Trump’s ICC Crackdown Blows Up In His Face As MORE Americans Sue!

Right, so Donald Trump's major campaign against the International Criminal Court has hit a rather big snag. The American people themselves. Well, some of them at least anyway.Four American organisations now say Trump's ICC sanctions have affected them as well.Not because Donald has personally marched into Human Rights Watch headquarters with his little book of sanctions, all written out in gold sharpie or sent the Treasury in to rob them of their lunch money, but because the sanctions are making it more difficult, and sometimes impossible, for them to continue doing things like legal representation, ICC submissions, human-rights research, advocacy, working with sanctioned Palestinian groups, and even just the bare minimum of the actual humanitarian work.And now they're taking him to court over it.That's Human Rights Watch, the Centre for Constitutional Rights, American Friends Service Committee, and the Open Society Institute.Four American organisations.And they're not just saying Trump is being unfriendly to the ICC. They argue his sanctions are interfering with real work. Legal work. Human-rights work. Advocacy. Cooperation with people and organisations caught up in this sanctions regime. For example, some report they've had to stop legal representation connected to ICC cases and hold back submissions they would otherwise have made to the court.So no, these groups haven't officially been put on some sort of a Trump blocklist.But if you can no longer do something because someone else has been sanctioned, and because interacting with them, working with them, or even dealing with them could bring a whole set of legal and financial troubles down on you, then honestly, the difference starts to seem pretty theoretical.Especially when you're the one forced to stop.And this is where Marco Rubio's late-night pitch for American virtue starts to unravel faster than a cheap sweater in a tumble dryer.Because the Trump administration hasn't described any of this as an attack on human-rights organisations or lawyers in America.Actually, quite the opposite. America, according to Rubio, is the innocent party here.The ICC is the dangerous one.