Friday Round Up! 10/31/25
The Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon legal theory for drone strikes.
I know that I have already written a few times about the hollow (read: barely articulated) legal justification for the drone strikes in the Caribbean. In the first I explained why the Trump administration is throwing out a bunch of 9/11 buzzwords and hoping they’ll stick, and in the second I explained why the CIA might be a “backup” option that could avoid all these thorny legal issues. But since the situation continues to escalate and the legal “reasoning” seems to be getting both worse and more alarming, I’m going to talk about it again.
First, if you want just a quick refresher on why what the administration is doing is basically cold-blooded murder, here is an Ask Asha video I did a few weeks ago:
Since then, the administration has both tipped its hand and tried to engage in more weird legal gymnastics.
First, about two weeks ago, the military briefly held two survivors of a drone strike in the Caribbean before repatriating them to Ecuador and Colombia. This is telling: Although the administration claims that it is targeting people on whom it has substantial evidence that they are transporting illegal narcotics (which, as I note in the video and my prior pieces, would not make them legitimate military targets even if true), it chose not to prosecute them in court. ??? If these drugs traffickers are as dangerous as the administration claims — so dangerous that it was imperative to drop a missile on them — why would we let them go? If there was so much evidence, why not charge them in court? The administration is implicitly conceding that it had no evidence of crimes for these men and in doing so, that it is basically just killing innocent people on the high seas. (Ecuador released its national after he was repatriated, finding no evidence to prosecute him there, either.)
Then, last week, President Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth referred to these military targets as the “ISIS and al Qaeda of the Western hemisphere.” Which means they are still trying to make “fetch” happen. The attempt here is, I think, to do a rhetorical sleight of hand, characterizing these drug traffickers as an armed group, similar to terrorists — the basic argument here is that in such a case, the U.S. would be justified in targeting them, based only on their status as members of that group. As I have explained, though, drug cartels are, quite simply, not armed groups. But I think there might be an even crazier play going on here, which is an implicit argument that the drug cartels actually fall under the 2001 Authorization for Military Force against al Qaeda and associated forces. (This would be an incredibly stupid and baseless argument, which is precisely why I can’t rule out that this is what they are trying to suggest.)
OK — so as bad as all of that is, at least these attempts are trying to repurpose a legal justification that has been used before. But now they are going completely off the rails. This New York Times piece reports that Pentagon officials — without any lawyers present — briefed members of Congress, but could not provide a legal justification:
Representative Sara Jacobs, Democrat of California, said the Pentagon officials conceded that the administration did not know the identities of all of the individuals who were killed in the strikes….Ms. Jacobs said Pentagon officials said they needed to prove only that the targeted people were connected to designated terrorist organizations, even if the connection is ‘as much as three hops away from a known member’ of a designated terrorist organization (emphasis mine).
Yeah, read that again. “Three hops away.” The Trump administration is now claiming that the military can strike anyone who is three degrees removed from a drug trafficker, which even on its own is not a valid basis to use military force. In other words, the administration is now basically saying that it can just extrajudicially kill whoever it wants.
“Extrajudicial killings” is exactly how the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, characterized the Trump administration’s strikes, and called on the U.S. to halt them. Instead, the administration has just shifted its strikes to the Pacific, hoping to find a stronger link between the targets and actual drug trafficking to continue to try to make its ad hoc legal theories stick. Still trying to make “fetch” happen.
This week, Renato and I took a break from the Trump news to focus on the indictments brought against the basketball and poker rigging schemes involving NBA players last week (I’ll have a CAFE Note coming on this next week, as well). We also discussed why Trump continues to float his fantasy of a third term:
NEW! Freedom Academy Book Club Selection: Agents of Change: The Women Who Transformed the CIA by Christina Hillsberg
I’m so excited to have my friend and former CIA officer Christina Hillsberg join the Freedom Academy Book Club to discuss her latest book! I have been wanting to read this ever since I met Christina at the Spied, Lies, and Nukes Conference two years ago (yes, that’s a real thing) while she was still writing it. If you want to hear some great “Jane Bond” war stories gleaned from exclusive interviews and learn about the evolving (and often challenging) role of women in the agency, you’ll want to tune in! (Also, don’t you just love this cover??) Check in on “Upcoming Events” in the Round Up for the date and time (TBA, January).
Join me and Renato in Alaska!
It’s Complicated is cruisin’! Come join me and Renato as we explore the stunning beauty of Alaska and discuss how we can work together to protect our democracy! It’s a small ship, and there will be lots of opportunities to talk to us both, plus we will have an opening and closing reception and dedicated democracy discussion tables throughout the cruise. You can find out more at this link, and fill out your info here to have an agent call you with more information. Stay tuned for our next happy hour/info session!
Podcasts I was featured in this week:
If you didn’t get a chance to watch the video last week of the Stanfield Conversations I was a part of at Dalhousie University, you can listen to it on the CBC’s IDEAS podcast, here!
Upcoming events:
NOTE NEW DATE/TIME (sorry I had to accommodate a conflict!): Class Guest Speaker Professor John Witt, author of the forthcoming The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America, Tuesday, November 11, 7:30 p.m. EST. Our current moment has many parallels to the Gilded Age. The Progressive Era, which followed, generated many grassroots movements and jumpstarted our democracy towards what Scholar Robert Putnam calls an “upswing.” Professor Witt’s book is about one of those movements, which may hold lessons for us today. Please join! Zoom link will be sent to paid subscribers three hours before event. The talk will be recorded and posted for those who cannot make it live.
Wednesday, December 3, 12 p.m. EST. Class Guest Speaker and author of the Pepperspectives Substack, on Local Affairs and the Habits of Democracy. So excited to have my friend, law school classmate, and colleague David — who has been a previous guest speaker for my Substack class on the role of state politics in facilitating autocracy — come and talk to us about how we can effect change at the local level. Zoom link will be sent to paid subscribers three hours before event. The talk will be recorded and posted for those who cannot make it live.
NEW! Freedom Academy Book Club, Agents of Change: The Women Who Transformed the CIA by Christina Hillsberg (Date/Time TBA, sometime in January 2026). Christina interviewed women from different eras of the CIA and paints a picture of what being a female spy in the agency was really like. Zoom link will be sent to paid subscribers three hours before the event. The talk will be recorded and posted for those who cannot make it live.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
I am getting a lot of questions from friends and colleagues asking what they can do in this urgent political moment. I have three potential actions steps you can take now:
Pro bono lawyers are on the front lines to stop Trump’s breakdown, takedown, and shakedown of the federal government. You can contribute to this effort on the donation page of State Democracy Defenders Action
If you have not already and are able, donate to a local food bank to help those who will have their SNAP benefits cut off as of today.
Self care tip of the week: Celebrate some wins. It’s so hard to think positive these days — I know that for me, the dumpster fire that is our democracy can seep into my feelings about everything. Reminding myself daily of my (small) “wins” in the sphere of the world that I can control (getting to the gym, doing some writing, crossing off the thing I have been meaning to do for a while) can help me refocus and feel like I have agency and impact.
‘Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number—
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you—
Ye are many—they are few.’
— The Masque of Anarchy by Percy Bysshe Shelley, stanza XXXVIII
If it's a stupid and baseless argument, you can be sure that Stephen Miller was involved in the decision.
For anyone who has been closely following Asha's discussions on this particular subject, I just finished reading an excellent interview from Politico (link here: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/11/01/trump-boat-strikes-international-law-interview-00632077) that approaches the topic from the perspective of international criminality. Both the interviewer and interviewee are really knowledgeable, thoughtful and reasoned "experts" and I found it to be well worth the read. Also, Asha, should you happen to read this comment, I hope you find time to check this article out; I honestly think you would find it interesting and valuable: you might even want to include it as a reference in one of your next posts.