Katherine Yon Ebright

US military averaged just under one air strike per day in Somalia in the first month of 2026. The highest or second-highest monthly Somalia strike numbers ever, rivaled only by Dec 2025.

2025, the highest year for Somalia strikes yet, had 140+ strikes (10-15 most months).

Major Somalia strikes update.

Our data now has a fully accounted for and confirmed strike count for Jan 2026 and to date. 26 strikes in Jan and 28 to date.

This includes two strikes w/o press release (1/20 and 1/26) and clarification of all multiple strikes.

www.newamerica.org/future-secur...

Five War Powers Takeaways from the Senate’s Venezuela Hearing The Senate's hearing with Rubio offered little solace to those concerned about the use of force against Venezuela.

New from me: A recap of last week's Venezuela hearing with Secretary of State Rubio.

Recap touches on the administration's overbroad theory of Art. II, the Cuban Missile Crisis as a "precedent," and the Alien Enemies Act -- among other items.

www.justsecurity.org/130722/war-p...

Five War Powers Takeaways from the Senate’s Venezuela Hearing The Senate's hearing with Rubio offered little solace to those concerned about the use of force against Venezuela.

5 Takeaways from Rubio's Senate hearing on Venezuela, from @brennancenter.org's @ebrightyon.bsky.social

The Trump admin "and its congressional allies believe the president can undertake bombings and ground operations at will, without meaningful constraints from Congress."

View: Why US airstrikes in Somalia are reaching record levels under Trump The Pentagon’s opacity over the attacks is creating an accountability gap, drawing parallels with the administration’s immigration enforcement push at home.

Semafor cites our New America Somalia strike data. Also touches on one of the major issues I’ve been emphasizing: the halt in the provision of casualty/battle damage assessments.

www.semafor.com/article/02/0...

The administration can't have it both ways. When it's a question of bypassing immigrants' constitutional rights under the Alien Enemies Act, they say we're at war. When they want to dodge congressional oversight, they say we're not at war. So which is it?

DUCKWORTH: If it's true that we are not at war with Venezuela, will you advise the president to rescind his invocation of the wartime Alien Enemies Act?

RUBIO: That was a mechanism to remove people from our country that present great danger

D: It's a wartime act. Are we currently at war?

R: No

DUCKWORTH: The administration has acknowledged that the vast majority of the men it rounded up and deported to torture under this law had no criminal record

RUBIO: We didn't torture anybody. Who did we torture?

America’s Counterterrorism Wars Tracking the United States's drone strikes and other operations in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya.

We have death tolls from Somali press releases for recent operations that align with declared strikes.

While it’s possible these include activity beyond the strikes, if these are the strike tolls, they’re quite a bit higher than death tolls early last year.

www.newamerica.org/future-secur...

No Legal Basis for Invading Venezuela 1989’s U.S. military action in Panama offers no constitutional cover for Trump’s Venezuela attack.

Administration officials have said H.W. Bush's ouster of the Noriega regime in Panama serves as a legal precedent for Trump's regime-change operation in Venezuela.

The comparison falls apart when you actually look at the facts.
www.brennancenter.org/our-work/ana...

Latest strike in Somalia brings declared count to 92 (confirmed count and is one strike despite plural via query) plus one declared ground op (not counted by AFRICOM as a strike bc not airstrike).

Our tally also includes two alleged strikes this year for 95.

www.africom.mil/pressrelease...

W.M.M. v. Trump The lawsuit challenges President Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members.

Proud to have filed another amicus brief -- alongside @cato.org and law professors @ilyasomin.bsky.social, John Dehn, and Geoffrey Corn -- in the ongoing Alien Enemies Act litigation.

The courts have the power to stop Trump's abuse of this wartime law.

www.brennancenter.org/our-work/res...

The Trump administration said that any Venezuelan immigrant it targets under the Alien Enemies Act "shall be ineligible for any relief or protection from removal" — including legal protections against deporting people to likely torture or persecution.

The AEA must be repealed.

The Trump administration said that any Venezuelan immigrant it targets under the Alien Enemies Act "shall be ineligible for any relief or protection from removal" -- including legal protections against deporting people to likely torture or persecution.

The AEA must be repealed.

This is a visual angle on the destruction in Gaza that has been mostly missing: what the huge expanse of Gaza City that has received the IDF earthmover treatment actually looks like, not top-down but horizontally. The fully razed area of Shejaiya just stretches on and on—you can’t even see the…

FWIW, the admin is definitely relying not only on FTO status but also on SDGT status under IEEPA -- which, as you know, is the law the admin is *also* using for worldwide tariffs.

Cartel de los Soles, one of the groups reportedly targeted, is an SDGT but not an FTO.

John Yoo, in an OLC memo from a month after the September 11 terrorist attacks, explaining when crime becomes war.

Caginess about which group makes me think Cartel de los Soles, which isn't a designated FTO but is a SDGT... under IEEPA. IEEPA for tariffs, IEEPA for war, IEEPA the everything-statute.

In law school, we definitely were lectured on/assigned case notes that discussed Bickel's Least Dangerous Branch, but I don't think we actually read any excerpts from it -- let alone the whole book. Common experience?

Truancy and related youth crime are real issues in DC, and I'm not sure anyone has a great answer to them. Whatever the answer is, though, it's not this.

I've had packages porch pirated in DC... but I also once dropped my phone while biking (fell out of my pocket, probably?), located it through find-my-phone, and recovered it at a CVS where someone had turned it in for safekeeping.

Question from @slotkin.senate.gov at Senate Armed Services Committee hearing with DOD personnel responsible for kill-or-capture missions

Pentagon: U.S. Counterterrorism Efforts Have Failed Africans A new Pentagon report sheds light on AFRICOM’s disastrous counterterrorism campaigns.

“Clearly, there’s been too little congressional and public oversight of these military efforts [with partner forces in Africa] to determine whether they are strategic and effective.”
theintercept.com/2025/08/05/p...

Maybe they should release all extant OLC opinions…

Another D.C. budget tidbit: @chmnmendelson.bsky.social says he has *not* funded Initiative 83 in his version of the budget that gets a first vote tomorrow. So, for now, the ranked-choice voting and semi-open primaries ballot initiative approved by voters would not be implemented.

Courts Can Check, and Have Checked, Executives’ Military Judgment Leah Tulin and Katherine Yon Ebright of the Brennan Center make the case against judicial deference to Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

In this compelling @volokhc.bsky.social guest post, @ebrightyon.bsky.social and Leah Tulin of @brennancenter.org explain why courts should not defer to Trump's invocation of Alien Enemies Act of 1798 as tool for peacetime mass deportation: reason.com/volokh/2025/...

Amicus Brief in W.M.M. v. Trump The lawsuit challenges President Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members.

A fuller argument regarding the ability of courts to check "manifestly unauthorized exercises of power" is available in the @brennancenter.org's amicus brief with @cato.org, @ilyasomin.bsky.social, and law professor John Dehn. /fin
www.brennancenter.org/our-work/cou...

Today's courts should simply follow these well-reasoned cases -- Sterling, Milligan, Schueller, etc. – which allow them to protect rights in the face of unsubstantiated executive claims of military or wartime necessity. /8

In Ex parte Milligan, notwithstanding the government's argument that Indiana was "threatened with invasion," the Court relied on its own "judicial knowledge that, in Indiana, the Federal authority was always unopposed, and its courts always open." /7

Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. 2 (1866) Ex parte Milligan: It is unconstitutional to try civilians by military tribunals unless there is no civilian court available.

In addition to following the logic of Sterling, Schueller cites Ex parte Milligan, a Civil War case in which the Supreme Court rejected the use of military commissions in Indiana. /6
supreme.justia.com/cases/federa...