A Los Angeles Dog Shirt

Happy Wednesday

Good Morning:

Let’s start with a programming note: #DogShirtTV today (Wednesday), tomorrow (Thursday), and Friday will take place at 8:00 am Pacific time, not at the usual time. This is a convenience to our West Coast Greek Chorus members, who are saddled with an inconvenient show time—at least for those who do not have terrible insomnia.

In short, no show six minutes from now. Show three hours and six minutes from now.

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Monday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable

Holly Berkley Fletcher

and I made plans for DC’s upcoming Frog March. I also argued with the estimable John Hawkinson about theater equipment:

My frog costume, the algorithm informs me, is arriving today. Maybe I will need to do a show in full costume—though that will have to wait until my return home.

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Recently On Lawfare

Compiled by the estimable Isabel Arroyo

Counting the Boots: Tracking Domestic Deployments, One Missing Report at a Time

Lawfare Public Service Fellow Loren Voss launches Lawfare’s Domestic Deployment Tracker, which maps the use of U.S. military forces on domestic soil. Voss describes the lack of transparency that has hindered research on domestic deployments over the last three presidential administrations and explains how this new tool can be used.

For the past month, Lawfare has been tracking how the current Trump administration, and the previous two administrations, have been using the National Guard and active duty forces: under what statutes and regulations, in which geographic areas, in what numbers, for how long, and—crucially—for what purpose. Today, Lawfare is launching a Domestic Deployment Tracker that provides a visualization of our findings as part of this work.

The project, as it turned out, was incredibly complicated. Information on domestic deployments is not centrally located. Instead, information on mission type, deployment size, and other aspects of deployments are scattered across memoranda, press releases, interviews, and other venues. What little information is out there is often incomplete. This raises yet another concern: Even as more Americans see armed military personnel in their neighborhoods, and as more National Guardsmen receive unusual orders to take on distinctly non-military roles, the administration has not sufficiently explained why. Such failures of transparency can create fear, stifle freedom of speech, and imperil a core principle of the rule of law—that everyone, including government officials, has to follow the same rules.

What’s Up With the Terror Indictment Against Alleged Antifa Members?

Eric Columbus examines the Justice Department’s decision to charge individuals who attacked an immigration detention facility with “material support” to Antifa “terrorists.” Columbus warns that, while the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on Antifa as a terrorist threat have little legal substance, they indicate a broader and more concerning campaign to link the president’s left-wing critics to terrorism.

“For the first time ever,” FBI Director Kash Patel announced on Oct. 16, “the FBI has arrested anarchist violent extremists and charged these Antifa-aligned individuals with material support to terrorism.”

Is this a big deal?

No and yes. The arrests were months-old, the new terrorism charge is based on no new facts, and the description “Antifa-aligned” is mere branding. But the indictment may augur worse to come in the administration’s efforts to pursue its ideological enemies.

Oral Argument Summary: Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (Tariffs)

Joshua Villanueva, Kristijan Barnjak, and Rebecca Qiu summarize each party’s written and oral arguments in the tariffs dispute currently before the Supreme Court and sketch a history of the lower court challenges that led to this consolidated case.

Can a president declare an economic emergency and, with the stroke of a pen, reshape U.S. tariff policy on a global scale? The Supreme Court confronted that possibility on Nov. 5. when it heard oral argument in Trump v. V.O.S. Selections and Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, two consolidated cases with sweeping implications for presidential trade powers and the statutory limits Congress has placed on emergency economic authority. The litigation stems from President Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose worldwide “reciprocal” tariffs and separate “contraband-drug” tariffs. At stake is whether IEEPA authorizes tariff measures at all, and if so, whether that delegation violates constitutional principles of nondelegation.

Podcasts

On Lawfare Daily, I sit down with Anna Bower, Roger Parloff, Molly Roberts, and Eric Columbus to discuss the criminal trial of the man who threw a sandwich at a federal immigration officer in D.C., the prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey, litigation over the conditions of an immigration detention center in Illinois, and more.

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Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the sea lion, seen here being difficult to work with:

Video Source

In honor of today’s Beast, be a memorable coworker.