The U.S. military is being used inside the United States. There's a lot we don't know about how, why, and under what authorities. Today, Lawfare is launching a new project–which includes a tracker and a map–to follow where and how the military is being domestically deployed.

SHUTDOWN TAKEAWAY: send home as many federal employees as you want, cut off people's food stamps, let health care system career towards a cliff, but don't mess with air travel, especially with holidays looming.

And this is the theme of all the confessions in every industry, to include the cowardly law firms that cut deals with the WH.

This is exactly it.

Schumer (NY) 202 224-6542 Booker (NJ) 202 224-3224 King (ME) 202 224-5344 Hassan (NH) 202 224-3324 Durbin (IL) 202 224-2152 Ossoff (GA) 202 224-3521 Shaheen (NH) 202 224-2841 Gillibrand (NY) 202 224-4451 Masto (NV) 202 224-3542 Warner (VA) 202 224-2023

I'm legitimately confused about the play here. No person who now is going to go without coverage in the ACA is going to just blame the GOP. They will rightly blame the Democrats too. Dems won't get "points" for "fighting" if they cave. It makes little sense.

ICYMI - I wrote this a few weeks ago about the frustration that many of us are feeling about this very preventable chaos, in the context of my June discussion with legendary South Korean author Hwang Sokyong about how we combat selective memory in times of crisis: www.cjlpa.org/post/on-forg...

AP reporter Regina Garcia Cano looked into a few of the men killed in Trump's extrajudicial strikes on Caribbean boats. "They were laborers, a fisherman, a taxi driver. Two were low-level career criminals. One was a local crime boss who contracted out smuggling services" apnews.com/article/trum...

It's impossible to overstate how much of what ICE is doing on the ground reflects this completely preposterous conflation of hostile *speech* and hostile *conduct.* The First Amendment protects—or, at least, is supposed to protect—the former up and until it's a "true threat," which none of this is.

This, times infinity.

There is a straight line from the impunity of Dick Cheney to the present day.

Can I interest anyone in two decades worth of scholarship based on a true story, on how NOT to treat detained persons, both in and out of armed conflict?

BREAKING: Immigration officers in the Chicago area will be required to wear body cameras after the use of tear gas and other actions against protesters, a judge rules.

"One recent flashpoint for the role of US military lawyers has been the series of strikes on boats in the Caribbean, with multiple current and former JAGs telling CNN that the strikes do not appear lawful." Important article & reporting by @natashabertrand.bsky.social via @cnn.com.

How devastating. Her writing held so much meaning for so many.

Trump is no longer even pretending to have any kind of argument that his murdering of people in the Caribbean Sea has any kind of statutory validity. Just straight up declaring that he has quasi-unlimited power to execute people based on (nominal) suspicion.

It's the "again" - because we begged for accountability long before the 2020 election, to rein in executive power gone wild, and then begged again after the 2020 election, thinking it would surely, finally, happen. Nope. We are never more exceptional as in impunity.

Very nice piece from my colleague @stevevladeck.bsky.social in today's Times on the illegality of Trump's troop deployments to American cities. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/07/o...

After spending some time in/studying Gwangju, this is a constant question in my mind.

HAPPENING NOW: Judge Karin Immergut hears emergency arguments as California and Oregon seek to block President Trump's deployment of federalized California National Guard troops to Portland. 🧵

Where are the commanding officers of those sailors in the background. How are they letting this happen?

Oh he can just unilaterally pass unconstitutional laws now huh ok

“Four children who are U.S. citizens were taken into custody amid the operation at the apartment complex on Tuesday until they could be placed in the care of guardians or the state, the DHS spokesperson said.” people.com/ice-agents-o...

BREAKING: Our client Mario Guevara, an Emmy-winning journalist detained by ICE in retaliation for livestreaming law enforcement activity, will be deported tomorrow to El Salvador. Mario and his family are being punished for his reporting. This cruelty is meant to stifle our free press.

“This is extortion, plain and simple. It is not hyperbole to say that the future of higher education.. requires that every university reject it…The only solution is solidarity and collective action against this effort at federal control over higher education.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/o...

Has anyone asked anyone in the administration to define a non-international armed conflict?

The entirely foreseeable and logical extension of all of the United States' law of war violations post 9/11.

👏🏾 @akalhan.bsky.social

Over the past century and a half, the US military has developed an entire body of law relating to the legitimate use of force that Hegseth completely erases here. To most in the armed forces, it is important to have a code of ethics (no matter how imperfect). Otherwise they are just hired killers.

Oh, this is John Yoo’s red line, is it? And zero recognition of how his work in the early aughts got us here.

I’m still kinda stunned we haven’t gotten any real insight into how they are generating intel for these targets, ISR, SIGNIT, HUMNIT, blast the first boat closest to the predator? Really alarming stuff ngl

There are no words for how massively destructive this is.

Very hard 😉

Exactly this

This week at the #ICC: A public hearing on #reparations in the case of Al Hassan. In June last year, Al Hassan was convicted of 8 counts of #CrimesAgainstHumanity and #WarCrimes. In December 2024, he asked for forgiveness "from all those I have harmed". www.icc-cpi.int/sites/defaul...

The Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territories has issued its 72 pages long legal analysis of submitted evidence supporting the charge of genocide against Israel. Full document here: www.ohchr.org/sites/defaul...

The three most damning paras in the UN Report alleging that Israel is perpetrating genocide in Gaza: Siege starvation, attacks on health care, direct targeting of children as patterns that cannot be explained except if group destruction is one animating purpose.

It remains absolutely shocking that the president is summarily executing suspected criminals even though he told us he was going to keep doing it: bsky.app/profile/beci...

Last week, I offered my thoughts on the illegality of the first boat strike at @foreignpolicy.com foreignpolicy.com/2025/09/10/t...

We have been trending this way since 9/11. Angry, but not surprised. At. All.

the deep American inability to think about other countries is going to mask how much we're destroying our international reputation I think

The complete inability to build consistent narratives or a coherent set of facts feels like a death knell for democracy. You can't leverage popular sovereignty toward the creation of public goods if popular sovereignty can't decide on what reality is

They have never, ever expressed anything close to this level of pain and sympathy for school shooting victims.

“This administration has gone too far and been violent to too many of us. Today we rise in solidarity to bring Trump’s agenda of detention and destruction to a grinding halt.” Keya Chatterjee of @freedcproject.bsky.social #WeAreAllDC

This is censorship from an authoritarian regime that wants to project the illusion that they face no internal opposition or dissent. No other way to describe it.

Just because the Trump administration labels a group or person a "terrorist" and uses the military tools of counterterrorism, it does not magically transform the target into a "terrorist" much less a lawful target for lethal force.

The illegal rebranding of the *Department of Defense* is of a piece with the illegal and lethal strike in the Caribbean. By no means new, but the administration is simply acting lawlessly.

This is not a thorny issue. This is not fraught. It is extrajudicial killing. It is the killing of civilians under any standard of law. He killed them on the basis of his-say so that they are drug smugglers, mere criminals. It was premeditated. And he's saying he's going to do it again and again.

The U.S. creating a “state sponsor of wrongful detention” designation is the possibly the funniest thing they could do, says the lawyer for detainees at…Guantanamo Bay.

💥 Resistance: "With only their cell phones, medical kits, and the confidence to assert their rights, volunteer night patrols follow and record the armed troops who have taken over the capital." We can do this!