President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order Thursday that will sanction the International Criminal Court (ICC).
According to NBC News, a factsheet obtained by the network allegedly said Trump accused the ICC of improperly targeting the U.S. and Israel.
The executive order is expected to include financial sanctions and visa restrictions on certain ICC officials and their families if it is found they participated in investigation U.S. citizens or allies.
It was further reported the ICC had issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and several members of terror-group Hamas in November 2024.
The reason given for the arrest warrants was apparently because the court said they believed Netanyahu and Gallant use “starvation as a method of warfare,” restricting humanitarian efforts and targeting civilians in Gaza. This was dismissed by Israeli officials as “false” and “antisemitic,” as NBC News reported.
Trump met with Netanyahu at the White House on Tuesday, where he said the Gaza strip was a “mess” and not a “place for the living.”
“The whole thing is a mess,” Trump said during his meeting at the Oval Office with Netanyahu.
“I don’t think people should be going back to Gaza. I think that Gaza has been very unlucky for them. They’ve lived like hell; they’ve lived like you’re living in hell. Gaza is not a place for people to be living. The only reason they want to go back, and I believe this strongly, is they have no alternative. What’s the alternative? Go where? If they had an alternative, they’d much rather not go back to Gaza and live in a beautiful alternative that’s safe,” he said.
During his first term, Trump said in his 2020 executive order that the ICC has no jurisdiction and no authority in the U.S., and placed sanctions on them, only to have those sanctions later repealed by former President Joe Biden once he took office.
“These actions on the part of the ICC, in turn, threaten to infringe upon the sovereignty of the United States and impede the critical national security and foreign policy work of United States Government and allied officials, and thereby threaten the national security and foreign policy of the United States. The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute, has never accepted ICC jurisdiction over its personnel, and has consistently rejected ICC assertions of jurisdiction over United States personnel,” Trump said in the executive order.
