statement to active servicemembers, urging them to refuse to follow illegal orders.

Read more
November 21, 2025

Security Council Shamefully Grants Colonial Domination Over Palestine to the US

A UN Special Rapporteur has decried the resolution as a violation of Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.

In 1947, the United Nations General Assembly committed the UN’s original sin when it partitioned Palestine to create Israel. This launched the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of the Indigenous people, and the establishment of a settler colonial state.

Now, 78 years later, the UN Security Council has committed the UN’s second cardinal sin. It enshrined Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, put its imprimatur on Israel’s genocide, and granted colonial control over the lives of the Palestinians to the United States, which has aided and abetted the genocide.

Read more
November 5, 2025

Lawsuit Charges That California Law Illegally Muzzles Students and Teachers on Palestine

The new law conflates criticism of Zionism with antisemitism and punishes educators for teaching truthful information.

Beginning January 1, 2026, teachers in California classrooms will be looking over their shoulders to avoid running afoul of a frightening new “antisemitism” law. On October 7, despite widespread opposition from civil rights groups, teachers’ unions, and education advocates, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 715, which amends the California Education Code to police what teachers can teach and what students can learn about Israel and Palestine.

“This problematic classroom censorship bill silences Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, Jewish, and other marginalized voices in California public schools by shielding a foreign government — Israel — from legitimate criticism and criminalizes honest discussions on Palestine and other global human rights issues,” the Council on American Islamic Relations said in a statement.

Under this law, educators could be charged with unlawful discrimination and disciplined “if they expose their students to ideas, information, and instructional materials that may be considered critical of the State of Israel and the philosophy of Zionism,” according to a lawsuit filed on November 2 by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC).

Read more
October 30, 2025

Trump Is Moving Relentlessly Toward Illegal War In Venezuela

The Trump administration’s murderous strikes on small boats at sea constitute unlawful extrajudicial killings.

As the Trump administration continues to murder people in small boats on the high seas and mounts the largest U.S. military buildup in decades in the Caribbean, it is moving inexorably toward an all-out, illegal attack and forcible regime change in Venezuela.

Despite Team Trump’s feeble attempts to legally justify its ocean strikes, which have now killed 57 people since early September, those extrajudicial killings are also unlawful.

Donald Trump’s murderous campaign came into focus on February 20, when the State Department designated eight drug trafficking organizations, including Tren de Aragua, as foreign terrorist organizations. Although the administration has attempted — so far unsuccessfully — to use that designation to justify sending immigrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador, Trump is now invoking it in an effort to validate his illegal strikes at sea.

Read more
October 24, 2025

Israel and US Scorn ICJ Ruling Against Starving Civilians as Method of Warfare

The World Court says Israel has a duty as the occupying power to cooperate with UN relief efforts, not impede them.

This week the International Court of Justice (ICJ or World Court) told Israel what seems obvious to any reasonable person — that it cannot starve civilians as a method of warfare. But Israel does not act in accordance with international law, as evidenced by its two-year campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, during which it has killed over 68,000 Gazans (more likely 680,000, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese said on September 15).

In its 71-page advisory opinion, issued on October 22, the ICJ reiterated that Israel is illegally occupying the Gaza Strip. The court unanimously held that as the occupying power, Israel has obligations under international humanitarian law to ensure that the population of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including Gaza, has essential supplies of everyday life, including water, food, shelter, clothing, bedding, and fuel, as well as medical equipment and services. The court also held that Israel must respect and protect all medical and relief personnel and facilities.

Read more
October 18, 2025

Trump Admits Complicity in Genocide

In his speech to the Knesset, Trump told Netanyahu: “We make the best weapons in the world, and we’ve got a lot of them. And we’ve given a lot to Israel … [And] you used them well.”

As Donald Trump congratulates Israel for its conduct of the genocide in Gaza, he should be charged with aiding and abetting genocide, not given the Nobel Peace Prize.

In his speech on Monday to the Israeli Knesset, Trump spent an hour bragging about how he ended the “war” in Gaza and “an age of terror and death,” declaring, “This is the historic dawn of a new Middle East.”

He decried the “thousands of innocent Israeli civilians” who “were attacked by terrorists in one of the most evil and heinous desecrations of innocent life the world has ever seen; the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust,” adding, “The cruelty of October 7th struck to the core of humanity itself. Nobody could believe what they were witnessing.”

Conspicuously absent from Trump’s remarks was any reference to the ubiquitous images of the nearly 68,000 Palestinians killed (possibly as many as 680,000, U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese said on September 15), including at least 20,000 children, and the more than 170,000 injured by Israel during its two-year campaign of genocide in Gaza.

Read more
October 14, 2025

As SCOTUS Enters a New Term, These Cases May Grant Trump Unbridled Authority

Rulings on the Supreme Court’s “emergency docket” foreshadow its abiding deference to Trump.

The Supreme Court’s new term, which began last week, presents the court with a monumental opportunity to hand Donald Trump unbridled executive authority and eviscerate the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution. The court appears poised to rubber stamp many of Trump’s worst abuses, from the imposition of massive tariffs to seizing control of federal agencies created by Congress.

Although there are 39 cases on the court’s regular docket, it has already handled nearly 30 cases with temporary unsigned orders on its “emergency docket.” In those cases, the high court granted Trump’s requests to block orders from lower courts 20 times and ruled against his administration in only three cases; the others led to mixed rulings.

Even though the cases in which the high court has already opined are not final decisions on the merits, they provide a preview of what we can expect during this term after full briefing and oral arguments.

Read more