Pretty sure even a lot of the current President's voters are slowly coming to this same realization. I predict soon in casual conversation almost no one will have voted for this man.
That's what I thought after he lost in 2020. And yet he came back in 2024 winning even more votes, both in absolute terms and in percentage, than he did in either 2016 or 2020.
I think Kamala would have been a terrible President but immeasurably better than Trump. She wasn’t openly, brazenly corrupt and self dealing nor an authoritarian with little interest in actual governing or the good of the nation he leads.
I'm not American but Ive been following US politics somewhat closely for a few years. And frankly, I can see where that opinion would be coming from. If I was American , I would not have been able to vote for Democrats either. Nor would I have voted for Trump... But the last election (and likely the upcoming one too) are basically down to who is less outlandishly horrendous.
Democrats seem to mostly run on literal socialism right now. And not how the US has traditionally exaggerated everything like regulated health insurance as socialism -- but actual and literal socialism... And identify politics, gender politics etc.
So if you're a working age normal person, you're kinda left with voting for the person that literally goes on air, blaming you for everything bad in the world... Or the person that's gonna fuck you over but at least tell you that you're not the issue.
The Camela Harris campaign was seriously... Insane for a lack of a better term.
There is no way this is happening. The logistics alone will be killer and as bad as things are, there is nothing that would be gained by this that would be worth the pain it would cause.
To the extent that there are geographic differences, it is not between red states and blue states, but rural vs. urban. Even in texas the major cities almost all go blue.
If by "UNDER HALF" you mean who voted for him then I don't know what you are talking about. Trump won the electoral AND the popular vote. And don't go counting non voters as against Trump.
By every metric the US wanted Trump and they got Trump.
Corruption and criminality is brazen, prices for everything are through the roof, there's an energy shortage, it started and is losing a new war, third biggest budget deficit in history (this same regime was responsible for the #1 biggest), but sure, everything is going great, comrade, the Party tells you that nothing is wrong.
Whats the timeline on that promised $1.99 gas, again? Or was that going to be $1.99/litre?
It’s a travesty but I think “never going to come back from this” is a stretch. There is no immediate replacement for the position the US holds in global politics. China has no interest in being the guarantor of freedom of transit in international waterways, to pick one example.
You're talking about some kind of projection in hard power. it's likely that the US will continue to wield the most hard power for the foreseeable future (though this war with iran has exposed logistics issues in that, as well as drained important armaments that will take years to recover).
The bigger loss is in soft power, the power that comes from economics, having the worlds reserve currency, and even the trust and respect of our allies.
Well really most of the consumers of the goodness that the US represented in international politics, including your example, are just being lazy and hoping the US will cover their arses. The sudden, stark realisation that they have been exposed by the instability of the US really kicked off the sovereign initiatives.
> China has no interest in being the guarantor of freedom of transit in international waterways
What makes you think of this? Also, why wouldn't China pick up this role, when they heavily rely on this, or why wouldn't bilateral agreements be enough?
> China has no interest in being the guarantor of freedom of transit in international waterways, to pick one example.
The Strait of Hormuz has entered the chat.
So much of American "power" in the past few decades has been based on perception, not reality. And other major powers, including China, have largely played along because it has suited their interests too.
But it's a mistake to assume that just because other major powers haven't sought conflict with the US, it means they're not capable of challenging America's power credibly in certain regions and domains.
Of note: the US doesn't even have an aircraft carrier in the Pacific right now. The only thing keeping China from, say, moving on Taiwan, is Pete Hegseth's testosterone.
It's not just this administration. The US helped create this court and pushed other countries to join, but never joined themselves and always threatened the court if they indicted or judged American people.
There's an US law that says the US will invade Belgium if the court wanted to investigate an American (???)
I remember Hillary Clinton, in the Obama administration, saying the US is an exceptional country that deserves exceptional conditions regarding this issue
It's worse than an embarrassment - it is an indictment of democracy itself. It is difficult to imagine a people - on paper the richest, most educated and healthiest in the history of the world - intentionally choosing a real villain as their duly-elected leader. They elected a man whose outrages, corruptions, selfishness, malice and outright crimes are so egregious and obvious that the problem becomes organizing so long a list into a workable taxonomy. But he's not done this alone - SCOTUS is in his pocket and truly made him above the law. The Republicans have enabled him by staying silent and riding on his coattails - the most "principled" of them have retired. Media is consolidated and owned by the oligarchs he calls friends. He has a personal paramilitary force (ICE) roaming the streets, killing people, and who will be "observing" the mid-term elections.
The root of the problem is in the collective mind of Americans. We are the problem - we've been hacked to be both stupid and proud of that stupidity, to cease recognizing "character" or "virtue" as a signal, to cease caring about reality that doesn't support opinions that were installed on us, like malware, or anything really except entertainment. Because that's the ONE thing we do get out of all this - we get to be entertained. How funny when he says outlandish things like immigrants are eating the cats, eating the dogs! How hilarious (and macho!) when he brags about grabbing women. How wonderful it is to see the discomfiture of the libs when he parrots Nazi propaganda or when he encouraged the Proud Boys to storm the capital to overturn his loss, and then his lackeys claimed it either didn't happen or was a false flag. "Hang Mike Pence!" is what an obese, fentanyl- and TikTok-addicted mind thinks is doing something! And hey, you can say "retard" again without getting canceled.
> It is difficult to imagine a people - on paper the richest, most educated and healthiest in the history of the world - intentionally choosing a real villain as their duly-elected leader.
Arguably the richest in terms of the GDP per capita, but I don't think Americans have ever been the most educated or healthiest in the world.
We'll see how the midterm civil war goes, but I'm guessing you should take your kids out of that place if only to offer them a future where this is no longer an option.
> It's worse than an embarrassment - it is an indictment of democracy itself.
Democracy is fine and well, it's an indictment of americans. Considering the 2 times this century the popular vote winner didn't get into power. And that the current president was given power twice.
> It is difficult to imagine a people - on paper the richest, most educated and healthiest in the history of the world -
The fact that you think these are true is part of the problem.
The qualification "on paper" was important, and seems to have been lost on you. BTW democracy itself is not okay - backsliding is rampant across the world, as are education scores, and the one commonality is the internet. The problem with America specifically is that we do have a lot of money, a lot of power and so the destruction we specifically can cause is much greater than, say, Turkey or the UK.
What are you talking about. US's congress and senate are completely silent and approving what is obvious corruption. It is very unlikely that Americans didn't know about the corruption during the first pass and it extremely unlikely that their representatives don't know. They don't act, either because they approve it or that democracy is no longer. Take your pick.
Sometimes you need to touch the stove and get burned to learn that its hot. This is something that tends to be repeated once people forget about the last time they (as a collective nation) touched the stove.
Sometimes it can be learned with a simple first degree burn. Sometimes you get blisters. Sometimes the government in power is determined to hold their hand to it and get third degree burns.
Hopefully the pain from this round of burns can be remembered for a while longer before its repeated again.
This seems like an overstatement. After all, Germany came back from Nazism.
I also think this is not a uniquely American problem. If anything, the US is a political bellwether. And I would note that Australian Rupert Murdoch for example has been funding right-wing propaganda in the US, as well as some other countries, for decades. (Donald Trump himself is known as a voracious consumer of right-wing media. He's in their target demographic.) In addition to donating massive amounts of money to US Republicans, South African Elon Musk has also taken an interest in other countries such as the UK. The Israel lobby is of course very powerful in the US. This is an international problem. As arguably the most powerful nation in the world, the US is a natural target for those who would abuse that power.
The International Criminal Court is a farce. How can you tell other sovereign nation what is a "crime" or what "is not a crime"? It has literally zero authority to decide such matters.
You appear to be confused. Anyone can decide anything, the question is whether it is in their power to enforce their decisions.
Saying that they don't have authority to make a decision implies that there's some universal set of rules that internationally lays down what anyone's authority is - precisely the kind of thing you appear to be opposed to, because such a set of rules would likely need a court!
Seems to be a rather silly, pedantic point if it even passes. GP was clearly talking about sovereignty etc. which is exactly the caveat that you granted - that ICC may have no enforcement power over non-treaty countries. For the record I have no axe to grind with the ICC, but you and GP literally agree on the main difficulty facing the institution.
This is exactly the kind of discussion where the difference is important. Your reading of the point they were trying to make is impressively charitable. I shall try to learn from it.
If the point is that anyone can tell anyone else anything, that's vacuously true but a court typically wields the power of a state and its code of laws. For treaty countries ICC is perfectly unproblematic but for nontreaty countries there's a strong difficulty in calling it a court as it bears no legal legitimacy.
National courts routinely issue arrest warrants and rulings for persons of other nationalities, who could currently be located anywhere in the world. The ICC is not special in that regard.
I have to applaud coming up with a sentence like that.
Let me address the point underlying that contortion by asking a question: In the alternate semantic universe we're constructing, if that Russian later passes through a US-friendly country and is arrested, did the US court turn out to retroactively have had the authority to issue the warrant, and we pretend it always had it, or is it supposed to work some other way?
Well a lot of international diplomacy depends on trade and associated meetings. If someone is sanctioned by the ICC then they can't move money or visit any member countries.
So you are saying that USA is entitled to act with criminal intent and it has no one to answer to? If that is the case, why should it be a trusted entity at all as a nation which claims human rights and democratic rights and abiding by laws?
It has as much if not more authority to judge crimes commited in the member countries that gave it that authority than Trump has to sanction them in the first place.
How can a nation decide what is and isn't a crime? It's all made up, a "farce" to use your diction. We just choose to go along and build these institutions because living in lawlessness is worse.
Why should we believe in the fantasy of the nation state, but not in the fantasy of international law? It's all just social constructs to create an ordered society that stops the worst excesses.
The sanctions announcement coincided with a former ICC judge, Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her contributions to enlarging the scope and impact of international law. -- https://thehill.com/policy/international/6138693-rubio-impos...
The American Service-Members' Protection Act has been US law since 2002, and was nicknamed "the Hague Invasion Act, since the act would allow the president to order military action in The Hague, the seat of the ICC, to prevent U.S. or allied officials and military personnel from being prosecuted or detained by the ICC." The sanctions are new, but the posture is old and bipartisan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
I know there's a lot of (deserved) hate for the current administration, but the ICC situation is somewhat nuanced. You can argue that international law doesn't / shouldn't exist because each country has the right to self-determination, and any disputes on that line are always decided by who has more economic sway or military strength. There's no world police that a smaller and less powerful country can send to arrest the leaders of a more powerful neighbor, unless they find enough friends with fighter jets.
Now, as it happens, the US is one of the most economically and militarily powerful states out there, so they're the closest we have to an actual world police - but again, that police doesn't follow "international law", they act in what they think is the best interest of the West (or the US specifically). That's how all regional powers roll, albeit on a smaller scale. Russia and China make claims to neighboring states, Germany unceremoniously protects its economic interests in the EU, Iran bankrolls terrorists in neighboring states who in turn bomb Iran, and so on.
The ICC is a bit unusual in that it's an initiative of some Western states trying to get the most powerful state to play by their rules. It's a nice try, but also... obviously doomed?
And it's not something the US can ignore, because the court does assert the authority to arrest and try US servicemen and politicians. So this was kinda inevitable, and if you think the sanctions are bad, consider the bipartisan Hague Invasion Act of 2002: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
Thank you for actually addressing the philosophical elephant in the room. There's way too much vitriol substituting rational thought when it comes to courts in general, doubly so for international courts. They are compacts and agreements, no matter what scale you're looking at, and there's a reason depictions of "Justice" as a lady hold scales and a sword. Neither one works without the other. The term "outlaw" used to mean outside the protection of the law, in both directions. What do these courts protect America from?
That being said, sanctioning them feels a bit odd. Might be some latent jingoism but I don't see a threat from the ICC being substantial to US citizens.
I thought the ultimate root of this situation is still 3rd Reich and the realization that, for the most part, the Nazis didn’t break any laws. They passed laws, legally, making all their horrid designs legal, then carried them out.
Which is a long way of saying, there’s a consensus that there are standards higher than national law we may want to uphold.
I know ICC is later, and also US never joined, in a somewhat hypocritical compromise. But at least the purpose and motivation, IMO, are clean and noble.
One can also argue that, exactly because there is the right to self-determination, there is a huge need for a inter-national and super-national organism to ensure that a right of some country doesn't jeopardise the rights of others.
Is the ICC the right organism? Maybe, maybe not; we can argue about that.
Why stop there? Let's do all other collaborative groups that don't put the US and their corrupted agenda first. You wanna be left alone and we don't want to have you so just make the calls.
Regardless - I think it's safe to assume this isn't happening in a vacuum - there are a number of world players who profit from the collapse of the U.S. And all this trouble started the moment they could use the internet to feed stupid Americans their stupid propaganda.
Europe is getting the same firehose of stupid propaganda and is looking a little shaky. Education and history give Europe an advantage but not immunity. There are stupid people everywhere eager to get their hate on.
Suicide implies something specific happening in a short time.
EU (which is what you presumably mean by "europe") has its own problems, but it do so much in such a short time. UK got close with Brexit, but that's like a single event compared to probably dozens by now by the US in last 2 years.
But you won't see any of that if best you could do was some weak whataboutism.
Yes a judge a Canadian woman was not able to book a hotel since her credit card was cancelled. And other services as well anything needed a credit card to work.
"You start to lose services from American companies, Amazon, Google, potentially Apple, whatever it may be," she told Morning Edition. "Completely randomly, though, you don't know when something's going to happen."
One of those moments came during an ordinary moment at home.
"I went home and Alexa wouldn't talk to me," she told NPR's Steve Inskeep.
Her credit cards, issued in the Netherlands and Canada, were canceled. She has managed to keep some bank accounts, but says her banking services are extremely limited and even small transfers can be blocked.
Scope of the sanctions is unclear, but it seems unlikely to me. This appears more like "US companies can't do direct business with the ICC organization."
E.g., the ICC ditched Microsoft last year, likely foreseeing this type of action.
These reactions are reasonable and are largely due to the US sanctions imposed on European judges at the ICC.
Nicolas Guillou, the French judge, has had all his bank assets in the US frozen; he has been banned from all US digital services (Google, Apple, Visa, Mastercard), as have many of his familly just in case.
There are literally proven war criminals who are not treated in the same way.
Does this mean that Microsoft or Google can no longer offer services (like mail/office/search etc..) to the ICC? Similar to what happened with the ICC prosecutor last year?
This is not a perfect analogy: when I choose not to join a club, I have a reasonable expectation of that club not declaring me its member, and not fighting me for failing to follow the rules that the club established.
If you go to someone else's house who is a member of that club and has agreed to follow its rules, it's not crazy to think you'd be held to them there.
Which is all the ICC can do to nations that aren't signatories to the Rome statute.
> it's not crazy to think you'd be held to them there.
It's not crazy to think that I won't be served meat if I'm going to a house of a vegetarian. It is however crazy to think that I will be stoned in that house for having eaten meat in the past.
It's really not complicated. You can be prosecuted for crimes committed inside another state even if you were not physically present in that state. When that state has ratified the Rome Statute then you can be prosecuted by the ICC because that state lends its jurisdiction to the ICC.
I think those are the sactions; the US is upset the ICC put out arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Regardless of what you think about Israel, it's easy to see how they might interpret the ICC's actions as a threat.
I was getting rather tired of SV opinions shaping all of our daily lives far outside the SV, but I did not expect that this would be how that would slowly end.
Not a week passes without the US giving other nations very good reasons to cut out any dependencies on anything under their jurisdiction.
Is California now panicking and exiting the United states? That would be really funny.
Some context per the below articles, and as a general IR nerd.
The proximal cause of the sanctions appears to be that the Nobel Peace Prize was won by a former ICC judge, and Trump covets it.
The distal cause is that the US never joined the ICC, arguing that US political & military leaders should not be subject to a binding foreign jurisdiction. This is a longstanding disagreement, with bipartisan consensus in DC.
Putting pressure on this disagreement, the ICC has a warrants out for Netanyahu and others that the current administration views as a political & military ally.
My interpretation is basically: this is a petty move about the Nobel, which builds on a long-simmering disagreement about the role of international law.
I'd say that the longstanding disagreement is used as a pretext today. Hence the need to stress twice the "bipartisan" nature of it, implying, the article suggests, the bipartisan support to this new move.
Isn't the concept of "bipartisan" anything suspicious today? Republicans turned away from most of the "movement conservative" principles in 2017. Rule of law personal responsibility, small local government, free markets, all either ignored or only paid lip service.
Previous bipartisan consensus thus means nothing. Bipartisan consensus now means everyone capitulated to Trump's whim of the day.
Bipartisan consensus means "at this moment, neither party opposes this policy"
It is indeed fragile since, as you point out, it only takes one party (or in Rs case, one person) to eliminate the consensus. Consensus comes and goes.
And yet, it's notable when through the chaos, both parties have consistently maintained lockstep agreement for 30 years.
A lot of these weird actions actually build on long-simmering disagreements. Which is weird - like if a state governor got drunk and tried to shut down immigration enforcement.
Is this a legitimate policy decision? Maybe - but it sure reads like the ranting of a drunk.
The picture is much clearer when you accept that they are never jokes.
"They're trolling" is simply a juvenile defense that provides the cult and its members with plausible deniability.
The world might be slightly better off if we'd all taken them seriously from the start, but taking clowns and the accompanying circus seriously is unintuitive to most.
I knew we were all doomed 10 years ago when Trump was promoting his wall and claiming Mexico was gonna pay for it. Mexican officials pushed back, saying "We're not paying". Trump responded by telling his supporters that every time Mexico refuses to pay, the wall is gonna get 10 feet taller. That doesn't even make any sense, but MAGA ate it up, simply because it agitated people. That's it.
The sanctions announcement coincided with a former ICC judge, Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her contributions to enlarging the scope and impact of international law. -- https://thehill.com/policy/international/6138693-rubio-impos...
The Americans got upset first because the ICC wants to take action against the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people.
But now it just happens to be that their president didn't get the Nobel peace price. The person who did was a judge on the ICC.
It could be a complete coincidence, of course. I mean, if it isn't, it would reinforce the notion of the USA being a clown of a country, which I'm sure Americans would prevent.
> For decades, Republicans and Democrats alike rejected the idea that the International Criminal Court had the power to prosecute American citizens, military servicemembers, or political leaders. America never joined the court. We don’t need it. And we don’t want it.
I mean this is your answer. Regardless of what you think about Israel and their actions, the ICC has no real authority, and there is no government authority above the US that can criminally charge people. Creating fake arrest warrants for people who aren't in your organization is easily interpreted as a threat, and it would be silly to think the US and/or Israel would want to retaliate to the ICC's threats.
Really the moral thing to do would be for the ICC to not try and charge or convict people who aren't part of their organization, since they don't have fair trials, but I suppose that's never how these international organizations work.
The last round of ICC sanctions got everyone here talking about tech sovereignty, now France and Germany are rolling their own productivity suites, the Netherlands are rolling their own NixOS distro, etc etc.
This is just going to further hurt US interests. Biting the hand that feeds, burning down their own empire out of hubris. And Americans voted for this! Twice!
It's time the EU rolls out the Blocking Statute [0] to counteract this nonsense.
Also, bear in mind that the first time he won he lost the popular vote by 2.1 percentage points. We have a voting system that favors less populous states. In 2024 he won the popular vote by 1.5 percentage points. He has never been very popular in this country. But his party controls all branches of government and he controls his party.
It turns out electing a stupid, vengeful narcissist and liar who is at death's door is not the way to go.
There is cantillon effect happening here with respect to trust in govts. media and institutions in general. People are becoming distrustful but slowly. Those who are on internet a lot know about these topics in depth but people farther away take time to adjust to New Reality.
He will try but even the Supreme Court has shown they are willing to place limits on his power, ruling against him in some cases. So I don't think he has a pathway to bypassing the 22nd Amendment.
It's truly bizarre. I think some of his supporters think that they are all in on the joke and that he doesn't mean half of it. But at this point there is zero evidence good faith, zero evidence of strategy. Just one odd PR stunt after another that someone can day trade on if they know about it a few hours in advance.
Pretty sure even a lot of the current President's voters are slowly coming to this same realization. I predict soon in casual conversation almost no one will have voted for this man.
"Democrats eat babies, are Satanist, globalists, shadow-government elite that trump is saving us from!": said the Coin Dealer.
I wish I was doing hyperbole... I really wish that I was...
You cannot identify idiocy if you are an idiot.
Pretty much everything that is worse because of decisions that Trump made.
Democrats seem to mostly run on literal socialism right now. And not how the US has traditionally exaggerated everything like regulated health insurance as socialism -- but actual and literal socialism... And identify politics, gender politics etc.
So if you're a working age normal person, you're kinda left with voting for the person that literally goes on air, blaming you for everything bad in the world... Or the person that's gonna fuck you over but at least tell you that you're not the issue.
The Camela Harris campaign was seriously... Insane for a lack of a better term.
There is no way this is happening. The logistics alone will be killer and as bad as things are, there is nothing that would be gained by this that would be worth the pain it would cause.
To the extent that there are geographic differences, it is not between red states and blue states, but rural vs. urban. Even in texas the major cities almost all go blue.
By every metric the US wanted Trump and they got Trump.
Whats the timeline on that promised $1.99 gas, again? Or was that going to be $1.99/litre?
The bigger loss is in soft power, the power that comes from economics, having the worlds reserve currency, and even the trust and respect of our allies.
Neither does the US anymore.
US influence has gone up in the smoke of broken economic agreements, psychotic bloviation, and tariff wars.
If all you can do is threaten other people/countries to stand beside you, you have no friends.
Bridges are burned that will never be rebuilt.
What makes you think of this? Also, why wouldn't China pick up this role, when they heavily rely on this, or why wouldn't bilateral agreements be enough?
The Strait of Hormuz has entered the chat.
So much of American "power" in the past few decades has been based on perception, not reality. And other major powers, including China, have largely played along because it has suited their interests too.
But it's a mistake to assume that just because other major powers haven't sought conflict with the US, it means they're not capable of challenging America's power credibly in certain regions and domains.
Of note: the US doesn't even have an aircraft carrier in the Pacific right now. The only thing keeping China from, say, moving on Taiwan, is Pete Hegseth's testosterone.
There's an US law that says the US will invade Belgium if the court wanted to investigate an American (???)
I remember Hillary Clinton, in the Obama administration, saying the US is an exceptional country that deserves exceptional conditions regarding this issue
It's frankly ridiculous
Pretty wild that the US has a law that literally says it must invade another country if they judge Americans for war crimes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
The root of the problem is in the collective mind of Americans. We are the problem - we've been hacked to be both stupid and proud of that stupidity, to cease recognizing "character" or "virtue" as a signal, to cease caring about reality that doesn't support opinions that were installed on us, like malware, or anything really except entertainment. Because that's the ONE thing we do get out of all this - we get to be entertained. How funny when he says outlandish things like immigrants are eating the cats, eating the dogs! How hilarious (and macho!) when he brags about grabbing women. How wonderful it is to see the discomfiture of the libs when he parrots Nazi propaganda or when he encouraged the Proud Boys to storm the capital to overturn his loss, and then his lackeys claimed it either didn't happen or was a false flag. "Hang Mike Pence!" is what an obese, fentanyl- and TikTok-addicted mind thinks is doing something! And hey, you can say "retard" again without getting canceled.
I've got kids and I'm terrified for them.
Arguably the richest in terms of the GDP per capita, but I don't think Americans have ever been the most educated or healthiest in the world.
Democracy is fine and well, it's an indictment of americans. Considering the 2 times this century the popular vote winner didn't get into power. And that the current president was given power twice.
> It is difficult to imagine a people - on paper the richest, most educated and healthiest in the history of the world -
The fact that you think these are true is part of the problem.
(I am from the country that voted to leave the EU...)
Sometimes it can be learned with a simple first degree burn. Sometimes you get blisters. Sometimes the government in power is determined to hold their hand to it and get third degree burns.
Hopefully the pain from this round of burns can be remembered for a while longer before its repeated again.
This seems like an overstatement. After all, Germany came back from Nazism.
I also think this is not a uniquely American problem. If anything, the US is a political bellwether. And I would note that Australian Rupert Murdoch for example has been funding right-wing propaganda in the US, as well as some other countries, for decades. (Donald Trump himself is known as a voracious consumer of right-wing media. He's in their target demographic.) In addition to donating massive amounts of money to US Republicans, South African Elon Musk has also taken an interest in other countries such as the UK. The Israel lobby is of course very powerful in the US. This is an international problem. As arguably the most powerful nation in the world, the US is a natural target for those who would abuse that power.
Saying that they don't have authority to make a decision implies that there's some universal set of rules that internationally lays down what anyone's authority is - precisely the kind of thing you appear to be opposed to, because such a set of rules would likely need a court!
You seem to have arrived at a suitable definition of "authority"
Let me address the point underlying that contortion by asking a question: In the alternate semantic universe we're constructing, if that Russian later passes through a US-friendly country and is arrested, did the US court turn out to retroactively have had the authority to issue the warrant, and we pretend it always had it, or is it supposed to work some other way?
That is authority if you like it or not.
Refresh my memory, what did USA choose about that?
If you equate what the Presidents of the USA want to what the USA itself wants, then the USA have decided they don't want that.
If not, then you'd need to organize a referendum and let the population itself decide on a one person, one vote basis.
EDIT: forgot the peace prize, trump likely mad over that again.
Rules for thee, not for me.
The U.S., along with China, India, Russia, and many other nations, are not members and do not grant any weight to ICC rulings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court#C...
Why should we believe in the fantasy of the nation state, but not in the fantasy of international law? It's all just social constructs to create an ordered society that stops the worst excesses.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2026/pillay/facts/
Wow, so tough, much decision
Now, as it happens, the US is one of the most economically and militarily powerful states out there, so they're the closest we have to an actual world police - but again, that police doesn't follow "international law", they act in what they think is the best interest of the West (or the US specifically). That's how all regional powers roll, albeit on a smaller scale. Russia and China make claims to neighboring states, Germany unceremoniously protects its economic interests in the EU, Iran bankrolls terrorists in neighboring states who in turn bomb Iran, and so on.
The ICC is a bit unusual in that it's an initiative of some Western states trying to get the most powerful state to play by their rules. It's a nice try, but also... obviously doomed? And it's not something the US can ignore, because the court does assert the authority to arrest and try US servicemen and politicians. So this was kinda inevitable, and if you think the sanctions are bad, consider the bipartisan Hague Invasion Act of 2002: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
That being said, sanctioning them feels a bit odd. Might be some latent jingoism but I don't see a threat from the ICC being substantial to US citizens.
Which is a long way of saying, there’s a consensus that there are standards higher than national law we may want to uphold.
I know ICC is later, and also US never joined, in a somewhat hypocritical compromise. But at least the purpose and motivation, IMO, are clean and noble.
One can also argue that, exactly because there is the right to self-determination, there is a huge need for a inter-national and super-national organism to ensure that a right of some country doesn't jeopardise the rights of others.
Is the ICC the right organism? Maybe, maybe not; we can argue about that.
Thank goodness.
Regardless - I think it's safe to assume this isn't happening in a vacuum - there are a number of world players who profit from the collapse of the U.S. And all this trouble started the moment they could use the internet to feed stupid Americans their stupid propaganda.
People are really dumb. Who knew?
EU (which is what you presumably mean by "europe") has its own problems, but it do so much in such a short time. UK got close with Brexit, but that's like a single event compared to probably dozens by now by the US in last 2 years.
But you won't see any of that if best you could do was some weak whataboutism.
Do these sanctions also affect anyone working at the ICC?
https://www.npr.org/2026/10/01/nx-s1-5977815/trump-icc-sanct...
"You start to lose services from American companies, Amazon, Google, potentially Apple, whatever it may be," she told Morning Edition. "Completely randomly, though, you don't know when something's going to happen."
One of those moments came during an ordinary moment at home.
"I went home and Alexa wouldn't talk to me," she told NPR's Steve Inskeep.
Her credit cards, issued in the Netherlands and Canada, were canceled. She has managed to keep some bank accounts, but says her banking services are extremely limited and even small transfers can be blocked.
E.g., the ICC ditched Microsoft last year, likely foreseeing this type of action.
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1ommt2f/the_int...
Nicolas Guillou, the French judge, has had all his bank assets in the US frozen; he has been banned from all US digital services (Google, Apple, Visa, Mastercard), as have many of his familly just in case.
There are literally proven war criminals who are not treated in the same way.
Which is all the ICC can do to nations that aren't signatories to the Rome statute.
It's not crazy to think that I won't be served meat if I'm going to a house of a vegetarian. It is however crazy to think that I will be stoned in that house for having eaten meat in the past.
"The answer is YES!"
Is it "Are we the baddies?"
ding ding ding ding
Not a week passes without the US giving other nations very good reasons to cut out any dependencies on anything under their jurisdiction.
Is California now panicking and exiting the United states? That would be really funny.
- from California with love.
Are the ICC already terrorists, or not yet? Asking for a friend who doesn't want to get bombed.
The proximal cause of the sanctions appears to be that the Nobel Peace Prize was won by a former ICC judge, and Trump covets it.
The distal cause is that the US never joined the ICC, arguing that US political & military leaders should not be subject to a binding foreign jurisdiction. This is a longstanding disagreement, with bipartisan consensus in DC.
Putting pressure on this disagreement, the ICC has a warrants out for Netanyahu and others that the current administration views as a political & military ally.
My interpretation is basically: this is a petty move about the Nobel, which builds on a long-simmering disagreement about the role of international law.
https://apnews.com/article/us-icc-trump-rubio-4ea3555403e3c6... https://www.reuters.com/world/us-imposes-sanctions-internati...
Previous bipartisan consensus thus means nothing. Bipartisan consensus now means everyone capitulated to Trump's whim of the day.
It is indeed fragile since, as you point out, it only takes one party (or in Rs case, one person) to eliminate the consensus. Consensus comes and goes.
And yet, it's notable when through the chaos, both parties have consistently maintained lockstep agreement for 30 years.
See the similarity here...?
I suspect this one was actually meant as a joke, although it is not remotely funny in my opinion.
Someone in Trump's orbit who writes them gets an immature charge out of trolling people.
So far my prediction about Trump have sadly been correct: The US is getting weaker and poorer every day.
Is this a legitimate policy decision? Maybe - but it sure reads like the ranting of a drunk.
"They're trolling" is simply a juvenile defense that provides the cult and its members with plausible deniability.
The world might be slightly better off if we'd all taken them seriously from the start, but taking clowns and the accompanying circus seriously is unintuitive to most.
That describes MAGA perfectly.
I knew we were all doomed 10 years ago when Trump was promoting his wall and claiming Mexico was gonna pay for it. Mexican officials pushed back, saying "We're not paying". Trump responded by telling his supporters that every time Mexico refuses to pay, the wall is gonna get 10 feet taller. That doesn't even make any sense, but MAGA ate it up, simply because it agitated people. That's it.
But now it just happens to be that their president didn't get the Nobel peace price. The person who did was a judge on the ICC.
It could be a complete coincidence, of course. I mean, if it isn't, it would reinforce the notion of the USA being a clown of a country, which I'm sure Americans would prevent.
https://www.icc-cpi.int/defendant/netanyahu
I mean this is your answer. Regardless of what you think about Israel and their actions, the ICC has no real authority, and there is no government authority above the US that can criminally charge people. Creating fake arrest warrants for people who aren't in your organization is easily interpreted as a threat, and it would be silly to think the US and/or Israel would want to retaliate to the ICC's threats.
Really the moral thing to do would be for the ICC to not try and charge or convict people who aren't part of their organization, since they don't have fair trials, but I suppose that's never how these international organizations work.
Another match lighting US soft power on fire
The last round of ICC sanctions got everyone here talking about tech sovereignty, now France and Germany are rolling their own productivity suites, the Netherlands are rolling their own NixOS distro, etc etc.
This is just going to further hurt US interests. Biting the hand that feeds, burning down their own empire out of hubris. And Americans voted for this! Twice!
It's time the EU rolls out the Blocking Statute [0] to counteract this nonsense.
[0] https://finance.ec.europa.eu/eu-and-world/open-strategic-aut...
For many Americans, three times!
And for many Americans, never.
Also, bear in mind that the first time he won he lost the popular vote by 2.1 percentage points. We have a voting system that favors less populous states. In 2024 he won the popular vote by 1.5 percentage points. He has never been very popular in this country. But his party controls all branches of government and he controls his party.
It turns out electing a stupid, vengeful narcissist and liar who is at death's door is not the way to go.
So, good news I guess. Everything is fine. Trump is the best president ever in the history of the world.
Even they have their limits.
- Are We the Baddies?