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elise stefanik
'What Dictators and Pariah States Do': Republicans Advance Bill to Sanction ICC
"Lawmakers should unequivocally oppose the new Republican bill to sanction the International Criminal Court," said one analyst.
Jun 04, 2024
House Republicans on Monday advanced legislation that aims to sanction the International Criminal Court after the Hague-based tribunal formally applied for arrest warrants last month against Israel's prime minister and defense minister.
The GOP-dominated House Rules Committee voted 9-3 to send the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act to the floor of the lower chamber, barreling ahead with an attempt to punish the ICC for working to hold Israeli leaders accountable for war crimes committed in the Gaza Strip. The ICC is also seeking arrest warrants for Hamas leaders.
The measure was introduced by Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) in early May, two weeks prior to the ICC prosecutor's announcement of the arrest warrant applications.
The bill's language is sweeping: If passed, it would require the U.S. president to impose sanctions on the ICC if the body is "engaged in any effort to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute any protected person of the United States and its allies."
The Republican-authored measure defines protected persons as current or former armed forces members, current or former elected or appointed government officials, and "any other person currently or formerly employed by or working on behalf of" the U.S. or an allied government.
"This is a bad bill," Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), the ranking member of the House Rules Committee, said Monday during the panel's hearing on the legislation. "The International Criminal Court is an important institution, and those who care about human rights would certainly agree with that assessment. And I think that it is not in America's moral or strategic interest to attack the court for attempting to do its job."
"Lawmakers should unequivocally oppose the new Republican bill to sanction the International Criminal Court."
Dylan Williams, vice president of government affairs at the Center for International Policy, noted on social media that the bill is "so broadly written that it could even sanction officials of the ICC or U.S. allies who help investigate, arrest, or prosecute Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, because he resides in a 'major non-NATO ally' that is not a party to the Rome Statute."
"Lawmakers should unequivocally oppose the new Republican bill to sanction the International Criminal Court," Williams wrote. "Threatening and penalizing legitimate international institutions, their staff, or members is what dictators and pariah states do, not democracies seeking to uphold the rule of law."
Neither the U.S. nor Israel are state parties to the Rome Statute, which established the ICC. The governments of both nations have argued that the ICC lacks jurisdiction to investigate Israeli war crimes—a claim that international legal experts have rejected—and U.S. and Israeli lawmakers have openly threatened the tribunal over its probe in the occupied Palestinian territories.
While the Biden administration supported the ICC's decision to issue arrest warrants against Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2023 over war crimes committed in Ukraine—even though neither Russia nor Ukraine are parties to the Rome Statute—the administration has condemned the ICC's pursuit of arrest warrants against Israeli leaders.
But in an official policy statement released Monday, the Biden White House said it "strongly opposes" the GOP's Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act, noting that the bill "could require sanctions against court staff, judges, witnesses, and U.S. allies and partners who provide even limited, targeted support to the court in a range of aspects of its work."
The White House did not pledge that U.S. President Joe Biden would veto the bill if it passes the House and Senate, saying only that "there are more effective ways to defend Israel, preserve U.S. positions on the ICC, and promote international justice and accountability, and the administration stands ready to work with the Congress on those options"—without offering specifics.
The full House is expected to vote on the legislation on Tuesday. Axiosreported that "several pro-Israel House Democrats, including Reps. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) and Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), signaled" that they are "likely" to join Republicans in supporting the bill.
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These New Attacks on Academic Freedom May Be Just the Beginning
While U.S. faculty have long been outspoken on controversial issues, these attacks on academic freedom are the worst in nearly 60 years.
May 19, 2024
During the wave of campus protests opposing the U.S.-backed war on Gaza and calling for divestment from Israel, students weren’t the only demonstrators to face arrest—supportive faculty members were also caught up in the crackdown.
At Columbia University, where president Minouche Shafik was pressed to resign by members of Congress for being too lenient toward the protesters, the university’s School of Public Health censured a South African faculty member from teaching about the health impacts of settler-colonialism. Shafik has also placed professors who have used terms like “settler colonialism” or “apartheid” in the context of Israel under investigation for alleged anti-Jewish discrimination, and removed professors from teaching assignments in response to complaints by rightwing students.
When Shafik testified before Congress in mid-April, she announced that Middle Eastern Studies professor Joseph Massad had been removed as chair of the university’s Academic Review Committee following claims by Republicans that he had said Hamas’s murder of Jews was “awesome, astonishing, astounding, and incredible”—even though he never said anything of the sort. She also failed to correct false claims by Republican committee members regarding Columbia Law Professor Katherine Franke, stating that she and Massad were under investigation for discriminatory remarks.
As Irene Mulvey, national president of the American Association of University Professors, toldThe New York Times, “We are witnessing a new era of McCarthyism where a House committee is using college presidents and professors for political theater. President Shafik’s public naming of professors under investigation to placate a hostile committee sets a dangerous precedent for academic freedom and has echoes of the cowardice often displayed during the McCarthy era.”
And Columbia isn’t the only university where faculty feel as though their academic freedoms are being steadily revoked.
Indiana University faculty have overwhelmingly endorsed a vote of no confidence in their president, provost, and vice-provost for suspending a tenured political science professor for a full year from teaching or advising—without the normal review process—after he hosted a talk by an Israeli-American peace activist that the university tried to ban.
Columbia isn’t the only university where faculty feel as though their academic freedoms are being steadily revoked.
Jodi Dean, a tenured professor at Hobart & William Smith College and a noted political theorist, has been suspended from teaching duties as a result of writing a blog post supportive of the Hamas attack. Although there had been no complaints from students about their interactions with Dean, the college’s president claimed that she had led students to feel “threatened in or outside of the classroom.” While her essay was widely condemned, even by pro-Palestinian faculty, there has been no such disciplinary action against professors who have defended the far greater violence against civilians by U.S.-backed Israeli forces.
At Texas Tech University, Jairo Fúnez-Flores, an assistant professor of curriculum studies and teacher education, had criticized U.S. policy towards Israel-Palestine on social media and was suspended after unsubstantiated claims of antisemitism appeared on a rightwing website. Similarly, at New York University, a popular adjunct who is critical of Israel was suspended due to complaints that were not revealed to him or the public. At University of Arizona College of Education, an assistant professor and community liaison were placed on leave for leading a discussion about civilian casualties in Gaza. An adjunct professor in American cultural studies at Washington University was “relieved of all job duties” and “prohibited from being on any part of the University campus” after taking part in a pro-Palestinian demonstration campus in which he and other peaceful protesters were arrested.
Graduate student instructors and teaching assistants have been particularly vulnerable and, in several instances, have been removed for simply noting the humanitarian consequences of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Administrations have been interfering with curriculum as well. At Albany Law School, a professor was ordered to unpublish a law review article by a prominent U.S. legal scholar and a legal briefing issued by a respected U.S. civil rights organization related to Israel-Palestine.
Unfortunately, the Biden Administration, rather than fighting this crackdown on academic freedom, has been supporting it. The Department of Education has opened a Title VI investigation into the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill because a Black professor in the Department of Communication said in a class that “Israel and the United States do not give a shit about international law or war crimes.” Such criticism of U.S. policy, according to the Biden Administration, may constitute discrimination against Jews.
Biden also launched an investigation against a George Washington University psychology professor for alleged antisemitism for critical comments about Israel just days after an independent investigation found no evidence to support the charges.
Faculty, however, are fighting back, particularly in defense of their students. At Columbia, Barnard, the University of Texas, and elsewhere, there have been walkouts and work stoppages. Faculty senates have condemned administrations for their violations of academic freedom, issued no confidence resolutions against their administrations, and have provided support—such as food deliveries—for students in their encampments.
Scores of faculty members have also been arrested, risking their careers and even physical safety.
At Indiana University, four professors were detained trying to protect students engaged in peaceful protests in a recognized free speech zone on campus, and have since been banned from campus for one year. At Washington University, historian Steve Tamari was brutally beaten by police while supporting peaceful demonstrators and was hospitalized with multiple broken ribs and a broken hand. Even faculty observers who were not participating in the protests themselves have become targets, such as at Emory University, where Economics professor Caroline Frohlin was body slammed during her arrest and Noelle McAfee, chair of Emory’s philosophy department chair, was also arrested. At Dartmouth, Annelise Orlick, the sixty-five-year-old head of the Jewish Studies program, was twice pushed to the ground while being arrested and initially banned from campus for six months, although that was later rescinded.
While U.S. faculty have long been outspoken on controversial issues, these attacks on academic freedom are the worst in nearly sixty years. While they are in part related to pressure from rightwing Zionist groups and donors, these actions can best be understood in light of the broader attack by the right against higher education as a whole.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, for example, has refused to condemn Donald Trump’s antisemitic comments and associations, and touted the Great Replacement Theory and other antisemitic tropes; she is now leading the charge against antiwar and pro-Palestinian faculty for alleged antisemitism. The attacks that led to the forced resignation of Harvard University president Claudine Gay were orchestrated not by Zionist groups, but by figures like conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who was also behind the assault on critical race theory.
The crackdown is having an impact. A survey of Middle East Studies faculty revealed that “82 percent of all U.S.-based respondents, including almost all assistant professors (98 percent), said that they self-censor when they speak professionally about the Israeli-Palestinian issue.”
While the right may be taking advantage of concerns of antisemitism, this disturbing trend should not be seen in isolation. What’s happening on campuses may only be the beginning.
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The 2024 Litmus Test in a Word: Democracy
The GOP has made 2020 election denialism a litmus test for membership in their party. So we must make rejection of the Big Lie a prerequisite for holding public office.
Apr 29, 2024
If there’s one thing that keeps me up at night, it’s my worry that those of us who are dedicated to democracy and therefore committed to playing by the rules are underestimating the willingness of House Republicans to break the rules to elect Trump.
It’s easy to forget that most current Republican members of the House, including Republican Speaker Michael Johnson, refused to certify the outcome of the 2020 election.
In fact, Johnson helped organize 138 Republican House members to dispute that outcome, despite state certifications and the nearly unanimous rulings from state and federal courts that it was an honest election.
If Johnson and his cronies had so few scruples then, why should we assume they’ll have more scruples in the weeks following November’s elections?
The specific scenario I worry about is that in the wake of the elections, the House’s election-denying Republicans retain their majority in the next Congress by denying certification of Democratic candidates who have won by close margins. Then, on January 6, 2025, the new Republican House majority refuses to certify Electoral College results from states that went for Biden by close margins — thereby ensuring that no candidate receives an Electoral College majority.
As a result, the decision about who’s to be the next president is made on a state-by-state delegation vote — almost surely delivering it to Trump.
I don’t think this scenario is far-fetched. Good faith can no longer be assumed. Quite the contrary: The current litmus test for Republican lawmakers in the Trump GOP is to say publicly that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Presumably they and Trump will do anything to get the White House back.
So what can we do to prevent it?
Long before we reach this constitutional crisis, Speaker Johnson and others in the Republican House leadership must pledge to certify the results of the November elections. They should be asked by the media to make this commitment. If they won’t, Americans need to know — and know why.
It’s worth noting in this regard that Rep. Elise Stefanik, the fourth-ranking Republican in the House, has refused to commit to certifying the results of next November’s elections, saying “we will see if this is a legal and valid election.”
She then claimed that the 2020 presidential race “was not a fair election” despite multiple legal reviews sought by Trump and his allies confirming that it was.
Why hasn’t Stefanik’s refusal been more widely reported?
Why isn’t the mainstream media requiring House Republicans to commit to certifying the results of the November election?
The GOP has made 2020 election denialism a litmus test for membership in their party. The nation should make 2024 certification a litmus test for commitment to our democracy.
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