By MATTHEW LEE, AP Diplomatic Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is ramping up pressure on the International Criminal Court for pursuing investigations into U.S. and Israeli officials for alleged war crimes.

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The State Department on Wednesday announced new sanctions on four ICC officials, including two judges and two prosecutors, who it said had been instrumental in efforts to prosecute Americans and Israelis. As a result of the sanctions, any assets the targets hold in U.S. jurisdictions are frozen.

The sanctions are just the latest in a series of steps the administration has taken against The Hague-based court, the world’s first international war crimes tribunal. The U.S. has already imposed penalties on the ICC’s former chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, who stepped aside in May pending an investigation into alleged sexual misconduct, and four other tribunal judges.

In a statement, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he had taken action against ICC judges Kimberly Proust of Canada and Nicolas Guillou of France and prosecutors Nazhat Shameem Khan of Fiji and Mame Mandiaye Niang of Senegal.

“These individuals are foreign persons who directly engaged in efforts by the International Criminal Court to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel, without the consent of either nation,” Rubio said. He added that the administration would continue “to take whatever actions we deem necessary to protect our troops, our sovereignty, and our allies from the ICC’s illegitimate and baseless actions.”

In a separate statement, the State Department said Prost was hit for ruling to authorize an ICC investigation into U.S. personnel in Afghanistan, which was later dropped. Guillou was sanctioned for ruling to authorize the ICC’s issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant related to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

Khan and Niang were penalized for continuing Karim Khan’s investigation into Israel’s actions in Gaza, including upholding the ICC’s arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, according to the statement.

Wednesday’s move carries on a history of Trump administration actions against the ICC, of which the U.S. is not a member, dating back to his first term in office.

During Trump’s first term, the U.S. hit the ICC with sanctions, but those were rescinded by President Joe Biden’s administration in early 2021.

By ANDREW DeMILLO, Associated Press

Texas cannot require public schools in Houston, Austin and other select districts to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom, a judge said Wednesday in a temporary ruling against the state’s new requirement.

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Texas is the third state to have a Ten Commandments law blocked by a court.

A group of families from the districts sought a preliminary injunction against the law, which goes into effect on Sept. 1. They say the requirement violates the First Amendment’s protections for the separation of church and state and the right to free religious exercise.

Texas is the largest state to attempt such a requirement, and U.S. District Judge Fred Biery’s ruling from San Antonio is the latest in a widening legal fight that’s expected to eventually go before the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Even though the Ten Commandments would not be affirmatively taught, the captive audience of students likely would have questions, which teachers would feel compelled to answer. That is what they do,” Biery wrote in the 55-page ruling that began with quoting the First Amendment and ended with “Amen.”

The ruling prohibits the 11 districts and their affiliates from posting the displays required under the state law. The law is being challenged by a group of Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Unitarian Universalist, and nonreligious families, including clergy, who have children in the public schools.

The families were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

“Today’s ruling is a major win that protects the constitutional right to religious freedom for Texas families of all backgrounds,” Tommy Buser-Clancy, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas, said in a statement. “The court affirmed what we have long said: Public schools are for educating, not evangelizing.”

A broader lawsuit that names three Dallas-area districts as well as the state education agency and commissioner is pending in federal court.

A federal appeals court has blocked a similar law in Louisiana, and a judge in Arkansas told four districts they cannot put up the posters, although other districts in the state said they’re not putting them up either.

Although Friday’s ruling marked a major win for civil liberties groups who say the law violates the separation of church and state, the legal battle is likely far from over.

Religious groups and conservatives say the Ten Commandments are part of the foundation of the United States’ judicial and educational systems and should be displayed. Texas has a Ten Commandments monument on the Capitol grounds and won a 2005 Supreme Court case that upheld the monument.

In Louisiana — the first state that mandated the Ten Commandments be displayed in classrooms — a panel of three appellate judges in June ruled that the law was unconstitutional.

By ALLEN G. BREED and JOHN SEEWER, Associated press

RODANTHE, N.C. (AP) — From Florida to New England, people trying to enjoy the last hurrahs of summer along the coast were met with rip current warnings, closed beaches and in some cases already treacherous waves as Hurricane Erin inched closer Wednesday.

While forecasters remain confident that the center of the monster storm will stay far offshore, the outer edges are expected to bring high winds, large swells and life-threatening rip currents into Friday. Life-threatening surf and 100 mph winds will lash the East Coast, National Weather Service forecasters warned Wednesday.

New York City closed its beaches to swimming on Wednesday and Thursday, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered three state beaches on Long Island to prohibit swimming through Thursday. Several New Jersey beaches also will be temporarily off-limits, while some towns in Delaware have cut off ocean access.

Off Massachusetts, Nantucket Island could see waves of more than 10 feet later this week. But the biggest threat is along the barrier islands of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, where evacuations have been ordered.

Erin has become an unusually large and deceptively worrisome storm, with its tropical storm winds stretching 265 miles from its core. Forecasters expect it will grow larger in size as it moves through the Atlantic and curls north.

Bob Oravec, the lead National Weather Service forecaster in College Park, Maryland, cautioned people about the dangers of rip currents. Even if someone thinks they know how to handle a rip current, it’s still not safe in the current conditions.

“You can be aware all you want,” he said in a phone interview. “It can still be dangerous.”

On Tuesday it lashed the Turks and Caicos Islands, where government services were suspended and residents were ordered to stay home, along with parts of the Bahamas before its expected turn toward Bermuda.

Tropical storm watches were issued for Virginia and North Carolina as well as Bermuda.

Erin lost some strength from previous days and was a Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds around 100 mph, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said. It was about 400 miles south-southeast of North Carolina’s Cape Hatteras.

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On the Outer Banks, Erin’s storm surge could swamp roads with waves of 15 feet. Mandatory evacuations were ordered on Hatteras and Ocracoke Islands. More than 2,200 people had left Ocracoke by ferry since Monday.

North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein warned coastal residents to be prepared to evacuate and declared a state of emergency Tuesday. Bulldozers shored up the dunes, and trucks from the local power company on Ocracoke were on hand to respond to downed wires.

Some side roads already saw some flooding on Hatteras, and the owners of a pier removed a few planks, hoping the storm surge would pass through without tearing it up.

Most residents decided to stay even though memories are still fresh of Hurricane Dorian in 2019, when 7 feet of water swamped Ocracoke, county commissioner Randal Mathews said.

Tom Newsom, who runs fishing charters on Hatteras, said has lived there almost 40 years and never evacuated. He was not going to this time either.

Comparing this hurricane to others he has seen, he called this one a “nor’easter on steroids.”

The Outer Banks’ thin stretch of low-lying barrier islands jutting into the Atlantic are increasingly vulnerable to storm surges. There are concerns that parts of the main highway could be washed out, leaving some routes impassible for days. And dozens of beach homes already worn down from chronic beach erosion and the loss of protective dunes could be at risk, said David Hallac, superintendent of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

Farther south, no evacuations were ordered but some beach access points were closed with water levels up to 3 feet over normal high tides expected for several days.

Climate scientists say Atlantic hurricanes are now much more likely to rapidly intensify into powerful and catastrophic storms fueled by warmer oceans. Two years ago Hurricane Lee grew with surprising speed while barreling offshore through the Atlantic, unleashing violent storms and rip currents.

Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio. Associated Press journalists Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut; Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina; Gary Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina; Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia; Hallie Golden in Seattle; Leah Willingham in Boston; Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama; and Julie Walker in New York contributed.

By MELANIE LIDMAN, Associated Press

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel gave final approval Wednesday for a controversial settlement project in the occupied West Bank that would effectively cut the territory in two, and that Palestinians and rights groups say could destroy hopes for a future Palestinian state.

Settlement development in E1, an open tract of land east of Jerusalem, has been under consideration for more than two decades, but was frozen due to U.S. pressure during previous administrations. The international community overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank to be illegal and an obstacle to peace.

This map shows the proposed area of the E1 settlement, alongside a depiction of existing settlements between it and Jerusalem. (AP Digital Embed)

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a former settler leader, cast the approval as a rebuke to Western countries that announced their plans to recognize a Palestinian state in recent weeks.

“The Palestinian state is being erased from the table not with slogans but with actions,” he said on Wednesday. “Every settlement, every neighborhood, every housing unit is another nail in the coffin of this dangerous idea.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel and has vowed to maintain open-ended control over the occupied West Bank, annexed east Jerusalem, and the war-ravaged Gaza Strip — territories Israel seized in the 1967 war that the Palestinians want for their state.

Israel’s expansion of settlements is part of an increasingly dire reality for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as the world’s attention focuses on the war in Gaza. There have been marked increases in attacks by settlers on Palestinians, evictions from Palestinian towns, Israeli military operations, and checkpoints that choke freedom of movement, as well as several Palestinian attacks on Israelis.

More than 700,000 Israelis settlers now live in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

The location of E1 is significant because it is one of the last geographical links between the major West Bank cities of Ramallah, in the north, and Bethlehem, in the south.

The two cities are 22 kilometers (14 miles) apart, but Palestinians traveling between them must take a wide detour and pass through multiple Israeli checkpoints, spending hours on the journey. The hope was that, in an eventual Palestinian state, the region would serve as a direct link between the cities.

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“The settlement in E1 has no purpose other than to sabotage a political solution,” said Peace Now, an organization that tracks settlement expansion in the West Bank. “While the consensus among our friends in the world is to strive for peace and a two-state solution, a government that long ago lost the people’s trust is undermining the national interest, and we are all paying the price.”

If the process moves quickly, infrastructure work in E1 could begin in the next few months and construction of homes could start in around a year. The plan includes around 3,500 apartments that would abut the existing settlement of Maale Adumim. Smotrich also hailed the approval, during the same meeting, of 350 homes for the settlement of Ashael near Hebron.

Israel’s government is dominated by religious and ultranationalist politicians, like Smotrich, with close ties to the settlement movement. The finance minister has been granted Cabinet-level authority over settlement policies and vowed to double the settler population in the West Bank.