What We're Reading

Hello Lawfare Patreon Subscribers,

Here is what we’re reading this week:

Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes is reading Senior Editor Alan Rozenshtein’s analysis of the Biden administration’s decision to extend the eviction moratorium. He is also reading Lawfare Founding Editor Jack Goldsmith’s follow-up “The Anatomy of a Screw Up: The Biden Eviction Moratorium Saga.”

Executive Editor Natalie Orpett has been catching up on her stack of New Yorkers, including articles about the future of Afghanistan, the challenges of building artificial hearts and a profile of Joe Manchin. She is also reading Samantha Powers's memoir, “The Education of an Idealist.”

Chief Operating Officer David Priess is enjoying the forthcoming “Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy.” Author Tom Nichols takes no prisoners when attacking citizens across the political spectrum who are rejecting the foundational virtues of democracy in favor of narcissism, anger and resentment; he’ll join David on the Lawfare Podcast in a couple of weeks to lament it all.

Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson is reading Jennifer Senior's "What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind" in The Atlantic, a touching portrait of how the family and loved ones of McIlvaine, who died on September 11th, have coped and recovered over the past twenty years. He's also reading Louis Menand's Pulitzer Prize winning 2001 book, “The Metaphysical Club,” which traces the lives and intellectual developments in the aftermath of the Civil War era. This is before he tackles Menand's newest book, “The Free World,” which came out earlier this year and traces the evolution of American art and culture through the Cold War.

Senior Editor Alan Rozenshtein read an insanely entertaining Harper’s Magazine piece about “The Anxiety of Influencers.”

Managing Editor Jacob Schulz is listening to a podcast from The Art Angle about Hunter Biden's burgeoning art career and how the Biden administration has handled the murky ethics issues that it has created. The story reminded him of a Lawfare classic, "Ethics Rules are National Security Rules."

Fellow in Cybersecurity Law Alvaro Marañon is reading a post on Motherboard that describes the emergence of a "ban-as-a-service" industry on Instagram, where an individual can hire a scammer to ban an account. The scammers are able to target specific accounts by "abusing Instagram's protections against suicide, self-harm, and impersonation."

Associate Editor Bryce Klehm is reading Andrew Desiderio and Lara Seligman’s recent article in Politico that details the decision making process within the Biden administration and the excruciatingly slow process of the evacuation of Afghan interpreters. He also listened to the Lawfare Podcast’s round-up of “Unfinished Business at the Department of Justice” with Scott Anderson, Benjamin Wittes, Carrie Cordero and Chuck Rosenberg.

Lawfare Intern Ajay Sarma is reading Olga Khazan’s piece in The Atlantic about vaccine hesitancy and distrust of public health messaging among Fox News’s viewership, with a focus on Tucker Carlson’s audiences.

Lawfare’s Quote of the Week:

From Jack Goldsmith’s “The Anatomy of a Screw Up: The Biden Eviction Moratorium Saga”: “And largely due to the Biden administration’s mismanaged messaging, the public (including many commentators sympathetic to the administration) viewed the administration as lawless because it declined to bow to this predicted Supreme Court ruling. It’s all an impressive new twist on Holmes’ adage that ‘[t]he prophecies of what the courts will do in fact, and nothing more pretentious, are what I mean by the law.’ And it is a master lesson about how the Court can achieve important substantive rulings on its shadow docket without the normal requirements of procedural rigor and reasoned decisionmaking.”

From the Lawfare Vault:

Jan. 21, 2020: “The Afghanistan Papers and the Perils of Historical Analogy” by David V. Gioe

April 2, 2019: “China’s Pivot on Climate Change and National Security” by Scott Moore and Michelle Melton

Thank you!