The Situation Room - August 19th

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I’m Atlas, and welcome to The Situation Room! We cover the most high impact geopolitical developments every Wednesday!

Today’s topics:

• U.S. Admin Sanctions The ICC

• Longtime Fauci Advisor Pleads Guilty To Concealing Covid-19 Records

• Pentagon Orders Audit Of 30 Universities With Foreign Institutions

U.S. Admin Sanctions The ICC

_{By: Atlas}

The Trump administration imposed sanctions Tuesday on the president of the International Criminal Court and one of its senior trial lawyers, the latest step in a campaign it now describes openly as an effort to dismantle the tribunal until it can no longer touch American or allied officials.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the measures against ICC President Tomoko Akane, a Japanese judge, and Abdoulaye Seye, a Senegalese senior trial lawyer at the court. "These individuals have directly engaged in efforts by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute officials whose government has not consented to ICC jurisdiction," Rubio said in a statement, without providing examples.

"The Trump Administration has been clear: the International Criminal Court is a corrupt and fatally politicized supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate," he said. "We will not tolerate its assault on state sovereignty." The administration "stands ready to take additional measures, if necessary, to systematically dismantle the ICC until it is incapable of threatening American sovereignty," the State Department added.

The sanctions, issued under the executive order President Donald Trump signed in February 2025, freeze any assets the two officials hold in US jurisdictions, bar them from entering the United States, and cut them off from the American financial system. With Akane's designation, the United States has now sanctioned nine of the court's 18 judges. Russia is the only other country to have sanctioned the ICC president.

On X, Rubio framed the move in the language of the American founding: "In honor of our Declaration of Independence, Americans will never be transported beyond seas to be tried for pretend offenses."

The Court Answers: "Undeterred"

The ICC responded within hours, saying the sanctions "undermine the rule of law" and that it "remains undeterred and stands firmly behind its personnel and behind victims of unimaginable atrocities."

"When judicial actors are threatened for applying the law, it is the international legal order itself that is placed at risk," the court said.

Established in 2002 and based in The Hague, the ICC prosecutes individuals for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression, acting as a court of last resort when national systems are unable or unwilling to pursue accountability. It counts 125 member states. The United States signed the Rome Statute that created the court but never ratified it, and it rejects ICC jurisdiction over Americans — though the court's statute allows prosecution of non-member nationals for crimes committed on member-state territory. China, Russia, Israel, and India also remain outside the court.

Akane, a former prosecutor and the first Japanese national to lead the ICC, began a three-year term as president in 2024. Seye has worked on the court's investigation of alleged Israeli war crimes. The Netherlands, the court's host nation, pushed back publicly: Foreign Minister Tom Berendsen wrote that his government "disapproves of the latest sanctions" and that "international courts and tribunals must be able to freely carry out their mandates," adding that he had invited Akane to discuss continued Dutch support.

From Retaliation to Demolition

The sanctions extend a pressure campaign that began with the court's 2024 arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over the war in Gaza, and its earlier investigations of alleged crimes by US forces in Afghanistan. But the administration's stated objective has expanded from retaliation to demolition. In July, Rubio announced a whole-of-government effort to unwind the court using visa revocations, sanctions, and diplomatic pressure on member states to withdraw.

"They believe that they should be in charge of your laws, of your country, your life, and they don't care whether or not you agree," Rubio said in a video address at the time.

Two countries have already left. Chad and Venezuela — the latter aligned with Washington since the capture and ouster of Nicolas Maduro in January — have withdrawn from the court, departures the ICC said risk undermining the collective pursuit of justice. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pressed the campaign further last week in Panama, urging every member of the US-led counter-cartel coalition to quit the court and asserting that American strikes on suspected drug vessels — operations that have killed more than 200 people — are lawful under the laws of armed conflict. Rubio has cited threats to US personnel carrying out immigration enforcement and drug interdiction as part of the rationale for confronting the tribunal.

Netanyahu welcomed Tuesday's action, calling the ICC "a kangaroo court that cloaks its abuse of power in the language of international law."

The Sanctions Meet the Courts

The campaign is generating litigation of its own. Three sitting ICC judges sued the administration in June, arguing the sanctions are unlawful. Last week, four human rights organizations filed suit in New York, contending the executive order violates the Constitution and blocks victims of war crimes from pursuing justice. "The plaintiffs are seeking an end to this sanctions regime, which transgresses the president's authority and violates international and US law, including the rights to freedom of expression and religion," said lead counsel Andrew Loewenstein.

Human Rights Watch, a plaintiff in that case, condemned the new designations. The sanctions are "just the latest example of the Trump administration's utter contempt for international law and a naked attempt to shield American and Israeli officials implicated in serious crimes from justice," said Balkees Jarrah, the group's Middle East and North Africa director.

A Relationship That Has Swung With Administrations

Washington's posture toward the court has shifted repeatedly across two decades. The George W. Bush administration opposed the ICC but permitted the UN Security Council to refer atrocities in Darfur to it in 2005. The Obama administration cooperated more openly, helping transfer suspects to The Hague and offering rewards for information leading to arrests. Trump's first term brought sanctions on court officials over the Afghanistan investigation; the Biden administration lifted them in 2021 and welcomed the court's 2023 arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine, even as it opposed the Israel probe.

The current administration has forsworn that ambivalence. What remains to be tested — in the New York and Washington courtrooms now weighing the sanctions, and in capitals deciding whether to heed the American call to withdraw — is whether a court built to outlast the objections of powerful states can outlast a sustained campaign by the most powerful one..

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