Tag: marco rubio

Federal judge blasts Rubio’s 75-country visa freeze as ‘Orwellian,’ strikes down policy

A federal judge struck down the Trump administration’s freeze on immigrant visas from 75 countries Friday, ruling Secretary of State Marco Rubio lacked the legal authority to order denials for applicants otherwise found eligible to enter the United States.

U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas, a Biden appointee in Manhattan, vacated the State Department policy and any visa refusals based solely on it, directing the government to revisit those cases.

“The Court holds that the Policy is contrary to law and was issued in excess of Secretary Rubio’s statutory authority,” Vargas wrote in her 61-page opinion.

The State Department enacted the policy in January, suspending immigrant visa issuance to nationals of 75 countries the department deemed at high risk of becoming dependent on public benefits. The list spans Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

Rubio’s policy instructed consular officers to review each applicant individually. But even applicants who passed that review showed “additional evidence that demonstrates he or she overcomes the public charge refusal” and had no other reason to be denied were still refused visas if they came from one of the 75 designated countries.

“While the Policy permits consular officers to exercise their normal functions up to a point, whatever determinations they make as to eligibility for the applicants subject to the Policy are ultimately irrelevant,” Vargas wrote. “The outcome is predetermined. The visa will be refused.”

The judge said the directive effectively imposed a nationality-based ban on immigrants from nearly 40% of the world’s countries and sidelined the consular officers Congress charged with deciding whether individual applicants qualify for visas.

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Rubio Announces Sanctions Against International Criminal Court President & Top Lawyer

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Tuesday new sanctions against International Criminal Court President Tomoko Akane and Senior Trial Lawyer Abdoulaye Seye as tensions flare between the court and the Trump administration.

“These individuals have directly engaged in efforts by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute officials whose government has not consented to ICC jurisdiction,” his statement said.

The ICC, he added, has attempted to “assert authority over” over U.S. citizens and nationals of other nations that have not consented to the Rome Statute that set up the court.

The United States is not a party to the ICC.

“Our whole of government campaign to dismantle the threat posed by the ICC to national sovereignty will be sweeping and we expect more countries to join our campaign by ending their funding and participation in this politicized and unaccountable court,” Rubio said, suggesting that “additional measures” may be taken against the Hague, Netherlands-based body.

As Jack Phillips reports for The Epoch Times, the sanctions against Akane and Seye were issued ​under a Trump executive order last year authorizing sanctions against the court, according to Rubio.

In July, Rubio said that the Trump administration would seek to dismantle the ICC by using visa revocations, sanctions, the targeting of individuals, and diplomatic pressure on countries to withdraw from the body.

“The American people never agreed to any of this, and they never will,” Rubio said last month.

“Read the words of our Declaration of Independence. We fought a revolution against a foreign power, transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses. Independence is our birthright. We will never let foreign bureaucrats take that away from us.”

The court, which was established in 2002 to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute, has been adopted by more than 120 countries. Countries that do not recognize the court’s authority include the United States, China, Russia, Israel, India, Saudi Arabia, and more.

However, the ICC has argued that the Rome Statute ​gives the court power to prosecute war crimes committed on the territory of member states by nationals of non-member states.

The Trump administration imposed targeted sanctions last year on several ICC officials such as prosecutors and judges, citing the ICC’s 2024 decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime ​Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over what the court alleged were improper actions carried out by the Israeli government during its war in Gaza.

Earlier this year, three sitting ICC judges sued Trump and his administration over the sanctions, arguing that they were unlawful.

And earlier this month, multiple human rights groups sued the administration over the sanctions, describing the actions and Trump administration order as unconstitutional.

“The plaintiffs are seeking an end to this sanctions regime, which transgresses the president’s authority and violates international and U.S. law, including the rights to freedom of expression and religion,” said lead counsel Andrew Loewenstein in a statement carried by Human Rights Watch, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

The ICC did not immediately respond to an Epoch Times request for comment.

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Veterans For Peace Condemns Marco Rubio’s Threats Against Cuba and Against US Peace and Solidarity Activists

Veterans For Peace has issued a strong condemnation of Marco Rubio’s McCarthyite report, Cuba, the Capital of 21st Century Communism, which was released by the State Department on July 20. The 100-page document charges Cuba with interfering in the internal affairs of the United States, while accusing U.S. peace and solidarity activists of being foreign agents of Cuba.

“Talk about turning things on their head,” responded Veterans For Peace. “It is the U.S. that has waged an economic war against Cuba for 64 years with a blockade that prevents it from normal trade relations with the U.S. and other countries, stunts its economic development, and denies it access to medicines and other essentials.

“It is the U.S. CIA that organized a failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, setting the stage for the 1962 Cuban missile crisis that almost led to a nuclear war. It is the U.S. that is currently enforcing a deadly oil embargo on Cuba, and it is the U.S. president and secretary of state who are openly threatening a U.S. military invasion of Cuba. What has Cuba ever done to the U.S.? Cuba is being punished for declaring its independence from U.S. imperialism and for attempting to develop a socialist economic model that is not based on exploitation and profiteering.

“We reject the Trump administration’s sudden return to “anti-communism” as a means of undermining the credibility of its political opponents — whether from the Democratic Party or actual left-wing organizations. If this is an attempt to intimidate those who are organizing for a just and peaceful world, it will not work. We will not be intimidated. If Trump’s and Rubio’s sudden obsession with “communists” and “political terrorists” is telegraphing their intention for a clampdown on dissent in the U.S., we take this very seriously.

“As veterans and active duty military, we swore an oath to “defend the U.S. Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic.”  We take this oath very seriously — more so than ever as the domestic enemies of our democracy ominously rear their ugly heads.  We will resist.

“Veterans For Peace will not be intimidated. We stand in solidarity with Cuba and with all those who struggle for human rights and democracy in the U.S. We will support active-duty military members who refuse to participate in an illegal invasion of Cuba. We also encourage service members to refuse illegal orders to support racist ICE raids or to suppress our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly in the U.S.” 

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Trump and Rubio Are Reviving the Old Cold War Racket Against Cuba

President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are making me feel like I’m smack dab back in the middle of the old Cold War racket — the racket that succeeded in making the U.S. national-security state and its ever-growing army of “defense” contractors a permanent feature of American life.

The State Department just issued a report that is straight out of the old Cold War playbook. It states that Cuba’s communist regime is behind the democratic socialist movements and radical leftist groups here in America . Reinforcing the report, Rubio delivered a talk last week at a big event hosted by the State Department in which he stated that Cuba’s “sprawling intelligence and ideological network helped to build the far left in our country and in our hemisphere.”

In other words, the Reds are coming to get us … again! Everyone needs to start looking under his bed for a Red … again! And Cuba, which is located only 90 miles away from American shores, is clearly the spearhead of the international communist conspiracy that is determined to take over America … again! Too bad Senator Joseph McCarthy is no longer here when we need him.

First question for Rubio: Is the international communist conspiracy still centered in Moscow or has it moved to Beijing?

Second question for Rubio: Is socialist-communist Cuba also responsible for Rubio’s fervent belief in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public (i.e., government) schooling, and other socialist programs here in the United States?

The Cold War racket was the best thing that ever happened to the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, the three principal components of the U.S. national-security state. By striking deep fear of the Reds within the American people after World War II, warfare statists succeeded in converting the federal government from our founding system of a limited-government republic to a national-security state, which is a totalitarian-like governmental structure — and they did it without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment.

That’s how Americans ended up living under omnipotent government — that is, government that wields the power to assassinate, torture, and incarcerate them for life without due process of law and trial by jury.

It’s also how Americans have come to live under forever war and never-ending crises.

It’s also how Americans live like little serfs under a massive, all-powerful, and very expensive military-intelligence establishment and its ever-growing army of voracious “defense” contractors.

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REPORT: Pentagon Draws Up Plans for Possible Military Action Against Communist Cuba

Senior Pentagon officials are reviewing military options for Cuba as the Trump administration intensifies pressure on Havana’s communist government.

According to CBS News, the planning reportedly includes a possible Army-led air assault involving thousands of U.S. troops from the 101st Airborne Division.

Officials stressed that no operation has been approved and that the discussions remain at the contingency-planning stage.

The review follows months of escalating pressure on the communist regime.

President Trump restored Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism after returning to office, expanded restrictions on travel and financial transactions, and targeted the military-controlled conglomerate GAESA, which dominates much of the island’s hard-currency economy.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has pushed for a negotiated transition to a reform-minded government, but talks have stalled.

In a recent statement, Rubio said Cuba’s ruling elite continues to maintain “total control” while clinging to a “morally bankrupt Marxist ideology.”

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Rubio’s Anti-ICC Campaign Is an Anti-‘Sovereignty’ Project

The International Criminal Court, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio complains in a July 13 Wall Street Journal op-ed, styles itself “a standing world tribunal with near-unlimited reach, empowered to override the courts and constitutions of the U.S. and other sovereign states — and to prosecute and arrest our citizens.”

Accepting that, he claims, “would mean the death of the U.S. as a sovereign and independent nation.”

He’d be right … if the ICC resembled his description of it. But it doesn’t.

The ICC’s jurisdiction — its “reach” — is strictly limited to crimes of specific types, and applies only when those crimes are committed on the soil of, or by citizens of, its 125 member states.

Each of those member states have, pursuant to their own “sovereignty,” ratified the Rome Statute, granting the ICC that jurisdiction.

Rubio’s problem with the ICC isn’t that it can “override the courts and constitutions of the U.S. and other sovereign states.” It’s that when an American allegedly commits a relevant crime on the soil of an ICC member state, the ICC, rather than US courts, adjudicates the matter.

To put it a different way, Rubio’s demand of ICC member states is “global sovereignty for the US, no sovereignty for anyone else.”

The whole idea of “sovereignty,” as codified in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, is that the world’s various regimes possess “legitimate” authority over their respective turf claims. That’s why the courts in Peoria don’t try people accused of reckless driving in Pakistan, or vice versa. And if some of those regimes choose to outsource prosecution of crimes on their respective turfs or by their respective serfs to an “international” court, that’s their prerogative.

Rubio wants it both ways.

The US regime routinely prosecutes — or, in the case of recent strikes on ocean-going vessels, just murders — foreigners for alleged crimes not even committed on US soil. Sometimes it even kidnaps the alleged criminals FROM foreign soil, as with former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.

But if an American soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine allegedly commits a crime in, say, Afghanistan (an ICC member state), he whines that charging, trying, and potentially convicting that American is an outrageous violation of US “sovereignty.”

The real solution to Rubio’s complaint is simple:

If the US government doesn’t want its military personnel charged with crimes, it should stop sending them abroad — or at least not send them to ICC member states — to commit crimes.

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Rubio launches campaign to ‘dismantle’ International Criminal Court

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a new push by the Trump administration against the International Criminal Court (ICC), including efforts to weaken and ultimately dismantle the global tribunal.

On Monday, Rubio (R-Fla.) warned that “powerful people in faraway places” are trying to control the lives of Americans, in an opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal and a video message shared on X.

“The U.S. is launching a diplomatic campaign with a simple message — sovereign states over globalism,” Rubio wrote in the opinion piece. “Using all the tools at our government’s disposal, working beside every ally with whom we can make common cause, we will dismantle the ICC — brick by brick, if necessary.”

America’s diplomatic toolkit features travel bans, canceled visas, harsher sanctions on the ICC and its affiliates and pressure on allied nations to leave the court, a State Department official told Reuters.

In 1998, the foundational treaty for the court known as the Rome Statute was adopted with operations officially beginning in 2002. The court is headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands. Although 125 countries are members, the United States has never officially joined.

“They believe that they should be in charge of your laws, of your country, your life, and they don’t care whether or not you agree,” Rubio said in the X clip.

“When the ICC was born 24 years ago, they told us that it was nearly a narrow backstop: a global court that would step in to prosecute only the gravest offense — things like genocide and war crimes — and only when a nation’s courts were unable to prosecute them on their own,” he continued. “But the truth is, it was something far more radical and extreme: it was a global tribunal staffed by unelected globalist bureaucrats who claim their power is almost unlimited.”

Because the U.S. is not a member of the court, its relationship with the ICC has shifted depending on which administration is in power. Generally, Democrat presidents have been more open to cooperation, while Republican administrations have taken a more critical approach.

“If we stand idle, all of them would be at the mercy of foreign judges thousands of miles away facing the constant risk of prosecution and even imprisonment for the so-called ‘crime’ of defending their own country.”

“The American people never agreed to any of this. And they never will,” Rubio declared.

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Rubio Revokes Legal Status of Alleged Cuban Communist Influence Operative as Feds Take Him and Family Into Custody

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has revoked the legal status of an alleged Cuban Communist influence operative, resulting in federal agents taking the man, his wife, and their son into custody pending removal from the United States in yet another major national security action by the Trump administration.

According to the State Department, Carlos Antonio Lloga Dominguez, a Cuban national who spent more than a decade working as a “foreign subversive” for the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the People (ICAP), the regime’s premier influence and intelligence front group operating on American soil, has been taken into federal custody along with his wife and son. All three are now in federal immigration custody pending removal from the United States.

The State Department announced the action on Wednesday after Rubio terminated their legal status. This is America First leadership in action.

Official Statement from the U.S. State Department:

“This week, three Cuban nationals were apprehended by federal agents following Secretary Rubio’s termination of their legal status. Carlos Antonio Lloga Dominguez – who spent more than a decade working as a foreign subversive for the Communist Cuban regime’s premier influence and intelligence front group in the United States – and his wife and son are now in federal custody pending removal from our country.

Lloga Dominguez spent more than a decade employed by the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the People (ICAP). He has continued to maintain ties to the transnational communist subversion network throughout his time residing in our nation.

ICAP, which Secretary Rubio designated for sanctions under Executive Order 14404 earlier this month, is the central node in a sprawling Cuban intelligence and influence operation, claiming to span more than 2,000 organizations across more than 150 countries.

The organization has a long and intimate relationship with Cuban intelligence agents; in fact, ICAP’s current president, Fernando González Llort, is a convicted Cuban spy who served 15 years in U.S. prison for his role in the infamous Wasp Network — a massive illegal Cuban spy ring uncovered in Florida in the late 1990s.

Working in close coordination with the Cuban communist regime, ICAP maintains an outsized footprint across the United States, trafficking in vile anti-American propaganda, cultivating pro-Havana regime activists and politicians, and lobbying federal, state and local politicians on behalf of the Cuban dictatorship.

The organization facilitates close working relationships between Havana and radical U.S. groups, using America’s far left milieu as a vehicle to export Cuba’s Communist revolution to the United States.

Under the Trump Administration, America will never become home for Cuban Communist regime thugs who peddle propaganda, run foreign influence operations, or seek to wage revolution against American civilization.

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Marco Rubio Helps Israel Pursue Goal of Civil War in Lebanon

After President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance committed the United States to a deconfliction cell with Iran in Switzerland – a mechanism enforcing a ceasefire in Lebanon as well as Iran – Israel and its powerful lobby moved instantly to sabotage it. And in a preview of the sorts of foreign policy fissures that will likely define the 2028 GOP primary, the lobby has deployed Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the man to pursue Israel’s interests and pave the way for Israel’s further occupation of Lebanon.

The first article of the 60-day interim agreement signed by the U.S. and Iran conditions an end to the conflict on the “immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon” and on “ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon.” That second clause, more than any other, appears to be the one Israel is most reluctant to accept.

Despite Israeli withdrawal now required to end a war that now threatens to destabilize the entire global economy, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently said that Israel would occupy southern Lebanon indefinitely, stating that “we dominate southern Lebanon, from the summit of the Beaufort, and we will remain as long as required,” adding that “we do not intend to withdraw from it.” Defense Minister Israel Katz meanwhile said there was “no American demand for Israel to withdraw from Lebanon,” and that Israel would not withdraw even if there were one, later telling reporters that southern Lebanon was Israel’s “playground.”

That Iran has set out to secure the complete “territorial integrity” of Lebanon is unacceptable to Israel, which seeks to ethnically cleanse southern Lebanon and possibly further north, with the goal of seizing the land for the Greater Israel Project.

In order to sabotage a deconfliction track outlined in Switzerland and continue their endless project to secure more lebensraum, the Israelis have turned to the U.S. State Department and the Israel Lobby’s man in charge, Marco Rubio, whose spearheaded deconfliction framework was signed by the governments of Israel and Lebanon in Washington on Friday.

Intended to supplant the one announced by Vance – which the Times of Israel reported “infuriated Israel” – Rubio’s agreement strips out the guarantee of Lebanese territorial integrity that Iran insists is necessary to end the war and replaces it with an Israeli wishlist that includes permissions for continued Israeli occupation of a “security zone” and a plan to deputize Lebanese forces to accomplish the likely-impossible objective of “disarming” Hezbollah.

Such an agreement is unacceptable to Hezbollah, which has vowed to keep fighting until Israeli forces leave Lebanon. That is why Israel and Marco Rubio deliberately excluded the group from the deal, producing a “peace deal” between two warring parties to which only one of them agreed.

Indeed, although the deal was pitched by Marco Rubio as “a framework for lasting peace and security,” statements made by Israelis and Hezbollah in recent days reveal that narrative to be nothing more than propaganda designed exclusively for Western audiences. On Israel’s Channel 13 after the signing of the Rubio deal, an Israeli analyst remarked how “it seems we’re leading the state of Lebanon into civil war,” adding “maybe it’s not so bad for us, let the Lebanese government fight Hezbollah.” That was “the goal from the start,” replied his co-host. Lebanese lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah, who is close to Hezbollah, agreed with the Israeli assessment, telling Al-Mayadeen on Friday that Lebanese ​authorities would not be able to enforce the agreement signed ‌in ‌Washington ​on ‌Friday ⁠unless, with ​U.S. backing, “they go ⁠to civil war.”

As John Mearsheimer foresaw in April, “what I think Netanyahu wants to do is to foment civil war in Lebanon, a war with the government on one side and Hezbollah on the other,” describing the strategy as a way of weakening them both. “The Israelis can’t disarm Hezbollah, so they want the Lebanese government to do it.”

In response to questions about the apparent divergence between the Lebanon frameworks pursued by JD Vance and Marco Rubio, the White House has denied that any divisions exist at all. Israel Katz has essentially said the same, admitting that even after Trump linked the Iran and Lebanon tracks and demanded that Israel stop “bringing down buildings in Beirut,” the IDF expanded ground operations north of the Litani River and enlarged its occupation of southern Lebanon, all of it, Katz said, “carried out with U.S. approval.”

Whether the intra-administration split is real or kayfabe, the status quo in Lebanon and its spoiling effect for a peace deal remain the same.

Harrison Berger is a correspondent at The American Conservative. He has contributed to Drop Site News, The Nation, and Responsible Statecraft. Previously, he was a researcher and producer for System Update with Glenn Greenwald. His work focuses on civil liberties and U.S. foreign policy. He studied Political Science and Russian Studies at Union College (NY).

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The Mladenov Distraction: Behind the Screen, Netanyahu Is Annexing Gaza ‘Step-by-Step’

Gaza requires urgent international attention.

What is happening in the besieged and devastated Strip at the moment by far exceeds an unfolding humanitarian disaster; it is a calculated geopolitical reshaping. Israel is actively executing a plan to permanently occupy the vast majority of Gaza, with consequences that require little elaboration considering what we already know about the ongoing genocide.

Currently, much of the international debate centers on a single official: Bulgarian diplomat Nickolay Mladenov. The former United Nations Special Coordinator has been designated by the United States as the Executive Director of the Trump administration’s newly established ‘Board of Peace’ – an international council founded to oversee the implementation of Washington’s 20-point Gaza roadmap.

The issue, however, is much bigger than a single Washington-backed bureaucrat. A growing number of Palestinians and political analysts accuse Mladenov of manufacturing the very conditions that continue to obstruct progress on the agreement’s transition to its second phase.

Under the framework, the official transition to this second phase – which Trump and the Board of Peace declared to have begun in January 2026 – demands sweeping, one-sided Palestinian concessions, most notably the total disarmament of armed factions.

This demand is a recipe for the failure of the entire project, especially given that Israel has completely failed to implement the most basic requirements of the agreement’s first phase. It has refused to halt its routine military incursions, has failed to withdraw its forces to the originally mandated ‘Yellow Line‘ demarcation, and continues to deny entry permits to the technocratic committee slated to assume civil governance of the Strip.

Mladenov’s insistence on Palestinian disarmament before the agreement can advance – without a single guarantee of Israeli compliance – conveniently flips the narrative. It cynically reframes systematic starvation and the blockade of medical and construction supplies as a Palestinian failure to honor commitments.

In reality, Mladenov holds no real cards; he is merely a cog in a larger machinery controlled by Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli Prime Minister has made it explicitly clear that he has no intention of following any peace roadmap, planning instead for the permanent, incremental takeover of Gaza.

Speaking at a conference in an occupied West Bank settlement on May 28, Netanyahu explained his strategy with total clarity, abandoning all diplomatic doublespeak: “We are currently squeezing Hamas; we now control 60% of the territory of the Strip – you know this. We were at 50, we moved to 60. My directive is to move to…” he said, pausing as an audience member shouted “100!”

Netanyahu smiled and responded: “Let’s go step by step. First of all, 70. Let’s start with that. We’re pressing them from all sides, we’ll deal with the remnants.”

This is the actual blueprint of the Israeli government, declared openly to domestic audiences. The admission was so brazen that even US Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed frustration at Netanyahu’s candor. Testifying before Congress on June 2, Rubio remarked, “We have a plan – it doesn’t call for that,” referring to further Israeli territorial expansion.

Yet, Rubio quickly reverted to Washington’s standard line: “And at the end of the day, we understand that what we want, and I think what the Israelis would ultimately want, is a Gaza that is governed by a non-Hamas entity.”

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