Rubio Sanctions ICC: The Court ‘Will End Its Threats or We Will End the ICC’
“Our message is clear: the United States and its people are not subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the U.S. has imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate,” stated Rubio.
Here’s Rubio’s whole statement, which is just glorious:
For decades, Republicans and Democrats alike rejected the idea that the International Criminal Court had the power to prosecute American citizens, military servicemembers, or political leaders. America never joined the court. We don’t need it. And we don’t want it.
But globalist “experts” an ocean away don’t care what American citizens think. They want the ICC to do more, including the prosecution of American citizens. Servicemembers defending their country, Border Patrol agents protecting our nation, and elected leaders ensuring our national security. They want more power, and they want it at our expense.
President Trump will never allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Americans. That is why, today, the United States is sanctioning the International Criminal Court. We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate.
We have been clear for over a year as to the basic gestures of good faith we have expected from the court. We exercised discretion and deferred this designation out of respect for our relationships and in hopes that the ICC would change course or would otherwise be restrained by States Parties. However, neither the ICC nor States Parties have yet taken meaningful steps to address our concerns.
Despite their inaction, we hold out hope for a diplomatic solution. We have structured this action to provide an opportunity for States Parties to negotiate and present a solution to address our concerns. If these efforts do not bear fruit, we will continue to adjust accordingly.
Our message is clear: the United States and its people are not subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC. Both parties agree on this, but only President Trump has the resolve to take the action needed to end this threat for good. Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC. We expect our allies, many of whom are part of the ICC and that rely on American servicemembers for their defense, to rein in the court.
If they do not, the United States will continue its campaign to dismantle the ICC, brick by brick, until Americans are threatened no longer.
Today, the Trump Administration is sanctioning the ICC.
This action should encourage our Allies within the Court to work for solutions to end this threat to U.S. sovereignty forever. pic.twitter.com/D86dCqLUaZ
— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) October 9, 2026
President Donald Trump’s administration has gone hard against the ICC, especially during this second term.
In July, Rubio warned that the administration started taking steps to completely cut off any strings attached to the ICC:
Perhaps more polite and compliant nations could make their peace with that arrangement. But this is America. Our forefathers fought a revolution against a foreign power “transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.” Independence is our birthright. We don’t intend to trade it for rule by a self-appointed priesthood of “international law.”
The Trump administration will always protect American service members from this threat. The U.S. is launching a diplomatic campaign with a simple message—sovereign states over globalism. Those who benefit from American security must not stand idly by while those who provide that security are targeted. This is only the beginning. Using all the tools at our government’s disposal, working beside every ally with whom we can make common cause, we will dismantle the ICC—brick by brick, if necessary.
Does international law even exist? It supposedly does, but the world lacks a world government or police force to enforce such laws.
The ICC was formed in 1998 via the Rome Statute.
The U.S. never ratified the Rome Statute and withdrew its signature in 2002, when the ICC officially took its seat in The Hague, Netherlands.
While some Democratic presidents have supported the ICC, the U.S. has remained wishy-washy with it due to harms to our national security and lack of protections for our soldiers.
In other words, the U.S. feared politically motivated attacks and unchecked prosecutions.
Because the U.S. never ratified the treaty, the ICC lacks jurisdiction over America.
In 2021, the Biden administration dropped sanctions the first Trump administration placed on then-chief ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda.
Trump took action after Bensouda opened a “war crimes” probe against the U.S. troops fighting jihadi terrorist groups Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The administration also opposed an ICC investigation against members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for their operations against Gaza-based Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups.
However, the Biden administration changed its tune when the ICC issued arrest warrants in 2024 for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, along with Hamas Leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar and Hamas Leader Ismail Haniyeh.
“We reject the prosecutor’s equivalence of Israel with Hamas. It is shameful,” said then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization that carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and is still holding dozens of innocent people hostage, including Americans.”
Blinken even reiterated the fact that the ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel and the U.S., since neither belongs to the court.
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Comments
Wow. Blinken said that???
— “It’s the big one, Elizabeth, I’m coming to meet you!”
And the US will never ratify such a treaty. Never.
I would not count on that never. If another communist gets in power all bets are off. They are completely sold on giving away our sovereignty
It’s a much heavier lift than just electing another lefty President, it takes a 2/3 Senate majority vote to ratify a treaty.
But thanks to Eisenhower’s blocking of the Bricker Amendment, the president can just call it an “agreement” instead of a “treaty,” and there’s pretty much zero practical difference.
There is a huge practical difference. What one president agrees to, a second president can end, like the Paris Accords, or the Iran deal. Any future agreement by a leftist admin would end the same way after the next election. If not, it will be one of the least of our problems.
There’s a huge difference. Treaties, like statutes, are the supreme law of the land.
This means that on any subject with a sufficient international nexus, the president and two thirds of the senate can bypass the house to enact a law over its opposition, simply by making a treaty with some cooperative country.
Likewise the president, a majority in the house, and 60 senators, can effectively pass a treaty over the opposition of 40 senators, by passing it as ordinary legislation.
But a private agreement between the president and some foreign government or leader has no legal status at all. It morally binds the president who signed it, but gives him no powers he didn’t have before. So in making such agreements he can only promise things that he can already do.
If the other party to the agreement wants something that’s not within the president’s authority he has to go to Congress to give him that authority, either by sending it to the senate as a treaty or by sending it to one house as legislation. Which method he chooses will depend on the numbers. If he has 60 senators but fewer than 67, and he has the house, he’ll do it as legislation. If he has 67 senators but not a majority in the house he’ll do it as a treaty. But if he has neither then he’s SOL.
0bama’s disastrous agreement with Iran depended critically on the fact that he already had the authority to do everything he promised. He didn’t need any additional authority, so he didn’t have to send it to congress in any capacity. But he agreed nonetheless to submit it to congress, to give it the chance to find a veto-proof majority in both houses to pass legislation against it. He didn’t have to agree to that, but he felt confident that it wouldn’t matter, and it didn’t.
Eurotrash will be Eurotrash,
1st ICC Person: Why are we sitting here?
2nd ICC Person: We have nothing better to do.
1st ICC Person: I know what. Let’s prosecute Americans. Everyone will be in favor of that.
2nd ICC Person: Okay. Let’s get some muslim lawyers and get busy.
1st ICC Person: They’re all muslims: Chief Prosecutor Karim, Asst Prosecutor Khan Shameem Khan & Asst Prosecutor Mame Mandiaye Niang.
2nd ICC Person: Don’t forget George Cluny’s wife. She’s a muslim.
1st ICC Person: Okay. Let’s get her too. George will be proud.
I so look forward to the Rubio Presidency.
The ICC is the United Nations with teeth. We shouldn’t have anything to do with either of them.
Any teeth they think they have are just ill-fitting plates.
Sec. Rubio is quite cottect – but this must come as a resolution from Congress, otherwise the next Marxist voted in as POTUS by the sheep will just re-institute our soi-disant membership in this rogue court administered by a self-appointed priesthood of “international law.”
Requiring withdrawal from that useless waste of time and money, the organization that sits in that pile of bricks on the East River and 42nd Street, wouldn’t be a terrible addition to that bill.
There’s nothing to reinstate. The USA has never been a member, and becoming one would require 2/3 of the senate to consent to a treaty. I don’t think it could be done by statute.
Any charges levied against American citizens should be viewed as an act of war and we should respond appropriately.
corto y derecho
bravo
The Nobel Peace Prize committee just handed this years prize to a 85 South African who led the UN panel that accused Israel of genocide, Let’s unpack that:
Norway
Peace Prize
South African
Woman
UN
Panel
Those words encapsulate the degree to which the West has lost its moral compass and the magnitude of its hatred of Jews. Obviously killing 6M of us was not enough for them and will never be enough.
Nobel Prizes…just stop already.
Why should they stop? They obviously like it, and the trust fund hasn’t run out of money, so how is it any of our business?
Anyone with any sense has realized long ago that the Noble prizes for Peace and for Literature are meaningless and should be ignored, while the other ones are still valid and useful.
It does, but it resembles domestic law only by a very imperfect analogy. With very few exceptions, sovereign nations can only be subject to international “laws” by their consent. Any “law” that a nation has not consented to is not binding on it. And nations can withdraw that consent at any time. So it’s very different from domestic law.
“Sovereign citizens” basically take that same attitude to domestic law, and they’re wrong. But in international “law” all nations are indeed sovereign.
Trump should call their bluff by threatening to expell the UN, and when they concede, expell them anyway.
Said it before: bulldoze the UN in Manhattan. That real estate is far too valuable for such a useless organization.
Who should bulldoze it? It’s private property and it doesn’t belong to the US government. Never did. It belongs to the UN, and it would continue to belong to it even if the USA withdrew from the UN Treaty.