1. United States
2. Texas
3. Letter

I write to you today as your constituent with grave urgency. President Trump has publicly stated that “a whole civilization will die tonight” — an explicit threat to obliterate an entire civilian population unless Iran meets his demands. Human rights expert Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, has stated that Trump is “openly threatening collective punishment, targeting not the Iranian military but the Iranian people,” constituting a potential war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention. International law protects from attack objects indispensable to civilian survival, and experts warn that the attacks Trump has threatened could entail war crimes. A president who openly threatens to destroy an entire civilization — civilian infrastructure, power plants, bridges, and water systems — and dismisses Geneva Convention obligations is not exercising sound executive judgment. He is demonstrating a dangerous and destabilizing unfitness for office. The 25th Amendment, Section 4 exists precisely for this moment: when a president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of office responsibly. The Cabinet and Congressional leadership have both the authority and the constitutional obligation to act. I urge you to immediately confer with colleagues across the aisle, engage the Cabinet, and initiate 25th Amendment proceedings. The stakes — potentially millions of civilian lives — could not be higher.