The Rule O' Law Roundup: April 19, 2026

Plus, it's RAGtime.

Good Evening:

This morning, as I sipped my coffee, I typed into Google on my phone: “how easy is it,” fully intending to finish the query with the words “to add RAM to a Mac mini” (answer, alas: virtually impossible).

I stopped after the word “it” when I saw the above list of suggested Google responses. I had half a mind to spend this dog shirt answering these questions, as though they were New York Times headline questions.

But imma just gonna leave ‘em here.

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And I know what you’re thinking: You’re thinking, “Ben, why do you need to increase your Mac Mini’s RAM?”

Well, let me tell you: Because it’s RAGtime.

For the past few weeks, I have been working on a wild project that, rather to my surprise, has come together spectacularly over the past several days. At first, the project involved using Claude to help the estimable Katherine Pompilio identify immigration habeas cases in which the government was violating court orders. Then, it shifted to helping other colleagues find needles in the giant haystacks of federal litigation related to their work. The estimable Anna Bower wanted to see cases in which the government had filed administrative records. Katherine had a different project that required isolating dozens or hundreds of a different sort of case from a sea of noise. Other colleagues were looking for other lists.

And all of a sudden, I realized I had stumbled upon a methodology for extracting signal from noise—not in a creepy surveillance way but in a surveillance of complex systems kind of way. You know, the kind of way that lets you hold government accountable for violating court orders. Without any coding skills at all—just with Claude and a certain sophistication about the way litigation documents work—I could isolate huge bodies of data about the courts and find amazing things in them.

And then I realized that what I was doing on a bespoke basis by hand I could systematize and build into tools I could make available to others.

And so began my project to create a search tool for all public litigation documents in the U.S. federal court system—but not just a search tool in the sense that it returns documents you might want to see. It’s a tool designed to extract meaning from very large groups of court documents.

I am currently building a giant database of every scrap of paper on every federal docket in the United States in every litigation filed since the beginning of the second Trump administration. When I’m done, the database will update itself every day. It will be available to the public. It will enable journalists, researchers, activists, litigants and others to see what’s going on in cases across jurisdictions for radically less money than is currently charged by data-brokers for search tools that are quite honestly not that good. And it will allow the user to use Claude to look for patterns across very large numbers of cases. It’s basically a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) system for federal court documents. Hence the working name RAGtime.

But all of this requires me to download every docket and every scrap of paper filed in every federal court in America over the past year.

And that turns out to require more than 8 GB of RAM—though my Mac Mini has been holding up remarkably well.

I hope to have a full-functional prototype of the system ready tonight. I have seldom been so excited about any project I have worked on.

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Thursday on #DogShirtTV, I recorded an episode of the Lawfare Podcast with various estimable personages on the Justice Department’s very non-estimable decision to drop charges against the only Jan. 6 perpetrators whose convictions still stood—the very worst of the worst:

Friday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable Mike Pesca had some thoughts on the definition of autocracy, in light of the Hungarian election that he wanted to argue with me about. It turns out, however, that we basically agreed. It’s actually a great conversation:

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Recently On Lawfare

Compiled by the estimable Marissa Wang

How Hungary Escaped Electoral Autocracy

In the latest edition of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, R. Daniel Kelemen explains how the electoral defeat of Hungarian politician Viktor Orbán reveals both the vulnerabilities of electoral autocracy and the conditions under which it can be overturned. Kelemen contends that this outcome will have broader implications for the European Union, Russia, and aspiring autocracies.

In 1989, a dashing young Viktor Orbán launched his political career with a speech at Heroes’ Square in Budapest, calling for a transition to democracy and for the Russians to get out of Hungary. Last week, Péter Magyar rallied his supporters at the same square, calling on them to end Orbán’s political career to restore democracy and get the Russians out of Hungary.

The scenes dripped with irony. In a generation, the young democrat had become an aging autocrat. In 1989, Orbán had stood up to the Soviets and helped topple the communist system. Eventually he became the most important European asset of Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent. When Orbán’s party Fidesz (the Young Democrats Alliance) was founded, it was a youth movement that didn’t accept members over age 35. Just over 35 years later, Fidesz was ousted by a new youth movement.

Was the Attack on an Iranian Primary School a War Crime?

Akshaya Kumar argues that the strike on a primary school in Minab, Iran—likely caused by U.S. forces—could constitute a war crime even if the strike did not deliberately target the school because the U.S. may not have taken adequate precautions to avoid civilian harm.

To be sure, there is a difference between deliberate attacks on protected objects and attacks that result in incidental civilian casualties. However, a finding that mistakes were made in the target selection for the Minab attack does not excuse responsibility. If U.S. forces failed to take the necessary measures to avoid civilian casualties, including maintaining updated “no strike” lists, they could be considered in violation of international humanitarian law (IHL)—and, if individuals acted sufficiently recklessly, they may be guilty of a war crime. Consequently, the investigation should also consider whether recent moves by Secretary Hegseth to dismantle the military architecture built to reduce civilian harm played a part in enabling the attack.

As the U.S. military’s inquiry goes forward, it is essential for the investigators to treat this incident with the seriousness such recklessness warrants under IHL, and to consider whether it meets the mens rea (criminal intent) standard for war crimes.

The Red Tape of Ukraine’s Semi-Open Arms Exports

Oleksandr Matviienko examines how Ukraine’s highly restrictive and bureaucratic arms export system has prevented it from capitalizing on global demand—particularly for cost-effective drone technologies—despite strong interest from partners in the Gulf and the West.

From a legal standpoint, Ukraine never had an outright ban on arms exports. But in practice, exports simply didn’t happen.

Because the government wanted the exports to remain shut, the interagency commission under the National Security and Defense Council, which is one of the key bodies responsible for authorizing exports, either didn’t convene or simply rejected all applications. Other responsible government agencies rejected all export applications, as well.

Then, in the summer of 2025, after months of lobbying by Ukrainian defense companies, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Ukraine would begin to export its technologies and open joint production lines with partner countries abroad.

From Endless Frontier to Enemy of the People: The Assault on Public Science

Wendy Wagner reviews Michael E. Mann & Peter J. Hotez’s new book, “Science Under Siege: How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces That Threaten Our World,” a narrative of the threats and fear campaigns used to discredit scientists and their work. Wagner describes how these coordinated attacks on public science are a systemic threat to scientific research and knowledge production that must be confronted before it is too late.

Nearly 20 years ago, a colleague and I documented the campaign against climate scientist Michael Mann after he developed what became known as the “hockey stick” reconstruction of historical temperature patterns. For the oil and gas sector, already facing mounting public pressure, Mann’s findings were deeply unwelcome.

What struck us most at the time, however, was not simply pressure from private actors but the degree to which governmental institutions themselves became vehicles for the attack. In 2004, for example, a congressional committee subpoenaed Mann’s scientific records, correspondence, and data stretching back decades. As we documented in our 2012 book “Bending Science,” legal and political tools were increasingly deployed to harass, suppress, or reshape research that political figures, often working at the behest of industry backers, sought to discredit in the eyes of the public.

Twenty years ago, Mann’s case felt exceptional. Two decades later, it no longer does.

Section 230 After ‘@Grok Is This True?’

Joshua Villanueva analyzes how platforms like X complicate immunity protections derived from Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 by both distributing potentially false third-party content and generating responses to “verify” its authenticity through its artificial intelligence (AI) powered Grok-on-X tool.

On X, a slew of content requires a critical eye. Fake wartime videos swirl around as users are swept up in synthetic, recycled, and misleading war images. A video of a mega-earthquake or a crumbling bridge goes viral. And deepfake footage of politicians and celebrities seems to bend reality. Users, seeking clarity, ask Grok-on-X, “Hey, @Grok is this true?”

When the same service both distributes content and generates an answer about whether that content is real, it raises questions under Section 230—the statute that generally shields online platforms from liability based on third-party content by preventing courts from treating them as the publisher or speaker of that content. In the context of “@Grok is this true?,” is the resulting claim still best analyzed as third-party speech for purposes of Section 230? Or does the platform’s own output become part of the challenged information?

It Is Time to Ban the Sale of Precise Geolocation

In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren unpacks the national security and privacy risks of geolocation data through an American adtech surveillance system, how threat actors are leveraging AI tools to accelerate criminal activities, and more.

The overall lesson here is not that AI allowed a hacking campaign to do new and unprecedented things. The techniques used in the campaign itself are not novel. And Gambit says there is evidence the systems compromised were end-of-life or out-of-support, and did not have relevant security updates applied.

But what AI did do was enable a single individual to operate at far greater speed than they could previously.

Documents

Anna Bower shares the $1.25 million settlement agreement between the U.S. government and former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn to resolve a lawsuit in which Flynn claimed he was maliciously prosecuted for allegedly lying to federal investigators.

Podcasts

Lawfare Daily: Crypto, Corruption, and Cons, with Ben McKenzie: Benjamin McKenzie joins Michael Feinberg to discuss McKenzie’s new documentary, “Everyone Is Lying to You for Money,” a deep dive into the cryptocurrency industry, and what the years-long research project has taught him of cryptocurrency’s literal and figurative value.

Lawfare Daily: The Justice Department Throws Out the Proud Boys and Oath Keeper Cases: Troy Edwards, Michael Feinberg, Roger Parloff, and James Pearce join me to discuss the Department of Justice’s motion to drop the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys seditious conspiracy cases, the last remaining criminal matter from the prosecutions of Jan. 6 Capitol insurrectionists.

Videos

At 4 pm on April 17, I sat down with Eric Columbus, Bower, and Parloff to unpack the D.C. Circuit’s blocking of Judge James Boasberg’s contempt inquiry in an Alien Enemies Act case, a nationwide warrant for an ICE agent over alleged actions taken during Operation Metro Surge, the firing of six immigration judges, and more.

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Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the horse, seen here being desensitized to various scary stimuli:

Video Source

In honor of today’s Beast, consider exposure therapy.

The Rule O’ Law Roundup: Week of April 13, 2026

It’s been a busy week. Here are the major developments.

• In re Donald J. Trump et al. (D.C. Cir., No. 25-5452):

The D.C. Circuit voted 2-to-1 on April 14 to issue a writ of mandamus ordering Chief Judge James Boasberg to terminate his criminal contempt proceedings concerning the March 2025 Alien Enemies Act deportation flights to El Salvador. This is not the first time a Neomi Rao-Justin Walker majority has blocked this inquiry. Judge Rao describes the case as follows:

The Supreme Court vacated the district court’s order because it was premised on a legal error and the plaintiffs’ suit was brought in the wrong court. Nonetheless, the district court threatened to hold government officials in criminal contempt unless they complied with the now-vacated order by, for instance, taking back custody of the plaintiffs. We issued a writ of mandamus vacating the court’s first contempt order.