Department of Defense Law of War Manual, Sec. 18.3.2.1 states the "requirement" to refuse illegal orders. What’s its key example? Wait for it . . . It’s "orders to fire upon the shipwrecked."

If the Venezuelan sailors were enemy combatants, then the 2nd strike is a war crime. If the Venezuelan sailors weren’t enemy combatants, then both strikes are criminal murder. It’s that simple.

Send them all to the Hague

/3 Asserting the (legally correct) point that members of the military may refuse illegal orders is not conspiring to overthrow the government or hinder the laws by force. You can tell because if it were seditious conspiracy Trump would be pardoning it. www.pbs.org/newshour/pol...

When Roberts is Chief Justice they just let you do it

@creshman.bsky.social’s presidential address on market power, critical minerals, and today’s conflicts was the perfect end to an excellent Peace Science weekend!

a new genre of photo in the last year is federal agents working for ICE pointing guns directly at photographers

That a federal judge had to block the Trump administration from pushing millions of Americans into hunger says everything about this President and the party he leads. Grateful to our Attorney General for being on the frontlines of this fight.

The New York Post is owned by Lachlan Murdoch, solely because his daddy bought it and passed it on to him. And it's backing Andrew Cuomo, a meathead whose whole career in politics stems from his daddy being good at it. But *Mamdani* is the nepo baby, because his mom was a filmmaker? Sure.

for some reason, I’m feeling very jealous of the French today.

Also a great example of why not to use passive voice (unless you’re trying to carry water for the administration

Kansas City showed up!

If you make jokes about gas chambers, rape and slavery, it's just 30 year old kids being kids. If you don't mourn Charlie Kirk enough, you're a terrorist who must be fired from your job immediately.

Hey ICE! Show your faces and display identification!

If this was happening in any other country you'd have journalists and analysts discussing risks of state failure

Hatch Act briefings once included the minutiae of what was allowable in terms of car bumper stickers in office parking garages. Now, absolutely, anything goes. The Hatch Act is on fire.

🧵 Libertarian economist Tyler Cowen is making headlines for an extremely creepy post at Bari Weiss's blog fantasizing about robot virgins and the AI character Tilly Norwood. Unfortunately, the story behind is much worse...

If the President can raise his own revenues and direct his own spending without congressional approval we are squarely in the only situation the Constitution was actually drafted to avoid: English civil war territory

If you're blaming the Democrats for the shutdown of a government that is run entirely by Republicans, why stop there? Go wild, man. Blame the shutdown on leprechauns, or the Seattle Mariners, or maybe the cast of "She's the Sheriff." You've decided facts don't matter, so have some fun with it!

hey, that’s me! Seriously honored to be interviewed for this story

“When you view the military’s purpose as just about going out guns blazing and killing people, then you might think, well, you don’t need diversity to just go out and kill people. But you do need diversity if what you really need to do is problem-solve.” - @rebeccabestir.bsky.social

Is the Russian military something the US military should aspire to? Do you look at Russia’s military performance in Ukraine—3.5 years and a million casualties failing to conquer a smaller neighbor—and think “wow, I wish we could be more like that”?

"More professors in the United States have been fired for controversial views in the past week than any other week in all of American history." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

Horrified to see yet another political assassination AND another school shooting this year. Most of us reject violence, but our rhetoric (& the algorithms that enable hate mongers to go viral), culture, and gun laws enable so much violence.

Going to be wild to have Clarence Thomas and other members of the court write that even the appearance of impropriety is sufficient to allow the President to remove Federal Reserve members from office, and then head off to Harlan Crow’s yacht

What do you want to know about...everything...that's going on in this economy? We're working on a special for this weekend -- listener questions wanted. Here's the frame: what are the *real costs of what's happening. hmu

Why would any future recruit choose to sacrifice for a country that is so willing to betray those who have chosen to sacrifice for their country?

This seems like the only explanation that makes sense for why it suddenly matters to MAGA that Trump is a pedophile. Though I think it goes beyond this - it’s not just that the cover up suggested he was (a) guilty and (b) not a victim, it’s also simply that he showed weakness and they smell blood.

The United States could have at least tried to stop this. wapo.st/3GXPS9A

I think about this figure a lot.

“Over the past 21 months of war, more than 17,000 children have reportedly been killed and 33,000 injured in Gaza. An average of 28 children have been killed each day – the equivalent of an entire classroom…A whole classroom of children killed, every day for nearly two years.”

or at least we have Trump’s word for it that starting Aug 1 we will have 35% tariffs. Which neither increases nor decreases my expectation of 35% tariffs on Aug 1.

Brings to mind this graph from Peter Feaver’s 2023 book. 25% of Americans think the U.S. spends over $1 Trillion on the State Dept. The actual 2020 budget was $55 billion - but 74% of Americans thought it was at least $250 billion and more than half thought it was at least $450 billion.

I encourage everyone to read this letter. Please then realize the president is imposing a tax on American consumers to leverage a foreign nation into making a domestic political decision that will help one of his political allies.

The entire Latino population in the U.S. is 65 million. She means all of us.

This is the strategy all across the federal government

Iran could install a Fordow-sized replacement facility in less than three months. The first bomb’s worth of material would be available two to three days after that, @armscontrolwonk.bsky.social argues.

I can’t wait to hear “America First” voters explain how this war is in the interest of the U.S.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were so famously successful and popular that we I can absolutely see why the GOP wants another forever war…

The stupidest people are in charge because we couldn’t prosecute a political crime because it would look too political.

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.

My team and I at the Crowd Counting Consortium (@[email protected], Soha Hammam, & Chris Shay) have a new piece out: wagingnonviolence.org/2025/06/amer.... In it, we show that through May 2025, the size and scale of anti-Trump protests have dwarfed those in 2017. 🧵

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

There goes the idea of a non-partisan military.

The terms he’s using to describe American civilians call to mind the way Hutu leaders talked about Tutsis in the run up to the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

It’s not just 700 Marines, it’s a battalion, a combat unit called 2/7. When I was in a similar unit, 2/8, we had literally 1 week of “non-lethal” (riot control) training. And about 4 years of lethal training. No disrespect to 2/7, but they’re not trained for this. They’re trained for war.

There's quite a bit you can say about President Trump's actions since taking office, but that he didn't say what he was going to do is not one of them

Bondi DOJ has a problem. On left: DOJ Indictment and Detention Memo allege Abrego Garcia lied to officer by not revealing he was coming from Texas On right: DHS Referral Report: "Subject stated he was driving 'three days ago' (11/27/2022) from Houston, TX to Temple Hills, MD (via St Louis, MO)"