1. United States
2. Iowa
3. Letter

To My Representative/Senator: A sitting President of the United States is publicly announcing plans that over 100 international legal experts, former military lawyers, and the United Nations have all identified as war crimes. The silence from too many members of Congress is becoming indistinguishable from approval. That silence must end — today. On April 6, 2026, President Trump stood at a White House press conference and threatened that “every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o’clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding and never to be used again.” He was not vague. He was not speaking hypothetically. He gave a timeline, described the method, and set a deadline. When asked directly whether such strikes would violate the Geneva Conventions, he skirted the question entirely. This is not a legal gray area. Iranian power plants and critical civilian infrastructure are protected from attack by the law of war — law the United States itself helped craft after World War II. Former uniformed military lawyers who spent their careers advising on targeting operations have warned that Trump’s words run counter to decades of legal training and risk placing our warfighters on a path of no return. Consider what following through actually means for 93 million civilians: hospitals go dark, ventilators stop, water treatment plants shut down, sewage systems fail, food refrigeration ends, and emergency response systems cease to function. The cascading civilian death toll would be staggering and sustained over weeks and months. This is not collateral damage. It is collective punishment. The Fourth Geneva Convention is unambiguous: “Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.” Legal experts have called Trump’s threats “clear, public evidence of criminal intent.” The United Nations Secretary General’s spokesman has confirmed: “If there’s an attack on clearly civilian infrastructure, that is not allowed under international humanitarian law.” Over 100 international law experts from Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and dozens of other institutions have signed an open letter warning that these threatened strikes could constitute war crimes — and that Secretary Hegseth has systematically dismantled the legal safeguards inside the Pentagon designed to prevent exactly this, including removing senior military lawyers and replacing the judge advocates general of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. No other recent American president has operated this way. No other recent American president has talked so openly about committing potential war crimes. Wartime American presidents and their aides have usually insisted they were trying to follow international and U.S. military law, even if they violated it in some cases. Trump has dispensed with even that pretense. He told The New York Times the only cap on his power was his “own morality.” Some of your colleagues have already found their voice. Senator Elissa Slotkin has called the threatened strikes a violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Pentagon’s own Law of War Manual. Senator Bernie Sanders has demanded Congress act immediately to end the war. Senator Jeff Merkley has reminded the nation that U.S. service members are legally required to refuse unlawful orders. Representative Yassamin Ansari has introduced articles of impeachment against Secretary Hegseth, citing repeated war crimes including the bombing of a girls’ school in Minab, Iran, and the willful targeting of civilian infrastructure. The question now is where you stand. I am asking you to do three specific things. First, issue a public statement — not a press release buried on your website, but a floor speech, a press conference, a television appearance — unambiguously condemning the President’s threats as violations of international law and American values. Second, use your seat on the relevant committees to demand a full congressional authorization vote before any further escalation of this war. Third, make clear to the Pentagon and to our service members that they are not only permitted but legally obligated to refuse unlawful orders — and that Congress will have their backs for doing so. A president who publicly threatens to destroy hospitals, water supplies, and power grids serving nearly 100 million civilians, dismisses international law as irrelevant, and silences the military lawyers whose job it is to prevent atrocities — that president is a clear and present danger to the security, the moral standing, and the soul of this nation. History is being written right now. Your constituents will remember who spoke up, who voted right, and who stayed quiet while a president threatened to commit atrocities in their name. Come Election Day, we will remember.