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Trump Squandered America's Strategic Advantage

Another week has gone by and the Felon still has not found a means to exit the war with Iran that he started by choice and against the advice of experienced intelligence and military personnel who predicted that Iran would use the Strait of Hormuz as a weapon against both America's and the world's economy.  Despite the Felon's claims to have "won" the war and that Iran is "desperate for a deal", no settlement has been achieved and the negotiations between Iran and Oman to date would leave Iran controlling which ships would be granted entry to Persian Gulf - a situation the opposite of free access that existed before the Felon's war of choice. Worse yet, as additional strikes are launched by Iran and the USA, the war has left America weakened with depleted munitions reserves - especially in terms on Patriot and THAAD missiles - and I ran having demonstrated that (much like Ukraine is showing with Russia) a weaker power can hold a far stronger power at bay.   Meanwhile, Iran has threatened Saudi Arabia that tying itself to America will not protect it from attack even as Pete Hegseth - who is clearly far out of his league at the Pentagon - fires yet another top general.  Iran seemingly recognizes that the Felon has created an impossible mess for himself and is content to let the Felon sink in the quicksand of his own creation, knowing that the war is steadily undermining support for both the Felon and GOP on the home front. A piece at The Atlantic looks at the ongoing disaster:

The United States is running out of missiles. After five months of war with Iran, stockpiles of long-range weapons are so low, current and former U.S. defense officials told us, that they don’t believe the U.S. has enough to combat a threat in Asia. The remaining supplies, depending on the munition, are as low as 20 percent of what the Pentagon would like to have in hand. And stores of sophisticated interceptor missiles, such as Patriots and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missiles, are too depleted to give or sell the weapons to Ukraine or effectively defend against Iran’s launch of ballistic missiles.

The Pentagon this year has awarded tens of billions of dollars in contracts to replenish those arsenals. But signing contracts is not the same as delivering missiles. Those contracts will produce munitions over the coming years, not the coming months. The Trump administration has invested in the defense industrial base to accelerate production, as did the Biden administration, but for crucial systems such as the Patriot, supply is not projected to meet demand until about 2030. Meanwhile, Iran has ramped up production of its offensive drones and ballistic missiles, and enhanced their capabilities. The war is now being shaped as much by industrial supply and logistics as by economic considerations and the politics of the midterms.

[The Felon] President Trump raged at the assessment his national-security team gave him at Camp David on Friday, which showed that the U.S. military was running low on the munitions that would be necessary for Trump to order an escalation against Iran, a senior administration official familiar with the meeting told us. If the U.S. were to strike, Tehran would likely launch a barrage of missiles and drones against its neighbors in the region and the American bases they host. . . . [the Felon] Trump has grown frustrated at his inability to escape the stalemate of the war; he’s seething at its toll on the economy and is desperate to move on.

White House aides are concerned that Trump is losing his leverage in the conflict. He has threatened Iran many times but has rarely followed through; Tehran knows that. Tehran also knows that the U.S. is running low on munitions despite what Hegseth and the president say in public. Military leverage depends not simply on the U.S. ability to strike but also on its capacity to defend against Iran’s retaliation.

The White House has maintained that Iran would soon face an economic situation so dire that the regime would be forced to negotiate, and U.S. intelligence reports suggest that Iran is struggling. But the [Felon's] Trump administration has been surprised at Tehran’s resilience, and is no longer certain that the regime will reach the point where negotiation is its only option.

In the five months since the war started, the president has never faced such a weak position. The shortage of interceptors makes escalation dangerous. Nor would expanded strikes guarantee that Tehran will come back to the table.

That may leave diplomacy and concessions as the administration’s least risky option. . . . Trump is now considering a deal that gives Iran some control over maritime traffic. The proposed agreement between Oman and Iran, pending U.S. and Gulf approval, would reopen the strait by establishing a jointly managed framework for commercial shipping. Such a deal would give Iran the oversight of the crucial waterway it feels it has earned from the war, while also honoring Oman’s insistence on preserving freedom of navigation.

America’s stockpiles have been under strain for years, but became painfully clear after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. The U.S. military fired hundreds of missiles, some costing millions each, during the Trump administration’s 53-day campaign last year against the Houthis in Yemen. That was followed by nearly two weeks of U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran and the interception of Iranian missiles and drones aimed at Israel. During the first 38 days of the Iran war, the U.S. launched thousands of munitions.

Between American voters’ frustrations with rising gas prices and Hegseth’s mixed messages and past combative relationship with Congress, “there is no goodwill for the department here,” one congressional aide told us. . . . . Still, Congress is ultimately expected to provide much of the funds the Pentagon says it needs to replenish its stores. But what the U.S. really needs is time. Depending on the weapon, replenishment to prewar levels could take as long as five years, Mark Cancian, who tracks munitions stockpiles for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., told us.

Another three years would get stockpiles “to a level where the joint staff and U.S. commanders in charge of the Asia Pacific would be comfortable,” Cancian said. In theory, that gives Beijing plenty of time to take advantage of American shortages with, say, an invasion of Taiwan.

The U.S. raced to develop cheaper ways to tackle the Iranian-supplied drones that Russia deployed, and has made some progress. But the stores of interceptors such as Patriots and THAADs were rapidly expended. “There are no good alternatives for stopping ballistic missiles,” Cancian told us. “Without these defensive missiles, attacking missiles will land unopposed. That is what is happening in Ukraine.”

Had the Iran war been over in a matter of several weeks, as the administration initially predicted, the U.S. munitions problem would not be so dire. And the problem would be mitigated “if we knew when the war will end,” one defense official told us. “The real problem is that there is no long-term strategy—and we can’t plan around that.”

Before the shortages, the U.S. used its technological advantages to shape its strategy. Now the technological advances of its foes—and the strain they have put on U.S. stockpiles—are forcing Washington to reconsider its strategy again, this time without the long-held assumption that U.S. forces would enjoy an advantage in munitions.

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New Mexico Sues DOJ over Epstein files

With the Felon's failing war against Iran dragging on with increased news reports of US munitions shortages, the constant chaos the Felon generates domestically, and growing focus on the approaching mid-term elections, it is easy to be distracted from the Department of Justice's ("DOJ") ongoing coverup of the Epstein scandal, particularly by withholding files ordered to be released and stonewalling both Congress and other investigations. No doubt the Felon likes things this way, but now the State of New Mexico is suing the DOJ for withholding information concerning Epstein's Zorro Ranch and is seeking a court order forcing the DOJ to turn over unredacted copies of files.  One can only hope New Mexico's lawsuit is successful and that the names of more of Epstein's coconspirators are made public - including the Felon's name.  Although Todd Blanche met with Epstein survivors under duress, the survivor's have condemned his dismissive attitude and strongly oppose Blanche's nomination for Attorney General.  A piece in Salon looks at the new lawsuit: 

While Jeffrey Epstein’s island or his various mansions get a lot of attention, the late sex offender and financier’s New Mexico Zorro Ranch was also allegedly the site of extensive abuse and criminal activity. Now, in a lawsuit filed Wednesday, the Department of Justice and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, are accused of “stonewalling” New Mexico’s criminal investigation of Epstein’s activities at the ranch outside of Santa Fe.

New Mexico’s Attorney General Raúl Torrez, who is behind the lawsuit, argues that the DOJ unlawfully withheld records, therefore delaying justice for victims. The lawsuit accuses Blanche and the DOJ of perpetuating “that disgrace” of failing to investigate or hold Epstein accountable before his death. The suit requests the court to order the DOJ to provide the requested unredacted records.

“USDOJ and Acting Attorney General Blanche are refusing to facilitate the investigation of state law crimes by hiding information about Epstein and his co-conspirators from Attorney General Torrez and state law enforcement, when New Mexico is one of few jurisdictions that still may have an opportunity to hold Epstein’s associates accountable or otherwise provide some sense of justice to survivors,” the lawsuit reads.

Meanwhile, New Mexico’s legislative “truth commission” released its first report on Zorro Ranch Wednesday, but the 119-page document offers little in the way of new revelations or recommendations. It draws heavily on news reports and what has so far been released from the Epstein files, but does underscore numerous hurdles the investigation has faced. 

“Those in law enforcement most responsible for protecting New Mexicans from Epstein played a passive role in investigating him, letting others in Miami and in New York do it. As a result, the conduct of Epstein and his co-conspirators in New Mexico went unexamined and unpunished,” the authors conclude. “Going forward, this commission endeavors to uncover the truth so many for too long were blind to.”

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Americans Are Turning on Trump

With the Felon having been documented to have told in the neighborhood of 30,000 lies during his first occupancy of the White House, I still find it baffling that many young voters, Hispanics and even blacks voted for the Felon apparently believing his 2024 campaign lies.  It should have been obvious to anyone who had paid attention to his first term would have believed him in 2024. Whether voter opposition to a black woman as president, Joe Biden's late exit from the race  or other dynamics were at work, we may never know. Now, polls are show huge levels of buyer's remorse among voters who in my view foolishly believed the Felon.  Instead of lowering prices "on day one" the Felon's tariffs, war of choice with Iran, and slashing of social programs have fueled more inflation that shows no signs of abating anytime soon, especially as a peace deal with Iran appears elusive. The Felon, of course, lies that his poll numbers are very high outside of "fake news" outlets, that a peace deal with Iran is close, and that "affordability" is a Democrat hoax. A piece at The Atlantic looks at Americans' souring view of the Felon and the losses of support among demographics who foolishly voted for the Felon in 2024.  Here are article excerpts:

Fundamental realignments in the way Americans vote are rare, but predictions that they have occurred are not. Nearly as soon as Donald Trump was declared the winner of the presidential race in November 2024, people started saying the election represented a new era. “Trump just realigned the entire political map. Democrats have ‘no easy path’ to fix it,” announced NBC News.

The election had been very close. Trump won slightly more electoral votes than Joe Biden had in 2020 (312 to 306), but he also won fewer total popular votes and a smaller percentage of the vote. This was still significant because it was the first time in three tries that Trump had captured a plurality of the electorate, but the case for realignment hinged less on raw numbers than on demographic breakdowns. The Republican Party had strengthened its grip on the white working class and had done historically well with young voters—young men in particular—and Hispanic voters. Writing in The Atlantic in May 2025, the pollster Patrick Ruffini argued that a new era of politics had dawned, in which Trump had broken Democrats’ solid grip on minority voters.

The Democratic Party’s problems remain very real, but for the moment, Trump and the GOP have more serious ones. The most glaring one is Trump’s deep personal unpopularity. In the current polarized and dyspeptic political environment, all presidents seem to be unpopular, but Trump is in a different league. A CNN poll released last week measured Trump at 34 percent support, matching the low he reached in that poll following the January 6 insurrection. Still, that was better than his showing in the AP-NORC survey, which found his approval at 33 percent, just one point above a 2017 low. Quinnipiac University found Trump at 32 percent, the lowest ever in that poll. . . . . digging into polling results shows particular deterioration with the particular groups that were supposed to be at the center of the Trump 2024 realignment.

Consider young voters. Kamala Harris won a slim majority of them in 2024, a huge drop from the 25 percent margin that Biden enjoyed four years earlier. The Yale Youth Poll found in May that 68 percent of voters ages 18 to 22 and 72 percent of voters ages 23 to 29 disapproved of Trump. Echelon Insights also found that younger voters disapprove of Trump more than the general population—the number has fallen 37 percent since the start of this administration.

One reason Trump’s numbers have sunk so much among young people is his poor performance among young men. A popular explanation was that a feminized, woke Democratic Party had driven them away and into the arms of Trump and a growing manosphere of influencers. To the extent that that was true, it was ephemeral. These voters are still wary of the Democrats, but they’ve soured on Trump as well. The Yale Youth Poll found that men under 30 were one of the two groups that had turned the most against Trump since last fall.

Trump is also bleeding support among Black and Hispanic voters, and especially men, as Bloomberg Government reports. In 2024, Trump won almost half of Hispanic voters, but polls show Republicans drawing 27 to 35 percent support in the midterms, which would be their worst performance with the group since the Democratic-wave year of 2018. . . . A May poll found that a quarter of Hispanics who voted for Trump in 2024 wouldn’t do so again.

The decay has even reached Trump’s core supporters. A New York Times review of polling data found in June that white working-class voters’ views of the president’s handling of the economy were tanking. During the first two years of his first term, these voters rated him higher than the overall population; now they rate him much worse.

Echelon finds his approval down to 41 percent among those with a high-school education or less. Polling from the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism finds a shrinking Trump base and less personal connection to Trump, which is a particular problem for a personalist leader and movement. Republican strategists are now worried that even consistent GOP voters might not turn out in November, according to The Washington Post.

[S]everal convincing explanations existed for Trump’s 2024 victory that didn’t involve realignment, including the lingering effects of the pandemic, global anti-incumbent sentiment, and the peculiar dynamics of Biden’s ill-advised decision to run and his late exit from the race. But the foremost was inflation. Americans were angry at the Democratic Party because of persistently higher prices. Now Trump is losing support for the same reason. Not only has Trump not ended inflation, as he promised—in June, it ran at 3.5 percent—but his decisions, especially the Iran war, have driven prices higher. Voters were willing to give Trump a chance because of their disgust with Biden. Now they’re seeing the results, and they don’t like them.

Although some observers believed a sea change had occurred, the Brookings Institution scholar (and Atlantic contributor) Jonathan Rauch concluded on November 9, 2024, that the result did not represent “a pro-MAGA realignment or a sweeping repudiation of Democrats. Rather, this was an ordinary election.” He added, prophetically, “While the Republicans undoubtedly scored a clear victory, they may be tempted to claim a stronger mandate than the voters intended to deliver—and they may respond with policies that are more extreme and disruptive than the public wants or expects.” Now the realignment looks nearly as moribund as GOP chances in the midterms.

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Trump’s Reversal on Escalation Shows Iran Has the Upper Hand

In what is becoming a familiar pattern, the Felon has again backed down from threats launch new attacks against Iran and claims I ran is negotiating towards a peace deal.  The Felon had made such threats before and oil prices surged - driving up US gasoline prices higher - only to have the Felon back down and claim negotiations have restarted and have oil prices subside somewhat.  Currently, Iran denies that negotiations are again underway and seems happy to allow the Felon to twist on the rope he put around his own neck. Indeed, Reuters reports that "Iran is betting it can outlast Washington by turning the Middle East's trade routes, shipping lanes and energy infrastructure into pressure points that steadily raise the cost of confrontation, according to Gulf officials and analysts." The reality is that the USA remains in a position where no good off-ramps exist and the war's continuation is creating a drag for Republicans as the mid-term elections approach.  This very scenario is what the Felon was warned about by experts but chose to ignore and instead listen to Benjamin Netanyahu rosy picture of how the war would be quickly over. A piece in the New York Times looks at where we find ourselves currently:

When [the Felon] President Trump appeared to back down once again from a threatened military escalation against Tehran, he offered fresh fodder to the narrative Iranian officials are eager to promote: They are not the ones who fear war — Mr. Trump is.

Iran’s leadership believes it has found the world’s Achilles’ heel. With the help of regional militia allies, Tehran spent the past week underscoring its ability to threaten several of the world’s most critical energy facilities and waterways.

It has continued to up the ante in its face-off with Washington over when and how to stop their renewed hostilities and return to a short-lived deal to start peace negotiations, which fell apart last month.

When Mr. Trump signaled in recent days that a major escalation was imminent if no concessions were made, two former Iranian officials said Tehran’s leadership told him to go right ahead.

“They are ready for the war, and they won’t back down,” said Amir al-Mousawi, a former Iranian diplomat, who said he had met over the weekend with the team surrounding Iran’s head negotiator and speaker of Parliament, . . . The Iranians refused, he said, unless Washington returned to the previously agreed “memorandum of understanding,” which many experts say was in Iran’s favor.

“‘We have no problem with war at all, and we are ready for the big confrontation,’” Mr. al-Mousawi said the Iranians told the Americans. “Trump told the Iranians: ‘I will hit the power in Iran.’ So, the Iranians said: ‘If you strike, we strike.’”

Iranian officials have spotted a pattern in Mr. Trump’s attempts to shape negotiations . . . . Mr. Trump starts to pressurize the situation by threatening Iran, so he can try to get further concessions,” he said. “But Iran is not so easily manipulated.”

On Sunday, Mr. Trump said he had relented from his planned escalation after Iran and other Middle Eastern countries requested a delay because the “perimeters of a deal” had been agreed to.

Yet, there are no outward signs of any return to U.S.-Iranian negotiations. What does appear to have happened is that Saudi Arabia and Qatar expressed concerns over their ability to adequately defend their oil and gas facilities, according to two regional diplomats.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, had recently spoken with Mr. Trump to stress “the necessity of prioritizing dialogue to de-escalate tensions” and “prevent a wider conflict.”  Recent strikes in the region reflect the severity of those concerns.

Two weeks ago, the Houthis, an Iran-aligned militia force in Yemen, blockaded Riyadh’s use of the Bab al-Mandab waterway in the Red Sea. The Saudis had been piping oil to their west coast port on the Red Sea in order to circumvent Iran’s stranglehold on global shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the primary route for oil shipments out of the Persian Gulf.

At its heart, the current struggle “is about redesigning the regional security architecture,” said H.A. Hellyer, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.  The core of that struggle is the issue of who controls the Strait of Hormuz, he said. “The Iranians are very, very serious about not giving up control, and they’re willing to bomb things to make sure that’s the case.”

Beyond that dynamic, there was also the startling July 17 attack on U.S. military sites in Jordan that killed three American soldiers. “The strike in Jordan was the game changer,” said Ali Vaez, Iran project director for the International Crisis Group. It not only showed that Iran’s missile arsenal remained well stocked, he said, but also that Tehran’s intelligence capabilities were higher than previously believed.

“The entire Iranian strategy in this period has been aimed at making the United States understand that if there is another round of escalation, the scope and scale of Iranian response would be so much more devastating for the region and the global economy,” Mr. Vaez said.

Mr. Trump, he added, has never fully grasped the motivations of the Iranians, how they refuse to be bullied or cowed. Throughout both his current and previous term, Mr. Trump “is reluctant to learn the lesson” that aggressive tactics toward Iran have only hardened its position, Mr. Vaez said.

At the same time, Washington is grappling with depleted stores of munitions. Some military officials say their abilities to fight future conflicts — such as a so-called great-power war against China — could be hobbled by shortages that might take years to reverse, particularly of defensive weapons like Patriot missiles.

“The U.S. military options aren’t great, and it’s not simply reported munitions shortages,” said Farzan Sabet, an Iran analyst at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland.

“One, it’s not clear that the limited and time-bound military escalation Trump is willing to undertake at this point will be enough to change Iran’s calculus,” he said. “Two, it’s hard to imagine these options can degrade Iran’s missile and drone capacity, such that it cannot effectively close the Strait of Hormuz or further damage the Gulf’s critical and energy infrastructure.”

Emboldened, some well-known Iranian hard-liners mocked the dilemma the Trump administration seems to find itself in.

“If a strike is made on Iran,” Mr. Rezaei wrote in a response on X to Mr. Trump’s renewed threats in recent days, “we will return the entire region and its facilities to the Stone Age.”

When Mr. Trump said he was postponing an escalation, a prominent hard-line commentator, Seyed Mohammad Marandi, posted a picture of chicken tacos on his X account. It was a reference to a sarcastic acronym used by Mr. Trump’s critics: TACO, or “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

“Iran has not budged,” he wrote above it. Far from being closer to talks, some regional experts feel the two sides are further away than ever.

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Trump Is Afraid of International Law

The Felon and his enablers and sycophants are waging a propaganda campaign against the International Criminal Court and other international bodies that seek to hold those guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity accountable. Why?  Because he and some in his regime fear they could be criminally prosecuted by the International Criminal Court ("ICC") for crimes that American tribunals may not entertain, especially thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court's insane ruling that largely gives presidents immunity for acts while in office. Given the over 200 murders of those on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific and the horrors and inhumane treatment visited on "illegal immigrants," including children, the Felon and hos bootlickers have reason to worry that prosecutions before the ICC.  One can only hope that other nations will ignore the false claims of the Felon and Marco Rubio who has truly prostituted himself to the Felon and remain members of the ICC and, with luck, at some point bring the Felon, Pete Hegseth and others accountable for their crimes and misdeeds.  A piece in Politico Magazine looks at what's behind the Felon's propaganda campaign.  Here are highlights:

[The Felon] President Donald Trump and his aides rarely go easy on their perceived enemies. But their attacks on the International Criminal Court — describing it as, among other things, filled with “lunatics” and pledging to destroy it — are hyperbolic enough that you have to wonder: Are they afraid the court will prosecute them?

That’s the conclusion many former government officials and legal scholars are reaching. They point not only to Trump’s anti-ICC campaign but also his administration’s broader efforts to defund, abandon or otherwise damage a range of global mechanisms that enforce human rights laws, from treaties to United Nations organizations. Those moves come as the Trump administration is accused of a series of abuses, from killing Iranian schoolchildren to deporting asylum-seekers. At the same time, Trump is going to great lengths to protect his backers from domestic justice, including through his extensive use of pardons.

“They’re doing everything they can to evade accountability as they attack the very institutions and advocates charged with holding rights abusers to account,” said Uzra Zeya, a former Biden administration official who is now president of Human Rights First.

Spokespeople for the White House and the State Department deny such assertions. In statements to me, they reiterated complaints that the ICC threatens U.S. sovereignty and cast their campaign against it as squarely within Trump’s America First agenda.

But when it comes to the ICC in particular, Shakespeare might say the administration “doth protest too much.” By wildly overstating the court’s power, it is feeding the notion that it is genuinely worried.

The ICC has almost — almost — no ability to prosecute U.S. citizens. The U.S. has never joined the court, which operates under severe jurisdictional limits. . . . . And Trump has already repeatedly penalized court officials for investigating U.S. ally Israel.

Yet, when I asked one Trump administration official whether they thought some of their colleagues could be prosecuted under international law, they replied: “Maybe.” The official also accused the court of being “insane” and “woke.”

Bill Cortese, a GOP operative close to the White House, was more direct, telling me some administration officials are truly worried about prosecution.

“There is a concern that, if Democrats come into power, that an unchecked ICC and other international institutions are going to unleash a wave of litigation against this administration and anyone associated with it,” Cortese said. . . . under Trump, U.S. law enforcement and military officials have been accused of a notable number of human rights-related accusations that cross borders.

U.S. military strikes targeting individuals on boats in the Western Hemisphere are a top example. The Trump administration claims it is taking out drug traffickers, but it has offered little evidence about the identities and backgrounds of the more than 200 people it has killed.

Legal analysts told me that the boat strikes bear similarities to the alleged extrajudicial killings of thousands in the Philippines between 2016-2022 during then-President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs.” Duterte is now facing charges of crimes against humanity at the ICC, having been handed over by a succeeding Philippines government.

Trump’s mass deportation policies have further sparked allegations of international law violations. His return of asylum seekers to the places they have fled or to third countries where they face detention or other danger is one example. His dumping of hundreds of Venezuelan men into an El Salvador prison on questionable claims that they were gang members is another.

America’s actions in the Iran war, such as a likely U.S. strike on a school that killed scores of girls, as well as an energy blockade on Cuba, have led to accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity. U.S. support for Israel in its war with Hamas in Gaza has spurred questions about American culpability in atrocities.

The ICC is supposed to tackle the gravest crimes humans commit, including genocide. It’s also meant to be a court of last resort. That generally means the aggrieved can turn to it only if countries involved lack legal mechanisms capable of justice, and usually only if those countries are parties to the ICC.

An American could, in theory, face trial at the ICC, especially if they are accused of certain crimes on the soil of a country that is party to the court.

The odds that another government, or the relatives of America’s victims, will try to force an international reckoning could also increase if Trump succeeds in gutting domestic methods of holding him and his administration accountable.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has already largely dismantled Pentagon units that investigated civilian deaths and dismissed military lawyers he believes would impede U.S. “lethality.” Inspectors general offices have been weakened across government agencies. The Department of Justice, now led by the president’s former personal attorney, is viewed as increasingly unwilling to defy Trump.

If other nations question how seriously the U.S. will take any rules that govern country-to-country relations, some governments may turn more to institutions like the ICC. The European Union, for instance, has slammed Trump’s anti-ICC campaign.

Some countries may invoke the concept of “universal jurisdiction” as a means of holding accused Americans responsible, although that is a tricky task. Such countries have other options, too. They can deny visas to Trump administration officials, impose economic sanctions or take more symbolic steps, such as parliamentary resolutions denouncing them by name.

Many do fear the Trump crew will do substantial damage to the court, including by convincing some nations to abandon it. Venezuela has already said it will. Other countries may also mimic the U.S. in deciding to ignore international laws and norms.

But some scholars noted that pursuing such a public campaign against the ICC simply draws more attention to the court and to the Trump administration’s alleged crimes.

“They’re showing that international law actually matters,” said a former ICC prosecutor, whom, like others, I granted anonymity because of their fear of retaliation from the Trump administration.

A few people I spoke to have an especially dark read on all the U.S. moves. They suspect that Trump is signaling he intends to commit more crimes around the world. “They want a blank check to use force,” one Latin American human rights lawyer told me.

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