US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday announced what he characterized as a “campaign to dismantle” the International Criminal Court, the Hague-based tribunal tasked with investigating and charging individuals with war crimes and other violations. In a video posted to social media, Rubio accused the international court of “waging a war against our country — not with bullets or missiles…
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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that the U.S. is supposedly going to take control over the Strait of Hormuz and charge a 20 percent fee — just weeks after his own secretary of state said that “no country is allowed” to impose fees on ships passing through the waterway. In successive statements on Monday morning, Trump said that the strait is “OPEN, and will remain OPEN…
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Some critics of the Trump administration are reacting with horror to revelations that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been serving as the de facto ruler of Venezuela. According to a Saturday report in The New York Times, Rubio for the last several months has been acting informally as the “viceroy” of Venezuela ever since its recognized president, Nicolás Maduro, was abducted by the…
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The Trump administration divulged sensitive information about Iranian asylum seekers to the Iranian government as it sought to deport them, putting their lives in danger, a lawsuit filed on Tuesday alleges. The lawsuit, filed by the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund and Public Citizen Litigation Group, says that Trump administration officials held secretive meetings in which they shared…
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On Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced an agreement with Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), a mixed-martial arts sports company, to create a public-private partnership for “sports diplomacy” efforts across the globe. Ostensibly, the agreement would be similar to other sports diplomacy partnerships, such as one the White House struck with the NFL, that use sports to promote…
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In an extraordinary public display of administration infighting, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Senate foreign relations committee on June 2 that he was wresting back control of U.S. contributions to an international vaccine consortium — Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance — from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. and his anti-vaxxer entourage. It was time…
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