Secretary of State Marco Rubio hit the International Criminal Court with sweeping sanctions Friday, barring all U.S. transactions with the tribunal and vowing to dismantle it unless it drops threats to prosecute American citizens — the sharpest move yet to stop foreign bureaucrats from dictating U.S. policy.

The ICC has already opened probes into American troops over alleged war crimes in Afghanistan and is angling to extend its reach to Border Patrol agents and elected leaders. The United States never joined the court. Both parties in Congress have long rejected its jurisdiction over Americans. But until now, no administration has moved to strangle it outright.

"For decades now, both Republicans and Democrats have rejected the idea that the International Criminal Court has any power to prosecute American citizens, to prosecute military servicemembers, or political leaders because America never joined the court," Rubio said in a video posted on X. "They want more power, and they want it at the expense of our sovereignty as a nation."

Rubio's message to allies was blunt: "Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC." He told nations that belong to the court — and rely on American service members for their defense — to rein it in, or the U.S. will continue "to dismantle the ICC, piece by piece."

The ICC's deputy prosecutor, Nazhat Shameem Khan, told Reuters the sanctions "must be condemned" and would not halt the tribunal's work. "The sanctions are intended to undermine the rule of law internationally," Khan said. The court plans to press forward across all investigations and prosecutions.

This is the same institution that, on the very day Rubio announced sanctions, saw its former judge Navanethem Pillay handed the Nobel Peace Prize — a signal of how entrenched the ICC remains within the Western establishment class that champions global governance over national consent.

The fight has been building for years. In 2020, ICC investigators opened an inquiry into U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sanctioned two prosecutors involved. The Biden administration reversed those sanctions — then reimposed them on more than half a dozen ICC officials in June 2025 after the tribunal refused to drop the probe. President Trump first sanctioned then-prosecutor Karim Khan in February 2025 after Khan threatened to jail Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over alleged war crimes in Gaza.

A Trump administration official told Reuters last December that there are concerns the ICC could pursue prosecutions of the president, cabinet members, or other U.S. officials after a new administration takes office in January 2029. The court's ambitions aren't shrinking — they're expanding.

On Wednesday, Rubio delivered a speech in Athens, Greece, calling on Western nations to join the U.S. in "the unapologetic pursuit of national power" over global bureaucratic bodies. The U.S. refused to sign the 2002 Rome Statute that created the ICC, unlike the UK, Canada, Australia, and most European nations — the same countries now sheltering the court and footing its bills.

Which raises the question Washington refuses to answer: who is lobbying on the ICC's behalf inside the United States, and whose money is keeping that effort alive? Every dollar spent pushing globalist jurisdiction on American soil is a dollar working against the Constitution.

The ICC insists its work will go on. Rubio insists the court will end. One of them is right — and for working Americans, the answer decides whether foreign tribunals get a vote on how this country defends its borders, fights its wars, and governs itself.