Good Afternoon:
I was sitting at a wedding yesterday staring at a beautiful ketubah (wedding contract) for a bride I have known literally since before she was born, when a friend texted me the above image. I burst out laughing. The style of art was similar to the ketubah—modern Jewish illuminated Hebrew calligraphy.
The artist who created the “Frog of Righteousness” blocks me on Bluesky. (I’m not sure what I did to offend her and whatever it may be, I beg forgiveness.) But only the other day, I wrote my “The Situation” column (see below) on humor and authoritarianism and focused specifically on the inflatable costume action in Portland, Oregon that has come be known as “tactical frivolity.” The Portland Frog Brigade is an important part of that movement.
And the artist above, though she might loath me, is not wrong that Jews have particularly delighted to plague of frogs jokes in response to the inflatable frogs bothering ICE guys. The reference, of course, is to this:
The passage is canonical sacred text to Christians, as well as Jews, but for a number of reasons, I think it reads differently to Jews. This is not Old Testament stuff that was superseded by the coming of Jesus. The Exodus from Egypt and the resulting Revelation at Mount Sinai is the central mythological event that binds Judaism together. This is stuff Jewish children—even not especially religious ones—discuss ritually on Passover. It is as central to Judaism, as say, the story of the birth in the manger is to Christian children.
And so there is something, well, deep about the idea of ICE officers being plagued by frogs because they will not “let people go.” Note the explicit linkage between being plagued by frogs and letting people go. And now think of a big inflatable frog bothering ICE on the streets. It causes this particular piece of tactical frivolity to touch a very sensitive place in the Jewish soul—and in a way that is laugh-out-loud funny.
But there’s more. Rashi, perhaps the most important rabbinic commentator, noted in the medieval period a textual quirk. The word for “frogs” in the Biblical Hebrew occurs in the singular, not the plural. Now the rabbis did not believe in textual quirks. The Torah is perfect, after all, so all textual choices have meaning. What does it mean that the plague of frogs is actually a plague of frog?
This came to be mythologized in Jewish legend either that the one giant frog split himself when struck into a millions of other frogs or that he called other frogs forth:
Imagine now the image of one very large inflatable frog harassing an ICE agent to let people go would hit you if this happened to be your religious tradition. On the one hand, it’s hilarious.
On the other hand, it’s all very moving.
So if you see “plague of frog” jokes, take them at least semi-seriously. They come from a very deep place.
Friday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable
came on to discuss power outages in Kiev, and the estimable jumped in for a discussion on the political role of languages, with reference to Ukrainian and Swahili:The Situation
In Friday’s “The Situation” column, I reflect on how humor punctures authoritarianism, from deliberate silliness at protests to Elizabeth Tsurkov finding comedy in the brutal torture she suffered at the hands of Kata’ib Hezbollah. I humbly submit that I have never written a better column—on any subject. And I promise you it contains the funniest story you will ever read about being tortured by terrorists:
But there is something that all authoritarians fear, and that is being laughed at. Authoritarians of all types take themselves extremely seriously. They have to. Because if authority doesn’t take itself seriously, why should anyone else accede to it?
So the first step to confronting authority and eroding it is refusing to engage it on the terms it demands—to refuse to take it seriously. This is the role of humor.
Friday On Lawfare
Compiled by the estimable Isabel Arroyo
How Trump Violated the Law to Pay the Military
Bobby Kogan explains that President Trump’s choice to pay troops during the ongoing government shutdown with money appropriated for Department of Defense research and development is unlawful and upsets the constitutional separation of powers. Kogan describes how service members have been paid legally during previous shutdowns, then explored the risks of allowing Antideficiency Act violations to continue unchecked.
In plain terms, the federal government can’t spend money on something unless Congress has provided money for that specific purpose. The Antideficiency Act and the purpose statute are laws that enshrine this prohibition into the U.S. Code. Under the Antideficiency Act, the federal government can’t spend money without an appropriation enacted into law and an apportionment (explained below) of the appropriated funds by the president’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Under the purpose statute, it can’t spend the money it does have for any purpose not specifically allowed in the authorization law and the appropriation made for the budget account(s) that funds that authorized purpose.
When President Trump used money authorized only for the purpose of supporting R&D to instead pay the troops, he used existing money for a purpose not allowed by that appropriation. He also spent money to pay the troops when he didn’t have an appropriation usable for that purpose.
Trial Dispatch: The Arraignment of Letitia James
Molly Roberts reports from the Oct. 24 arraignment of New York Attorney General Letitia James in the Eastern District of Virginia.
Judge Walker announces the arraignment of James, and proceeds through the customary procedure for an initial appearance. He warns the defendant of her right to counsel and to remain silent. He recites the charges in the indictment—bank fraud and false statements to a financial institution—as well as the maximum penalties of 30 years in prison and a fine of $1 million dollars.
Does James waive a formal reading of the indictment, the judge asks? She does, says Lowell. Does she wish to plead not guilty and have a trial by jury? She would like to enter her plea herself, please. And she does: “Not guilty, judge, to both counts.”
The Truth Shall (Maybe) Set You Free
Preston Marquis reviews Tim Weiner’s book “The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century.” Marquis praises Weiner’s account for impressive sourcing, page-turning coverage of operations, and powerful warnings about the threat of CIA weaponization under the Trump administration, but points out that it provided little fresh insight into the United States’ arc during the war on terror.
Those familiar with Weiner’s earlier books will find he adopts a different tone in “The Mission.” Weiner’s previous history of the CIA, “Legacy of Ashes,” which won the 2007 National Book Award for nonfiction, was highly (and controversially) antagonistic toward the agency. As its title suggested, it argued that the agency had harmed U.S. national security interests as frequently as it advanced them during the Cold War. Weiner has dialed down his stridency in “The Mission” and produced a more readable and credible narrative as a result.
“The Mission” also benefits from Weiner’s impressive access to former agency officials. Weiner acknowledges as much with pride, declaring that “[r]ecruiting agents overseas was not unlike developing sources at the CIA.” Weiner proves himself to have been an adept handler, drawing on material from officials including former CIA Director William Burns in his final chapters. This access to senior agency personnel may be Weiner’s comparative advantage over other accounts of the CIA’s activities over the past quarter century, even impressive ones such as “Way of the Knife.”
America’s Private Sector is Hacking for Godot
In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren discusses a recent report on how the private sector could close the offensive cyber gap between the U.S. and China, the splintering ecosystem of ransomware-as-a-service, the takedown of scam SIM boxes and Starlink terminals, and more.
Although this is a capability gap, it’s there because the U.S. intelligence system is designed to feed a relative trickle of information it knows is highly valuable to a single customer: the government. Select first, steal later.
The Chinese system is the opposite: Steal everything and then figure out who wants what. Leaks from cyber espionage firm i-SOON showed that hackers would steal data based on loose priorities and see if they could find a paying customer after the fact.
The report suggests that the private sector could close this capability gap because it’s agile and can operate at scale. That’s true, but we’re not sure U.S. national interests would benefit from significantly more stolen data, unless it was shared widely with customers beyond the government.
Documents
Tyler McBrien shares Letitia James’s Oct. 23 motion requesting that the court of the Eastern District of Virginia curb extrajudicial statements by prosecutors.
McBrien also shares watchdog group American Oversight’s letter urging Attorney General Pam Bondi and Acting Archivist of the United States Marco Rubio to preserve Lindsey Halligan’s Signal messages with Anna Bower, arguing that disappearing messages constitute federal records destruction.
Podcasts
On Scaling Laws, California State Sen. Scott Wiener (D) joins Kevin Frazier and Alan Rozenshtein to discuss SB 53, which Sen. Wiener authored. The three discuss the contents of SB 53, the bill’s significance for artificial intelligence governance, and the lessons Senator Wiener learned from California’s earlier battle over SB 1047.
Videos
On Friday’s Lawfare Live, I sat down with Scott R. Anderson, Molly Roberts, Roger Parloff, Eric Columbus, and James Pearce to discuss legal challenges to Alina Habba’s and Halligan’s appointments as U.S. attorneys, the arraignment of James, litigation over the federalization and deployment of the National Guard, and more.
Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is an elusive—and award-winning—Namibian hyena:
It’s the shot that won the grand title at this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year, run by the Natural History Museum in London. It’s an intriguing image not just for its composition, but for its subject too. The brown hyena is the rarest species of hyena in the world. It is also a remarkably adaptive and opportunistic animal, which has adopted Namibia’s abandoned diamond towns as its own…
Van den Heever runs nature photography tours around the world and returns to the Namib Desert once a year. During his initial visits, he became convinced that a brown hyena was roaming the ghost town at night. “I would see either droppings or tracks of a hyena in the area,” he says. He soon had the idea of photographing the hyena in the striking setting of the ghost town.
After trying several different approaches, Van den Heever settled on waking between 02:00-03:00 to return to Kolmanskop to set up his camera trap while the town was entirely empty. Capturing the shot, however, was exceptionally difficult. The brown hyena is a shy animal, mainly active at night. For years, Van den Heever would only catch a glimpse of one far in the distance from the town, often running in the opposite direction.
Added to that was the daunting environment of the Namib Desert. Easterly winds brought sands that would pile up a metre (3.3ft) high against his photography equipment in the night. “I had one or two years where cameras just got absolutely trashed,” he says. When a westerly wind was blowing in off the ocean, it brought thick banks of fog. “Then even if there’s a hyena in your picture, you can’t see it, because the fog’s just too thick.”
…
After that, it was a matter of waiting. Ten years of visits to Kolmanskop went by, during which time Van den Heever’s camera traps captured a couple of jackals facing the wrong way, but no brown hyena.
Then came the night when the conditions were just right, and the hyena walked exactly where Van den Heever anticipated it might. “My camera triggered three times that night. Once with me testing the scene. The second time, nothing happened, and the third time, there was a hyena in the picture.”
He describes being close to tears as he saw the image for the first time on the back of the camera. “It’s exactly the way I envisaged the picture to be,” he says. “It’s exactly what I was looking for from day one. It’s why I went through all the effort, all those seasons to try and do it.”
In honor of today’s Beast, check out the other winners of the 2025 Wildlife Photographer of the Year. They are all of them distinguished Beasts.
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