Worth Knowing, Probably Not Quite Threadworthy 7/14

[SVPete]

A Case of Campus Cancel Culture Finally Goes to Trial

https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2026/07/13/a-case-of-campus-cancel-culture-finally-goes-to-trial-n3816906

Economist Arthur Laffer is widely regarded as the father of supply-side economics and is hated by the left for that reason. In 2019, Laffer was invited to speak on the campus of Binghamton University and what happened, as it often did at the time, was a bit of student organized cancel culture. Here's a sample but I'll post the full video below.
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In 2020, the Young Americans Foundation and the College Republican sued and the lawsuit has been dragging along for six years. Now the case is finally going to trial.

After years of preliminary motions, the remaining defendant is John Pelletier, who served as the campus chief of police at the time. Attorneys for Alliance Defending Freedom allege Pelletier chose to appease activists and shut down Laffer’s speech rather than defend the conservative students’ First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

The law firm seeks to recoup the roughly $35,000 it cost to host the event along with attorneys fees and punitive damages, said ADF attorney Tyson Langhofer in an interview Wednesday with The College Fix.

He said Binghamton University has policies on the books that are supposed to protect students’ free speech rights, but argues those rules were actively ignored in this case. He said the legal battle is important because a favorable decision may help sway campus officials nationwide to actually enforce their campus free speech policies.

“If we have government officials who are unwilling to protect people’s rights … those rights are worthless,” Langhofer said. “Policies mean nothing unless we have government officials who are willing to enforce the law on an equal basis, that’s what the Equal Protection Clause was enacted for.”

The campus police cooperated in a hecklers' veto.

[SVPete]

Sec State Lays a Flaming Marco Down on That Rogue ICC

https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2026/07/13/sec-state-lays-a-flaming-marco-down-on-that-rogue-icc-n3816903

In June, Khan was suspended for physically assaulting one of his staffers, who had credibly accused him of a pattern of rapidly escalating physical sexual harassment.

On Friday, word came that the United Nations investigation had concluded that the accuser's credibility had been established, that there had been no personal gain for her - in point of fact, her personal mental state and career suffered severely for the abuse, that Khan had retaliated against other court employees who had reported his harassment, and that Khan's actions were detrimental to the court and not in keeping with a position that demanded the highest level of integrity and moral character.
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They left the chief prosecutor spinning in the wind, and his fate will be decided at a July 24th meeting of the ICC member states, who will vote on whether he stays or goes.
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This morning, there was this cryptic but forceful denunciation of the ICC from our incredible Secretary of State, which, thanks to its complete dismissal of any legitimacy of said court in the most brutal AMERICAN terms ever, had bald eagles screaming in rapture across the country.

This, ladies and gentlemen, my fellow Americans, is how 'national sovereignty' is defined and how boundaries and limits are set... game, set, match.
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America never agreed to a world tribunal that can override our own courts and the Constitution.

...The ICC was born at the turn of the century. At first, it was marketed as a narrow backstop to prosecute the gravest crimes. Now the ICC and its allies seek a standing world tribunal with near-unlimited reach, empowered to override the courts and constitutions of the U.S. and other sovereign states—and to prosecute and arrest our citizens.

Americans never agreed to any of this. Both of our major political parties opposed the prospect of handing a distant global court the power to prosecute and jail our own citizens. President Clinton refused to submit the Rome Statute (the ICC’s founding charter) to the Senate for ratification due to his “concerns about significant flaws in the Treaty.” Two years later, a bipartisan Senate supermajority passed the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act, authorizing the president “to use all means necessary”—including military force—to prevent the ICC from detaining or arresting Americans.

Americans found themselves in the crosshairs anyway: In 2020 the ICC launched an investigation into what chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda of Gambia described as “war crimes by members of the United States armed forces” in Afghanistan, declaring that the U.S. government hadn’t prosecuted enough American soldiers to satisfy the court. In effect, Ms. Bensouda was anointing herself the final judge of U.S. military policy and the entire U.S. justice system.

The Afghanistan investigation was only the opening move in the assault against American self-government. The ICC is backed and run by a powerful network of leftist nongovernment organizations, smug globalists, and hostile Third World governments united by their enmity toward the U.S.

The ICC needs to be erased.

[SVPete]

More:

Rubio to ICC: Hands Off the United States — Oh, And We're Shutting You Down

https://pjmedia.com/sarah-anderson/2026/07/13/rubio-to-icc-hands-off-the-united-states-were-shutting-you-down-n4954985

"Most of us would struggle to imagine a world in which U.S. soldiers, police officers, Border Patrol agents, and elected leaders could be dragged before an international court, tried by judges from random countries across the globe, found guilty under international laws we neither consent to nor control, and then imprisoned thousands of miles from America," Rubio wrote in an op-ed that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Monday. "But that is what the International Criminal Court now claims the power to do."
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"Both of our major political parties opposed the prospect of handing a distant global court the power to prosecute and jail our own citizens," Rubio writes. "President Clinton refused to submit the Rome Statute (the ICC’s founding charter) to the Senate for ratification due to his 'concerns about significant flaws in the Treaty.' Two years later, a bipartisan Senate supermajority passed the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act, authorizing the president 'to use all means necessary'—including military force—to prevent the ICC from detaining or arresting Americans."
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In the second Trump administration, these calls have continued to grow. Last year, major activist groups urged high-ranking international officials 'to take immediate and meaningful action' against the Trump administration’s deportations of violent criminals to El Salvador. Months later, a former ICC chief prosecutor declared that President Trump’s strikes against narcoterrorists amounted to 'a crime against humanity' and should be treated as such under international law — a line that was echoed by United Nations leaders, and major leftist nongovernmental organizations, Democratic Party officials and politicians. In March, the Washington-based Democracy for the Arab World Now urged the Iranian regime to request an ICC investigation of 'apparent war crimes' committed by American personnel.

U.S. efforts to push back against the ICC’s illegitimate interventions have been framed as a further reason for the ICC to target Americans. When 12 U.S. senators wrote to the ICC prosecutor about their concerns, the prosecutor’s office accused them of crimes. When Mr. Trump imposed sanctions against ICC personnel, a former head of Human Rights Watch said that 'all 125 ICC member states would have a legal duty to arrest him were he to show up.'

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But we're not just looking to tell the ICC to back off, Rubio said. We're going all in to dismantle it "brick by brick, if necessary."

We're starting by launching a diplomatic campaign with a simple message: "sovereign states over globalism." He added that, "Those who benefit from American security must not stand idly by while those who provide that security are targeted." 

And that's only the beginning, Rubio said. We'll use every tool at our disposal to take down the ICC with the help of every ally really to join our cause.

Needless to say, this will infuriate DU-grade Progs, because they believe the US needs to be "put in its place".

[SVPete]

Europe may be ‘upset’ with Trump, but his tough love approach is working, military historian says

https://justthenews.com/government/diplomacy/europe-may-be-upset-trump-his-tough-love-approach-working-historian-says

Amid reports that the Europeans are at a “breaking point” with the United States as President Donald Trump cajoles and pressures them to spend more on mutual defense, the reality is that his strategy has worked, respected military historian Victor Davis Hanson tells Just the News.

Ahead of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit last week in Turkey, European leaders’ frustrations with their American counterpart was the key story.
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But, Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, argues the actions of those European allies show Trump's pressure is working, despite their protestations and suggestions that they have reached a breaking point with the U.S.

Since Trump took office last year and called for Europeans to boost the percentage of GDP spent on defense, the NATO allies have responded with action. At a summit last year, the allies committed to boosting defense spending to 5% of GDP.

“Europe is very upset with Trump, but it's largely because he's forcing them to do what they know is in their own self-interest, and they can't admit that they were wrong by not arming to the 2% prior NATO standard or reaching the 5%,” Hanson told the John Solomon Reports podcast.

“But, the net result of it is that in a year or two, NATO is going to be much more independent, much better to protect itself from Russia, and will allow us to pivot and really take care of our equally important allies in Australia, the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan against the rising hegemony of China,” he also said.

Trump's "style" aside, EuroLand leaders know that decades of sloughing their NATO obligations have engendered a cultural laziness in their nations about military preparedness.