The Trump administration is weighing new measures to curb the International Criminal Court (ICC), including travel bans, visa revocations, expanded sanctions and diplomatic pressure, arguing the court threatens US sovereignty. America never consented to a global court with authority over its citizens. The Trump administration and Secretary Rubio are taking steps to isolate the ICC and defend U.S. sovereignty.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio plans to dismantle the International Criminal Court, an institution that the United States has never recognized.
In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, he outlined the reasons the United States seeks to dismantle the ICC.
“Most of us would struggle to imagine a world in which U.S. soldiers, police officers, Border Patrol agents, and elected leaders could be dragged before an international court, tried by judges from random countries across the globe, found guilty under international laws we neither consent to nor control, and then imprisoned thousands of miles from America.
“But that is what the International Criminal Court now claims the power to do. The ICC was born at the turn of the century.
“At first, it was marketed as a narrow backstop to prosecute the gravest crimes. Now the ICC and its allies seek a standing world tribunal with near-unlimited reach, empowered to override the courts and constitutions of the U.S. and other sovereign states—and to prosecute and arrest our citizens.
“Americans never agreed to any of this. Both of our major political parties opposed the prospect of handing a distant global court the power to prosecute and jail our own citizens. *President Clinton refused to submit the Rome Statute (the ICC’s founding charter) to the Senate for ratification due to his “concerns about significant flaws in the Treaty.”
*[Correction: Clinton did reluctantly sign. However, in May 2002, President George W. Bush informed the United Nations that the U.S. did not intend to become a party to the Rome Statute and did not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC. He effectively unsigned the document.]
The ICC Tried to Overrule US Sovereignty
“Two years later, a bipartisan Senate supermajority passed the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act, authorizing the president “to use all means necessary”—including military force—to prevent the ICC from detaining or arresting Americans.
“Americans found themselves in the crosshairs anyway: In 2020, the ICC launched an investigation into what chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda of Gambia described as “war crimes by members of the United States armed forces” in Afghanistan, declaring that the U.S. government hadn’t prosecuted enough American soldiers to satisfy the court. In effect, Ms. Bensouda was anointing herself the final judge of U.S. military policy and the entire U.S. justice system.
“The Afghanistan investigation was only the opening move in the assault against American self-government. The ICC is backed and run by a powerful network of leftist nongovernmental organizations, smug globalists, and hostile Third World governments united by their enmity toward the U.S.”
[Rubio refers to a little-known provision in American law that the president is authorized to go to war to defend servicemembers from prosecution by the ICC should they face trial in The Hague.]
Opinion
I would also be concerned now about the Democrat communists using the International Court to arrest our own people, including Republican officials, and any other people who oppose them. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has expressed his belief in using the International Court, and other Democrats have said they would let Donald Trump be arrested and tried in The Hague.
For example, Democrat[ic] state representative in Ohio, Tavia Galonski, tweeted in 2020 that she “can’t take it anymore” and vowed to refer President Trump to the International Criminal Court for “crimes against humanity” over Trump’s promotion of hydroxychloroquine, which has not been conclusively proven to fight the coronavirus. Democrat strategist James Carville has suggested Democrats refer President Trump to The Hague.
“Americans never signed up for this, and all American presidents since the ICC’s ratification have maintained that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over Americans.”https://t.co/xj5WGAgZXe@elonmusk @RealJamesWoods pic.twitter.com/1SdtavOR9D
— DonaldsHeroes (@DonaldsHeroes) July 13, 2026
