Dani Gilbert

Over 2,000 senior staff set to leave NASA under agency push The losses could endanger the administration’s plans for landing astronauts on the moon and Mars.

ALL CAPS

THIS IS CATASTROPHIC FOR SPACE SCIENCE AND ASTROPHYSICS ...

GLOBALLY CATASTROPHIC, NOT JUST FOR AMERICANS 🔭🧪

www.politico.com/news/2025/07...

Dueling U.S. Efforts Botched a Deal to Swap Venezuelans Held in El Salvador for Americans

👀👀👀
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

The Due Process Clause represents “the principle that ours is a government of laws, not of men, and that we submit ourselves to rulers only if under rules.” Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U. S. 579, 646 (1952) (Jackson, J., concurring). By rewarding lawlessness, the Court once again undermines that foundational principle. Apparently, the Court finds the idea that thousands will suffer violence in farflung locales more palatable than the remote possibility that a District Court exceeded its remedial powers when it ordered the Government to provide notice and process to which the plaintiffs are constitutionally and statutorily entitled. That use of discretion is as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable. Respectfully, but regretfully, I dissent.

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.

DHS v. D.V.D. Sotomayor, J, dissent. "... [T]his Court now intervenes to grant the Government emergency relief from an order it has repeatedly defied. I cannot join so gross an abuse of the Court’s equitable discretion."

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.

Trump post Iran

🧵 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.

Things That Go Boom News Podcast · Updated Semiweekly · Stories about the ins, outs, and whathaveyous of what keeps us safe. Hosted by Laicie Heeley.

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.

Nuclear scientists  have long been targets in covert ops – Israel has brought that policy out of the shadows Close to 100 scientists have been killed or abducted to stymie foreign nations’ nuclear programs since World War II. But the tactic has serious drawbacks as a means of countering proliferation.

And this week, she published commentary about her new project: the targeting of nuclear scientists

theconversation.com/nuclear-scie...

Her 2021 book, All Options on the Table, explains why some leaders launch preventive attacks against their adversaries’ nuclear weapons programs:

www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

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.

An unpopular and virtually unconstrained authoritarian has turned the military on domestic political opponents and a sovereign foreign country. We are in a very bad place.