Breaking News: Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Princeton graduate student taken hostage in Iraq, has been freed after more than two years of captivity.

ALL CAPS THIS IS CATASTROPHIC FOR SPACE SCIENCE AND ASTROPHYSICS ... GLOBALLY CATASTROPHIC, NOT JUST FOR AMERICANS 🔭🧪 www.politico.com/news/2025/07...

👀👀👀 www.nytimes.com/2025/07/08/w...

I’m currently building a dataset on police forces around the globe. No other country has a force quite like ICE (w/ broad enforcement powers, tactical gear, immigration focus); the most apt comparisons are to secret police in authoritarian regimes rather than border/immigration forces elsewhere.

This is an unappreciated downside of the Iranian airstrikes: it revealed capabilities of the MOD and the B-2 itself (both radar x-section and actual combat load/range) and, despite everything working perfectly, appears to have failed to destroy the program despite being built for this use

My colleague Nick Miller in The Economist www.economist.com/middle-east-...

What’s striking about the SCOTUS stay here is not just (!) the risk that the govt will ship people off to countries where they may face serious danger, but that the Court is tacitly rewarding the govt’s repeated defiance of the district court

according to conservatives on the court, the constitution does not protect your right to your own body but does enable the government to ship you off to a foreign gulag without any hope of return

Justice Sotomayor ends her dissent by saying the Supreme Court has permitted "thousands [to] suffer violence in farflung locales," an action which "rewards lawlessness" by the Trump administration. She says the Court has undermined the basic concept of Due Process under the law.

Sotomayor's dissent is scathing. She accuses her colleagues of a gross abuse of discretion, saying they "interven[ed] to grant the Government emergency relief from an order it has repeatedly defied." She's right. The 6-justice majority is effectively endorsing contempt of court.

#BREAKING: Over a (sharp) public dissent from the three Democratic appointees, #SCOTUS clears the way for the Trump administration to remove migrants to third countries *without* giving them an additional opportunity to contest whether they face persecution or other forms of mistreatment there:

at least he didn't do something truly reckless like try to forgive student loans

By the way, one of the reasons it’s terrible all of these people lie all of the time about meaningless things is it makes it impossible to believe them when they’re talking about incredibly consequential things.

Journalists: this thread has many, many people who can comment on different angles of the US attack on Iran. Contact them!

Donald Trump, a weak and dangerously reckless president, has put the United States on a path to a war in the Middle East that the country does not want, the law does not allow, and our security does not demand.

Trump is skipping over all potential checks on use of force. Intl law - no claim of self defense. US law - no AUMF, does not meet WPR criteria, Article 2 so stretched it’s tearing. Partisan congressional notification only. Intel and defense principals objected. Vast majority of Americans opposed. 1/

Trump is once against arsonist and fireman. If he hadn't pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal (which our own State Dept. certified Iran was in compliance with), we wouldn't be here.

🧵 Quick legal thoughts on Trump's attack on Iran. It was patently illegal. And a further egregious assault on the rule of law in the US. 1/n

I was briefed on the intelligence last week. Iran posed no imminent threat of attack to the United States. Iran was not close to building a deliverable nuclear weapon. The negotiations Israel scuttled with their strikes held the potential for success.

Once again, if we were a more serious country, we would not be here right now & Iran would have been years further away from actually having nuclear weapons than it was two weeks ago.

Oh hey if you wanna go back and listen to a whole season about why pulling out of the JCPOA during Trump’s first term was a terrible idea and would probably lead to war, we did that here: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t... (Season two.)

No Congressional approval and we find out we're at war with Iran from a freaking social media post. Just straight up Mad King

Data points like this and the badly outdated State/DoD websites suggest a lack of government coordination. Which is…well, not good when you’re getting into a war.

The brilliant @rachelwhitlark.bsky.social just joined bluesky and there is no one better to follow right now.

Questions, in no particular order: 1. Where’s the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio? 2. Is there a homeland security/CT plan given recent focus on mass deportations and downgrading of CT? 3. Did the “2 weeks” backlash push him or was it a done deal? 4. Did he notify Congress at all? (More soon)

Briefing only one party leadership on a decision to put American forces in harms way is a massive violation of norms. I mean, yeah, "norms", but still a break worth noting

Folks look at you like you’re crazy when you say we’re in the midst of the worst, most unprecedented constitutional crisis in 🇺🇸 history, & then, well, here it is, all in one post:

Among many other things this is a proliferation nightmare. The lesson learned will be never negotiate with the United States.

It’s a good thing Congress isn’t alive to see this

“When Mahmoud Khalil was detained, I wrote on my blog that the U.S. had pivoted to a new tactic, one I called “the deportation of dissent.” Then it happened to me.” Stunning, from @alistairkitchen.bsky.social www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

As someone who studies kidnapping, I’d say we don’t have to label every abduction/ detention as “kidnapping” to indicate that it’s arbitrary, unlawful, or just plain vile. Fortunately, we’ve got a whole slate of terms for what’s going on. More from me with all of them, soon.

🧵IR scholars, let's start a thread of what we know that's relevant for a US attack on Iran. Won't change any minds, but might help us teach this crisis and learn new angles. Please add (incl. your own work!), forgive/correct omissions. Nobody can cover everything and it's great to find new work. 1/?

Not an original point but worth saying again - there is not a single element in this picture that identifies any of these folks as law enforcement agents. No badges, no uniforms, no vests. Out of context it just looks like a bunch of random guys are kidnapping a mayoral candidate.

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City's comptroller, mayoral candidate Brad Lander, has been arrested while visiting an immigration court.

Here's a longer video of Brad Lander's detention just now inside 26 Federal Plaza as he tried to walk a man out of immigration court, by masked federal agents.

🧵 To make this more concrete: don't assume Trump himself knows what he is going to do next in in the Israel-Iran conflict. He definitely doesn't want to get the US involved in a major war in the Middle East (that much he's been clear on). But he loves to bomb and look tough. 1/

The Musgrave

Norms & the duct tape of two mostly functional, mostly pro-democracy mainstream political parties that mostly abide by them, folks. It’s all that’s held the Republic together for centuries, sometimes barely. And we appear to be all out of both norms & tape.

The devastation I felt to read this news and realize that I never, not for one second, lost hope that he might someday come home www.bbc.com/news/article...

Nothing subtle about what's happening here. The only question is what we'll do about it.

Which leads to the usual, rhetorical, unanswerable for the lack of an answer but still essential question I have been asking for years: "And then what?"

Time to update the Intro IR slides on “entrapment” and how to tell the difference between “preemptive” and “preventive” war…

Netanyahu wanted to strike Iran when Obama was president. Obama said no and he didn’t. Netanyahu wanted to strike Iran when Biden was president. Biden said no and he didn’t. Netanyahu wanted to strike Iran when Trump is president. Trump said no and he did.

The Israelis are calling this a "preemptive" strike. Whether you agree or disagree with this attack, these are not - from what we know tonight - "preemptive" strikes. The Israelis are using that word for a reason. Read on. /1

Updates from @nytimes.com

I posted in slack earlier this week asking if the wheels were coming off. Today's events provided a definitive yes.

Seeing lots of discussion about whether the U.S. military will go along or push back against orders to confront mass protests. Here’s my take on what other cases and prior research tell us about what might happen. 1/