President Trump has renewed his threats to attack Iran’s civilian infrastructure, warning that every power plant and every major bridge in Iran could be destroyed if the Strait of Hormuz is not fully reopened by 8 p.m. Eastern time this evening. Speaking to reporters Monday at the White House, Trump shrugged off questions about war crimes and threats against civilians, saying, “Very little is off limits.” Trump also claimed that Iran — a country of more than 90 million people — could be “taken out in one night.”

President Donald Trump: “Where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12:00 tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding and never to be used again. I mean complete demolition by 12:00. And it’ll happen over a period of four hours, if we want it to.”

Republican lawmakers defended the president’s threats, while Democrats condemned them as “unhinged.” Arizona Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari, who is Iranian American, called on Vice President JD Vance and Trump’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office; she also announced she’ll introduce articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, citing his “reckless endangerment of U.S. servicemembers and repeated war crimes.”

In Iran, state media reports U.S.-Israeli attacks targeted at least a dozen cities on Monday, killing at least 34 people, including six children. Among the targets was the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, which was badly damaged by airstrikes. The university has been called the ”MIT of the Middle East.” It’s among at least 30 universities struck by the U.S. and Israel, according to Iran’s Ministry of Science and Technology.

Iranian missiles and drones continue to target U.S. military bases and other infrastructure in Gulf countries. In Kuwait, CBS News reports 15 U.S. service members were injured in an Iranian drone attack on the Ali Al Salem Air Base. In Saudi Arabia, officials temporarily closed the King Fahd Causeway, the only bridge to the island nation of Bahrain. It’s one of eight major bridges Iran has threatened to blow up if the U.S.-Israeli coalition escalates its attacks. Bahrain is home to the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, but the Pentagon has largely evacuated its naval base there, after it came under persistent fire from Iran.

On Monday, Iranian officials rejected a proposal for a 45-day ceasefire, saying it will only negotiate a permanent end to the war, with guarantees it won’t be attacked again.

The United Nations says the number of people displaced in Lebanon has grown to over 1.1 million, as Israeli forces continue to invade Lebanon’s south while bombing Beirut and other sites across the country. Hezbollah responded with waves of rocket attacks on northern Israel. Lebanon’s Health Ministry reports one Israeli airstrike on Monday targeted a civilian car in southern Lebanon, killing four civilians, while another strike on the town of Haris killed two civilians. This follows a bloody Easter Sunday that saw Israel kill more than three dozen people, among them Lebanese politician Pierre Mouawad, his wife and another woman, killed in an Israeli strike on an apartment building east of Beirut. Mouawad was an official in the Lebanese Forces, a longtime adversary of Hezbollah.

In the Gaza Strip, Israeli strikes killed at least 10 people and wounded several others Monday at a school housing displaced Palestinians in the Maghazi refugee camp. In a separate attack, an Israeli strike on Gaza City killed a Palestinian man on a bicycle and wounded a child who had just collected food from a soup kitchen. This is an eyewitness to the drone attack.

Ibrahim Karerah: “A youth on a bicycle, a young man in his twenties, he was on the bike, and two drones fell. God protected the people that were getting food, innocent people. They are all innocent. The man on the bike is a civilian, a civilian youth. We were surprised. Two drones tore him apart.”

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization said Monday it was suspending evacuations from Gaza after a WHO contract worker was killed. The Palestinian Health Ministry condemned the attack, saying Israel continues to directly target health and humanitarian workers. The ministry reports 1,700 healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza since October 2023.

The head of the International Monetary Fund is warning the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran will lead to higher inflation while slowing the global economy — even if the conflict ends swiftly. IMF Director Kristalina Georgieva said Monday the war has already led to the worst-ever disruption in global energy supplies and that poor, vulnerable nations with no energy reserves will ⁠be hit the hardest.

Kristalina Georgieva: “Had we not had this war, we would have seen one small upgrade of our growth projections. Instead, all roads now lead to higher prices and slower growth.”

Meanwhile, Drop Site News reports the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has prompted Gulf nations’ sovereign wealth funds to undertake a sweeping review of U.S. investments. Those include funding for U.S. artificial intelligence data centers and the merger of U.S. media giants Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery. More than one-fifth of pledges for the blockbuster $111 billion deal come from wealth funds connected to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Drop Site News reports the deal remains likely to go through, but that could change if the war drags on for weeks or months, and if Gulf oil and gas assets come under even greater attack.

In Turkey, one attacker was killed and two others were wounded in a gunfight with police near a building housing the Israeli Consulate in Istanbul. Turkey’s interior minister said the three attackers had links to an organization that “exploits religion.” There had been no Israeli diplomatic staff at the consulate for two-and-a-half years, since October 2023.

The Trump administration has terminated civil rights settlements that previous administrations reached with five school districts and a college to protect transgender students — a move unprecedented in U.S. history. The Delaware Valley School District, which reached its original settlement with the Obama administration in 2015, received notice of the termination in February and has since voted to roll back its anti-discrimination protections for transgender students. Shiwali Patel, senior director of education justice at the National Women’s Law Center, said, “There is absolutely no basis for what the Department of Education is doing, and it is unimaginably cruel.”

Meanwhile, in Iowa, the state can now restrict teachers from discussing LGBTQ+ topics with students in kindergarten through sixth grade and can ban certain books in school libraries and classrooms, after the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a lower court’s temporary block on a 2023 state law.

A pair of Democratic lawmakers is calling on President Trump to immediately end his oil blockade of Cuba. Democratic Congressmembers Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Jonathan Jackson of Illinois concluded a five-day congressional delegation to the island nation, during which they met with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez and members of parliament. Congressmembers Jayapal and Jackson said they witnessed premature babies in incubators at risk because their ventilators could not function without electricity, and reported that food production on the island has dropped to just 10% of the population’s needs. In January, President Trump signed an executive order threatening tariffs on any country supplying oil to Cuba, intensifying the six-decade-old U.S. embargo. But Trump made an exception for a Russian ship that reached the island last week carrying over 700,000 barrels of crude oil. It was the first petroleum shipment in three months to dock in Cuba. This is Congressmember Jayapal.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal: “The moment is here for us to have a real negotiation between our two countries and to reverse failed U.S. policy of decades, a Cold War-era remnant that no longer serves the American people or the Cuban people.”

Vice President JD Vance is in Budapest today for meetings with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, days before Hungary’s April 12 parliamentary elections. It’s the toughest electoral test Orbán and his far-right ultra-nationalist movement have faced in years. Orbán’s Fidesz party is trailing in polls behind the center-right opposition Tisza party. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also traveled to Budapest in February, where he told Orbán, “President Trump is deeply committed to your success, because your success is our success.” Over the weekend, Orbán convened an emergency National Defense Council meeting after Serbian authorities said two backpacks containing U.S.-made plastic explosives were discovered near the TurkStream pipeline in northern Serbia, which transports Russian gas to Hungary. Opposition leaders accused Orbán of staging a “false-flag” operation with Serbian and Russian assistance, aimed at influencing the outcome of next week’s election.

The U.S. Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Justice Department to dismiss the criminal case against Steve Bannon, President Trump’s former chief White House strategist. The justices set aside a lower court decision that upheld Bannon’s conviction on two counts of contempt of Congress, paving the way for the district court to dismiss the case. Bannon was convicted after he refused to comply with a subpoena from the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol, which required him to provide documents and testimony; he served four months in prison.