In an age when international institutions are tested by the very powers that once championed them, the United States has sanctioned the president of the International Criminal Court and one of its officials, freezing their assets and severing them from the American financial system. The move is the latest chapter in a deliberate campaign by the Trump administration to shield Israeli officials from the ICC's arrest warrants — warrants issued over alleged war crimes in Gaza. It raises a question as old as justice itself: whether a court can remain truly independent when the world's most powerful