Trump: "We're gonna hit 'em very hard tonight and we're gonna hit 'em hard tomorrow. And there's not a damn thing they can do about it. They have nothing going other than they have big mouths."

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday vowed to “dismantle” the International Criminal Court and urged other countries to join the effort as the Trump administration significantly escalates its campaign against the global institution.
 
Rubio accused the ICC of “waging a war against our country, not with bullets or missiles,” but with “the force of so-called international law.”
 
The administration’s ire against the ICC goes back to President Donald Trump’s first term, when it targeted the ICC for seeking to investigate alleged war crimes committed by US forces in Afghanistan. The second Trump administration has imposed a slew of sanctions against ICC officials for their attempts to investigate the US and Israel.
 
However, the State Department-led, “whole-of-government campaign” to dismantle the ICC is a significant escalation, particularly as it seeks to pressure countries around the world to join and threatens potential cuts to US assistance for those who don’t.
 
“Nations that refuse to reject the ICC’s false authority while relying on US assistance are likely to come under increased scrutiny,” a State Department official said Monday.
 
“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,” Rubio wrote in a separate piece in the Wall Street Journal on Monday. Those tools include possible travel bans, visa revocations, and increased sanctions, the State Department official said.

President Donald Trump will support a Russia sanctions bill championed by the late Senator Lindsey Graham, according to a White House official, a move that would ramp up pressure on the Kremlin to end its war in Ukraine.
 
The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter. Trump’s backing would be a major win for Ukraine, boosting long-stalled efforts to punish buyers of Russian oil and natural gas.
 
Graham, one of the Senate’s most vocal Republican backers of Ukraine, died suddenly on Saturday. He had returned to the US from a trip to Kyiv where he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Graham and a bipartisan group of senators on Friday said they had reached an agreement with the Trump administration to move ahead with new Russia sanctions legislation.
 

BRUSSELS, July 13 (Reuters) - European Union countries imported record-high volumes of liquefied natural gas from Russia's Yamal facility in ‌the first half of this year, EU data showed on Monday, ahead of a ban on Russian supplies that will take effect next year.
The EU from April banned Russian LNG imports under short-term contracts, but imports under long-term contracts can continue until January 1, 2027.

MeidasTouch @MeidasTouch
 
BREAKING: A federal judge just nullified Trump’s $1.776 billion IRS “settlement,” ruling it had “no viable basis in law or fact,” finding there was never a real legal dispute, and referring Trump’s attorney to The Florida Bar for possible discipline.

Scott MacFarlane @MacFarlaneNews
 
FLASH:  Federal judge in Florida has released a scathing takedown of Trump's slush fund, Trump's sweetheart IRS immunity deal and the lawsuit Trump filed against his own IRS
 
Judge orders sanctions and possible bar discipline against Trump's lawyers in lawsuit

Chiefs Mama @bling_momma
 
Reflecting Pool drained again, revealing tire tracks from Trump's convoy...vandalism MY ASS!!!

Cuckturd @CattardSlim
 
Yep. These are tire tracks in the reflecting pool. Sediment has built up on the indents.
 
You can see where the front tires turned in unison.
 
10 years prison for Trump!

NEWS:

President Trump is planning to announce that Georgia's two senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, are illegitimate because of fraud, a well-placed source in Georgia tells us. Announcement could come as soon as tonight.

Etats-Unis : ICE, la police fédérale de l’immigration, fait une nouvelle victime et provoque la colère dans le Maine

Depuis le retour au pouvoir de Donald Trump en janvier 2025, 11 personnes sont tombées sous les balles des agents fédéraux anti-immigration, et 52 sont mortes en détention.

Donald Trump a signé, lundi 13 juillet, un décret réduisant la superficie de deux zones protégées de l’Utah, ouvrant ainsi la voie à une possible exploitation minière et pétrolière de ces réserves naturelles qu’il avait déjà amputées lors de son premier mandat.
 
Les sites nationaux de Grand Staircase-Escalante et de Bears Ears, tous deux situés dans l’Utah, vont voir leur superficie réduite de 90  % et 91 % respectivement, selon le texte signé par le républicain.

But the deficit, which had become a little smaller last year thanks to the tariff income, is now growing again. It hit $1.367tn in the first nine months of the fiscal year, up 2%.
 
The US spent more than $1tn just on paying interest on its debt, up 14%, and military spending climbed 5% because of the war in the Middle East.

Last month Trump also threatened a 100% tariff on European countries, including the UK, that pursue a tax on the biggest US tech companies.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said: “Numerous European Countries have been discussing the imminent implementation of a Digital Services Tax on American Companies. Some of these Countries are close to actually doing this. Please let this statement serve to represent that any Country that imposes such a Tax will immediately be met with a 100 per cent TARIFF on any and all Goods sent to the United States of America.

Judge: Trump sought to ‘manipulate the judicial process’ with his IRS lawsuit and attempted $1.8B fund
 
US District Judge Kathleen Williams is ordering sanctions for the attorneys involved in the lawsuit, which led to an attempt to create the now-defunct $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund for allies of the president. It was also used to justify a Trump administration order giving the president and his businesses amnesty for any past tax issues.
 
Williams’ 56-page opinion blasted the behavior of both the Justice Department — arguing that the administration’s response to the case disregarded DOJ policies and potentially the law — and of the private attorneys who brought the lawsuit on Trump’s behalf.
 
“The nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the Parties and counsel from its filing make plain that this was an attempt to use the Court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the President and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law,” the judge wrote.
 

Trump’s Justice Department announced in May it reached a settlement with the president over the leaked information that included a $1.776 billion fund for those who believed they had been unfairly targeted by the DOJ.
 
Amid significant backlash from Republicans and Democrats, Blanche told lawmakers last month the fund was dead, but he has refused a federal judge’s request to submit a signed statement saying the fund was no more.
 
More importantly for Trump, the settlement included a memorandum from Blanche — quietly added to the Justice Department’s announcement of the settlement the following day — prohibiting the IRS from investigating Trump, his family or his businesses for past tax issues, or even other types of claims brought by the federal government for any conduct pre-dating the deal.
 
Even before Williams’ Monday opinion, it was unlikely that the Blanche amnesty order would have stopped a future Democratic administration from investigating Trump, given the dubious legal ground around the agreement.
 
But the new order from the judge could undermine any attempt by Trump to use the purported settlement as a defense in court, if a future administration brings a claim against him, his family or his businesses.

Blanche and Woodward specifically may have violated attorney ethics laws, while signing on to a deal that the judge believes to be unlawful.
 
She suggested the two Justice Department officials should have recused themselves from working on the dispute, because of their work when they were private attorneys representing clients who stood to benefit from the case’s resolution.
 
Blanche was Trump’s attorney in various criminal cases before the president’s return to the White House, while Woodward represented Capitol riot defendants and a Trump aide who was prosecuted alongside the president in the classified documents case.
(...)
 
The judge additionally said the second piece of the “settlement” — the tax amnesty order signed by Blanche alone — “directly contravenes” a federal law barring presidents and other executive branch leaders from influencing tax audits.

Williams said the “acquiescing to any such demand is wholly incompatible with the duties of DOJ attorneys (as well as CEO [Frank] Bisignano for the IRS) to enforce the law and protect the public interest,” raising the prospect that the order is unconstitutional as well.

The opinion comes as Blanche is scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday for a confirmation hearing to be the permanent head of the DOJ. Williams wrote in a footnote that she was “extremely troubled” by testimony Blanche gave when he was on the Hill in May, when he said the court had no role in reviewing the agreement.
 
“While temporally accurate, this answer is, at best, misleading and, at worst, disingenuous,” she wrote.