A Democracy Drive Thread
Sanctioning judges and freezing their bank accounts, suing them, and vowing to “dismantle” the International Criminal Court — punishing the courts outside U.S. control that dare to investigate the president, his allies, or Israel.
The administration has treated any court beyond its reach — chiefly the International Criminal Court, the world’s permanent war-crimes tribunal, but also foreign national courts — as an enemy to be crippled. This thread tracks, in chronological order and with sources, the campaign against them: executive orders and Global Magnitsky sanctions aimed at individual judges and prosecutors, frozen bank accounts and cancelled email, lawsuits, demands that the ICC promise never to charge Trump, and finally a State Department vow to take the court apart “brick by brick.” The through-line is impunity — dismantling the institutions that could hold Americans or their allies accountable.
February 6, 2025
On February 6, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14203, “Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court,” authorizing asset freezes and visa bans against ICC officials and anyone who helps the court investigate the United States or its allies. The order followed the ICC’s November 2024 arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant over the war in Gaza, and the court’s earlier investigation into alleged crimes by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. It named chief prosecutor Karim Khan. Human-rights groups and U.N. experts called it an attack on the global rule of law.
February 19, 2025
On February 19, 2025, Trump Media & Technology Group and Rumble sued Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, alleging his “gag orders” — which suspended U.S.-based social-media accounts tied to critics of Brazil’s government — violated the First Amendment and could not be enforced in the United States. Moraes oversees Brazil’s case against former president Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally. The judge did not respond, and the companies later moved for a default judgment.
May 1, 2025
By the spring of 2025, the February sanctions on ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan were crippling the court: Microsoft cancelled his email account, forcing him onto a Swiss provider; his U.K. bank accounts were frozen; and non-American staff among the ICC’s roughly 900 employees were barred from entering the United States. Officials and lawyers said basic tribunal functions had ground to a halt, as companies and banks complied with U.S. penalties threatening fines and prison for anyone providing Khan financial, material, or technological support.
July 30, 2025
On July 30, 2025, the Trump administration imposed Global Magnitsky sanctions on Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes — a law meant for human-rights abusers and corrupt officials — over his role leading the trial of former president Jair Bolsonaro. Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Moraes of a targeted, politically motivated effort to silence critics by ordering U.S. platforms to ban accounts. Brazil condemned it as an unacceptable attack on its sovereignty. The sanctions were quietly lifted on December 12, 2025, after a phone call between Trump and Brazilian President Lula da Silva.
August 1, 2025
In August 2025, the State Department designated four ICC officials under Executive Order 14203: judges Kimberly Prost of Canada and Nicolas Guillou of France, and deputy prosecutors Nazhat Shameem Khan of Fiji and Mame Mandiaye Niang of Senegal. Prost was targeted for a 2020 ruling authorizing an investigation into possible atrocities in Afghanistan, including by U.S. troops; the others for the Afghanistan probe or the November 2024 warrants for Israel’s leaders. Prost described a “pervasive, negative effect” across her life — Amazon closed her account and she was locked out of much of the international banking system.
“These sanctions are a flagrant attack against the independence of an impartial judicial institution which operates under the mandate from 125 States Parties from all regions.”
December 10, 2025
On December 10, 2025, U.S. officials told Reuters the administration was demanding the ICC pledge not to investigate President Trump or his top officials — and amend the Rome Statute, the court’s founding treaty, to strip it of jurisdiction over them — or face further sanctions, including against the court itself. The demand came with two others: dropping the investigations of Israeli leaders over Gaza and formally ending the Afghanistan probe of U.S. troops. A Trump official cited “growing concern” that the ICC could pursue the president and vice president after 2029. Amending the Rome Statute would require approval by two-thirds of its 125 member states.
July 13, 2026
On July 13, 2026, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a State Department campaign to “dismantle” the International Criminal Court, urging other nations to join and casting the court as a threat to U.S. sovereignty for claiming authority to prosecute American service members and officials. It marked a sharp escalation from targeted sanctions to an avowed effort to destroy the institution itself — the culmination of a campaign running back to the ICC’s investigation of alleged U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan and its warrants against Israel’s leaders.
“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.”