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human rights
Trump vs. the ICC: The Law of the Strong or the Strength of the Law?
Ultimately, the question is what commitment governments and civil society organizations will demonstrate to counter the “might makes right” mentality with the strength of international law.
Nov 12, 2026
US President Trump is fighting the International Criminal Court, whose mission is to prosecute and convict high-ranking suspected criminals who have violated international law and human rights in The Hague. The US government under Trump is now imposing sanctions against the entire International Criminal Court as an institution. This represents yet another attack on global justice.
Trump Imposes Sanctions on Members of the ICC
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has 125 member states and, since 2002, has been prosecuting war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide—including those committed by high-ranking officials. Like China, Israel, and Russia, the US is not a member of the ICC. However, a clear majority of countries worldwide (125 member states) do support it.
The US government is now not only imposing sanctions on the ICC as an institution but has also previously taken action against members of the court. Thirteen judges and the chief prosecutor of the ICC have been placed on the U.S. sanctions list. The sanctions range from travel bans to the US, restricted access to digital services, and the freezing of assets in the US, to the blocking of credit cards, such as Mastercard. This also affected ICC President Tomoko Akane.
The midterm elections have shown how little support the US public has for US foreign policy that violates international law and is aggressive in nature.
The US opposes the ICC’s prosecution of suspected war criminals because this would allow for the prosecution of US citizens if they commit war crimes in ICC member states.
In August 2026—according to STERN—US Secretary of State Marco Rubio justified the sanctions against individual ICC members with the disparaging remarks that the ICC is a “corrupt and fatally politicized” court that has “maliciously abused its powers and exceeded its mandate.”
ICC Now Also on the US Sanctions List as an Institution
As of October 9, 2026, the ICC is now also on the US sanctions list as an institution (“Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court”).
These sanctions are already largely in effect and are set to take full effect in early April 2027, although a few individual exemptions still apply.
The sanctions include, for example, a ban on cooperation with the ICC for NGOs, as well as for banks and digital service providers, along with the threat of significant penalties.
One reason for the sanctions could be the arrest warrant issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces charges of serious war crimes in the Gaza Strip. Palestine is a member state of the ICC, which is why this arrest warrant was possible. The ICC’s arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin could also be another reason for the action against the ICC. An arrest warrant was issued against Putin in the spring of 2023 in connection with the abduction of 16,000 children from Ukrainian territory. However, US Secretary of State Rubio is also fundamentally opposed to the international prosecution of war criminals by an independent and supranational organization—as reported by the Legal Tribune Online:
Rubio also openly threatened the court with its demise. "Either the ICC stops its threats, or we will put an end to the ICC," declared the US secretary of state (…). At the same time, he called on American allies to exert their influence on the court.
Eight countries protested shortly after the new punitive measures against the ICC were announced in early October 2026 (Joint Statement of the Foreign Ministers of Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom) and declared their “unwavering support” for the ICC:
As committed supporters of the ICC, we regret the announcement of sanctions that the United States intends to impose on the Court and firmly reject them… Should these sanctions take effect, however, they will have a significant impact on the Court’s work, its dedicated staff, and their families. They work tirelessly every day to bring those accused of the most serious international crimes to justice and to support the victims.
US NGOs Halt Cooperation With the ICC
One human rights organization after another is now halting its cooperation with the International Criminal Court. They fear the sanctions imposed by Trump. For the ICC judges, the NGOs’ reports were a key source of information on which to base their indictments. The editors of the Dutch investigative journalism platform Investico, Michelle Salomons and Allart van der Woude, report on the effects so far of the announced sanctions:
ICC investigators reportedly receive thousands of tips from aid and human rights organizations every year. This important source for investigative work is now at risk of being destroyed. Of the 25 organizations that have spoken out, 14 have already ceased all cooperation with the ICC due to pressure from the US government. Among them is the major human rights organization Human Rights Watch, based in New York, which is also simultaneously filing a lawsuit against the US sanctions. Six other NGOs have already significantly reduced their cooperation. Several European and German organizations have also curtailed their cooperation with ICC investigators. US NGOs are legally compelled to comply with the sanctions.
First Countries Turn Their Backs on the ICC
EU Justice Commissioner Michael McGrath expresses the EU’s solidarity with the ICC and hopes, before the general sanctions take effect:
The six-month grace period before these measures take effect offers an opportunity for dialogue. In the meantime, we are prepared to support the Court and protect EU companies from the effects of these measures.
ICC President Akane stated on November 2, 2026, before the United Nations General Assembly—via video only, as she was already barred from entering the US—that 34 international arrest warrants are currently outstanding and have not yet been executed by the relevant states. However, six states have since withdrawn from the ICC. The ICC, however, is continuing its work undeterred—according to Akane:
Despite all challenges, the International Criminal Court will continue to fulfill its judicial mandate with full independence and impartiality, acting solely on the basis of the law and the evidence.
Not Letting Civilizational Progress Be Taken Away—A Perspective
The work of the ICC is a continuation of the Nuremberg Trials against Nazi war criminals. It is a civilizational achievement of the international community to have created a supranational legal institution that investigates serious war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Philippe Bolopion, executive director of Human Rights Watch, therefore criticizes this move from a human rights perspective: “By attacking the Court, the US government is jeopardizing justice for victims of human rights violations from Palestine to Ukraine and Myanmar to Sudan.”
Political scientist August Pradetto places the actions against the ICC in a current context:
Putin, Trump, Netanyahu—Ukraine, Venezuela, Iran: Everywhere we see attempts to replace the rule of law with the so-called "might makes right." Putin claims such a supposed right against Ukraine, while Trump does so even more indiscriminately against Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, and Greenland… If middle powers and those states interested in an international legal order join together to form "coalitions of the willing" and assert the rule of law both among themselves and against the few but powerful violators of the law, a world of international law and multilateralism—albeit one that will by no means be free of conflict in the future—will be preserved. If they fail to do so, the violators of the law will effectively have free rein (“The Law of the Strongest,” from: Rolf Bader (ed.): Peace Requires Courage and Action 2026, pp. 56 and 64).
Demands on the UN and the EU
The European Union must distance itself from and clearly draw a line against the United States regarding its foreign policy, which violates international law. Furthermore, all diplomatic avenues and measures must be utilized to counter the US government’s actions against the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Cooperation between the United Nations and the European Union would also be essential in this regard.
After all, on November 2, 2026, the UN General Assembly in New York criticized the US government’s actions and attempts at intimidation by a majority vote and continued to call on ICC member states to cooperate. Ninety-three states voted in favor of the resolution critical of the US, 13 against, with 36 abstentions.
On several occasions within the EU—including by the Dutch government—calls have been made in this context to protect institutions, companies, NGOs, and individuals threatened by US sanctions through the EU Blocking Regulation.
The EU Blocking Regulation was created to avert or compensate for damage caused by measures taken by a non-European or extraterritorial state by providing a legal framework that could protect those affected. The EU would not allow them to comply with extraterritorial sanctions that extend into the EU. However, the exact consequences, compensation, and measures in this legal context are not comprehensively defined and are, in some cases, controversial.
Julia Duchrow, secretary general of Amnesty International in Germany, nevertheless calls on the EU:
The US sanctions against the International Criminal Court are an attack on human rights and international law. In doing so, the US government is protecting war criminals and treating judges as perpetrators. The European Union must provide a clear response by shielding European companies and citizens from the consequences of the sanctions. As a first step, the EU must activate and expand its Blocking Regulation. The European Parliament must speak out clearly in favor of this today.
Overall, there is widespread outrage in the European Parliament and the European Commission over the threat to the ICC. EU Foreign Affairs Commissioner Kaja Kallas called for the withdrawal of the threatened US sanctions and reaffirmed that the EU would take all necessary measures to protect the work of the ICC.
Conclusion
The US government is attempting to undermine a transparent legal process—one independent of individual national interests—against individuals who are to be charged with the most serious crimes under international law and crimes against humanity. The ICC serves as a peacekeeping force due to the deterrent effect of the criminal proceedings it threatens to initiate. High-ranking individuals will certainly think twice about whether they want to risk an international arrest warrant from the ICC—even if this will undoubtedly compete with other considerations and interests. The midterm elections have shown how little support the US public has for US foreign policy that violates international law and is aggressive in nature, particularly with regard to an attack on Iran. Whether the actions against the ICC are also part of this rejection remains to be seen.
Even if the midterm results do not yet signal the end of Trump’s US presidency, they are likely to raise hopes for a swift end to this catastrophe for democracy and world peace. The sanctions against the ICC have sparked global outrage.
As early as 2025, a total of 79 states had publicly criticized US sanctions policy and expressed support for the ICC. On October 15 and 16, 2026, the 27 heads of state and government of the EU also declared their support for the ICC and spoke out in favor of “the effective protection of international courts and their officials from any threats or sanctions.”
With the UN General Assembly’s resolution, the number of states condemning the US sanctions had already risen to 93 by November 2026.
Ultimately, the question is what commitment governments and civil society organizations will demonstrate to counter the “might makes right” mentality with the strength of international law. On the one hand, this involves upholding just normative standards; on the other hand, it also concerns the interest of states and state alliances in not allowing themselves to be dominated by any great power, either now or in the future. The size of the defense budget and the threat posed by the military must not determine whether human rights and international law are upheld. This is what is at stake—and nothing less.
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World Leaders Must Make Real Progress at COP31: Our Shared Future Depends on It
The task for states gathering at COP31 now is to ensure that international cooperation delivers on international obligations: preventing further harm, addressing the consequences of climate change, and providing reparation to those in need.
Nov 09, 2026
Governments will gather November 9-20 in Antalya, Türkiye, for the COP31 climate talks, amid mounting pressure on nearly every front, and the picture could hardly be starker.
Climate impacts are accelerating, bringing devastating losses to countries and communities that have contributed the least to the crisis and intensifying demands for adequate finance and remedy. Conflict, economic instability, and price spikes are exposing the risks of continued dependence on fossil fuels, strengthening the case for the transition. Yet, windfall war profits for oil and gas companies and growing demand from artificial intelligence and data centers are driving fossil fuel expansion. And as global temperatures approach the 1.5°C temperature limit, speculative technological interventions are increasingly being promoted as ways to manage continued warming rather than prevent it.
The consequences are no longer projections. In August, a devastating glacial flood tore through Nepal, killing more than 1,400 people and leaving billions of dollars in recovery needs in a country responsible for only a tiny fraction of historic global emissions.
Consensus is not the aim. Action is.
The international institutions meant to help governments respond collectively are themselves under strain and struggle to overcome obstruction, corporate influence, and weak accountability. Deadlock at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), escalating attacks on multilateralism and the international rule of law, continued fossil fuel influence, and shrinking civic space all raise a fundamental question for COP31: Can international cooperation deliver the action the climate crisis requires?
Since last year‘s climate summit, states have taken important steps outside and alongside the United Nations climate process toward collective implementation of legal obligations to prevent and repair climate harm. The first Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia brought governments together to begin developing practical pathways for implementing the transition. The UN General Assembly resolution on how to operationalize the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) climate Advisory Opinion showed that the world recognizes the rule of law must guide climate action.
COP31 must build on that momentum while closing the gap between commitment and conduct. The world does not need another inventory of climate promises from COP31 in Antalya. It needs evidence that international cooperation can still deliver when the science is urgent, the law is clear, and political and economic pressures are pushing governments toward delay.
The Climate Regime Must Be Reformed to Deliver
COP31 is the first since the breakdown in Belém, Brazil spotlighted the structural flaws of the climate talks’ consensus-based process, fueling calls for reform.
After 30 years of climate talks, it is abundantly clear that the international climate regime is not delivering the collective response the crisis demands. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement remain essential to international cooperation, but progress on an equitable phaseout of fossil fuels and delivering the necessary climate finance is far too slow. And not for lack of clarity on what the science and law require.
The UNFCCC’s reliance on consensus is a barrier. Without agreed-upon rules for voting when consensus fails, a small number of governments can continue to block progress on the issues central to climate action. What should be an avenue for alignment has become a tool for veto. Of course, consensus itself is not the sole cause of inadequate climate action. Governments have had ample opportunities to act more ambitiously, and fossil fuel interests and some states have repeatedly shaped what is politically possible.
The COP31 slogan, “From consensus to action,” must serve as a reminder of the bottom line: Consensus is not the aim. Action is. When consensus impedes action, voting should be possible, and outvoted countries must nonetheless fulfill their obligations under international law.
A decision is one thing, but action is another. Assessing whether the process is delivering also means looking at how decisions are implemented. Reform must therefore also strengthen accountability. Governments’ commitments mean little without transparent monitoring, public scrutiny, and independent processes to assess implementation and address backsliding, with the participation of rights-holders. Progress must be measured by action: Are fossil fuel production and use declining? Are climate finance and remedies for climate harm reaching the countries and communities that need them?
The climate summit itself must be protected from conflicts of interest and corporate capture. Fossil fuel interests have enjoyed disproportionate influence in climate negotiations, while climate-vulnerable communities, Indigenous peoples, and civil society struggle to even have a seat at the table. At COP31, atates should adopt a clear definition of conflict of interest and safeguards to prevent those profiting from climate-destructive activities from undermining climate action. Protecting civic space and ensuring meaningful public participation are essential to a credible process.
Initiatives such as the Transition Away from Fossil Fuels process with the forthcoming Tuvalu-Ireland conference complement the UNFCCC by building momentum and developing practical pathways for a managed transition and strengthening cooperation among willing states. Such initiatives demonstrate that effective multilateralism can and must extend and change to deliver the action the climate crisis demands.
1.5°C: A Benchmark for Accountability, Not a License for False Solutions
The critical 1.5°C temperature limit must remain an essential legal and moral benchmark for climate action and accountability. It is not a threshold beyond which all is lost, nor does approaching or exceeding it make further emissions cuts any less important; on the contrary. Warming below 1.5°C has already caused devastating harm, and each additional increment of warming increases the risks and impacts faced by communities and ecosystems worldwide.
Yet as climate action remains inadequate, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and geoengineering technologies are increasingly presented as ways to “manage” warming exceeding 1.5°C, while carbon capture and storage (CCS) continues to be touted as a way to manage ongoing fossil fuel pollution. So-called “climate stabilization scenarios” often assume temperatures can later be brought back down “returning to 1.5°C”, relying on overly optimistic assumptions about feasibility, scale, resources, and risks—and on future technologies that do not even exist.
Decisions must close loopholes that enable continued fossil fuel use and prioritize a rapid and equitable phaseout of fossil fuels.
This approach risks normalizing the idea that the consequences of breaching the 1.5°C limit can be managed through future interventions rather than limited through immediate and deep emissions reductions. The obligation is to prevent climate harm now, not simply to respond to it later. The prospect of exceeding 1.5°C must never become a justification for treating harmful, speculative technological interventions as inevitable or necessary, or worse, delaying action today, entrenching fossil fuel dependence, and locking in devastation tomorrow.
Pathways that overshoot 1.5°C and rely heavily on CDR risk worsening climate impacts and triggering planetary tipping points. COP31 must not entrench speculative technologies in fossil fuel transition road maps or electrification targets. Decisions must close loopholes that enable continued fossil fuel use and prioritize a rapid and equitable phaseout of fossil fuels.
The focus on the ocean at COP31 must also not become an entry point for dangerous marine geoengineering technologies promoted as “ocean climate solutions.” The most important ocean-based solutions involve eliminating ocean-based threats, like offshore oil and gas. The priority must be to prevent further warming and harm, including to the ocean, at their source: Reduce emissions rapidly by curbing fossil fuel production and use; protect and restore ecosystems; and provide the finance needed for a just transition away from fossil fuels.
There Can Be No Climate Justice Without Human Rights
Climate action cannot be separated from human rights and the protection of those challenging powerful interests to defend people and the planet, who continue to face threats, intimidation, and restrictions on their participation in decisions that shape their futures.
As Türkiye hosts COP31, protecting civic space and the rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly must be a top priority of all governments gathering for the COP31. The latest crackdown on LGBTI+ groups, activists, and human rights defenders in Türkiye is yet another stark reminder of the increasingly difficult environment in which civil society is operating.
Against this backdrop, it is particularly concerning that the COP31 Host Country Agreement reintroduces a provision requiring participants not to "interfere in the internal affairs" of the host country, a provision that was absent from the COP30 agreement. At a climate conference, civil society participation necessarily includes being present, speaking out, scrutinizing governments’ decisions and climate policies, and advocating for communities most vulnerable to climate change. Participants should never have to fear that legitimate human rights advocacy, peaceful protest, or criticism could be construed as interference in the host country’s internal affairs.
The COP31 joint Presidencies of Türkiye and Australia, the UNFCCC Secretariat, and all states share responsibility for ensuring safe and open civic space before, during, and after the negotiations. They must protect freedom of expression and peaceful assembly; prevent intimidation, harassment, violence, and reprisals; and guarantee meaningful and non-discriminatory access for civil society, Indigenous peoples, human rights defenders, and all rights-holders.
The same structures of fossil fuel dependence, resource extraction, and unequal power that drive climate breakdown are also deeply connected to the growing militarization of our world. From Gaza to Ukraine, from Iran to Sudan, armed conflicts continue to grow in number, duration, and complexity, with devastating impacts on people, human rights, and the environment while diverting resources from urgent climate needs and compounding suffering. As states gather in Antalya, it is critical that governments confront the crises of war and warming hand in hand.
The Choice Facing COP31
The test in Antalya is not whether governments can produce another carefully negotiated declaration. It is whether they can tackle what matters in a world of crisis and conflict.
Can governments at COP31 accelerate a just and equitable transition away from fossil fuels while war and economic insecurity are being used to justify new fossil fuel investment? Can they protect 1.5°C as a benchmark for ambition and accountability without turning projected exceedance of the temperature limit into a rationale for speculative technological fixes? Can they deliver finance and remedy to countries and communities suffering losses they did little to cause? Can they reform climate institutions to overcome obstruction, rather than reward it? And can they defend human rights and civic space at a time when both are increasingly under attack?
If the ICJ confirmed that states’ climate obligations are grounded in international law, COP31 must confirm that their climate action is too. The task for states gathering at COP31 now is to ensure that international cooperation delivers on those international obligations: preventing further harm, addressing the consequences of climate change, and providing reparation to those in need.
The science leaves no room for ambiguity. Neither does the law. What remains is the political choice.
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If This Is a Wave, We Made It: Why the Midterms Were About Us, Not Them
We may feel as if we have woken up to a different country after election day, but we have not. We woke up just as we did the day before to a country in which the collective is fighting for justice and equity relentlessly, strategically, and with love.
Nov 05, 2026
What is this strange feeling washing over millions of us this week? Is this relief? Is this joy? Is it disbelief that our collective voice could not be stifled despite the best attempts of the wealthy and the corrupt? We wake up to a very different world than the one that we woke up to on election day.
We have the very first openly gay man senator ever elected.
We have the first Black woman governor ever, and she is 1 of 5 Black governors elected, making it the first time that multiple Black governors will serve at once. Until now, each previous Black governor served alone, they were the only Black person in the room.
We are part of a long lineage of dreamers and resisters and creators. We voted. And that is only one small action in a large toolkit of creating more just worlds for all.
We have the first Native American woman governor ever.
We have a senator-elect in Texas who speaks of a politics of love. James Talarico, a former middle school teacher and Presbyterian seminarian, named what his campaign had to overcome in his acceptance speech:
We went up against nearly 40 years of doubt and disillusionment. We went up against more than $300 million, more than any senate campaign in American history. We went up against all the negative ads, smear campaigns, foreign bots, and AI deepfakes that money can buy. Those attacks were the final howls of a dying establishment. The death rattle of a status quo that knows its days are numbered.
We have a Latina governor in Texas for the first time, defeating a governor who has been more complicit than anyone in creating a brutally hostile environment toward immigrants and academic freedom. Abbott’s immigration policies led to the erosion of safety and human rights such as when police officers are allowed to question a person’s immigration status during a routine traffic stop, encouraging racial profiling. His Senate Bill 17 increased state censorship and widespread self-censorship, resulting in a devastating erosion of academic freedom. Harming one of the greatest riches this country has: our excellent higher education system.
We have Ohio’s first woman governor who won even after a deeply personal attack featuring her own estranged mother put forth by the Trump-promoted and backed opponent.
We have the first Native American woman US senator senator in Minnesota.
This was the very first midterm in which a single person gave more money in donations than any other person has ever spent on a single election cycle (with the exception of billionaire Mike Bloomberg who funded his own run for the presidency in 2020). The world's richest man donated a stunning $474 million, of this $168 million went toward the aim of defeating Talarico, who took no corporate PAC money and was only funded by individual donors.
The first Muslim senator was elected despite some of the most vitriolic racist attacks lodged at him and having his primary opponent choose to blow up her political career by betraying every value she ever indicated to hold by backing the Trump-favored Republican opponent.
The list of names could continue, but there is a risk to narrowing the story to the name in the headline. After all, each of these people was carried by thousands and even millions of people organizing, refusing, resisting, and caring.
It is no wonder if we feel as though we have woken up to a different country than the one we woke up to on election day. But I want to argue that we have not. We woke up just as we have woken up the day before and the one before that, and so on to a country in which the collective is fighting for justice and equity relentlessly, strategically, and with love.
There is some data to back these seemingly unnecessarily hopeful words. The early vote exceeded the 2022 midterm early vote by 9 million. This brings to mind a well-known psychological concept known as learned helplessness. The studies that led to this theoretical framework are devastating in their cruelty. Dogs were shocked while standing on a platform. And at first, they tried to get away from the painful bursts but were not given an opportunity to do so. Eventually, even when an escape was a possibility, when the door was open, they no longer even tried, they simply gave up and accepted the torture.
Even with the egregious misuse of the Justice Department, the assault on the checks and balances in our government, even with the wealthiest man in the world aiming to disempower the voters and buy elections in order to maintain his privileges. Even with the gerrymandering in many states that aimed to dilute Black political power. Even with voter intimidation by the federal government. Even with all of this, the country challenged Martin Seligman's original theories on learned helplessness. We do not lie down and accept the shocks. We are not biologically wired to quit when the stressors feel out of our control. Years after the original study in 1967, Seligman and Maier revisited learned helplessness in 2016 and concluded that passivity is not learned; instead, what is learned is a sense of agency, as that is something we build and learn together. Of course, as often happens, the research simply confirmed what the community already understood.
As we struggle to find the right words to describe what happened—is it a tsunami? Is it a firestorm? Is it a repudiation? What should the Democratic Party do next?—I want to offer my perspective as a critical social psychologist. Ignacio Martín-Baró was a Jesuit priest and University of Chicago-educated social psychologist who was assassinated by US trained unit of the El Salvadoran army on November 16th, 1989. In a few days it will be the 37th anniversary of this execution. He provoked transformative questions about the discipline of psychology itself and is regarded as one of the founders of the subdiscipline of liberation psychology. One of his core claims was that fatalism, a feeling that the story is already written so we might as well give up, is not actually natural to people. This is produced by systems. And an election like this shows us when fatalism can crack, as people reclaim their power. As we refuse to become pawns of the corrupt and the greedy. With that, what is the answer to what the Democratic Party needs to do next? Marin-Baro’s legacy reminds us that the party’s job is to follow the collective, not lead it.
We look at our neighbors who are being targeted for cruel deportations by bypassing due process despite their meaningful contributions to our communities, and we say, we stand with you. We look at our neighbors, like Alex Pretti and Renee Good, who were murdered because they refused to hide at home when their neighborhoods were under attack by masked bullies, and we grieve them with an act of radical love, which is always action. We look at our universities that are being stripped of academic freedom, becoming a tool of those in power and the state, and we say we believe in the power of education and that it is worth fighting for. We look at each other, and we know that we are being told a story that does not make sense. You, my neighbor, have never been my enemy. You have always been my keeper. We belong to each other.
Following the midterms, it is not so much that the world has changed; it is simply that we see the world more for what it has always been. Nothing has changed. The lens, smeared with lies, has been cleared somewhat with this election. We have communities who show up day after day after day for one another. They demonstrate that hope is not a soft feeling but a fierce warrior emotion that is produced by action. Mariame Kaba says it best: Hope is a discipline. We are part of a long lineage of dreamers and resisters and creators. We voted. And that is only one small action in a large toolkit of creating more just worlds for all. So is this a big blue wave? Well if it is, we created it. It is not crashing over us. We are in this water. And yes, resistance can be joyful. So come in, splash around. The water is warm. Let’s keep making waves together.
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'Pain in My Mind and in My Soul': Christa Pike, Who Survived Botched Execution, Speaks Out
"I had not contemplated life beyond that night, and I'm deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position."
Oct 30, 2026
Christa Pike, whose twice-botched execution in Tennessee last month has renewed calls for abolishing the death penalty in the United States, spoke out about her experience on Friday, a month after she had "walked into the execution chamber at Riverbend men's prison prepared to die."
"I had made my peace," Pike said in a statement dictated by her legal team. "I had told the people who loved me, supported me, and stood by me through the years I was grateful for them. I had also told the people in the room, and who were there to witness my execution, that I was leaving them in loving kindness. Several days later, I woke up alone in a hospital, confused and in pain."
Despite an ongoing legal fight stemming from the pervasive abuse the 50-year-old suffered throughout her youth, the US Supreme Court let Tennessee move forward with its plan to kill her on September 30. Pike, who was sentenced to death over the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, survived two injections of pentobarbital from a doctor involved with an earlier botched execution at the maximum security prison in Nashville. She was taken by ambulance to Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
"There hasn't been a moment since that night when I haven't been in pain," Pike said Friday. "My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still struggle to speak. And the pain isn't just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul. I had not contemplated life beyond that night, and I'm deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position. I continue to think about my victim's family and the terrible pain and loss they have endured. I am recovering, and I know that I am getting stronger. But healing is not the same as being okay."
"Since that night, I have been largely isolated in the prison's medical ward, away from other people and the human connections that mean so much to me," she continued. "That isolation brings its own kind of pain. I spent 28 years in solitary confinement, and much of what I am experiencing today is a repeat of that condition. I am searching for meaning in what happened to me. One thing that has given me strength is the extraordinary love and support I have received from people around the world. I am overwhelmed by the kindness and prayers of people I have known for years and complete strangers who have never met me."
"To know that so many people care about me, that they see me as a human being whose life matters, is something I cannot fully put into words," Pike said. "It is humbling, and it has touched me more deeply than I can explain. I also want to thank the first responders, doctors, nurses, and everyone at the hospital who cared for me. They treated me with compassion, dignity, and respect. I will never forget their kindness. I also want to thank my attorneys and everyone who has fought for me, stood beside me and refused to give up on me."
She added that "I don't know why I survived that night. I don't know what comes next. Some days, finding hope is harder than others. For now, I am trying to heal, one day at a time. And I am holding on to the love and kindness of so many people who have reminded me that I am not alone."
clicks.wdsu.com/f/a/ZdWHrZpX...End the death penalty.
[image or embed]
— Bill K - NO DEATH PENALTY (@really-mad.bsky.social) October 30, 2026 at 9:57 AM
Gov. Bill Lee—who declined to commute Pike's sentence before the failed injections—has since halted executions in Tennessee through the end of the year, but the Republican suggested Thursday that the state may try to kill Pike again.
"As it relates to a particular individual like Christa Pike and her crime, she is still incarcerated under the laws of the state of Tennessee," Lee said Thursday. "I suspect her sentence will be the same as it was before unless determined otherwise by the courts."
While a review of Pike's execution attempts is underway, and Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada has already announced he will step down, opponents of capital punishment are demanding more. Amnesty International USA said earlier this month that "Tennessee’s botched attempt to execute Christa Pike, as witnessed by her attorneys, demonstrates why the death penalty truly is the ultimate cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment."
"All execution methods are inhumane and unacceptable," the group declared. "The death penalty must be abolished, everywhere."
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Americans Should Reject All State-Sanctioned Murder, Live-Streamed or Not
Last year, the US was 1 of only 17 countries to record an official execution.
Oct 23, 2026
The Pentagon’s self-described “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth recently announced a plan to live stream the execution by firing squad of former Army Major Nidal Hasan, a wheelchair-bound veteran convicted of a mass shooting at Fort Hood in 2009.
President Donald Trump eventually backed away from the live-stream plan. But not before Americans across the political spectrum agreed that—whatever Hasan’s crime—live streaming an execution crossed a line. In one poll, 80% opposed it.
That’s not surprising. Live streaming the slaughter of a human being, especially when the spectacle is cheered on by a defense secretary who claims to worship his troops’ killing power, their “lethality,” above all else—including their loyalty to the Constitution—falls outside any definition of morality.
The death penalty is so normalized in the United States that we don’t even recognize how depraved “normal” executions are by the rest of the world’s standards.
The thought of kids pulling out their phones on the playground, or adults glued to their tablets at work, to witness an execution is uniquely horrifying. But much of the official criticism of Hegseth’s proposal to make the execution public also had a particularly chauvinistic quality to it.
Some argued that it would lower the integrity of the US to the level of “other” countries. As North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis said: “Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America.”
Yet beyond the issue of live streaming, the underlying act of state-sanctioned homicide itself sounds a lot like what “they” do. The death penalty is so normalized in the United States that we don’t even recognize how depraved “normal” executions are by the rest of the world’s standards.
Last year, only 17 countries recorded official executions, according to Amnesty International. China led the list with the most executions, followed by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Yemen (with 51) and the United States (with 47) rounded out the top five. During that same year, no executions at all occurred in Europe or Central Asia. And for the last 17 years, the United States has been the only country in the Americas to officially execute anyone.
The US embrace of the death penalty as other countries abandon it is disturbing enough. Equally disturbing is the fact that executions here historically have often been quite public.
The US has a long legacy of lynching, whether carried out by a wartime firing squad or hanging people from a makeshift noose on a tree. During racist lynchings carried out from the Civil War era well into the 1960s, crowds of people—including well-dressed women, men with children on their shoulders to make sure the little ones could see, poor and rich but all white—gathered near the tree with picnic baskets and post cards for sale to commemorate the slaughter of Black men, women, and children.
Yet this isn’t only about our past. It’s about this administration’s effort to normalize a level of deliberate bloody slaughter being carried out today—whether in the Gaza genocide, the US bombing of school children in Iran, or Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s (ICE) brutal treatment of immigrants and protesters. All based on the idea that some people simply have no right to live.
These decisions made here have international impacts.
The Israeli government is openly borrowing from the cruelties of the US prison system. Earlier this year, the Israeli parliament legalized capital punishment. From its founding in 1948, Israel had not allowed an execution—with only two exceptions, one of whom was Adolf Eichmann, the main organizer of the Holocaust.
But in March 2026, the Knesset passed a law requiring death by hanging for Palestinians convicted in military courts of any lethal action Israel deems terrorism. (Jewish Israelis, including illegal settlers in the West Bank, remain completely immune from the threat of capital punishment.)
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s extremist national security minister, made a video showing off the gallows under construction—gloating that the new site would have an open viewing area, “just like in the US.”
Still, it’s encouraging that Americans’ outrage forced Trump to back off from Hegseth’s brutal spectacle. And with the percentage of Americans opposing capital punishment climbing year after year—alongside public opposition to war, genocide, and ICE’s violence—perhaps one day the White House will similarly abandon those horrors as well.
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‘Unconscionable’: US Called to Stop Shipping Taser Weapons to Israel After Horrific Abuses of Palestinian Detainees Reported
The Council on American-Islamic Relations called for action by not only the manufacturer but also the Trump administration to "block the transfer of technologies to governments implicated in systemic human rights violations.”
Oct 22, 2026
America's largest Muslim civil rights organization is calling for the US-based manufacturer of Tasers to stop supplying them to Israel following the publication of a harrowing investigation into their use to torture Palestinian prisoners.
On Thursday, The Guardian and Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism reported on allegations from four Palestinian detainees who said they were restrained and tortured using electroshock weapons made by Axon Enterprise, formerly Taser International.
One man identified as Essa, who had both his feet amputated after being injured in an Israeli missile attack on his home, said that while in custody at Israel’s Ofer military prison in the occupied West Bank, soldiers shot him with rubber bullets, tied him up, and blasted him with the stun gun, leaving marks that are still visible a year after his release.
Another detainee said his body was doused with water to intensify the shock before he was hit with a Taser in 2024. He said he still suffers from visual impairment, spasms, and fainting spells.
These new accounts are not the first allegations of electroshock devices being used to torture Palestinian prisoners. The United Nations Human Rights Office has documented other cases, while Amnesty International has called for restrictions on their use in Israeli prisons.
Israel's military found that soldiers accused of sexually assaulting a Palestinian prisoner at Sde Teiman detention camp in 2024 had used electric shocks to torture him during the attack. The military dropped the charges against the five soldiers in March 2026.
That month, UN experts identified five more accounts of detainees being shocked by electric batons or similar devices.
In November 2025, the UN Committee Against Torture reported that torture, including the use of electric shocks, had "escalated sharply since October 7, 2023," when Israel launched its genocidal war in Gaza following Hamas' attack. The committee noted that electric shock devices were frequently used in "sexualized forms of torture."
Despite concerns raised by human rights organizations, The Guardian found that Axon likely continues to supply Israeli authorities with electric shock devices and has been documented showcasing its latest models to the nation's security agencies.
“It is unconscionable that equipment manufactured by an American corporation is reportedly being used to carry out acts of torture and abuse against detained Palestinians," said the Council on American-Islamic Relations on Thursday in response to the report.
"Axon must immediately halt all current and future contracts, shipments, and servicing of electroshock weapons to Israeli authorities," the organization said. "Furthermore, the US Department of Commerce must rigorously enforce export oversight criteria to block the transfer of technologies to governments implicated in systemic human rights violations.”
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New York ICE Shooting Illustrates Deliberate Policy of Harm and Medical Neglect
It is not normal for a democratic nation to institute this level of warfare against its own people.
Oct 12, 2026
President Donald Trump’s ICE terror campaign against US cities reached a new height October 8 with the dangerous shooting of an unarmed Dominican man, with his 5-year-old child in the car, in a densely populated Manhattan neighborhood.
The incident adds to a growing scandal over inhumane ICE treatment of victims they harm. ICE agents have repeatedly interfered with or denied medical care for the victims they shoot. Patients have also been pulled out of hospitals prematurely against medical advice and without authorization of their doctors and other medical professionals.
California last year enacted a law that prohibits medical facilities from permitting federal agents without a valid search warrant or court order into private areas, including places where patients receive treatment or discuss health matters, the Los Angeles Times noted. The Minnesota Nurses Association is also pressing for public policies to bar ICE agents from being in rooms when patients are receiving care, and other community and patient protections.
Other states should follow and more is still needed. ICE must be held accountable, by law, for denying immediate medical care to anyone they harm, and it must be barred from removing them from any medical facility without specific medical consent and written authorization. National legislation would be best, but with a lawless administration in Washington, states should enact strict legislation to protect all patients as well as public safety.
Oscar Belgal, 28, was shot in the neck, apparently with an assault-style rifle, as seven rounds were blasted into his vehicle. ICE initially claimed they’d transported him to the hospital, a claim subsequently disproven by video. New York police officers, not ICE, transported Belgal to New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital. There, nurses provided “dignified care,” said their union, the New York State Nurses Association, despite an ICE presence in the hospital that “has an intimidating and harmful effect on all patients. ICE has no place on our streets or in our hospitals.”
After several hours, ICE agents pulled Belgal out of the hospital taking him to a Brooklyn jail, with a bullet still in his body, according to his lawyers. They said he was in pain, afraid for himself and deeply concerned for his unhurt but terrified 5-year-old son. There was no report that any medical staff had explicitly authorized or cleared him for such quick discharge against all medical ethics. He spent the night in a cell, not in a hospital bed despite still having a bullet in his body, an attorney said.
More than 24 hours later, Belgal was “still in pain,” Paige Austin of the nonprofit Make the Road New York, told a federal judge. “Although [Mr. Belgal] was initially hospitalized, it appears that ICE moved quickly to transfer him out of the hospital to an unknown location—raising grave concerns for his health and well-being,” his legal staff said in a court filing.
“We know that ICE is rotten to its core,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani told reporters. “ICE undermines public safety. This is an agency that should be abolished.” He later added, “Get ICE out of our neighborhoods. Get ICE out of our hospitals. Get ICE off our streets. Get ICE away from our children.”
It is not normal for a democratic nation to institute this level of warfare against its own people — not targeting the “worst of the worst” they claimed, but anyone they racially profile as an enemy. Then they force the pain and physical harm they’ve caused on people against professional medical judgement. It’s what fascism looks like. As National Nurses United (NNU) repeated in August after one of its members, a Maine RN was kidnaped by ICE, “Since ICE began kidnapping Black and brown people and terrorizing our communities,” NNU has called it out as “an illegitimate, violent, paramilitary organization that must be promptly abolished.”
Belgal is far from the only person to whom ICE has shown disregard for their safety or health after being shot or otherwise harmed.
In September, a Venezuelan delivery driver Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, 28, was shot by ICE agents in Austin, TX after an unmarked SUV—one that never activated its lights or siren—rammed his car as he said he was trying to pull over. After fleeing on foot, the agents shot him in the back.
He was taken to a hospital in San Antonio with a bullet in his back for four hours, apparently just given morphine, his attorney said, before being whisked away again by ICE and moved to a detention center in South Texas. At the facility, she said, “He was cold, asked for water (and) said he was in great pain, but he spent hours (there) even before he got an ibuprofen.” The bullet, that was close to his spine, remained lodged in his back for two weeks, before it was finally surgically removed after partial paralysis had set in. When he appeared in court, he was in a wheelchair.
“Democratic leaders and immigrant advocates have questioned whether Garcés Pérez received proper medical treatment and whether he was taken into custody before he could fully heal,” the Texas Tribune reported. Brian Elmore, a Global Emergency Medical fellow doctor, told The Tribune, “In somebody that isn’t detained, these patients would have close follow-up with their trauma surgery team and be discharged with pain medication. The problem with these patients is that they are often discharged in conditions where they receive inappropriate or absent medical care.”
Lack of proper medical care has been demonstrated throughout the ICE campaign. It was evident in the callous behavior of ICE agents who impeded medical personnel from seeking to reach Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in the moments after their fatal shootings by agents.
It was demonstrated in Los Angeles in 2025 during ICE presences in hospitals. In October 2025, journalist Carlitos Ricardo Parias, who had been tracking ICE actions and posting them on TikTok, was wounded by an agent and taken to a downtown hospital, California Hospital Medical Center. ICE agents remained in his hospital room for nearly a week, a presence intimidating to nurses and patients, said Anne Caputo-Pearl, RN, a labor and delivery nurse and chief nurse representative for the California Nurses Association (CNA). He too was denied adequate medical treatment, including pain medication and physical therapy, while subsequently still in an ICE detention facility, said the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Three months earlier, ICE agents stayed around the clock in the hospital room of a Salvadoran detainee Milagro Solis-Portillo who had a medical emergency while being arrested. CNA President Sandy Reding, RN, who joined protesters at Glendale Memorial Hospital, said nurses and patients were frightened to see masked immigration agents in the hospital’s lobby. “Hospitals used to be a sanctuary place, and now they’re not,” she said. “And it seems like ICE has just been running rampant.”
Solis-Portillo said she was repeatedly pressured by ICE to say she was well enough to leave, and was barred from speaking to family and attorneys until she complied. They ultimately transferred her to another hospital against her doctor’s orders and without explanation, her attorney said. Her case “violates established ethical and patient care standards not only for this individual, but also for the public health and safety,” CNA said.
It has long been obvious that ICE and other paramilitary federal’s cruel behavior is intentional. It is evident in the streets, where on behalf of the Trump administration federal agents have shot at some two dozen people, killing six of them. Not only has a single agent not been federally charged, but as Jonathan Blitzer writes in The New Yorker, the federal response is always to blame the victim.
Further the administration has arrested and prosecuted hundreds of protesters; in many cases where judges have dropped charges or juries acquitted them. One major case, known as the Minnesota 15, goes to trial October 20. They are being charged not with impeding ICE, but conspiracy to impede ICE in Minnesota, notes defendant Cal Robinet.
A policy of harm, disregard, and cruelty is abundantly apparent in 239 ICE concentration camp detention centers where the death toll has reached 59 during Trump’s second term due to deliberate substandard conditions, inadequate nutrition, and medical neglect. ICE has even stopped listing where detainees are being held in its online database to hide them from family members and legal counsel.
Stephen Miller, the architect of the campaign, put it bluntly after Renee Good was murdered while administration officials branded her a domestic terrorist. “To all ICE officers: You have immunity to perform your duties and no one—no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist—can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties,” he declared.
The history of fascist dictatorships is littered with sobering examples of what happens when there are not barriers against government medical abuses, either by law, or by the opposition of the medical establishment and its practitioners.
For the medical community, if actions are taken by ICE against their medical recommendation, doctors, nurses, and emergency medical technicians need to speak up in real time to advocate for their patients. Hospital administrators should support them, and say this patient was taken away against medical advice. They will have public support, and laws should be enacted to protect them against retaliation.
As the Trump administration continues to use its paramilitary forces and other federal police as an instrument to target communities of color and threaten violent repression on everyone who dissents, these policies will continue to escalate without more broad, forceful responses and protest.
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Trump's US Meets the Textbook Definition of an Oppressive Regime
The distinction between “oppressive regime” as a concept in a textbook and “oppressive regime” as the texture of ordinary life—for millions of people living in this country right now, citizens and noncitizens alike—has ceased to exist.
Oct 11, 2026
Political scientists have a fairly dry checklist for what makes a regime oppressive: It silences dissent, it turns state power against its own people, it treats international law as optional, and it punishes anyone—institution or individual—who tries to hold it accountable. Read as a list, it sounds abstract or like something that happens elsewhere, in a dictatorship in a Third World country maybe.
For Americans, such a definition no longer feels abstract anymore.
Let’s start with the silencing. Since the war on Gaza escalated, human rights groups and journalists have documented, for years now, a pattern of pro-Palestinian content—protest footage, on-the-ground reporting, even the straightforward accounting of civilian deaths—being throttled, flagged, or removed from major platforms. Meanwhile, incitement and dehumanizing rhetoric spreads with far less friction. Independent researchers have called it out repeatedly. Platforms deny doing it on purpose.
Regimes like this have ended before, usually because enough ordinary people refused to stop saying what they saw.
The silencing isn’t limited to algorithms, either. Last month, the White House revoked press credentials for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, physically barring their reporters from the building over what the president called unfavorable coverage. A federal judge has since ordered access temporarily restored, calling the move a likely violation of due process, but the message had already landed: Cover this administration the wrong way and you can be locked out of the room where the decisions get made. A press freedom advocate called it part of a broader pattern meant to intimidate journalists and deter critical reporting. When the people paid to tell the public the truth are the ones getting the door closed in their faces, “free press” starts to feel like a technicality rather than a guarantee.
Then there’s the gap between what the government does and what the country actually wants. This summer, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) forced a vote to strip billions in US military funding to Israel. This was no fringe gesture but a real floor fight that split both parties and forced members to go on the record. It lost. But the fact that it happened at all, that a sitting Republican congressman felt he had to make Washington answer for the money it kept sending regardless of what constituents were saying, is itself the story. Institutions are moving in one direction while public sentiment visibly pulls in another, and the institutions are winning anyway.
And there’s the reach outward. When the International Criminal Court issued warrants tied to the Gaza war, Washington didn’t argue the law. It sanctioned the court itself, freezing officials’ bank accounts, cutting off their email, warning American staff they’d be arrested for traveling home. A body created specifically to stand outside any one government’s control got treated like an adversary for doing its job. If that’s what happens to an international court, it’s not hard to imagine what happens to an ordinary citizen who speaks too loudly.
Actually, it’s not hard to imagine because it is happening on a daily basis, especially for those who protest the Trump administration’s immigration policy. Last month, Donna Ganger—the mother of Renee Good, a US citizen shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Minneapolis in January—testified on Capitol Hill that she’s a registered Republican who voted for Donald Trump because she believed that these agents were there to protect citizens, not to treat her own family like the threat. She didn’t get an apology. “This is madness,” she concluded.
Every day, millions of people in America live the reality of a police state. They are afraid to leave their houses for fear of being detained by ICE, thrown into horrific holding centers, and sent back home to civil war or family abuse or even deportation to a third country they know nothing about. ICE has become something closer to a domestic enforcement arm than an immigration agency, and “wrong place, wrong time” is a real category of harm now, not a hypothetical one.
What does it mean to raise a child in a country where simply existing in the wrong neighborhood at the wrong moment carries risk? Where even a global court gets its accounts frozen for trying to hold power accountable?
It’s a strange kind of irony that at the United Nations last month, Trump denounced “the fanatical Iranian regime” for spreading “carnage and chaos” and called for its “complete economic isolation” over how it treats its own people. He’s not wrong that repression deserves condemnation. He’s just describing, almost point for point, the pattern playing out here at home—press outlets barred from covering their own government, citizens shot by agents meant to protect them, and dissent treated as the threat rather than the right.
The distinction between “oppressive regime” as a concept in a textbook and “oppressive regime” as the texture of ordinary life—for millions of people living in this country right now, citizens and noncitizens alike—has ceased to exist. Describing the disappearance of that distinction—calmly, specifically, without exaggeration—feels like the first form of resistance available to someone who isn’t a lawyer, a lawmaker, or a judge.
Regimes like this have ended before, usually because enough ordinary people refused to stop saying what they saw. That’s the piece I want to hold onto, even on the days when fear wins out.
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The International Criminal Court Is Under Attack
If the attack from Putin's Russia and the US Trump administration succeeds, it will produce a disaster not only for the rule of law, but for the cause of human rights.
Oct 10, 2026
On October 9, only hours after the announcement of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, a former judge on the International Criminal Court, the Trump administration imposed its latest sanctions on the global judicial body. According to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, “we will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate.”
When the ICC became operational in 2002, it represented a major breakthrough for the human rights groups that had campaigned for it. The new organization had the mandate to prosecute individuals for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and, after 2018, the crime of aggression. Once nations ratified the ICC’s authorizing document, the Rome Statute, they took responsibility for arresting these individuals and submitting them to the court for trial. Designed to complement, rather than to replace, national criminal justice systems, the ICC could prosecute cases only when countries were unwilling or unable to do so. A total of 125 countries―nearly two-thirds of the world’s nations―have ratified the Rome Statute.
Since its founding, the ICC (headquartered in The Hague, the Netherlands) has acted to hold individual perpetrators accountable for the world’s gravest atrocities. Its actions included opening 34 cases (some with more than one suspect), holding 17 different investigations across four continents, issuing 61 arrest warrants, and, thus far, issuing 13 convictions and four acquittals.
Nevertheless, the campaign against the ICC is having a serious impact. In late July, thanks to US government pressure, Venezuela and Chad announced their withdrawal from the court’s Rome Statute.From its inception, however, US officials were wary of the ICC.
In the United States, President Bill Clinton signed the Rome Statute, but refused to present it to the US Senate for ratification, warning that it had “significant flaws,” including the inability to “protect US officials.” His successor, George W. Bush, “unsigned” the treaty in 2002 and signed US legislation authorizing military force to liberate any American nationals it held for crimes. During Donald Trump’s first term as president, he denounced the ICC before the United Nations General Assembly and imposed economic sanctions and visa restrictions on top ICC officials for any effort to investigate the behavior of US personnel in Afghanistan.
Russian officials, too, soon realized that enforcement of international law threatened them. Although, initially, the Russian government signed the Rome Statute and participated constructively in the ICC, it withdrew its signature after Ukraine appealed to the ICC in 2014 and 2015 to investigate Russian war crimes in Ukraine. The ICC did initiate a preliminary inquiry that, after the full-scale Russian invasion of 2022 and Russia’s murder of Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war in Bucha, expanded into a formal investigation. In 2023, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for the kidnapping of thousands of Ukrainian children.
Denying any wrongdoing in Bucha, the Russian government also dismissed the charge of kidnapping as “outrageous.” Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, threatened a Russian hypersonic missile attack upon the ICC headquarters.
Meanwhile, the assault on the ICC escalated. Although US President Joseph Biden scrapped Trump’s sanctions on the court and authorized sharing information with it during investigations of Russian atrocities in Ukraine, he and numerous officials of other nations denounced the ICC’s November 2024 war crimes arrest warrant for top Israeli officials. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assailed what he called “the antisemitic decision” of the ICC and said that Israel refused to comply with it.
With Trump’s reelection, the campaign to destroy the ICC went into high gear. In February 2025, he imposed sanctions on the ICC prosecutor. That August, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, labeling the court “a national security threat,” added ICC judges to the sanctions list. In late 2025, a top Trump administration official told Reuters that there was “growing concern” that “the ICC will turn its attention to the president, to the vice president, to the secretary of war and others, and pursue prosecutions against them.” That was “unacceptable, and we will not allow it to happen.” The ICC, he said, had been informed that, unless it amended its founding document to ensure that it would not investigate the Republican president and his top officials, new, very punishing US sanctions would be imposed on the court.
The Russian government also ramped up its attack. In December 2025, a Russian court, retaliating for the ICC’s arrest warrants for Putin and Lvova-Belova, convicted the ICC prosecutor and eight ICC judges, in absentia, of “unlawful prosecution,” sentencing them to terms of imprisonment ranging from three and a half to 15 years.
In July 2026, Rubio announced what the US State Department called “a sweeping campaign to dismantle the threat posed by the International Criminal Court to US sovereignty.” It would “feature a whole-of-government response to systematically disable the ICC’s ability to operate” and destroy the court “brick by brick.” That August, imposing additional sanctions on court officials, Rubio proclaimed “our unwavering mission to protect Americans from this sham of a court.” Meanwhile, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called on Latin American and Caribbean governments to sever their ties with the ICC.
Many observers, of course, were appalled by the Trump administration’s behavior. The European Union immediately expressed its backing for the ICC, while Germany’s foreign minister declared that the court made the world “safer and more just.” In a biting article, Kenneth Roth, a former executive director of Human Rights Watch, argued that “the administration’s real goal is to secure impunity for war crimes.”
Nevertheless, the campaign against the ICC is having a serious impact. In late July, thanks to US government pressure, Venezuela and Chad announced their withdrawal from the court’s Rome Statute. The number of withdrawals now stands at five, including Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. The latter three are ruled by military juntas allied with Russia.
As the Nobel committee warned when announcing the Peace Prize, the “judges and institutions of international law are under political attack.”
If the attack succeeds, it will produce a disaster not only for the rule of law, but for the cause of human rights.
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UN Says Trump-Hegseth Livestream of Execution Would Breach ‘Absolute Prohibition of Torture’
"The world’s supposedly greatest (or formerly greatest) democracy has arrived at a horrific new moral nadir," said one columnist of the plan to livestream the killing by firing squad of Nidal Hasan.
Oct 09, 2026
As rights advocates across the US expressed horror at the Trump administration's confirmed plans to publicly broadcast the execution of Nidal Hasan, the former military psychiatrist who was convicted of killing 13 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood in 2009, the top United Nations human rights expert warned that the public state killing would violate international laws prohibiting torture.
“The livestreaming of an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture,” the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) told Agence France-Presse Friday.
As Common Dreams reported Thursday, the US Army announced that Hasan would be executed by firing squad at Fort Hood on December 3, with the Trump administration inviting the public to watch the shooting via livestream.
The UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions said in a report to the UN Human Rights Council in June that all capital punishment must be abolished worldwide, as "severe physical pain and psychological distress are an inherent part of the design and implementation" of the practice.
The OHCHR has particularly spoken out against public executions, such as those that have been carried out in Afghanistan and Iran.
Public killings by the state "constitute a form of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment," the office has said.
"This planned livestreamed execution says it all about what is happening in America today, opening the window ever wider on the Trump administration’s moral vacuity and its paucity of human decency."
Should the livestream go forward, Hasan's execution will be the first public state-sanctioned killing in the US in 90 years, according to Michael L. Radelet, professor emeritus at the University of Colorado Boulder, an expert on capital punishment.
Rainey Bethea, a Black man, was hanged in Kentucky in 1936 after reportedly confessing to the killing of a white woman. He was never charged with murder. Thousands of people attended his execution outside a courthouse.
As Edmarverson A. Santos wrote at the independent research platform Diplomacy & Law, the Trump administration's proposed execution livestream "raises substantial concerns under international human rights law."
"The UN Human Rights Committee expressly interprets Article 7 of the [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights] as prohibiting public executions and considers executions conducted in violation of that provision to constitute arbitrary deprivations of life under Article 6," wrote Santos. "A government-sponsored livestream accessible to the general public could fall within that interpretation, particularly where the condemned person's death is deliberately displayed as part of the state's punitive message."
"Hasan's conviction for intentional murder and the presidential approval of his death sentence do not independently establish the legality of publicly broadcasting his execution," Santos added.
Paul Daley, a columnist for The Guardian Australia, wrote Thursday that the planned livestream—and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's statement that the execution will be made viewable to all to show that "there’s serious consequences for these types of things"—amounted to "state-sanctioned killing as entertainment."
"The world’s supposedly greatest (or formerly greatest) democracy has arrived at a horrific new moral nadir," wrote Daley. "This represents a significant lurch in the US from civilization towards savagery... And this planned livestreamed execution says it all about what is happening in America today, opening the window ever wider on the Trump administration’s moral vacuity and its paucity of human decency."
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