Corrections and Updates

Why This Page Exists

This archive is intended to be durable public reference material. That only works if changes are visible and editorial uncertainty is handled honestly.

October 2026 Legal Review

In October 2026 every record in the archive, 379 at the time, was re-read against the standard an analyst in the International Criminal Court's Office of the Prosecutor would apply in a preliminary examination, and regraded. The full method is on the evidentiary standards page.

What changed

• The top grade was renamed and narrowed. It was "War Crime / Crime Against Humanity". It is now International Crime (Rome Statute), and it is kept only where the record shows every element of genocide (Article 6), a crime against humanity (Article 7), a war crime (Article 8) or the crime of aggression (Article 8 bis) to at least the "reasonable grounds to believe" standard of Article 58.
• Top-grade records now name their crime. Each one states the crime type and the article, and you can filter by crime type. Where a record carries two characterizations, the second is shown as an alternative.
• A separate record of pre-office conduct. Conduct before the campaign launch on 16 June 2015 is recorded as Pre-Office Conduct. It is kept as context, sits outside the five-grade scale, and is left out of every grade statistic.
• The evidence labels were simplified. "Probable" now appears only on top-grade records, and "potential" only where an international crime is suspected but not shown to the Article 58 standard. "Confirmed" and "enabling" were retired. Complicity is now a crime type with its own strict test.
• Some records were held back. Records with a thin factual basis, records that described lawful policy disagreement rather than a violation, and duplicate copies of the same incident are hidden from the listings pending an editorial pass. Nothing was deleted.
• Records that did not hold up were withdrawn. On 9 October 2026 the editorial pass withdrew 48 of the held-back records as wrong, unsourced, or not a violation. One more, on the US withdrawal from the WHO, was rebuilt on new sources and republished. A withdrawn record's page remains as a dated notice giving the reason; all of them are listed under withdrawn records.
• The archive's scope was restated. It covers Trump's political career from the 16 June 2015 campaign launch to today, judged on the five-grade scale, with pre-office conduct recorded as context. The methodology page now says so.

Grade counts, before and after

Counts cover all 379 records, including the 76 now hidden. The public listings show the remaining 303.

Of the 11 top-grade records, five are war crimes, three are the crime of aggression, two are complicity, and one is a crime against humanity with a war crime as the alternative characterization.

The principles the review applied

Every element of a crime has to be shown, as the ICC's Elements of Crimes define them, including the contextual element. A war crime needs a nexus to an armed conflict, so where it is contested whether an armed conflict exists at all, both readings are analysed. A crime against humanity needs a widespread or systematic attack on a civilian population carried out under a State or organizational policy. Strong language in the sources does not substitute for an element.

The top grade needs at least reasonable grounds to believe. A reasonable basis to suspect a crime is not enough. When in doubt, the reviewers downgraded and said why. A downgrade is not a judgement that the conduct was acceptable. It records only that the specific legal threshold for an international crime is not shown.

Serious violations of human rights law that do not meet those contextual elements, such as arbitrary deprivation of life, torture or refoulement, are graded as critical or serious rights violations rather than as international crimes. Lawful immigration removal is not "deportation" in the Article 7 sense. That requires removal without grounds permitted under international law.

Jurisdiction is not the test. The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute. The review asks whether conduct meets the definition of a crime under international law and notes jurisdictional obstacles separately. Aggression is recorded as its own type, separate from war crimes and crimes against humanity. Complicity counts only when the principal crime is well established and the assistance was substantial and knowing.

The lower grades were reviewed with the same rigour in both directions: entries were checked for upgrade, for placement on the scale, and for whether they belong in the archive at all.

What Gets Updated

Incident pages should be updated when any of the following materially change:

• a new court ruling or operative order
• a new official document
• the factual timeline
• the legal posture label
• the severity assessment
• the identity of the agency, actor, or target described on the page

What Counts As A Correction

A correction is required when the published page materially misstated:

• a date
• a source attribution
• what a cited document or ruling actually says
• the procedural posture of a case
• who was targeted or what authority was exercised

When a correction materially changes the reader's understanding of the incident, it should be reflected in the page's visible update log.

Silent Copyedits

Minor style edits, grammar fixes, or formatting cleanup may be made without a separate correction notice if they do not change meaning.

Legal Framing Changes

If an incident's legal posture changes because of new litigation, a new ruling, or clarified public evidence, the page should be updated rather than left frozen in its old framing. The archive's goal is to preserve the record accurately, not to preserve outdated phrasing for its own sake.

Reader Expectations

Readers should assume:

• incident dates remain tied to when the underlying event occurred
• update dates reflect when the public record on the page materially changed
• source documents and reporting links may expand over time
• unresolved legal questions remain unresolved until the page cites a relevant ruling or official record

Generated Update Ledger

The public /updates page now includes a generated changelog built from incident update entries. That ledger is intended to make material changes easy to scan without requiring readers to revisit every record manually.

The generated list does not replace the policy on this page. It is the operational output of that policy.

Reporting Problems

If you believe a page misstates the public record, use the contact route documented by the project maintainers and cite the specific passage, source, or document at issue. The public site does not currently offer a secure anonymous submission tool.