Good Morning:
My uncle painted these signs and brought them to Washington for the #FreeDC rally and march on Saturday. He asked me to make them available for general use and distribution and emphasizes that no attribution is necessary.
Yesterday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable
and the estimable Mike Feinberg joined me to talk about the trials and tribulations of parenting dogs and babies. Work-life balance and dead squirrels were discussed—as well as whether Holly is a bad person for not loving babies:The Situation
In Sunday’s “The Situation” column, I—a vocal defender of drones and targeted killings of enemy military leadership—explain why the Trump administration’s lethal strike on a boat allegedly carrying drugs and Tren de Aragua members should have been “unthinkable” and call for a limit to the president’s power to use military force in lieu of law enforcement authorities.
But I’m sorry. This boat isn’t Libya. And this boat isn’t Serbia. This is a small craft allegedly carrying drugs and allegedly piloted by criminals not remotely connected to an armed conflict in which the United States or any ally is involved. If the president can blow it up using his war powers, I fail to see why he can’t also deploy the military domestically to use lethal force against supposed Tren de Aragua facilities or groupings that might be engaged in activity he might think warrants similar American “self-defense.”
In yesterday’s “The Situation” column, I follow up and focus on a remarkable Twitter exchange the Vice President had with a guy named Brian Krassenstein on the subject:
Yesterday, after I had written the column but before it had run and entirely unbeknownst to me, Vice President J.D. Vance, vice president of the United States and a graduate of the Yale Law School, tweeted out: “Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military.”
Among the nearly 20,000 replies to this tweet came this one from a political commentator named Brian Krassenstein: “Killing the citizens of another nation who are civilians without any due process is called a war crime.”
The vice president of the United States responded, and I’m not making this up: “I don’t give a shit what you call it.”
Yesterday On Lawfare
Compiled by Katherine Pompilio
The Grand Jury Strikes Back
Aaron S.J. Zelinsky and David Reisler detail the unprecedented way in which grand juries are blocking the Justice Department’s efforts at criminal prosecutions by rejecting “overcharged” felony indictments.
In our view as a former federal prosecutor and a former public defender, the publicly available evidence suggests that these were weak cases that should not have been charged as federal felonies. These are not the types of prosecutions that would have been initiated under previous administrations—nor should they have been. Indeed, the Justice Manual itself instructs prosecutors not to bring federal cases unless there is a “substantial federal interest,” which includes assessing the “nature and circumstances of the offense” and the “consequences” of a felony conviction.
Even if elements of the Department of Justice have decided to “fuck the Justice Manual”—and by extension, the underlying legal and ethical principles that document embodies—it appears that grand juries have a say in the matter. Just as the framers of the Fifth Amendment intended, the grand jury is now asserting its role in policing government overreach.
Anthropic Settlement Shows the U.S. Can’t Afford AI Copyright Lawsuits
Stewart Baker argues that President Donald Trump should invoke the Defense Protection Act to prevent copyright lawsuits against artificial intelligence (AI) companies. Baker explains that these extremely costly lawsuits force AI companies to allocate significant financial resources to settlements rather than AI development, and thus pose a threat to the AI industry and national security.
The American public will likely have little sympathy for a well endowed AI industry facing the prospect of hiring more lawyers, or even paying something for the works it copied. The problem is that peculiarities of U.S. law—a combination of statutory damages and class action rules—allow the plaintiffs to demand trillions of dollars in damages, a sum that far exceeds the value of the copied works (and indeed the market value of the companies). That’s a liability no company, no matter how rich and no matter how confident in its legal theory, can ignore. The plaintiffs’ lawyers pursuing these cases will use their leverage to extract enormous settlements, with a decade-long effect on AI progress. At least in the United States. China isn’t likely to tolerate such claims in its courts.
Why Isn’t China Interested in Nuclear Risk Reduction?
In the latest installment of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay Series, Wu Riqiang illustrates China’s long arms control tradition of prioritizing capability and development over reassurance and risk reduction, and how this tradition contributes to China’s reluctance to embrace various arms control measures.
From China’s perspective, nuclear arms control has often served as a tool used by superpowers to restrain its capabilities. The primary objective of China’s arms control policy has been to safeguard its national defense modernization. Accordingly, Beijing prioritizes building its retaliatory capability over reassurance and risk reduction and maintaining a high level of secrecy, both of which go against U.S. arms control principles.
Podcasts
On Lawfare Daily, in a live recording on Sept. 5, I sat down with Scott R. Anderson, Katherine Yon Ebright, Roger Parloff, and Loren Voss to discuss the ongoing activation of National Guard in the District of Columbia, the Trump administration's lethal strike in the Caribbean, and Harvard University's win over its funding fight in federal court.
Documents
Tyler McBrien shares the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General report on its administrative investigation that followed its criminal investigation of Charles McGonigal, a former FBI senior official.
Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the bear cub, seen here hitching a ride:
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