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The Trump administration imposed sanctions against the International Criminal Court just hours after a former ICC judge won the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump awarded national medals for science and technology to six CEOs who have collectively given his political operation at least $6 billion. An ICE agent with a history of violent arrests fired seven rounds into a car in the Bronx while a five-year-old sat inside. And the daughter of Trump’s chief of staff works for a lobbying firm that represents a pro-Russia regime.
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The fastest way to get on the president’s sanctions list is to put a war criminal on yours.
The Trump administration announced new sanctions Friday against the ICC’s president, Tomoko Akane, and senior trial lawyer, Abdoulaye Seye, just after the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to a former ICC judge, Navi Pillay. The sanctions freeze their U.S. assets and cut them off from the national financial system.
The sanctions were imposed in retaliation for the ICC’s investigations into alleged torture and abuse of detainees by U.S. military and CIA personnel in Afghanistan. The Trump administration has also targeted officials who have issued court arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Trump has now sanctioned nine of the 18 judges at the ICC, two deputy prosecutors, the former chief prosecutor and a second staffer. Now half the bench of the court is being punished for investigating war crimes.
The ICC called the sanctions a “flagrant attack” on its judicial independence. ICC President Akane warned that the measures would “jeopardise its very existence.”
“We will never give up, and the court took measures to prepare itself against the sanctions and limit as much as possible the effect of sanctions on its activities,” Akane said.
Participation trophies have gotten very expensive.
This week, Trump awarded national medals for advancements in technology and science to six tech titans: Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, AMD CEO Lisa Su, and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang.
The National Medal of Science is the nation’s highest honor for scientists and engineers and has been given by presidents since 1959. Trump had never awarded the medal in either of his terms until Thursday, when he gave it to six billionaires who have collectively donated at least $6 billion to his campaign, his inauguration fund, his White House ballroom, and more.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, gave $22 billion to the Trust for the National Mall as part of a settlement in Trump’s January 6 lawsuit against YouTube. Elon Musk spent $277 million on Trump and Republican campaigns in 2024, the biggest political spender in the country.
Michael Dell and his wife gave $6.25 billion to his savings account program for kids. Thursday morning, just before Huang was presented with his medal, NVIDIA also announced a $1 billion pledge to Trump’s Genesis Mission AI project.
Plainclothes ICE agents fired at least seven shots into a car in a residential neighborhood in the Bronx Thursday afternoon. Oscar Belgal, 28, was shot in the neck while his 5-year-old son sat in the back of the vehicle.
Wired identified ICE officer Brendan Cuni as one of the officers present at the shooting. Photos from the scene showed Cuni wearing a high-visibility yellow construction vest and carrying an AR-15-style rifle, suggesting he was disguised as a construction worker.
Cuni’s name appears in several lawsuits across the country and New York City alleging excessive force. A Bronx man said Cuni Tased him six times while he was already handcuffed on the ground after he kneed him hard enough to break a tooth last October. A woman claimed he shoved her to the ground while she was pregnant.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani said that ICE took Belgal into federal custody from the hospital after Trump refused to release him, despite Mamdani pleading with him on the phone for over two hours. Representative Adriano Espaillat tried to visit Belgal at the hospital, but was stopped by federal agents.
Putin doesn’t need to infiltrate the White House when the White House keeps flying to him.
Katie Wiles, daughter of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, is employed by a political lobbying firm that has a contract worth $35,000 a month to represent Republika Srpska, a self-governing region of Bosnia and Herzegovina. She was there as recently as August.
A photo shared on social media showed Katie Wiles standing next to the territory’s interior minister, holding a rifle. Continental Strategy, her employer, confirmed the trip but said she has not lobbied the U.S. government on behalf of Republika Srpska.
The news comes amid a separate controversy involving two of Trump’s closest advisers, Chris LaCivita and James Blair, who traveled to the Balkans to help with elections in Republika Srpska. Both were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide political advice to the government, headed by far-right nationalists with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump tried to distance himself from the controversy, calling Blair and LaCivita “outside consultants.” The consultants were outside the country, so technically he was correct.
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2026 Nobel Peace Prize Goes to Former ICC Judge Who Immediately Mocked Trump. South African jurist Navi Pillay, a former judge on the International Criminal Court and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, was awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. Pillay learned the news while attending a conference at Nuremberg Court in Germany, where she told the room, “If you clap a little bit more I may share this prize with Trump.” Trump has wanted the award for years, once calling the Norwegian prime minister to lobby for it. After being passed over last year, Trump said that since the committee chose not to give him the prize, he “no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace.”
DeSantis Cancels Florida Inmate’s Execution Scheduled for Tuesday. Governor Ron DeSantis rescinded the death warrant for 74-year-old William Lee Thompson on Wednesday, calling off his execution that had been set for October 13. DeSantis gave no public reason, but Thompson’s lawyers argued that his advanced dementia left him unable to understand why the state planned to kill him. Christa Pike in Tennessee survived a botched lethal injection on Sept. 30 and is now walking and eating in a hospital. The corrections commissioner who oversaw the botched execution has resigned and the Republican governor has issued a stay of all executions in the state for now.
** Federal Jury Awards Driver $76 After License Plate Reader Led to Traffic Stop.** A federal jury found that Bexar County, Texas, violated the Fourth Amendment rights of Alek Schott, a local resident whose license plate was flagged by an automated surveillance system as he drove through southern Bexar County. The flag led to a traffic stop, and when Schott refused to grant consent to a search, officers requested a K-9 unit. The jury awarded Schott $76, a dollar for each of the 76 minutes he was held on the side of the road. His attorneys are now asking the court to block Bexar County from using license plate surveillance to justify traffic stops at all.
Seattle Becomes First U.S. City to Ban Grocery Surveillance Pricing. The Seattle City Council voted 7-2 to ban big grocery retailers from using personal customer data and algorithms to set personalized prices. The ordinance forbids online grocery stores from using sensitive data like race, gender, location, employment status, web browsing history, and social media activity to alter what individual customers pay. All grocery prices must now be plainly displayed and available to all shoppers. Seattle is the first city in the country to pass a broad ban on algorithmic grocery pricing, following state efforts in Maryland, Connecticut, and New Jersey. The measure now heads to Mayor Katie Wilson for her signature.
