Good Evening:
How long will it be before President Trump pardon’s Senator Bob Menendez, who today was sentenced to 11 years in prison. I mean the case has everything to tantalize Trump—even gold bars. And it has an infinitely corrupt Democrat prosecuted by a Democratic administration. Remember Rod Blagojevich?
I don’t think it’s going to take long. It will be too tempting.
Not, mind you, because there’s any good case for clemency for Menendez, but because it will infuriate all the right people from Trump’s point of view. It would be a finger in the eye to establishment expectations. And it would remind everyone that he is the source of pain—and that he is the source of the relief from pain.
Just remember, when it happens, you heard it here first.
Today on #DogShirtTV, the estimable Holly Berkley Fletcher and I welcomed the estimable (and very anti-profanity) Jonathan Rauch to discuss his new book on the role of Christianity in American democracy. The estimable Eve Gaumond came by as well.
The cactus was also present. Holly has decided that the cactus is the mansplainer-in-chief. But what she doesn’t understand, and I need to explain to her, is that…
Today On Lawfare
The Trouble With AI Safety Treaties
Keegan McBride and Adam Thierer suggest that the United States should be wary of international agreements that purport to ensure alignment of artificial intelligence (AI) across countries, warning that such treaties could introduce restrictions that hinder AI innovation and reduce U.S. AI dominance:
Developing and deploying AI across industries and sectors will be key for any nation that wants to remain relevant in the emerging geopolitical order. Today, the United States has a clear advantage and, as a result, will continue to reap numerous benefits from its early investments in AI innovation. To help counteract this dominance, numerous countries are working together to hamstring the United States’s AI capabilities and ambitions. While dialogue between countries on “AI safety” and other related issues is wise, it would be foolish for the United States to tie its own hands and agree to formally binding constraints on its AI ecosystem.
Sanctuary, Supremacy, History, and the Deep Country
Daniel Richman explains why the Trump administration lacks the legal authority to enlist state and local authorities in its mass deportation efforts and how the federal government has failed to compel local law enforcement’s participation in the past:
The premise of this section—that the Supremacy Clause obliges state and local actors to “comply” with the administration’s “initiatives”—is false. In fact, the Supremacy Clause doesn’t even oblige those actors to carry out actual federal immigration laws, which have far more concrete legal status than “initiatives.” Back in 1842, in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, Justice Joseph Story flatly rejected the notion that states were under any obligation to enforce either the Fugitive Slave Clause or legislation passed pursuant to it. It would, Story noted, be “an unconstitutional exercise of the power of interpretation to insist that the States are bound to provide means to carry into effect the duties of the National Government, nowhere delegated or entrusted to them by the Constitution.” More recently, Justice Antonin Scalia relied on the “anticommandeering doctrine” in Printz v. United States, which held that Congress lacked the power to require state and local law enforcers to conduct background checks on handgun purchasers. As Justice Samuel Alito put it in 2018, Congress lacks “the power to issue direct orders to the governments of the States. The anticommandeering doctrine simply represents the recognition of this limit on congressional authority.”
Podcasts
On Lawfare Daily, Peter Hyun, then-acting chief of the Enforcement Bureau at the Federal Communications Commission, joins Justin Sherman to discuss the FCC’s data security and cybersecurity enforcement authorities and how those authorities fit into addressing national security threats to the communications supply chain. They also discuss how technology supply chains, national security risks, and entanglement with China may evolve in the years to come:
On Rational Security, Kevin Frazier, Peter Harrell, and Eugenia Lostri join Scott Anderson for a deep dive into the week’s national security news, including the U.S.-Colombia spat, the Stargate Project, and a freeze on foreign assistance:
A reminder that this is happening tomorrow afternoon at 4:00 pm:
Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the bear cub, both polar and grizzly:
Laerke (polar) and Jebbie (grizzly) were raised together in the Detroit Zoo after Jebbie was orphaned and Laerke was rejected by her mother. After 2 years together, both were successfully reintegrated with their respective species as adults.
In honor of today’s Beasts, send a “hello” text to your oldest friend, the one you’ve known so long you don’t even remember meeting them. It’ll be nice.
Tell Me Something Interesting
As the bird flu apocalypse looms, let us consider the word influenza. EJ Wittes investigates.
Weird word. Really weird. Think about the names of diseases. Not new diseases, like COVID, those get special scientific names. Old diseases, the kind that got named “by the people,” as Tom Lehrer would put it. Smallpox? It’s called that because it makes small pox. Scarlet fever? It gives you a fever and a bright red rash. Syphilis? Well, actually, syphilis is named for the main character in a 16th century epic poem about sexually transmitted disease and is therefore a bad example of my point—but it’s a funny example, so I’m telling you anyway.
Anyway, epic poems aside, there’s a trend as to the way diseases get named, and influenza doesn’t really fit.
So why influenza? Well, look at the word sideways, squint a bit, and it looks pretty much like someone saying the word “influence” in fake Italian.
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