House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is urging Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to bring legislation sanctioning the International Criminal Court for pursuing arrest warrants against Israeli officials up for a vote “as soon as the Senate returns.”

Johnson expressed his concerns about the bill’s continued delays in the upper chamber, despite it passing the House in a bipartisan fashion in June, in a letter to Schumer obtained by Jewish Insider. The memo, dated Wednesday, points to comments from Schumer himself and President Joe Biden condemning the ICC for pursuing such charges and notes the New York senator’s public commitment to negotiating a sanctions package. 

“In a bipartisan vote, the House passed H.R.8282, The Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act, to sanction employees of the ICC. President Biden condemned the ICC, and you yourself called the ICC’s decision “reprehensible” and promised to negotiate on a sanctions package,” Johnson wrote. “Unfortunately, after five months, neither your statements nor those from the Biden-Harris White House have materialized into action.”

“Now, even after [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar’s death, [ICC lead prosecutor] Karim Khan and the ICC are still pursuing baseless warrants against Israeli officials, and effectively punishing Israel for Hamas’ barbarism. The ICC will continue to do so without strong, unified intervention by the United States,” he continued. 

“The ICC tried to justify its illegitimate action by also issuing a warrant for Hamas’ leader, Yahya Sinwar. Republicans and Democrats in Washington recognized the ICC’s despicable false equivalency and called out its warrant as an attack on the very idea of state sovereignty,”

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has been deadlocked since April as a result of the bill. SFRC Republicans have refused to agree to move forward with any nominations or other committee matters until the panel votes on the ICC bill, resulting in 40 nominations being held up. 

The White House opposes sanctions on the ICC altogether. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), who chairs the panel, supports sanctioning the body in some capacity, but has said he opposes the House bill as passed. Cardin, Schumer and others have been working behind the scenes on a bipartisan path forward in the upper chamber.

Cardin has also urged the White House to come around on a compromise sanctions deal, but the Biden administration’s position on the matter has not changed. Cardin, who is retiring in January, has said that while the effort has bipartisan support, such a campaign would fail without buy-in from the White House. 

“Failing to advance a sanctions package on the ICC would distance the U.S. from Israel at a time when they need our ironclad support, give de facto approval to the ICC’s malicious treatment of Israel, and allow the ICC to threaten the sovereignty of democratic nations unabated,” Johnson warned in his letter to Schumer. 

Reached for comment, a Schumer spokesperson said: “There are bipartisan negotiations and we will continue to support those.”

The spokesperson also pointed to the majority leader’s comments to JI in April accusing the ICC of a decades-long bias against Israel. “I am urging the Biden administration to send a very strong stance against possible arrest warrants that the ICC could issue against top Israeli officials,” Schumer said at the time.