{"id":646395,"date":"2026-10-14T18:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T18:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/646395\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T18:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T18:38:09","slug":"judge-blocks-us-sanctions-on-rights-groups-helping-icc-gaza-war-crimes-inquiry-trump-administration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/646395\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge blocks US sanctions on rights groups helping ICC Gaza war crimes inquiry | Trump administration"},"content":{"rendered":"

A US federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration<\/a> from placing sanctions on two US-based human rights groups for working to help the international criminal court\u2019s (ICC) investigations into war crimes in Gaza.<\/p>\n

In a 30-page order<\/a> issued on Tuesday, Jesse M Furman, a judge at the US district court for the southern district of New York, granted a preliminary injunction to the two groups, Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn) and Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide (Taag).<\/p>\n

The two organizations\u00a0sued the Trump administration this summer<\/a>, challenging an executive order issued<\/a> in February 2025 that imposed sanctions against the ICC.<\/a><\/p>\n

The order warned the US government would \u201cimpose tangible and significant consequences\u201d on people involved in investigations that Washington said threatened the national security<\/a> of the US or its allies, including Israel.<\/p>\n

The order came after the ICC issued arrest warrants<\/a> for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Both men have<\/a> rejected<\/a> accusations against them, and the US government also opposed <\/a>the court\u2019s decision to issue the warrants.<\/p>\n

In his opinion, Furman noted that last year two law professors brought a separate lawsuit challenging the 2025 executive order, and that the court had held that the order \u201cviolated those plaintiffs\u2019 first amendment rights because it constituted a content-based regulation of their speech-based activities and did not survive strict scrutiny\u201d.<\/p>\n

Furman said that this lawsuit brought by Dawn and Taag \u2013 groups he described as \u201cAmerican advocacy organizations\u201d \u2013 raised a \u201csubstantially similar challenge\u201d. He wrote that the groups were challenging the 2025 order on \u201cboth statutory and constitutional grounds, re-upping many of the arguments made in the earlier cases\u201d.<\/p>\n

Dawn and Taag are rights groups that had worked to gather information for the ICC as it investigated allegations of war crimes against Palestinians<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe court concludes that the 2025 order likely violates plaintiffs\u2019 first amendment rights because it constitutes a content-based regulation of their speech-based activities and cannot survive strict scrutiny,\u201d Furman wrote.<\/p>\n

However, the judge stopped short of declaring the executive order \u201cfacially unconstitutional\u201d and rejected the groups\u2019 request to \u201cenjoin the president and to enter a \u2018universal\u2019 injunction barring enforcement of the 2025 order against anyone\u201d.<\/p>\n

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian on the ruling.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the US state department said in a statement to the Guardian that \u201cwe do not comment on pending litigation\u201d but added: \u201cThe Trump administration has been clear: the ICC poses an intolerable threat to US sovereignty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joseph Pace, a lawyer for Dawn and Taag, described Tuesday\u2019s decision as \u201ca victory for the first amendment and an important step in unraveling the ICC sanctions regime\u201d.<\/p>\n

And in a statement<\/a>, Omar Shakir, Dawn\u2019s executive director, said: \u201cToday, a US federal court has put the brakes in a major way on the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to shield from justice the Israeli officials who have perpetrated a genocide and their US backers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dawn also said that it would \u201cimmediately resume\u201d its advocacy with the ICC \u201cto prosecute Israeli and American perpetrators of grave crimes\u201d.<\/p>\n

The ruling comes just days after the US imposed financial sanctions<\/a> on the ICC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A US federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from placing sanctions on two US-based human rights…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646396,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-646395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}