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Expect Me

Good morning:

The estimable

Katherine

Pompilio and I made a video!

I think, “Expect Me” is my new slogan.

People have been asking me on Instagram and elsewhere how they can support #SpecialMilitaryOperations. A reminder that I do not take contributions to support my mischief, which I am pleased to pay for myself. The only way to support my mischief operations is to subscribe to #DogShirtDaily, which you are invited to do here:

Also, Katherine will be on #DogShirtTV this morning to impart her mad editing skills to the estimable Mariia Hlyten, who has uncommonly pressing need for them.

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Tuesday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable

Holly Berkley Fletcher

and I talked about the challenges of writing about religious communities from an academic perspective:

Yesterday on #DogShirtTV, we talked election results—good ones, even. It was kind of invigorating:

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The Situation

In Tuesday’s “The Situation” column, Anna Bower and I examine the newly articulated substance of the government’s case against former FBI Director James Comey, arguing that the facts alleged fail to show that Comey lied to Congress:

The interesting aspect of the brief, rather, is its account of the government’s substantive case against Comey.

The Comey indictment was notably devoid of facts. Few federal indictments of prominent figures have ever “spoken” less. So it was only a matter of time before the government had to spell out what precise statement it would endeavor to prove to a unanimous jury beyond a reasonable doubt constituted a lie to Congress and an effort to obstruct a congressional investigation—and what underlying conduct demonstrated its falsity. In this brief, the government for the first time does that.

So let’s go through the facts as alleged by the government, and let’s see if we can find a false statement to Congress in them.

The result of that exercise?

Spoiler alert: That case is unspeakably, breathtakingly devoid of merit. To see it laid out in all its patchwork threadbaredness is to gasp with embarrassment for the prosecutors who have presented this to an American court. It is to understand why no career prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia would work this case and why Interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan had to import two sacrificial lambs from North Carolina to litigate the matter. To read it is to spend 48 pages understanding the depth of corruption in the Justice Department in the second Trump administration.

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Recently On Lawfare

Compiled by the estimable Isabel Arroyo

Lessons Learned from the TikTok Saga

Alan Rozenshtein reflects on the twists and turns of the Tiktok deal, which would require the platform’s transfer from Chinese control. Rozenshtein explains that, while he stands by his initial analysis of the move’s legality and its importance to national security, he failed to anticipate how executive lawlessness, congressional weakness, and private sector appeasement would warp the process of transferring control.

If the divestiture proves genuine, this is what the law envisioned: TikTok continues operating, preserving speech interests, creator livelihoods, and user access, while national security concerns are addressed through structural separation from Chinese government influence.

So what did I get wrong? What I failed to appreciate was how we would get from Point A (bipartisan national security legislation passed under one set of political conditions in spring 2024) to Point B (a U.S.-China bilateral trade deal hammered out under very different political conditions 18 months later)—and what that journey would reveal about our institutions.

The journey revealed three institutional betrayals: by the executive, by Congress, and by corporate America.

U.S. Military Detention and Transfer in Its Fight Against Cartels

Trent Buatte analyzes the international legal status of the two men who have survived U.S. boat strikes in the Caribbean. Buatte examines the legality of repatriating or transferring detained survivors elsewhere, the challenges of defining alleged cartel members as combatants under the law of armed conflict, and the lessons policymakers should draw from the war on terror.

In prior detention cases, the U.S. government has asserted the right under the law of war to detain an enemy combatant until the end of hostilities. Importantly, the government mainly relies on its domestic statutory authority for detention for the duration for hostilities—the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which the Supreme Court determined authorizes detention as an “important incident[] of war.” No such domestic authorization exists for the government’s use of force against drug cartels. Instead, the U.S. government has relied solely on the president’s powers under Article II of the Constitution. In the early GWOT days, the Bush administration argued that Article II alone permitted the detention of enemy combatants for the duration of hostilities, but the Supreme Court could not reach agreement on this point, instead identifying the detention authority from the statutory authority to use force. This leaves Article II detention authority an open question.

What Europe and Non-Nuclear States Can Do to Reinforce Restraint on Nuclear Testing

In the latest installment of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, Astrid Chevreuil and Doreen Horschig argue that President Trump’s announcement considering the resumption of U.S. nuclear testing risks eroding decades of global nonproliferation architecture. The authors urge Europe’s nuclear and non-nuclear states to pressure the U.S., Russia, and China to reaffirm their commitments to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

The United States, Russia, and China are now in a dangerous feedback loop that risks reigniting nuclear testing. This dynamic threatens to erode long-standing global norms against nuclear testing and intensify the broader nuclear arms race. To help break this cycle, Europe’s nuclear powers—France and the United Kingdom—should urge the three major nuclear powers to reaffirm their testing moratoria and commitments under the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). In parallel, non-nuclear states can use multilateral fora to apply collective diplomatic pressure, sustain funding for verification systems, and reinforce the political and normative barriers against a return to testing.

Podcasts

On Tuesday’s Lawfare Daily, Kate Klonick sits down with Rick Pildes to discuss his recent article “Political Fragmentation in the Democracies of the West.” The two discuss the democratic and antidemocratic effects of social media; how social media adoption compares to the communications revolutions sparked by the printing press, radio, and cable TV; platforms’ power to both polarize information ecosystems and bolster small-donor campaigns; and more.

On Scaling Laws, Gabriel Nicholas joins Kevin Frazier to discuss the emerging world of artificial intelligence (AI) agents, the challenges of incorporating them into sensitive tasks, and possible policy frameworks for governing them.

On Wednesday’s Lawfare Daily, Anastasiia Lapatina and Francis Farrell discuss the ongoing fighting in the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, recent transformations on the front line, and whether Ukraine can ever give up Donbas.

On Rational Security, Scott R. Anderson sits down with Kate Klonick, Alan Rozenshtein, and me to discuss tensions over anti-Semitism within the American right, the U.S.-China TikTok deal, and parallels between the war on terror and the Trump administration’s current campaign against narcotics traffickers in the Caribbean.

Videos

On Lawfare Live, Scott R. Anderson sits down with Peter Harrell and Kathleen Claussen to discuss oral arguments in the legal challenge to President Trump’s tariffs at the Supreme Court.

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Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is this laser gator:

Video Source

In honor of today’s Beast, introduce other Beasts to laser pointers and report your results for future Beast of the Day purposes.