How Marco Rubio Wants to Help Trump Take Down the ICC

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a campaign to dismantle the International Criminal Court.

The Trump administration wants to dismantle the International Criminal Court.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted a video message to X Monday saying that the ICC has turned into something “radical and extreme” and that the U.S. will now target the court.

“As we speak, the ICC and its friends are waging a war against our ​country, not with bullets and missiles but ​with statutes, compacts, and the force of ⁠so-called international law,” Rubio said in the video.

The International Criminal Court seeks to become the unaccountable arbiter of a new global law — empowered to prosecute and arrest our citizens at will and existentially threaten American sovereignty.We will teach the ICC the full meaning of American resolve. pic.twitter.com/2egHK1jA98— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) July 13, 2026

The International Criminal Court seeks to become the unaccountable arbiter of a new global law — empowered to prosecute and arrest our citizens at will and existentially threaten American sovereignty.We will teach the ICC the full meaning of American resolve. pic.twitter.com/2egHK1jA98

In addition to the post, Rubio wrote an op-ed column for The Wall Street Journal accusing the court and its allies of seeking “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.

“The ICC is backed and run by a powerful network of leftist nongovernment organizations, smug globalists, and hostile Third World governments united by their enmity toward the U.S.,” Rubio’s column added.

Reuters spoke to an anonymous State Department official who said that the Trump administration is considering a variety of tactics, including travel bans, visa revocations, increased sanctions against the ICC and its affiliates, and diplomatic pressure on countries to withdraw from the ICC.

“No diplomatic option will be off-limits in the campaign ​to dismantle the threat posed by the ICC to Americans,” the State Department said in a statement.

The U.S. has never been a member of the ICC, and President Trump attacked the court after it issued arrest warrants against Israeli government leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in 2024 for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Since then, the U.S. has sanctioned court officials and prosecutors, as well as other international leaders who document and speak out about Israel’s crimes, including United Nations Special Rapporteur for Palestine Francesca Albanese.

The Trump administration’s new push is not only based on support for Israel (whose Gaza massacre was largely conducted with American weapons) but also on the possibility of ICC charges being issued against the U.S. During Trump’s second term, the U.S. has launched strikes against boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, which it claims are bringing drugs to the U.S.

In effect, the administration sees the ICC as a threat to its ability to launch........

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