President Theodore Roosevelt often referred to the term “bully pulpit” to mean he would use the country’s highest office to present his program. “Bully,” at the time, was positive, as in wonderful or sublime. President Trump and his subordinates have revealed during their time occupying the nation’s highest pulpit that they are bullies in the modern sense of the term, using force or comments to abuse or dominate others. Trump and Company’s bullying examples are numerous, but the administration’s actions against Francesca Albanese are particularly outrageous, bullying at its worst.

Francesca Albanese serves as the United Nations special rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. She is not a U.N. official, but an independent, eminent Italian legal scholar, an expert on human rights as well as the first female to hold that position. She was appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2022. Previous special rapporteurs were such renowned figures as Richard Falk, Michael Lynk, and John Dugard.

How has Francesca Albanese been bullied? Last week, the Trump administration announced that it would impose sanctions on Albanese. “Today I am imposing sanctions on U.N. Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt International Criminal Court action against US and Israeli officials, companies, and executives,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X. “We will not tolerate these campaigns of political and economic warfare, which threaten our national interests and sovereignty.” He also mentioned that the sanctions were part of a larger U.S. effort to marginalize the International Criminal Court (ICC) which had issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the former defense minister. “We will always stand by our partners in their right to........

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