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Secretary Rubio Pledges to Defend American Sovereignty Against the International Criminal Court, Jul. 13, 2026

July 13, 2026 · U.S. Department of State · 0:02:39

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a direct-to-camera statement, published by the State Department on July 13, 2026, framing American self-government — “we choose our own leaders, we determine our own laws,” and the accused “stand for judgment before a jury of our own peers” — as the essential feature of the American system, and the International Criminal Court as its would-be displacer: “powerful people in far away places” who “believe that they should be in charge of your laws, of your country, your life.”

The court, he argued, was sold 24 years ago as “merely a narrow backstop” for the gravest offenses where national courts could not act, and is instead “a global tribunal staffed by unelected globalist bureaucrats who claim their power is almost unlimited.” The danger he named reaches “Border Patrol agents removing violent criminals from our country,” Marines defending the homeland, and prosecutors dismantling terrorist plots — all, if the country stands idle, “at the mercy of foreign judges thousands of miles away.” He closed with the Declaration of Independence — a revolution fought against a foreign power “transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses” — and the administration’s pledge: “If they believe they can deprive us of our sovereignty, we will teach them the full meaning of American resolve.”

Why it matters

The ICC fight is usually conducted in sanctions notices and legal filings; here the Secretary of State takes it to the public himself, in the 250th-anniversary frame, as a sovereignty argument — the administration’s case against the court stated as a founding principle rather than a policy preference.

Sources: U.S. Department of State, “Secretary Rubio Pledges Defense of American Sovereignty Against the International Criminal Court” (official upload, embedded above). Statement as delivered; transcript reviewed in the site’s private research store.