Category
Complicity in foreign conflicts, weapons deals, ICC obstruction, and military threats
60 incidents
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
A strike on the night of September 1 hit a wedding near the Strait of Hormuz, killing at least four people including a 4-year-old and wounding dozens. Reuters-consulted experts judged the weapon likely American; the US has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility and says it is investigating.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
In mid-July 2026, US strikes in Hormozgan province hit bridges, tunnels, power infrastructure and a seawater desalination facility, leaving about 10,000 villagers without drinking water according to the regional water utility. Drinking-water installations are specially protected under the laws of war; the US has offered no target-specific justification.
Grade 5 of 5: War Crime / Crime Against Humanity
U.S. strikes on civilian port cities (Qeshm, Bandar Abbas, Bandar Kargan) during an active ceasefire killed at least one sailor, injured ten, and Iran says hit civilian residential zones. A massive oil spill (71 sq km, ~80,000 barrels) from Kharg Island was confirmed by Copernicus satellite imagery. Iran declared the ceasefire violated and said the U.S. had 'crossed the point of no return.'
Grade 5 of 5: War Crime / Crime Against Humanity
The United States imposed a full naval blockade on all Iranian ports after peace talks in Islamabad collapsed, threatening to destroy any vessel approaching. The blockade — the first U.S. naval blockade since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis — constitutes an act of war under international law, threatens 25% of global seaborne oil, and amounts to siege warfare against Iran's 88 million civilians.
Grade 5 of 5: War Crime / Crime Against Humanity
Trump's explicit threats to destroy all civilian infrastructure in Iran — every bridge, every power plant — with the stated goal of ensuring Iran 'could literally never rebuild as a nation again' constitute textbook threats of indiscriminate attack, a war crime under the Rome Statute and customary IHL.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The shootdown of a US F-15E over Iran and the massive rescue operation that followed document the intensity and cost of the 2026 Iran war. The rescue itself was a legitimate military operation, but Trump's threat to jail journalists who covered it raises serious press freedom concerns, and the scale of the operation — including abandoned US aircraft inside Iran — illustrates the escalatory trajectory of the conflict.
Grade 5 of 5: War Crime / Crime Against Humanity
US forces destroyed Iran's landmark B1 bridge near Karaj in a double-tap strike during Nowruz holiday celebrations, killing 8 civilians and wounding 95. The bridge — 176 meters tall and 1,050 meters long — was under construction and had never been used for any military purpose. The strike marked the first direct hit on major civilian infrastructure following Trump's 'Stone Ages' threats.
Grade 5 of 5: War Crime / Crime Against Humanity
Repeated strikes near Bushehr nuclear power plant violate Additional Protocol I Article 56's specific protection of nuclear electrical generating stations. Even without a radiation release, strikes on or near an active nuclear reactor in a city of 250,000 constitute reckless endangerment of the civilian population and violate the prohibition on disproportionate attacks under Rome Statute Article 8(2)(b)(iv).
Grade 5 of 5: War Crime / Crime Against Humanity
The US Defense Secretary's public declaration that no quarter would be given to Iran constitutes a textbook war crime under Rome Statute Article 8(2)(b)(xii), which criminalizes 'declaring that no quarter will be given.' This prohibition is among the oldest in the laws of war.
Grade 5 of 5: War Crime / Crime Against Humanity
U.S. military strikes on Kharg Island — Iran's primary oil export facility handling 90% of crude exports — constitute attacks on critical civilian economic infrastructure. Combined with explicit threats to destroy the entire island, these strikes raise serious questions under the proportionality and distinction principles of international humanitarian law.
Grade 5 of 5: War Crime / Crime Against Humanity
US and Israeli strikes have damaged UNESCO World Heritage Sites and over 100 cultural heritage sites across Iran, including Golestan Palace, Isfahan's Naqsh-e Jahan Square complex, the 8th-century Jameh Mosque, and prehistoric sites dating to 63,000 BC. The destruction of cultural heritage during armed conflict is prohibited under the 1954 Hague Convention and constitutes a war crime under the Rome Statute.
Grade 5 of 5: War Crime / Crime Against Humanity
A US submarine torpedoed an Iranian frigate returning from a peaceful international naval event, killing 87 sailors. The failure to rescue shipwrecked sailors violates the Second Geneva Convention's obligation to search for and collect the shipwrecked after an engagement.
Grade 5 of 5: War Crime / Crime Against Humanity
The Iran war triggered closure of the world's most critical energy chokepoint, causing the largest supply disruption since the 1970s. Despite a nominal ceasefire, the US and Iran exchanged fire in the strait on May 7, 2026. The US struck civilian port cities Qeshm and Bandar Abbas; a cargo vessel was hit, killing one sailor. A massive oil spill (71 sq km, ~80,000 barrels) from Kharg Island confirmed by Copernicus satellite imagery. Iran declared the ceasefire violated; the strait remains effectively closed.
Grade 5 of 5: War Crime / Crime Against Humanity
Trump's explicit threat to destroy Iran's civilian power infrastructure constitutes a per se violation of international humanitarian law. The threats escalated from 'obliterate' to a promise of 'complete demolition' of all civilian infrastructure. Combined with 3,400+ killed including 1,600+ civilians, this represents a confirmed war crime classification.
Grade 5 of 5: War Crime / Crime Against Humanity
A sustained pattern of strikes on Iranian hospitals, ambulances, and medical infrastructure has killed healthcare workers and forced the evacuation of six hospitals. The WHO verified 18 attacks on health sites through mid-March 2026, documenting systematic damage to protected medical facilities including Gandhi Hospital and Iranian Red Crescent centers. The pattern continued through the April 7 ceasefire, and HRW documented further strikes through the ceasefire period in its April 2026 report.
Grade 5 of 5: War Crime / Crime Against Humanity
A Tomahawk cruise missile struck a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran, killing up to 180 schoolchildren in one of the deadliest single incidents of civilian harm in the 2026 Iran war. Investigations by the New York Times, CBC, NPR, and BBC Verify confirmed US responsibility.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
An executive order stripped human rights safeguards from the US arms transfer framework, replacing decades of bipartisan policy with a commerce-first approach. The subsequent emergency bypass of congressional review for $23+ billion in Gulf arms sales demonstrated the immediate consequences of removing these guardrails.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The US contracted with an Israeli state-owned arms manufacturer for banned cluster munitions at industrial scale, reversing decades of declining reliance on these weapons and funding an Israeli weapons program while cluster munitions continue to kill and maim civilians worldwide.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
The expiration of the last US-Russia nuclear arms control treaty ends over five decades of binding limits on the world's two largest nuclear arsenals. No replacement is under negotiation. The loss of verification mechanisms, data exchange, and warhead caps risks an unconstrained nuclear arms race at a time of peak geopolitical tension.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
A large-scale US retaliatory bombing campaign in Syria following the deaths of three Americans near Palmyra. The scale of the operation — hundreds of munitions across dozens of targets in populated desert regions — raises serious questions about proportionality and civilian protection under international humanitarian law.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The Trump administration reversed decades of bipartisan progress toward eliminating antipersonnel landmines by authorizing their global use and simultaneously dismantling the US humanitarian demining program that had been the world's largest mine-clearing effort.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
Trump directed the Pentagon to match other nations' nuclear testing programs, breaking a moratorium that has held since 1992 and threatening to collapse the global norm against nuclear testing that has been maintained for over three decades.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The United States sanctioned a UN human rights investigator for performing the duties of her mandate, in what UN experts described as an unprecedented threat to the international human rights system.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The US was the sole dissenter blocking Gaza ceasefire resolutions supported by all other Security Council members, while famine and allegations of genocide continued in Gaza. The pattern of vetoes enabled continued military operations with devastating humanitarian consequences.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
The combined effect of freezing Afghanistan's sovereign assets and terminating all US humanitarian aid has created a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in which millions face starvation. UN officials have explicitly warned the policy will directly cause deaths, particularly among children.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
The tariff regime was described by the administration as reciprocal response to trade imbalances, but the methodology for calculating tariff rates — dividing trade deficits by import values — was not a recognized economic method and did not reflect actual foreign tariff levels. Economists across the political spectrum warned of consumer price increases, supply chain disruptions, and reduced trade volumes. The tariffs on Chinese goods — reaching 145% cumulatively — effectively ended routine trade in many product categories. Markets fell sharply; the S&P 500 lost approximately 12% in the two trading days following the announcement, its worst two-day drop since 2008. A 90-day pause was announced for most countries (excluding China) after Treasury Secretary Bessent and other officials lobbied Trump.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The reimposition of FTO status on the Houthis threatens to deepen what was already the world's worst humanitarian crisis by chilling aid delivery, disrupting commercial imports, and creating legal risks for humanitarian workers operating in areas where more than half of Yemen's population lives.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The Pentagon's civilian casualty prevention infrastructure was gutted in early 2025, removing safeguards that existed specifically to prevent the kinds of civilian harm documented in the administration's subsequent military operations.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
Trump demanded $500 billion from a nation under active invasion, publicly humiliated its president in the Oval Office, suspended aid and intelligence, and conditioned continued support on a minerals deal — leveraging Ukraine's existential crisis for resource extraction.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
Using emergency waivers under the Arms Export Control Act, the administration has bypassed Congress to approve massive arms sales to Gulf states, including to the UAE despite documented evidence of UAE weapons flowing to the RSF in Sudan's genocide. The simultaneous rescission of NSM-20 removed all human rights conditions from US arms transfers.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
Trump's second-term Ukraine policy represented a fundamental reversal from the U.S. position that Russian aggression must not be rewarded with territorial gains. The administration froze intelligence sharing and weapons deliveries to Ukraine, sent officials including Steve Witkoff to meet with Putin without Ukrainian representation, and publicly pressured Zelensky to negotiate terms that Ukraine and European allies considered capitulation. The Oval Office meeting on February 28, 2025 became an international incident when Trump and Vice President Vance confronted Zelensky before cameras, accusing him of ingratitude and warning he was 'gambling with World War III.' Zelensky left Washington without a security guarantee or continued military aid.
Grade 5 of 5: War Crime / Crime Against Humanity
President Trump publicly called for the forced displacement of 2.3 million Palestinians from Gaza, describing it as 'cleaning out' the territory. The proposal was condemned by the UN, Arab League, and international lawyers as ethnic cleansing. Trump subsequently issued executive orders and pressure on Egypt and Jordan to accept Palestinian deportees.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The systematically intensified US sanctions regime against Cuba has caused 20-hour blackouts, hospital closures, medication shortages for 5 million chronically ill people, and collapse of essential services. UN experts condemned the measures as collective punishment of civilians.
Grade 5 of 5: War Crime / Crime Against Humanity
The administration froze PEPFAR on Day One, cutting antiretroviral therapy for an estimated 20 million HIV-positive people in sub-Saharan Africa. PEPFAR funded 70% of the global HIV response. Health workers reported clinics closing, drug supplies running out, and patients dying within weeks of the freeze. Even after partial restoration, the damage to supply chains, staffing, and preventive programs is projected to cause hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
Trump's January 7, 2025 press conference at Mar-a-Lago was the clearest statement of the annexation posture: asked whether he would rule out military force to take Greenland, he said 'no.' Asked about economic coercion of Canada, he said tariffs were possible. His son Donald Trump Jr. visited Greenland on what was described as a personal trip days before the press conference, raising diplomatic concerns. Denmark's prime minister stated that Greenland was not for sale. Greenland's prime minister stated Greenland's future was for Greenlanders to decide. Panama's president said the canal was and would remain Panamanian. Canada's prime minister described the threats as unacceptable.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
NATO's collective defense commitment under Article 5 — that an attack against one member is an attack against all — was the foundational guarantee that had maintained European security for 75 years. Trump's statement that he would encourage Russia to attack members he deemed to be underpaying undermined the credibility of the deterrence that Article 5 provided. NATO allies condemned the statements as dangerous; European leaders described them as a fundamental threat to the alliance's deterrence value. In his second term, Trump continued pressing NATO members with threats of U.S. withdrawal contingent on spending levels, while simultaneously pursuing a Ukraine peace framework that European allies described as favorable to Russia.
Grade 2 of 5: Major Abuse of Power
Trump had previously threatened to withdraw or defund the WHO in April 2020; in May he made the withdrawal formal. Critics noted that withdrawing from the WHO during a pandemic eliminated U.S. influence over the global response to the same pandemic — including over vaccine development coordination, variant tracking, and equitable distribution programs. The U.S. would lose voting rights, committee seats, and the ability to shape WHO standards and guidelines. Allies and public health experts across the political spectrum criticized the decision. Biden rejoined the WHO within hours of taking office on January 20, 2021.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
The Washington Post reported in May 2020 that senior Trump administration officials — including representatives from the Defense and State Departments — discussed at a meeting whether to conduct a nuclear test explosion. The discussions were presented as leverage in arms control negotiations with Russia and China. No test took place, but the public discussion of resuming testing — after a 28-year U.S. moratorium — was treated by arms control experts as a significant destabilization of the global non-proliferation architecture. The Trump administration had already withdrawn from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and signaled disinterest in extending New START.
Grade 1 of 5: Significant Democratic Concern
The Open Skies Treaty allows its 35 signatories — including the United States, Russia, and most NATO and former Warsaw Pact nations — to conduct scheduled unarmed reconnaissance flights over each other's territory. The flights collect imagery that member states share, building collective military transparency. Trump administration officials argued Russia had violated the treaty by restricting U.S. flight paths over certain territories. European allies agreed Russia had compliance issues but argued the U.S. should address them within the treaty framework rather than withdraw, and warned that U.S. withdrawal would give Russia an excuse to exit entirely. Russia did subsequently withdraw from the treaty in January 2021, after Trump's withdrawal had set the precedent. The Biden administration reviewed but did not rejoin the treaty due to concerns about congressional opposition.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
The Trump administration's Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad negotiated the Doha Agreement with Taliban representatives over 18 months. The Afghan government of President Ashraf Ghani was excluded from the negotiations — the Taliban refused to negotiate with the Ghani government and the U.S. accepted this condition. The agreement required the U.S. to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, including senior military commanders, in exchange for the Taliban releasing 1,000 Afghan security forces. The Taliban made no commitment to halt offensive operations against Afghan forces. The U.S. military assessment was that the Taliban were not fulfilling the agreement's anti-terrorism requirements before the withdrawal was completed.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad led 18 months of negotiations with Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar while refusing Taliban demands to include the Afghan government. The Afghan government, which the U.S. had spent nearly two decades and $2 trillion supporting, was effectively presented with the agreement as a fait accompli. Trump personally called Taliban leader Mullah Baradar in a phone call. As part of the deal, the U.S. pressured Afghan President Ghani to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, including commanders. After Biden inherited the deal, he extended the deadline and withdrew forces in August 2021; the Afghan government collapsed in days.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
Soleimani was one of the most senior military commanders of a foreign government. His killing — outside declared combat zones, in the territory of a third country (Iraq) — raised significant questions under international law and the U.S. War Powers Resolution. Congressional leaders, including Senate majority leader McConnell, were not briefed in advance. Iran's ballistic missile response struck Al Asad Air Base and injured 110 U.S. service members; Trump initially told the public no one was hurt. The administration's justification for the strike — an 'imminent threat' — was not substantiated with specific intelligence that was shared with Congress.
Grade 5 of 5: War Crime / Crime Against Humanity
After a phone call with Erdoğan, Trump announced U.S. forces would step aside from the Turkish-Syrian border, describing the Syrian Kurds as 'no angels' and suggesting the region's conflicts were 'not our problem.' Turkey launched Operation Peace Spring within hours. The SDF — which had lost 11,000 fighters combating ISIS — was forced to divert troops from guarding ISIS prisoner facilities; hundreds of ISIS prisoners escaped.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
Ukraine had been under Russian military pressure since 2014. The $391 million in security assistance — congressionally appropriated bipartisan aid that had nothing to do with Biden — was withheld by Trump's Office of Management and Budget while the White House sought a Ukrainian announcement of investigations. The July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky documented the pressure: Trump told Zelensky he needed a 'favor' — an investigation of the 2016 election and of Biden — before the U.S. would proceed. A White House national security official filed a whistleblower complaint. The aid was eventually released in September 2019 after the whistleblower complaint became public.
Grade 2 of 5: Major Abuse of Power
Mattis had served as Defense Secretary since January 2017. His resignation came after Trump announced — via tweet, without military consultation — that he was withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria, effectively abandoning the Kurdish partners who had done the ground fighting against ISIS. Mattis's resignation letter was unusual in its directness: it stated that he believed Trump had not treated allies with 'respect and seriousness' and had not been 'clear-eyed' about the threats posed by adversaries including Russia and China. Trump, initially describing the departure as planned, later forced Mattis out before the end of his original tenure after the letter's contents became widely circulated.
Grade 5 of 5: War Crime / Crime Against Humanity
Khashoggi was killed and dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a 15-person hit squad sent from Riyadh. The CIA concluded with high confidence that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally ordered the killing. Trump publicly sided with Saudi Arabia over his own intelligence agencies, blocked sanctions on MBS, and used the murder as leverage in arms sales negotiations.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
Khashoggi, a permanent U.S. resident and Washington Post columnist, entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain documents for his upcoming marriage. He was killed and his body dismembered by a 15-member Saudi team that included members of MBS's personal security detail. Turkish intelligence recorded audio of the killing and shared it with the CIA. The CIA concluded MBS ordered the operation. Trump's November 2018 statement defending Saudi Arabia cited the CIA assessment as uncertain and emphasized arms sales: '$450 billion of jobs, 450 billion dollars.' Trump resisted congressional pressure for Magnitsky Act sanctions against MBS. The administration characterized MBS's culpability as inconclusive despite CIA findings.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
Khashoggi, a permanent U.S. resident and Washington Post contributor, entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain marriage documents and was killed by a Saudi hit squad. Turkish intelligence recordings documented the killing. The CIA assessed with high confidence that MBS had ordered it. Trump's response was to prioritize the Saudi relationship over accountability: he repeatedly questioned the CIA's conclusion, cited a $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, and issued an unprecedented presidential statement that effectively exonerated MBS by saying even if he was responsible, the U.S. would stand by Saudi Arabia. A bipartisan Senate resolution holding MBS responsible was passed; Trump threatened to veto related legislation.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
Trump and Putin met privately for approximately two hours with only translators present; there was no U.S. notetaker and Trump reportedly had his interpreter's notes confiscated. At the public press conference, Trump said he didn't 'see any reason why it would be Russia' that interfered in the election — contradicting the unanimous assessment of the U.S. intelligence community. When asked the next day, Trump claimed he had misspoken and meant to say 'wouldn't' instead of 'would.' The statement provoked condemnation from Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican Speaker Paul Ryan, and dozens of Republican members of Congress.
Grade 5 of 5: War Crime / Crime Against Humanity
Standing next to Putin at a joint press conference, Trump declined to affirm the intelligence community's unanimous assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit him. He also refused to implement congressionally-mandated sanctions against Russia following the Salisbury chemical weapons attack and on other grounds. The Senate Intelligence Committee's 2020 bipartisan report confirmed not only Russian interference but that Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort shared internal polling data with a Russian intelligence operative.
Grade 2 of 5: Major Abuse of Power
Trump's three meetings with Kim Jong-un (Singapore June 2018, Hanoi February 2019, DMZ June 2019) produced vague joint statements but no binding agreements. North Korea did not submit to inspections, did not provide a declaration of nuclear assets, and did not halt weapons development. Trump unilaterally suspended U.S.-South Korea military exercises after the Singapore summit, calling them 'very expensive war games' and using language Kim had used — a significant concession military commanders opposed. North Korea tested missiles throughout 2019. Talks broke down at Hanoi when the U.S. declined to trade all sanctions for only partial denuclearization.
Grade 5 of 5: War Crime / Crime Against Humanity
The IAEA confirmed Iran was fully complying with the JCPOA when Trump withdrew. His 'maximum pressure' campaign reimposed crippling economic sanctions, including on Iran's banking system, oil exports, and humanitarian goods. Iran resumed enrichment and crossed successive JCPOA limits. The campaign ended with the assassination of IRGC General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020 and Iran further accelerating its nuclear program — ultimately leaving Iran closer to a bomb than when the deal was in force.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
The JCPOA had halted Iran's path to nuclear weapons by removing sanctions in exchange for verifiable limits on enrichment. The IAEA had certified Iranian compliance in each of its inspections. Trump characterized the deal as 'the worst deal ever made' and the withdrawal as correcting an Obama-era mistake. European allies, who had spent years negotiating the agreement, tried unsuccessfully to persuade Trump to stay in. Following the withdrawal, Iran accelerated its nuclear program, enriched uranium to higher levels than were permitted before the JCPOA, and the U.S. assassination of General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020 brought the two countries to the brink of direct military conflict.
Grade 2 of 5: Major Abuse of Power
The Section 232 tariffs were challenged immediately as legally dubious — U.S. national security law did not contemplate allies as threats, and Canada, Germany, South Korea, and Japan supply steel and aluminum to U.S. defense contractors. The EU, Canada, and Mexico all retaliated with targeted tariffs on politically sensitive U.S. products (Bourbon, Harley-Davidson motorcycles, orange juice, soybeans). The broader China trade war — separate from the steel tariffs — involved escalating rounds of tariffs reaching 25% on $250 billion in Chinese goods; China retaliated against agricultural products; the U.S. government paid $28 billion in direct payments to American farmers to compensate for lost Chinese export markets.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
The four soldiers — Staff Sgt. Bryan Black, Staff Sgt. Jeremiah Johnson, Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright, and Sgt. La David Johnson — were killed in an ambush 12 days before Trump publicly acknowledged their deaths. Trump's delayed response and his disputed call to Johnson's widow — in which witnesses say he told her her husband 'knew what he signed up for' — became a national controversy. Trump denied the account. The incident also exposed the extent of U.S. military operations in Africa that Congress had not been notified about.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
Trump visited Puerto Rico nine days after a storm that killed nearly 3,000 people and left the island without power for months — the longest blackout in U.S. history. His visit featured a trophy-style photo op where he tossed paper towels to survivors. He told them their death toll compared favorably to 'a real disaster like Katrina.' Months later, as the official death toll was revised upward toward 3,000, Trump claimed the number was fabricated. Puerto Rico remained without power for 11 months in some areas — the longest blackout in U.S. territory history. FEMA's response was widely criticized as inadequate.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
Trump announced the withdrawal in the Rose Garden, framing it as a defense of American workers against an agreement he claimed was economically harmful. The U.S. had committed under Paris to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 26–28% below 2005 levels by 2025. Trump claimed the accord would cost 2.7 million jobs — a figure taken from a Koch-funded study that most economists disputed. The U.S. was the only major nation to withdraw. The formal withdrawal process took three years under treaty terms; the U.S. officially left the day after the 2020 election. President Biden rejoined on his first day in office.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
Trump's first clear signal came in May 2017 at NATO headquarters in Brussels, where he delivered a speech at the unveiling of a 9/11 memorial wall without explicitly affirming Article 5 collective defense — the alliance's core commitment. His aides later said the affirmation had been removed from the speech at Trump's direction. Over the following years, Trump repeatedly demanded NATO allies pay 2% of GDP on defense, threatened withdrawal, and reportedly told European leaders in private that the U.S. might not come to their aid. In February 2024, during the 2024 campaign, Trump stated publicly that he would 'encourage' Russia to attack NATO members who he thought hadn't paid enough.
Grade 2 of 5: Major Abuse of Power
The TPP was designed explicitly to be a counterweight to Chinese economic influence in the Asia-Pacific region — establishing labor standards, intellectual property rules, and trade norms that reflected democratic values rather than Chinese state capitalism. Trump's withdrawal handed China the diplomatic and economic initiative in the region it had been seeking. The 11 remaining nations completed the CPTPP without the U.S.; China has since established its own trade framework covering much of the same region.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
The Senate Intelligence Committee's August 2020 bipartisan report documented that Paul Manafort shared confidential Trump campaign polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Ukrainian political consultant the committee assessed had ties to Russian intelligence. The report characterized this as 'a grave counterintelligence threat.' The report also documented extensive contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russian nationals. Mueller found the hacking and dumping of Democratic emails benefited the Trump campaign and that the campaign was aware of, and made use of, the releases — but did not find sufficient evidence of criminal conspiracy between the campaign and the Russian government.