Trump Sued for Violating Americans’ Rights With ICC Sanctions

The Trump administration is being sued over its sanctions on the International Criminal Court.

Two American nonprofits, Democracy for the Arab World Now, or DAWN, and the Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide, or TAAG, sued White House officials in federal court Wednesday. The lawsuit is a response to President Trump’s February 2025 executive order, which placed sanctions on ICC judges, prosecutors, and Palestinian human rights groups seeking to investigate alleged U.S. and Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

The lawsuit alleges that the sanctions violate the Constitution’s First Amendment right to free speech and “unconstitutionally restrict Americans from seeking justice on Palestine at the ICC,” including by “limiting what Americans can say to an international tribunal or to foreign advocates, as well as by limiting their ability to associate with the sanctioned parties.”

As a result of Trump’s order, DAWN and TAAG said that they have avoided filing submissions to the ICC and working with those hit by the sanctions, like Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur for Palestine, out of fear of facing criminal charges themselves.

“The Trump administration is using the blunt instrument of economic sanctions not only to punish human rights defenders, but to police the political expression ​of millions of Americans,” said Omar Shakir, executive director of DAWN, in a statement.

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 That attempt was blocked by a judge in 2020 and formally rescinded under President Biden in 2021.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.

The White House has found a novel way to ensure Donald Trump’s nominees ascend to power.

Federal judges in the Western District of Washington swore in former King County Superior Court Judge Roger Rogoff as U.S. attorney Wednesday morning. Within 54 minutes, Trump fired him.

The district’s 17 federal judges have been trying to find a replacement for Seattle’s First Assistant U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd, after Trump failed to formally nominate him. Floyd was appointed in October, though his name was never officially advanced to the Senate for consideration.

Federal law grants a district’s judges the power to appoint a U.S. attorney if the president and the acting attorney general fail to do so within 120 days, subsequently stonewalling the procedural Senate hearings.

Instead, Floyd became an interim U.S. attorney and, later, the first assistant, in an attempt to “sidestep the nomination process,” according to The Seattle Times.

Rogoff was elevated to the bench by Democrats and had been appointed to one of his previous roles by ​former Washington Governor Jay Inslee, also a Democrat. The veteran prosecutor told the newspaper that he was waiting in the lobby of the U.S. District Courthouse downtown to meet with Floyd when he received an email notifying him he’d been fired.

“We are working on legal action right now,” Rogoff said. The legal team representing the former federal prosecutor is expected to sue the administration and the Department of Justice, according to the Times.

The White House has taken a heavy interest in the regional position. One month after returning to office, Trump inexplicably fired Tessa Gormon, another court-appointed prosecutor. Gormon, too, represented the Western District of Washington and was ultimately replaced by Floyd.

Donald Kinsella, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York, also faced the ire of the White House earlier this year for daring to do his job unclouded by the interests of the administration. Kinsella was appointed in February by a panel of federal judges, but much like Rogoff, was fired within hours.

The New York State Bar Association condemned Kinsella’s abrupt ousting, describing acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s interference at the time as an “insult to separation of powers and the administration of justice.”

“While it is hardly surprising given the president’s regular abandonment of even the veneer of independence for the DOJ, it is no less appalling,” the organization wrote in a statement.

Blanche is currently in the midst of his own confirmation hearings to officially take on the role of attorney general. Hundreds of former federal prosecutors—including some of his own ex-colleagues—have urged the Senate to deny him the opportunity.

This story has been updated.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is demanding “testosterone deficiency” testing for U.S. soldiers to ensure they’re masculine enough to be a part of his anti-woke military.

Hegseth unveiled the new screening, which will be mandatory for service members over the age of 30, in a video announcement Wednesday.

“Today, I’m authorizing a new screening program for testosterone deficiency for our service members—ensuring you have the right testosterone levels to operate at your absolute best. Because it’s well-established science that as we age, testosterone levels often, naturally, drop,” Hegseth said. On X, he captioned the video, “The High-T Department of War.”

“Warfighters aged 30 and older are gonna be tested annually as part of their periodic health assessments.... Those under 30 can voluntarily choose to get the test as well,” Hegseth continued. “If treatment is recommended, it’s entirely your choice to receive testosterone replacement therapy.”

It’s unclear what will happen to soldiers over 30 who have “low testosterone” and don’t want to engage in the military’s gender-affirming services.

This is about as Hegsethian as it gets. It’s no surprise that the man who proclaimed, “I’m straight up just saying, we should not have women in combat roles” just one week before his confirmation now thinks that having higher testosterone levels is a real, urgent priority for soldiers in the midst of a war.

“This is the absolute dumbest thing imaginable for the Secretary of Defense to be focused on. We are literally at war and this idiot is in his office doing two camera make up videos on testosterone. What a complete clown show,” wrote Army vet, podcast host, and Democratic congressional candidate Fred Wellman. “I’m so sorry for our poor service members who have to deal with this ridiculous man.”

Answers given by Jay Clayton, Donald Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, in his Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Wednesday suggest that, if confirmed, he would be a pawn in the president’s election-meddling pursuits in the vein of former DNI Tulsi Gabbard.

Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff pressed Clayton about Gabbard’s presence at a February FBI raid at a Fulton County, Georgia, election facility. The operation was based on Trump’s debunked election fraud claims. And her attendance—at the president’s request, she has said—ignited a scandal, as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s role in election security is to counter foreign threats, rather than be weaponized for domestic, partisan ends.

Clayton prevaricated when asked about his familiarity with the Fulton County incident, claiming, to Ossoff’s dismay, that he had only learned about the raid the day before, when he met privately with the senator.

Ossoff then asked if Clayton would comply with a similar request from the president: “If the White House chief of staff or the president asks you to travel somewhere across the United States and oversee the execution of a domestic search warrant on a sensitive election facility, will you do it?” the senator asked. “Is that appropriate for the director of national intelligence?”

Clayton threw his hands up. “Um … that’s a hypothetical.” Pressed further, he declined to comment on the matter.

“Disqualifying,” Ossoff replied.

Moments later, Senator Mark Warner, the Democratic vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, chastised Clayton for his waffling.

“It strains credibility to think that you are not aware of Director Gabbard’s intervention in the domestic election activities in Fulton County, and that that was subject of a great deal of consternation and review,” Warner told the nominee. “Even if you weren’t aware, in preparation for this hearing, I would’ve thought, ‘Hey, we gotta be ready for the Gabbard questions.’”

Clayton mustered a far from reassuring response: “To be clear, the ODNI’s role is principally outside of the United States.”

Also in his heated exchange with Ossoff, as well as with other senators, Clayton, like countless other Trump nominees before him, avoided saying that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election, instead opting for weasel words so as not to contradict the president’s election denialism.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche tried to claim at his Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday that he was committed to meeting with Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, but quickly backtracked. 

“When it comes to the victims of this horrible man, we will never, never not talk to victims. We will never not do everything we can to prosecute anybody that committed any crimes against any of these women,” Blanche told the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

But when pressed by Democratic Senator Richard Durbin on why he hasn’t met with Epstein survivors yet, and whether he’ll commit to doing so in the next 30 days, he struggled to answer. 

“If they have lawyers, as you know. I’m prohibited from meeting directly with them,” Blanche said. “I have met with counsel for survivors, as have many people in the Department of Justice. But if they are represented by counsel, we will work with their counsel.”

“It can get done as soon as today. It could have gotten done last week. We remain available to meet with any victim at any time.”

That’s not what Epstein’s survivors say. In May, Blanche said at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing that he had met with survivors and their lawyers, drawing an immediate statement from 18 of Epstein’s victims, who said he was lying. 

“Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has not met with any of us. As survivors, we previously sought a meeting with former Attorney General Bondi and Department of Justice officials, but no meeting occurred,” the survivors said. “We should not have to be this persistent to engage with DOJ—the department responsible for handling the Epstein files, protecting their privacy, and answering for years of secrecy and failure.”

Last month, 19 victims came out publicly against Blanche’s attorney general nomination after a New York Times report revealed he was among the Trump administration officials who met in the White House Situation Room to discuss how to respond to public pressure for more transparency on the government’s Epstein files.  

These survivors have multiple grievances against Blanche for inconsistent redactions on the released files, which have put some of them in danger after exposing their names, personal information, and illicit photos.

“We are especially concerned that Todd Blanche, the person nominated for the highest law enforcement position in the country, was at that table. Blanche has consistently minimized legitimate concerns about how the files have been handled, including problematic redactions and the exposure of survivors’ personal information. Blanche failed to deliver transparency, and he has gravely failed survivors. This is failing upward, plain and simple,” the women said last month.