Rebecca Ingber

Opinion | State Terror Has Arrived

Gift article:

“Only hours have passed since they shot a man right in front me and I don't feel like I can go home because I heard agents were looking for me. I don’t know what the agents will do when they find me. I do know that they're not telling the truth about what happened.”

TincherSealedWitnessDec012426.PDF

This witness to Alex Pretti's murder not only refutes the governmen't story, but says she is afraid to go home because federal agents might arrest her. This is what it feels like to live under state terror.
www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

204. Accountability After Minneapolis A short post explaining (1) why it's so hard to hold federal officers and/or the federal government liable for violating our rights; and (2) how a one-sentence statute could (and *SHOULD*) fix it.

"Just like the killing of Renée Good, Saturday morning’s shooting once again raises the question of why it is so damned difficult to hold federal officers—and the federal government itself—accountable if and when they violate our rights."

Me on the federal accountability gap—and how to close it:

How much does it weigh

This moment is going to be an identifiable turning point in world history. Maybe even if it hadn’t been an extraordinary work of rhetoric — just the “taking down the sign” on its own terms. But also, damn what a speech.

And apparently he wrote it himself. Can you imagine … having a leader who could give let alone write that speech right now.

bsky.app/profile/meli...

A YouTube link for those looking for it. No words.

youtu.be/btqHDhO4h10?...

“American hegemony…helped provide public goods: open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes. So, we placed the sign in the window.
This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct: we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”

The Carney doctrine Open comment thread on the PM's Davos speech

My god this Mark Carney speech.

Here in its entirety:

on the evening of 9/11 i worked in the operations center at the state department helping field incoming calls & cables. ally after ally promised support under the north atlantic charter. trump is shredding the bonds that make that kind of support natural.

We have crossed that line, wherever it was, where world leaders have moved from trying to hold the course to recognizing, well, this:

To be clear map size is a justification to invade NEITHER Greenland, NOR Mexico.

Maps are wild

Congress. SCOTUS too. They’ve relied on the internal guardrails for so long they’ve lost the muscle memory to act as separate and coequal branches in a system of truly divided power.

The problem is not the internal guardrails. The problem is the people outside the executive branch who are constitutionally entrusted to check and constrain it, who have relied on those internal guardrails instead of doing their own jobs.

Preserving NATO; Prohibiting Military Action Against Greenland Trump’s threats to invade Greenland risk destroying NATO itself, but a little-known statute could prevent him from doing just that.

2/ Congress needs to put a stop to this shameful and reckless Greenland gambit now.

Here’s Alberto Mora’s latest on how a law already on the books cuts off funds for an action that would result in NATO’s destruction:

www.justsecurity.org/128930/prese...

Ok

But my neighbors are appalled and so many are stepping up. Fear does not work so well in the North Star state. We survive Arctic winters every year, we will survive ICE.

A homicide in a camp where members of politically disfavored ethnic groups are concentrated.

Abjectly terrifying thread on ICE abductions of random people off the street. Read the whole thread.

It was a pleasure to speak with @weissmann.substack.com and Mary McCord about Venezuela, international law, and why it is in the U.S. interests to maintain a stable world governed by the rule of law, for their Main Justice podcast.

Available below or here: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/m...

Consolidation of Power A new episode of Main Justice, with a special guest

Listen to our @rcls-nyu.bsky.social senior fellow @becingber.bsky.social lay out the stakes & explain the law re US actions in Venezuela.
With our faculty co-director @weissmann.substack.com & Mary McCord on their Main Justice podcast:
substack.com/@ghost22/not...

It’s the “not war by virtue of not planning” theory of constitutional war powers

Another interesting line: “We were further assured that there is no contingency plan that would involve using U.S. forces occupying Venezuela should the removal of Maduro result in civil unrest in that country.”

*because the president doesn’t currently have a contingency plan for casualties

Had to break to feed the children. Returning, and this is an interesting paragraph. Note the OLC “not a war” analysis is supposed to take into account risk of escalation into war. Here OLC says that the U.S. might sustain significant casualties, yet that doesn’t warrant Congressional involvement—

1/DOJ OLC's memo on the #Venezuela attack makes clear that that in the Executive's view, there's nothing left of Congress' Art. I power to decide whether the nation goes to war.

Congress needs to push back hard on this.

More to come, but a few initial observations:
www.justice.gov/olc/media/14...

13/ In an extraordinary show of how absurd this “war in the constitutional sense” test has become, the memo shockingly concludes that:

“It is unlikely that even the full loss of the strike force would amount to the type of sustained casualties that would amount to a constitutional war.”