Trump Is Literally Frying a Rare Copy of the Emancipation Proclamation

Trump’s 2025 executive order followed a similar attempt to target the ICC in his first term. That attempt was blocked by a judge in 2020 and formally rescinded under President Biden in 2021. This lawsuit comes two days after Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the Trump administration would seek to dismantle the court, possibly through tools such as travel bans, visa revocations, increased sanctions against the ICC and its affiliates, and diplomatic pressure on countries to withdraw from the ICC.

In an op-ed column for The Wall Street Journal, Rubio called the court “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 … 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.”

Late last month, three ICC judges sued the Trump administration over sanctions imposed against them, which left them unable to access any assets in the U.S. or engage in any transactions with American entities, including through the “provision of funds, goods or services.” Wednesday’s lawsuit seeks to protect Americans who are trying to seek justice for Palestine from the same fate.