On Friday, the Trump Administration stopped sanctioning the International Criminal Court’s people.
It sanctioned the court.
That’s the escalation.
For more than a year, Washington had gone after judges, prosecutors, even the court’s president. Now Secretary of State Marco Rubio has put full blocking sanctions on the institution itself. Its property.
Its transactions. Its access to anything American.
“Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC,” Rubio said.
Secretaries of state don’t usually talk like that. Then again, foreign tribunals don’t usually claim the power to put American soldiers in the dock.
Start with the fact the court keeps stepping around. The United States never joined it. Neither did Israel. No Senate ever ratified the treaty that created it. The American people never consented to its jurisdiction, and in this country, consent is the whole ballgame.
The court has its own theory. If an alleged crime happens on the soil of a member state, it says, it can prosecute anyone, member or not.
That theory has teeth. The court has spent years on an Afghanistan investigation that could reach U.S. troops and intelligence officers. It issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over the war in Gaza, a war Israel fought against the terrorists who slaughtered its people on October 7.
Washington has been warning about this for a long time.
Rubio said the administration actually held off on Friday’s move. It hoped the court would change course, or that its member nations would rein it in. Neither happened.
So the hammer came down.
“We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling their ability to operate against us because our message is clear: the United States and the American people are not subject to the jurisdiction of this fake ICC,” Rubio said in a video.
The sanctions aren’t a light switch. The administration issued temporary licenses, including a 180-day window for the court to keep basic operations running, plus carve-outs for IT services, staff pensions, and detainees.
Call it a grace period. The message is that the clock is running.
Rubio also turned to America’s friends. Many of them belong to the court. Many of them also count on American service members to defend them. He expects them to do something about it.
If they don’t, he said, the United States will keep dismantling the ICC “piece by piece, until Americans are threatened no longer.”
This didn’t come out of nowhere.
Trump sanctioned the court’s prosecutor in his first term over the Afghanistan probe.
In February 2025, he signed an executive order targeting the court over its actions against America and Israel. Judges and the chief prosecutor followed.
In July, Rubio announced a government-wide campaign to take the court apart, accusing it of waging war on this country with statutes and compacts instead of bullets. In August, he sanctioned the court’s president, Tomoko Akane.
Friday was the logical next step.
Rubio argued that skepticism of the court has never been a one-party position. He has a point. A Republican president pulled America’s signature off the treaty. A Democratic president never sent it to the Senate.
“Both parties agree on this,” Rubio said, “but only President Trump has the resolve to take the action needed to end this threat once and for all.”
The court is not going quietly. Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan said the sanctions are designed to undermine the rule of law, and that the court’s work will continue.
Critics also noted the timing. The announcement came just hours after former ICC judge Navi Pillay won the Nobel Peace Prize.
None of that changes the core question. Who gets to judge Americans?
The answer, for 250 years, has been Americans.
American courts. American juries. American law, written by people Americans elected and can throw out.
The ICC can keep calling itself international. It just doesn’t get to call itself ours.
BREAKING: US imposes sanctions on ICC pic.twitter.com/3aUKa395a4
— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) October 9, 2026
