The “I AM an Object Lesson” Edition

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Kate, I am incredibly distracted because while I am looking at you and you look fairly normal and not overly intense today, you have a painting of a woman with the incredibly intense stare putting daggers into my heart from over your shoulder. What is this painting on your back wall? Talk to me about it. Oh, that? I painted. You didn't paint that. It's quite good. I like it. It is very intimidating to have directly. It's almost got like a dog shirt effect with Ben where you have like the goggle eyes looking at you as Ben looks at you. It's a pair of paintings. And it's Godzilla and Grace Kelly is actually who that's. Grace Kelly. Wow. I thought that was. Okay. She looked so familiar. I thought it was Felicity for a second, whoever Felicity is. You can't see everything on my shelves behind me, but it is such a curated thing of like. curios that are matched with books that go with them and like all of these types of kind of things that like this is like my western theme there's like lonesome dove and some buffalo horn cups and like yeah and like you know like an old like silver dollar that I found in a railroad track in Montana and like I don't know so just kind of like I don't know I am an object lesson Scott. I like it. That's like you're waiting for Architectural Digest to give you a call for their home tours and like really to give the here's my my slightly inane household decor. Here is my deep meaningful household decor. And they may be the same thing, but I've got a story for all of it. Just fill 15 minutes of YouTube space. It's a good, it's a good strategy. The best compliment I ever got was like, and I've gotten it a few times is like people being like, I kind of want to go shopping in your house.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Rational Security, the show where we invite you to join members of the Lawfare team as we try and make sense of the week's biggest national security news stories. And I am thrilled to be joined by two of the newer members of the Lawfare team, although at least one Rational Security veteran. That is, of course, our latest senior editor, Kate Klona. Kate, thank you for coming back on the podcast. Thanks for having me. I think you probably have been on many times over the years. I think it's your second or third or fourth time maybe on since I've been involved in a rat secondly. So excited to have you back on. And what will become a more recurring frequent Kiklonic segment, no doubt, now that you're with us in a more full-time capacity. And joining for the first time is our relatively newly minted senior editor, although he's not an unfamiliar name or perhaps a voice for folks who listen to the podcast or read Lawfare. That is, of course, our new senior editor, Eric Columbus. Eric. I just want to say I'm glad to be here for my first time. Well, Eric, thank you for coming on. Kate, thanks for coming on. We have a couple of really interesting stories in the news, making big headlines. So let us dig into it as we talk through following three topics for this week's episode. Topic one, an unerring of grievances. Since the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, some supporters of his, including several figures within the Trump administration, have actively sought to have individuals who have said critical or purportedly insensitive things about Kirk, removed from their jobs, or otherwise punished. This arguably came to a head last week after Jimmy Kimmel live was polled from the air following statements by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr suggesting networks might face additional regulatory scrutiny for not addressing alleged misinformation about Kirk's killer Kimmel purportedly put forward. While Kimmel is now, as of last night, officially back on the air, several major local affiliates are refusing to air his show. How do these efforts comport with the First Amendment and what do they mean for freedom of speech regardless? Topic two, you can't spell appeasement without app. After months of negotiations during which it has held off on enforcing a statutorily mandated ban, the Trump administration has announced that it has reached a deal with China regarding the disposition of the social media platform TikTok and its operation in the United States. But the public details of the deal have been few and far between and much more remains to be worked out. How close to a deal are the party's in actuality? And does it actually address the national security concerns motivating Congress's ban in the first place? Topic three. Playing with White House money. The Trump administration has been rocked by two major corruption-related stories in the past week. First, that the Justice Department is reported to have closed an investigation into White House immigration czar Tom Homan, who reportedly accepted $50,000 from undercover FBI agents prior to joining the administration. on the understanding that he would help the donors gain access to the incoming Trump administration. And second, new details suggested the recent deal to permit chip sales to the UAE were tied up in a variety of major cryptocurrency deals that enriched both the Trump organization and others in the Trump administration. Only the latest and a long history of suspect cryptocurrency transactions by Trump-related businesses, at least in the eyes of many skeptics. How big a problem are these transactions and what do they tell us about the state of corruption in the second Trump administration? So for our first topic, Eric, I want to turn to you because you've been digging into this topic for us this week. It's been a dramatic week for free speech in the First Amendment. I think it's fair to say. First, we had the incredibly dramatic and violent and shocking assassination of Charlie Kirk in the last week and a half or so now, followed by a really, really strong public reaction by a variety of people, an element of which, and we shouldn't.

correlate and say that this is all of it, but an element of which is focused on trying to, um, silence or punish or otherwise put pressure on voices to suppress criticism of Kirk or, uh, otherwise, comments are seen as insensitive about. Kirk, his killer, the killing, and a sort of related issues. Some of these have come from figures in the White House. Vice President JD Vance has said certain things similar to this. President Trump has said certain things similar, certainly. Of course, Brendan Carr, chairman of the FCC most recently, specifically in relation to Jimmy Kibble said things like this. And it led to not just the Jimmy Kimmel Live Show being pulled off the air, but also a lot of people being removed from their jobs or facing other sorts of penalties from their employers over the last few weeks, at least according to a number of media reports. So talk to us about... What you think are the major trends and actions we're seeing here and the sort of questions they're raising for you about what illegal implications they might have? I think we've seen a lot of people embarrass themselves in the wake of the Kirk assassination and both private figures and public figures. And obviously the public figures have a higher responsibility. And public officials, you saw the attorney general saying that. Hate speech is not protected speech, which is obviously nonsense, and she basically had to walk that back the next day. She also said that they could go after people at a kinko's, not at an office depot who refused to print a flyer advertising a vigil for Charlie Kirk. But those people have the First Amendment right not to... print something just like the people who have a First Amendment right to ask them to print something. And those are kind of similar issues involved in the recent Supreme Court case called Masterpiece Cake Shop, with the added wrinkle here, that there isn't even any law that under normal circumstances would give the federal government any authority to go after a copy shop for not printing something. That is because political speech, generally speaking, is not a protected class. It's not a protected class, political reviews, rather. It's not a protected class under federal law. It's only in certain places in certain states protected under state law. And then we get to the firings of personnel all over the country for making comments regarding the Kirk assassination, largely on social media. And these are kind of tough to evaluate in bulk because they require kind of a case-by-case assessment. The Supreme Court has said that when a public employee, such as, for example, a university employee, but could be any public employee at a public university or elsewhere, is... talking about issues of public concern that are not part of their job, but just kind of ancillary to that, basically kind of not part of their job duties. If they get fired or reprimanded or otherwise subject any adverse action, there's a balancing test that courts need to apply, weighing their interest in expressing themselves versus the employer's interest in in.

providing public services efficiently and you know what does that mean that could mean there's such a wide variety of factors that would go into such a balancing And one interesting wrinkle in this case is that one of those factors is the extent to which disruption occurs to the employer, to the business of the employer in, say, at a university. And here we've got, obviously, people who are supporters of Charlie Kirk are upset when people say bad things about Charlie Kirk. But you've got the added element here of people like JD Vance saying, if you hear someone saying something bad about Charlie Kirk's assassination, you know, call their employer. I mean, this is a very small paraphrase of what the vice president actually said. You've got the, in some states, such as Indiana, the attorney general, opening up a portal for people to submit things and basically pounding the drums there. So that is almost an artificially created negative sentiment to kind of rile people up to get them. angry about the comments that people are making about Charlie Kirk. And that raises the question of whether you're establishing kind of what's known in First Amendment law as a heckler's veto, that speech being restricted because people don't like it. And that normally is something in First Amendment law we don't give any credence to. But in the public employee speech context, it does sometimes play a role. If you are... For example, if you were a police officer making racist comments on Facebook, unrelated to your job, but just like despicable racist comments, people in the community may reasonably fear that you will not treat people of that race fairly. And a police department who fires you for would probably win. But what happens if you are... say not in a public facing role. And you made comments that are objectionable to some people. Is it really disrupting the functions of, say, university if an assistant dean somewhere, a bureaucrat is saying things about how Charlie Kirk was a worthless individual? Does that rise to the level where the disruption exceeds the right of the employee to speak? Those are questions that are going to be decided by courts on a case-by-case basis. So, you know, it strikes to me, it's an important distinction here. This is a phenomenon we've become a little more familiar with over the last few years. because this isn't, while it's kind of in some ways a little highest and most recent of these public pressure campaigns, it's not the only ones. I mean, we've seen.

you know, as this was happening last week, was I was just like, oh, my God, this from these people, like it was really kind of the feeling that I had. And let me, let me unpack that a little. And I'm not just kind of like, this isn't just like super anti the administration or super anti whatever. It's, it's like if you followed this, it's just, it is a particularly sharp moment of hypocrisy and kind of double standards that are kind of unbelievable. So, Jaw-boning is a concept just to review for listeners. Jaw-boning is a biblical term or has an etymology in like the Bible, but it's generally the idea of basically trying to use economics or the threat of enforcement or bullying basically by a government official in the context. This is in the, it happens in economics, it happens in other types of areas, but this is in the context of the First Amendment and freedom of expression. And the idea is that comes from, is kind of most famously laid out. in a case called Bantam Books versus Dan Sullivan, in which essentially the Rhode Island Commission that have been set up to review titles that were appropriate for bookstores to have for youth and minors, wrote these letters that were basically like, we're aware, and we've made the police aware that you have these obscene materials in your bookstore. We're aware. We're just, we know. And we've told the police. And so we're not going to tell you to take these books down. We're not going to, you know, to take these books off the shelves. But we're just going to tell you that the police know. And so Bantam Books, the publisher, sued on the grounds that this was actually job-owning or a First Amendment violation. The Supreme Court upheld this, saying that, yes, this was like a violation under the law. And this is, Bantam is the high watermark for this. In any event, we don't see a ton with jaw-boning. It doesn't mention, it's not mentioned a lot. It comes up in huge ways a couple of years ago from, like 2022 to 2024 in a case called Murthy v. Missouri, which I think I've been on the podcast to actually talk about it before or specifically, which was essentially the idea that in social, that the White House administration, the Biden administration in 2022 was threatening social media companies in this exact type of bantamie way in which they were basically saying, excuse me, like, Please take down, like sending emails that are saying, like, you have to take down this misinformation about COVID. You have to take down this information about, you know, about the genesis of the lab leak and like where this is coming. And there were suits against Viveig Murphy and the, this sort of general and others that basically went. all the way up to the Supreme Court. And it was eventually laughed out of the Supreme Court. I wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about the Murthy district court decision. It was a 130-page breathless decision that quoted Orwell and Jefferson and almost no law that basically said, you know, this is this unspeakable.

Kind of like, can you believe that they sent these emails? But like, they did send emails. The administration had sent a few emails being like, hey, this is really bad. What the F? Like, take this, you know, take this down. But the White House administration can't. do anything to Twitter or Facebook or any of these social media companies. There was no proof that there was a causative link between anything they decided to take down in their content moderation policies on the sites and getting these emails from White House officials. There was no link. There was like, it wasn't even, they weren't even closely linked in time. And there was all of these kinds of, there was all of this. So there was like just no causation in the way that you could have seen in Bantam and also. Frankly, the main thing that Amy Cohen, this is the most beautiful part about the Murthy decision when it came down is that it was written by a conservative, was written by Amy Coney Barrett. And so in my opinion, this gave it extra kind of, and the oral arguments were beautiful in it. Like it was just like a taunting, essentially, of like the attorney general from Louisiana, who was a former Samuel Alito clerk, just kind of like just getting raked over the coals by the justices and Samuel Alito, like kind of. of like grimacing, like so embarrassed that this guy had clerked for him and now couldn't even like kind of properly defend the First Amendment. But anyways. All of that being said, this was all brought. This was all thrown out. This didn't rise to the level of jawboning. This was the type of thing that the conservative voices and the right was so concerned with was this excess of use of government power to not directly censor, but to jawbone social media companies into censoring. Okay? So this is like, this is how concerned the right was with free speech. And fast forward to last week. When you literally had the man who was in charge, who writes, who holds the pen to finalize licensing deals with broadcast administrators, like saying in a effing podcast podcast, well, this comedian who made a joke. bad or good about an event that happened, you know, ABC should be aware that its affiliates are licensed by the FCC. I mean, it's just like not only Ken Commissioner Brendan Carr, who is the person that I'm talking about. go and actually do something in like the most immediate sense against ABC. But then ABC upon hearing this broadcast, then goes and pulls Kimmel, right? Pulls Kimmel. Doesn't like decide that Kimmel is going to kind of get a chance to defend himself or whatever, but pulls Kimmel entirely. And so you have like every element that's missing and...

times 10, in my opinion, on steroids that's missing in the murthy case. But you have like these same people that were just breathless over the Orwellian future that we were all destined to. In this kind of in this context, all of a sudden being like, oh, but no, this is a really bad joke. Like, let's, let's like behead the jester that makes fun of the king. That seems like a totally reasonable thing to do in the United States of America. Sorry, I am. Sorry. I realized as I'm saying this, how worked up I'm getting. I just, this is my catharsis. I was in France last week. And so I didn't have anywhere to talk to you about this. And so I was losing my mind. And so like I, you know, and I was kind of texting furiously with people. But it was a, anyways, that is the long and the short of it. And that's where kind of the job owning is. And that is. I think kind of just the unbelievable kind of boomerang that we're seeing in this, this, I mean, we always suspected and kind of knew that. the GOP, the right was using free speech as a, as pretext to do, kind of to make moves and censor the speech they didn't like. But it just couldn't be more obvious or without pretext now. And I guess I'm a little appalled at like, at that. Like the lack of any type of beard on this was really kind of the thing that put me over the edge this week. I think it put a lot of people over the edge. So it wasn't just me. But there. But yes, now I've gotten very, I'm going to like get a call for my parents being like, I heard you on the, my friends heard you on law fair. And they got, they said you were really upset. Well, I mean, like this is kind of unique because this is the sort of incident where you hear these things and they're peripheral in their third party. But it does when it actually impacts, frankly, like the what is broadcast into your home. It begins to have a much more. kind of direct ramifications. And, you know, I understand these sort of direct effects. It's worth noting, I think, not the entire, and this is actually notable for the last week, in particular response to the Kimmel thing. The entire GOP has not lined up behind the Trump administration on this. And Kimmel actually made a point of highlighting. I can't remember that Ted Cruz specifically highlight. I think he was. As well as a number of other pretty prominent Republicans, usually big boosters of Trump administration, people who had come out and said very strong things, you know, condemning criticism of Kirk and criticism and other.

insensitive comments where they proceed to be insensitive comments relating to Kirk's assassination. But nonetheless, he said, this is really an inappropriate thing, a dangerous, slippery slope thing for Brendan Carr to do for other people to do in the government. Less vocal about, you know, again, calling for people to call people's employers, which I think does pair for similar problems. But certainly here, they were much more willing to say, hey, this probably crosses a line. And we've even seen Carr himself. try and roll back his comments. He says they're being misconstrued, you know, what's happening to Kimmel's or ratings issue. It's not a, uh, not, uh, has nothing to do with what the SEC said or did. Well, there was a, there was a, did you see the theory that basically Politico called out car for basically not doing enough and calling him kind of weak. And so that is the thought that was one of the reasons that he went on this podcast and just decided to kind of say this. Oh, really? I did. Yes. There was like, there was like a taunting of, of car. And so this was kind of like a reaction to that, an overreaction to that. And I mean, that could be frankly true. That's not that seems very consistent with like how things roll out in this administration. But yes, he did walk it back or try to walk it back. You know. But then Trump kind of doubled down on it last night, I think. Yes, 100%. Shortly before the show went on board. Well, and that kind of leads me to this question of remedies, right, a little bit. Because, you know, we have the Murthy case, which, again, was ultimately found that didn't have jurisdiction because their parties didn't have standing for a variety of reasons, but primarily it seemed to be a redressability issue. The key point basically being. the government's not actively doing, in the Murthy case, that the government wasn't actively doing what they're accused of doing anymore. And so there really wasn't a reason to think that there was anything redressable by enjoining because there was nothing to enjoin the government for doing anymore because they weren't doing it anymore. I'm kind of curious what... you all think of remedies in this case. Notably, there is also in Politico, I think, an op-ed by Aziz Hook, a law professor, I think of the University of Chicago currently, who is, I think is particularly notable. His scholarship for the last 10 years or so, very good scholarship, is really focused on the fact that there is a lack of constitutional remedies. Lots of constitutional violations don't have a remedy. But here he came in Politico. He wrote a piece basically saying that Kimmel actually does have a remedy here. He should pile a lawsuit. And I kind of posit that he... he should win, or at least could win. So I'm kind of curious from your two's perspectives. What remedies could there be for people who face this sort of sustained pressure, particularly from governmental actors, where the First Amendment implications are much more substantial? Eric, well, and I start with you. What are your kind of thoughts on that? Well, I think it might be hard for someone in Jimmy Kimmel's shoes. in the future to get an effective remedy uh to the extent money is is something that the actor would want uh the there isn't really a great way to get it against the federal government there is a case uh called n r a v v v v ullo last year in which new york state financial officials were basically trying to uh jawbone

private insurance companies into not doing business with the NRA because of the NRA's views about guns. And the Supreme Court said in a unanimous opinion that you can't do this, basically under the Bantam Books principle. You can't, government cannot do indirectly what it can't do directly. At the state level, there are remedies via Section 1983 against the state. You can get financial damages from the state. But the Supreme Court has very much cracked down. There's no companion statute against federal officials. And the Supreme Court has limited the availability of what's known as Bivens actions in which you can have an implied remedy under the Constitution. But that is highly unlikely to be available in the First Amendment context. And in terms of an injunction, it's not clear what such an injunction would say. You could possibly get an injunction telling Brendan Carr to shut up. But it's with that, that might be worth something in the court of public opinion, if you will. But the reason why it is so. Why people fear the FCC, and I think Kate alluded to this, is that they have a lot more sticks and carrots that they can deploy against media companies than the Biden administration could deploy against Facebook and Twitter. And Disney touches the FCC in so many different ways that they reasonably feared that. Brendan Carr would find some way to go after them or give them, on the opposite side, give them goodies if they did what they perceived as his bidding regarding Jimmy Kimmel. And he could do that, even if he's told to shut up and he does shut up, he could still do things like that. And as long as that there's some possible legal basis for what he's doing, he could possibly get away with it. Kay, what about you? What are your thoughts? Yeah, so Eric is kind of speaking to this. So I want to say that I thought Aziz, that Aziz's op-ed was quite, quite good. I liked it. If people haven't read it, I'm sure we'll link to it in the show notes. But it was, I think I also liked it because it does what so many of these articles don't do, which is like, you have, like, Kimmelk-Zoo for contract violation to ABC or, like, you know, kind of, and I like that as a law professor. But anyways, so I just want to kind of put that on the table. It doesn't all have to. to be high and money. So there's there's the high and the low here. Like there are obviously suits that Kimmel would have for like, you know, lost pay, like, you know, reputational damage, all these types of like things that he could possibly bring against ABC and potentially the federal government in some type of way. And an injunction is kind of like, would be like it's what was sought in Murthy and it was what was sought in Bantam and it is what was won in Bantam. But. Again, like now that this has been reversed, unclear what this would do. Under CASA, there's not really going to be, like, it's not as if Kimmel's suing in his personal capacity would protect other people against other, like this wouldn't protect Fallon if he decided to go to the mat and take this all the way to like the Supreme Court. This would end up, you know, in many ways this would not necessarily, maybe not all the way to the Supreme Court. That would actually maybe set some precedent. But he could like essentially.

You know, he can only stand for Kimmel on this and get this injunction in this personal capacity. And so, you know, that's a little bit that like lowers the amount of power and like the purpose of having an injunction. And yeah, I think the one other thing that I that really does kind of confuse this pot here is of course. Brendan Carr and the FCC are one piece of this. But as was reported at the tie at last week, there's a local TV merger that is on the table right now that ABC is deeply counting on kind of going through. And there was immediately talk that like the FCC could do something as as negative as removing. broadcasting, licensing from an ABC affiliate that decided to air Kimmel or something else like that, if they decided to keep it on the air. But what would be much harder to prove and much harder to kind of show kind of a remedy for is like that they fail to approve a merger that would then ultimately hurt ABC and then could ABC sue in some type of capacity. And yes, ABC, and I just walked a student through this yesterday, ABC could sue. There would be a lot, many years. Like it would be a long suit in which they would basically have to go up against a court that is very in favor of like the administrative. like the administrator's ability to decide what is what are what are okay and um what are okay and um what are okay and not okay mergers uh they would have to make a case that this was like this was brought because of political reasons and this was some type of first amendment that was related to like this kimal thing i mean but my point is is that this was like there's a there's like some things that could happen but so much of this you just have to look at at like the time and money that would these type that litigating these types of things would cost and the increasingly small and unimpactful remedies that you would have for taking these types of cases to the mat and that like these were the types of cases that broadcasters used to use to take uh used to fight for and maybe those days are i mean they've seemed to have been gone for a while but like maybe those days are gone maybe it's all you know it is not you know ABC News standing up for the press. It's not New York Times standing up for the press, although maybe in the New York Times would do it. But generally, like, someone needs to fight these in the courts, not roll over. If you roll over, there's no new law that can get made and the bad guys win. So that's like, you know, that is, but it's an expensive, it's an expensive thing to fight. It is. You know, I'm slightly more bullish, I think, than you guys are on perspective of somebody in Kimmel's position.

being able to get conjunctive relief that may be as meaningful for them. It may not be like address the underlying harm. Like for the simple reason, A, I'm not sure you couldn't get a class certification given that the statements by the administration are not specific to Kimmel whatsoever. Like a lot of their statements are about lots of media figures that are engaged in public commentary on these things. So it's not hard to imagine, you know. whether it's just late night hosts or a variety of other media figures joining into class action or being certified as a class. I don't know. You know, there's always like, now there's this question about how do you handle class certification. That's under a lot more scrutiny. And they have to have like I'd like enough characteristics. But the fundamental concern a lot of those figures have is actually pretty identical. And that's in theory at least like what is supposed to be the distinguishing characteristic of a class. So I'm not sure CASA is like. a huge barrier if you can get that class certification. And I suspect there's like some sort of class, whether it's like all media, I don't know, but maybe at least it's like people in Kimmel's sort of position. Um, And then in injunction, you know, maybe primarily symbolic. But notably, like, this is on the administration just keeps doing, right? The president did it again last night. Brendan Carr has not backed off from his comments. Like he says he intends to keep, you know, I think in New York Times headline today, Brendan Carr intends to keep targeting media companies, even though he has kind of walked back some of his initial or tried to reframe his initial comments on Kimmel. So when you have that kind of recurring conduct by the government. you know, I'm not sure the injunctive relief is like beyond the pale. Now, does it address the underlying concern? Absolutely no, because maybe, you know, the media companies are just going to infer or already be aware of the preference of the administration. That's enough to weigh them in a particular direction. That's an argument. But if the government has to stop saying this stuff or face the risk of, you know, of potential. court sanctions and other items although again that enforcing it actually poses a variety of complications i'm not sure that's meaningless um especially frankly like it extends to a variety of other future cases where like the one on run relationship of disapproval isn't there. Because again, this is something we've seen the Trump administration actually do like a couple times already in other cases. Kirk is just the biggest one. And there's no reason to think they're not going to do it in future cases. So, you know, I don't know. I'm a little more bullish on both the value of it and the prospect of getting some sort of injunctive belief. I'm not saying it's slam dunk. But I'm not sure it's fruitless entirely. Oh, I, to be clear, I would love to see this. like actually filed and for there to be an injunction. I would love to even have like

the procedural necessity of like kind of various any issues kind of played out in the court and whether or not this would you know what constitutes things here would love something like that and we didn't get clear lines out of Murphy at all and barely out of Vulu so like I think that there is I think that there's a lot of room here I just I guess I've just never I just I joke that my internet law class could be internet guns and money class So, like, I just kind of, you know, I don't really think that, like, I just don't know how much, I just don't know how much. I'm just, I'm just, you know, I'm just, you know, a little bit. Less, less optimistic. Yes, exactly. Eric, any last thoughts on this? Well, I think it's interesting. As Kate just pointed out, Murthy, they did seek an injunction because it really mattered to them, the principle of the plaintiffs, that the government cannot say this stuff. And there wasn't a huge, I think ongoing financial issue for them necessarily. The drawboning had really died down by the time this reached the Supreme Court, but they really wanted to establish this principle. And, you know. good for them in that sense. That's what fine reason for litigation. People may not have the same incentives in cases like this. I would also note that the First Amendment is enforced not only by the courts, but in the Court of Public Opinion. And Ted Cruz played a... quite possibly very significant role. And others like Rand Paul, even Joe Rogan, in pushing back against the government and perhaps sifting the spine of Disney. It's a way in which kind of private or rather private slash public actors, but non-judicial actress can have a role in enforcing the First Amendment and Freedom of Speed. Hey folks, Scott R. Anderson here. It is officially hot here in Washington, D.C. The kind of hot where biking to work means arriving, already regretting your life choices. Or the only sane afternoon plans involve shade, something cold to drink, and anything other than jeans. Luckily, Quince has you covered for the season. I mean that quite literally. Because half the trick to surviving a D.C. summer is having the right lightweight stuff in rotation in your wardrobe. Personally, I have been living in their organic, cotton, cool, Max Gino shorts this month. Breathable, comfortable, and somehow still presentable. When I'm actually biking and running around, their ultimate commuter shorts have become my go-to. They move with you and don't fall apart after a few washes. And their pro-peak performance pillow has quietly become my favorite warm weather shirt. Look sharp, but breathes enough that I'm not melting into my chair. And when the weekend rolls around its pool time with the kids, I'll admit, I've gotten a lot of mileage out of their Italian swim trunks. Genuinely nicer fabric and fit than I expected for swimwear. So good, in fact, that I just bought another pair. The best part, Quince works directly with ethical factories, cutting out the middleman markup so you get real quality without the premium price tag. So beat the heat this summer with Quince. Go to quince.com slash security for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada, too.

That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash security. Free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash security. Now, let's get back to the show. Hello, I'm Monica Rineagle, host of the Nutrition Diva podcast. Summer is here and with it the hot and sticky weather. A morning working in the garden, or maybe on the golf course, can leave you more depleted than you realize, and plain water isn't always the most efficient way to restore the balance. That's where liquid IV comes in. Its science-backed formula is clinically proven to hydrate faster than water alone. Whether you're exercising, playing outside, or simply surviving a summer heat wave, it's an easy way to stay hydrated. Shop now at liquid iv.com. Liquid IV, hydration that goes wherever life takes you. That refresh you've been putting off until the right deal came along? It's here. Wayfair's Black Friday and July sale is happening now so you can finally get the style you've been waiting for for less. Well, get up to 80% off area rugs and up to 60% off outdoor and bedroom furniture. Shop Wayfair's huge selection of styles and find the piece to fit your style, budget, and space. Plus, free shipping. Black Friday and July ends July 27th. Shop today at Wayfair. Every style, every home. Well... Speaking of some interesting government regulatory choices, let us go to our second topic. And that is the TikTok deal or possible TikTok deal we have gotten news of over the last week or two. As folks who have been following this know, as folks who've been listening to the rational security notes, we've talked about it a number of times. We've had a statutory bar on TikTok more or less in the United States. It's a little more complicated than that, but that's a fair enough way to think about it, that the Trump administration has been withholding enforcing. since entering into office in kind of 120-day rolling chunks to allow for further negotiations and discussions about efforts to get China to kind of relinquish ownership and control of TikTok in the United States instead of banning it outright, which was the consequence that Congress enacted into law. There's big legal questions as to whether the administration can do that. We've talked about before on the podcast. Now we have this deal, and the Trump administration has rolled over the suspension of the penalties for another 120 days while the deal is finalized. Kate, talk to us. What's what we know about this deal and what we don't know about this deal? Yeah, so this has been slowly percolating. And I think that the first news that we had of it was when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent came out of some meetings in Madrid and said that they were close to a framework for a deal for TikTok, whatever a framework was. There was no mention of who the buyers would be for a number of days. And it was said that essentially that Trump and Xi Jinping were going to have a call about this at the end of...

two weeks ago on a Friday and kind of discuss. Coming out of that transcript of that call, we had Still no details, but a clear kind of acknowledgement that I guess, according to Trump's to Trump's playback on Truth Social, that everything had been ironed out and that we were fine on going forward with the deal, but still no terms and no public acknowledgement of the buyer. Since then, we have gotten some... additional details. We have the fact that the buyers of this are Oracle, Silver Lake, and Andreessen Horowitz. Those are the three kind of buyers. You might recognize Oracle as the company owned by Larry Ellison, who is a huge Trump supporter. Andresen Horowitz is not exactly a fainting liberal. There is, you know, the liberal organization. And Silver Lake is kind of an obscure VC firm, not that obscure, but like obscure to like the public eye kind of obscure. And so this is who is behind in the last couple of days. We also have heard that Rupert Murdoch and Michael Dell from Dell computer manufacturing also might take a stake in the TikTok deal. Of course, what everyone wants to know is not only who's buying our newest kind of like social media broadcaster as we're coming to kind of recognize these things as. But what's going to happen to the algorithm? The main concern, as you might remember for TikTok, not that anyone remembers back that far because it was apparently 20 million years ago, even though it was only two, that there was essentially a concern over the national security of TikTok and the giving of Americans data to the Chinese authority who controlled this algorithm and controlled all of... all of kind of the functioning and the propaganda use and the private information of US citizens. That was the pretext for this. It went all the way to the Supreme Court to determine whether or not this ban or this forced, this forced sale of the US-based portion of of TikTok, which is, you know, owned by a parent company bike dance, would be unconstitutional. The court said it wouldn't be. It was fine. And so right now we're just kind of at the phase of like the nitty gritty of the law, which has been, I mean, bent to the point of.

breaking and not being even like like kind of like essentially like we're not even fall we're off the rulebook of anything that was written in the law at all there was nothing in the law about a hundred like three hundred twenty day extensions to find buyers or make a deal or anything else um and as allan rozenstein has said multiple times there's no there's actually no kind of um clarity around what the deal has to be um for in order to allow ticot to keep operating in the united states although it does still operate in United States because of course Trump has just unilaterally told Pam Bondi not to enforce this law against any of the the companies in which it would be forced against for keeping up TikTok. So the result is essentially that if this deal manifests, it has been reported that there will be clarity, and I put that in scare quotes that you can't see, around what it is that the, and it will be a U.S. controlled algorithm, and that TikTok will give that up, and that all that is needed legally is for Trump to say, okay. They don't need to bring this to Congress. They don't need to. And that's been misreported in the media bunch. It's like, well, it could still not, like this deal could still not get approved by Congress. There's no need for congressional approval whatsoever in this. Like, that's just incorrect. The president just needs to say this is okay. And apparently this week, we are expecting, I just saw, like, late yesterday. news that he, that President Trump is going to be issuing an executive order announcing this deal. Now, the one thing I will also mention is we may never see this deal. We don't have knowledge of any of the law firm deals that like Trump cut or anything else. There's no visibility. There's no need for transparency in any of this. None of it's mandated by the law. So like this could, I mean, we just have no idea what it is that. uh what it is that this merger is accomplishing what it is that this merger is supposedly solving given the underlying animus for this for for the for the um protecting american freedom act um You know, like that that caused this this act to happen in the first place. And so I'm just kind of like, I'm just kind of baffled. And also just like the sheer lack of technical knowledge by everyone with authority to like talk about this has been unbelievably astounding and does not give me any type of confidence. So talk to us about what? the actual concerns were and how this might or might not address it. So it's this question about control of the algorithm. And as I've seen it reported, is that this you, TikTok US, this new US corporation is going to essentially quote unquote lease the algorithm from China or the Chinese owner, I guess from bite dance, I should say that that's partially owned by the Chinese government. And therefore.

Presumably exercise control over it, but we don't really have a sense of the terms of the control. Is that right? And what does the lease arrangement mean? That strikes me as very strange for something that presumably you are going to control and be able to constrain and monitor enough to be confident that it doesn't tilt. just, you know, tilt the output in a direction of China's favor, which is the concern underlying the law in the first place. Yeah. I think that that's a great question, Scott. Any of those questions would be great to have answers to. But I don't know, I haven't heard the term lease. I've heard the term licensing. That I decided, I mean, say like. you know, potato potato, but, but the licensing of the recommendation algorithm. And then Oracle's supposed review monitoring and security of the U.S. data that is flowing through the service to that algorithm or getting being used in that algorithm. I have no idea why this would take. the control that the chinese have over the algorithm away from the chinese that like none of that that i just described to you makes it seem as if the thing that was the animating principle behind this law which was that bite dance's algorithm was vulnerable to manipulation by the CCP none of this is like fixed in this in this you know if you're if you're licensing their algorithm they still make the algorithm like i guess in theory they still have all our data like there's no need to even like you know use ticot when this is something that we you know is for a different day but it just it does seem like A lot of smoke and mirrors and performance around words that and words that basically are like, we'll say that we control it or you control it and you can license it. But no. And people don't actually know what it is the terms of this license mean, how often are they, I mean, how often do you run out updates in an algorithm? It's a constantly at least. currently it's a constantly changing constantly informed thing like it's not as if it's auditable it's not an explainable concept and so like i just kind of i have no idea what it is that this that this is giving us and i don't think anyone has has said so i mean that's you know I think that all of your questions are good ones. I mean, is the idea that the Chinese would still continue to control the algorithm and the new TikTok US would just be able to use it? But as you say, it's a living thing in algorithm and it would constantly be changing.

Yeah, that's not like parsible. Like what you just said is like, yes, that's like it just doesn't, it doesn't make sense. And so like, but this is like by the way, I mean, this is a larger conversation, Scott that we and I could have or anyone could have about like this this farcicle kind of call for algorithmic transparency or algorithm or algorithm or blah-de-blah blah blah blah that like has kind of happened in the last, you know, been happening for the last eight. like years essentially and they're they're nonsensical kind their math equations that are not particularly explainable that the idea of knobs that like you turn on these things is like there's this absolutely vast oversimplification of this and like the details on this are just so sketchy there is like it says that the license is going to be retrained with US data but like That doesn't make sense. Like the algorithm is always, like the algorithm is always going to be training on the data. So like I don't understand like it's already training. on US data. So you're just telling us that it's retreating in US data and that it's now you're watching it. And so like, but you could have watched it before? Like, I don't know. None of this makes sense. I'm also here to say that like as a person who spent a lot of my life thinking that I just didn't know enough to like question these things. And I was like, oh yeah, that sounds good. Like sure. Like now we'll like determine whether we have like this ability to control this algorithm or see these things. It's just if your impulse is like this doesn't make sense, I don't understand it. The answer is because it really doesn't make sense. Like they are just, this is a completely manufactured performance that is taking place. I want to turn the attention because I think we've done a good job identifying a lot of the questions that are one should have about this deal. That's still, again, the details are still being worked out. That's why we have another 120 days for according to the administration. But it does raise this question that, Kate, you really highlighted really well, which is because what the administration has done is to essentially withhold enforcement of the penalty, apparently at its discretion. It's not clear why this deal has to be reviewed by anyone but the president. So Congress office has an interest in this issue, although it's one that's kind of flip-flopped a little bit over the years. It's a position, at least from initially enacting law, then we saw, you know, congressional leadership flip-flop on whether they actually wanted the law to be enacted after it. There's been court decision. When the president came out, I think it did a lot of damage to the law at that point. But, Eric, I want to come and ask you about this. You know. What avenues, as somebody who's a Congress watcher I know with experiencing Congress, talk to us about what avenues of leverage you might see Congress might have on the table to be able to use to get more information about this deal or even disapprove of it if they don't like it. And how likely those seem to likely to be brought to bear, how easily they're brought to bear in this particular case, whether this Congress or I guess the next Congress if the partisan composition is a major obstacle. Well, at the simplest level, Congress could.

pass a law now amending the law to require the president to do different things for a deal, to require a deal to be approved by Congress, to require more transparency about an algorithm, to require a greater actual divestment from Chinese control. I think we all know that those things are unlikely to happen because this Congress has not pushed back legislatively against Trump at all. In the next Congress, assuming this is likely that Democrats take control of one House, they could subpoena the president or relevant agencies for information about the deal, for its texts. possibly bring people in for depositions or transcribed interviews. And the question that becomes to what extent the administration resists that. And I can't really think of valid bases to resist, but that hasn't stopped them in the last term when it was controlled by Democrat. And the last in the, during the second half of the Trump administration, when the House was controlled with Democrats and they may be even more recalcitrant this time around. I mean, I'll just point out one more just in terms of like this doesn't make sense. You're not crazy. It doesn't make sense. It's just that like Karoline Leavitt also like kind of said and like from the White House that this would not change the user experience for users in the U.S. at all. on TikTok, it should change the experience. Like if the entire point of this is that you're taking resting control away from the CCP and then nefarious things that they're showing you and the things that they're doing with your data to train your algorithm and group think you into whatever imposing this like. This should change the, like all of this should change the experience. But that doesn't. So the idea that this is like, I mean, just to further kind of just say that this is and the, the true unparsable and kind of like, you know, now you see it, now you don't. Great imaginary TikTok deal is, you know. This isn't, like, what I learned. There was no part of schoolhouse rock when, like, the bill becomes a law that, like, it was like, and then the president sticks it in a drawer and decides that he's not going to order enforcement on it unilaterally for, like, multiple 120-day periods while he makes deals with his good friends to, like, then meet the requirements of the bill. I mean, this isn't like, you know, we're just off the script here. So there's a, you know, this is, I mean, I guess. Why are we surprised that we're off the script here where we're off the script of or else? I would just add one quick thing is that there's also, as Kate mentioned, that it's the reported purchasers or a bunch of right-wingers. And is this Trump just shoveling money to his friends or is the expectation that they will be?

tweaking the algorithm to reward right-wing views and punish, you know, left-wing views. Now, that may not be, make financial sense under normal circumstances for those investors because TikTok appeals to youth who are, you know, probably more left-leaning than right-leaning. But if they do that, it's got this feedback loop. Like Trump gives them something benefit, and then they... tweak it to make it more right wing in the hopes that they could get even more money from Trump because they've he is so twisted their market incentives. And that'll go back to the question of to what extent are they going to control the algorithm, which is the big outstanding question that we still have out of this. Speaking of outstanding questions, let's go to our third topic as we're running short on time today. And that is this question of purported. But some would call corruption happening in and around in some of the states a few weeks before the Trump administration. We had a big story come out this week about the Justice Department under this administration refusing to go forward with an investigation or prosecution of Tom Homan. The immigrations are at the White House who's alleged to have $50,000 from undercover FBI agents before entering into the administration, but at an era where it seemed clear he's going to have a senior role and on the understanding he would help steer. business contracts and other interests to the people who paid him. That comes just a few days after another major story where we saw the UAE chip deal, the deal where the Trump administration reversed the Biden administration's restrictions on chip exports to allow the UAE to export chips happen to coincide with a big cryptocurrency deal that benefited the Trump organization and private businesses held by... people within the Trump administration, including Steve Witkoff, the kind of chief negotiator, or at least one of the chief negotiators of that deal. It's a pretty dramatic set of stories, and it's not the only one. Remember, the White House also came under heat just a few months ago for essentially holding a White House dinner for people who bought the dollar sign Trump, you know, meme cryptocurrency, which a lot of people had a lot of people claiming is essentially, you know. holding a poor pay-for pay-to-play event at the White House. It's pretty remarkable. But it's one of these things where in the first administration with the Trump Hotel, we saw a lot of litigation around this. We saw state, cities, competitors line up to challenge the Trump administration's management at the Trump Hotel, which a lot of people said accused of essentially taking kickbacks, emoluments foreign and domestic in that state. We're not seeing that this time. Eric, I don't want to start with you on this case. You can start with the homin's case and we can spread out to the other ones. Talk to us about what your reaction was to this case. I know you did some digging into a little bit about what your sense is about how. inappropriate this might be or whether this story may be a little more smoke than fire. Well, the allegation here is that Tom Homan was approached by undercover FBI agents who had been tipped off that in the course of a separate investigation, they'd been tipped off that Tom Homan was kind of basically soliciting money during 2024 summer when it was clear to everyone that he would get a...

plum job in the Trump administration that he was solicited money to steer government contracts to people who ponyed up. And so the FBI agents gave him $50,000 in a bag from Kava, the fast casual chain. And he... And then nothing happened. They did not, the FBI did not, DOJ did not attempt to prosecute him during the Biden administration in the early. And then reportedly the investigation was shut down during the Trump administration. And Tom Homan did in fact go into the Trump administration. He is basically a White House official. I don't know what his title is. He is sometimes referred to as the border czar. But he is believed to have a very. heavy role in immigration policy along with Stephen Miller of the White House. Now, he went on Lori Ingramham's show a couple days ago and say he did nothing illegal or improper, which is very different from saying, I did not accept $50,000 in cash. So. It's possible, actually, that he's right about not having been anything illegal. Because the way that the... bribery statutes are constructed. And this was a point that it was made by Ken White recently, who is a defense lawyer and First Amendment lawyer in California and a former federal prosecutor. It basically criminalizes taking money in exchange for promising to do an official act. And it's not clear that Tom Homan in the job that he eventually did get in the White House. uh has the power to do official acts it's largely an advisory role he is not He cannot say, I approve this contract, I disapprove this contract. If he even made the head of ICE, it might be a different story. Still, it's wildly inappropriate to be taking cash from people who want favors from an administration under any normal circumstance that is someone who you would not want in your administration. But as is so often the case, it is... unrealistic, let's say, to expect the administration to punish people for saying or doing things that basically the president says and does all the time. Yeah, and, you know, an interesting point. I can't remember somebody made it on Slack. It may have been you, Eric, but about why they may not have brought charges early on during the Biden administration beforehand is because they wanted to get clear quid pro quo, see some sort of action that Homer had actually taken when he came in office.

But perhaps unsurprisingly, although, you know, not ideally the Trump administration that wanted to go forward with that. Other administrations might have been. You know, we've seen other administrations, or at least they may have used this as a reason to not put home in a senior White House position if they became aware of this investigation. But that didn't happen in this case. Kate, I want to turn to you on the crypto side of this. Talks about why crypto has come to play such a prominent role in this administration. And pretty again, the Trump organization's activities, they're pursuing. kind of adjacent to their official governmental roles. Yeah, well, I mean, it is an unregulated market. And so it is very much kind of a new wild west of, not a new wild west, it is now kind of a very well-established wild west of opportunity and financial incentives to basically create either an ease of creating your own crypto and ease of hyping it, the ability to possibly bring stability or regulatory control to a cryptocurrency, be it through a stable coin. or any other type of introduction of cryptocurrency into formal markets and regulatory systems is an incredibly powerful, powerful tool. It has made the value of a lot of coins go. through the roof under Trump because this is just, you know, he has ostensibly, um, has touted the power to kind of do this. And it also just is unregulated in the sense that just so much it's not clear at all, um, how you, there's no 50, there's no $50,000 in a bag. Like it's all kind of it's, that's the biggest thing. There's no, I mean, the entire beauty and. horror of cryptocurrency is its relative untraceability. And I say relative because like it is not quite as untraceable as people claim it is, but it is still relatively, like, it is still kind of a, especially like the earnings that you're making off of it if you have your own coin are still relatively, like, not required under public disclosure laws. And so it's just an immense mechanism for corruption. And there's no, but there's also, it's immense that mechanism for corruption because it's not even imagined in any type of regulatory control we have for corruption. You know, we have rules for money in a bag. We have rules for self-dealing. We have rules for insider trading. We have securities fraud, which is everything if you ask Matt Levine. But like there is just generally kind of like all of these, you know, we have all of these rules. We don't have them for this. And this is, you know, both.

This is something that Trump and most importantly, all of Trump's family members are very, very, very, very leveraged in to the max. And especially when it comes to national security and dealing with the Middle East. Yeah, it's really absolutely fascinating. And one other aspect jumps out. I mean, I think I've mentioned this a podcast before, but it's a pet theory, Ben Wittis and I have been working on a little bit. which is that during the first Trump administration, the big focus of a way the Trump organization tried to profit off the Trump presidency was the Trump International Hotel and assorted other kind of licensing deals around the country kind of playing off the brand name. And there's a little bit of that still happening. But those became the subject of particularly emoluments litigation, litigation trying to enforce the parts of the Constitution that prohibit the acceptance of, you know, of. money from outside foreign powers and in various domestic contexts as well by public officials, including the president. None of these cases, while they never actually came to full fruition during the first Trump administration, a few of them did survive all the way through senior appellate courts before they eventually were kind of rendered moot by the fact that President Trump lost the 2020 election. But the theory that they operated on was one of competitor standing. And that's a lot harder to do when you're talking about things like cryptocurrency. Because to be a competitor, you got to show that your individual business interests were harmed by the illegal competitive advantage of another. Now, maybe somebody selling one meme coin could make that argument about the dollar sign Trump. I don't know how to say that otherwise. Dollar sign Trump meme coin, right? Like, you could have an argument there. But it's so much harder to show correlation and relationship there because who knows what the baseline is for a meme coin selling and a particular rate or value. And particularly when you're talking about like these industries where you don't have conventional conceptions of business operations and where they're essentially, you know, pseudo commodities being traded, like instruments of value themselves that don't have underlying value. The values, especially with meme coins, like essentially cultural. The UAE deal, notably, was not just about meme coins. It's about a variety of other crypto, more conventional cryptocurrencies. But regardless, it's just it is a. super harder. I think it's a harder environment to show colorably the sorts of claims you would need to show to establish standing. And then perhaps even more importantly, the people who would be in a position to do that are all part of the crypto industry that has. really looked at the Trump administration as a savior and where there's a strong cultural catch there. It's not universal. I have friends who are very into crypto who are not super into President Trump for the record. So I don't want to paint everybody with one broad brush. But needless say, the big actors in the crypto space have really sidled up to the Trump administration because of its laissez-faire approach to regulation in general pro-crypto.

outlook. So it's a really tricky situation, but it makes a lot of sense. If you are learning from the experiences of Trump 1.0 about how, you know, the challenges you faced, even though they never really came to fruition, but the potential risks you faced and pushback you faced in that case, this is a good way to avoid a lot of that, I think. Yeah. Can I just make a pitch if people want more reading on this? Because we should do maybe an entire... show about the crypto and have maybe like Eric, I was going to say there are two New York Times reporters who have just been outstanding on kind of reporting out all of this and how this is being leveraged specifically in the UAE for those interesting kind of the national security hook and all of this. And that's Eric Lipton at the New York Times and David Yaffe, Bellany. And the reporting that they have been turning up is just outstanding. They're like going and they're getting the receipts and who may not. Might never matter. Might never, might never, ever, ever matter, but it will be a, it'll be a tremendous. It is, it is horrifying and fascinating to watch. It also, like, I have to say it, not to get super philosophical, but to, you know, if we're going to kind of, it really does kind of like make you recognize two things. One, just how incredibly market philic and money philic, this entire. administration and this entire like in a way that is just unparalleled that we've just never ever seen before i mean the adage is you know like you know u.s loves the markets and hates the got like it's fears the government control in europe like loves the government and doesn't trust a market i mean this is but this is like i never in ever in the history of you know america have we have we trusted and just used markets and capital in this way before and it's really really kind of just the size and scale and scope of the UA thing has really kind of put a pin in that for me. And then the last thing that I'll say is just kind of the ability for technology to create a semi like to create a new. a new currency system is, is just, I mean, it's a reminder about how much money's value is made up, period, you know, in general. But it is also just kind of, it is, the cat and mouse is so necessary and the cat is gone on vacation to, or is like flying around in his, in his jet. But there's no, there's no cat. So there's a lot of mice. And everyone's eating cheese. And, yeah, we'll see what happens. Well, I think we'll have opportunity to circle back on the story in the future. But for now, we are out of time. But this would not be rational security. If we did not leave you with some object lessons to ponder over in the week to come. Eric, what do you have for us today? I have a, today is the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the start of a Jewish New Year. And I'm Jewish. And I recently read a... I very rarely read novels, but I recently read one called To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, which is a novel basically about three topics, Judaism, baseball, and dentistry.

And I have great interest in the first two of those topics and interest slash knowledge and none at all about the third. And I found it to be kind of fascinating. It's a little bit, a little bit of Philip Roth in it by Joshua Ferris. It's just who has written a lot of other novels that I hope to get around to reading. about a kind of middle-aged male-up protagonist going through a bit of a mid-life crisis, which, of course, naturally appeals to me. Other topics aside, and I think if you're, if those, if two of, at least two of those three topics appeal to one, then I think it's, it's worth reading. Awesome. That sounds a great, great recommendation. Well, for my object lesson today, I am going back into the concert file as my wife and I, with our daughter, a little older, have been able to get back out to some shows in D.C. But there's one upcoming that I want to make sure people are aware of. And if you're in the D.C. area, consider coming out and joining. I have sung the praises of Katie Pruitt on this album before. Not adequately well-known rock. slash Americana with like a little country angle singer-songwriter, but not really singer-songwriter. It's not like it's like acoustic anything. This is like actual real rock songs. Like she's got a whole EP of really phenomenal Neil Young covers that is definitely worth checking out. She is coming to DC for the first time in a while and she's actually headlining her own show, which is great. She was here for an opener like a year or two ago, but openers never get the... sound treatment and balancing everything they deserve. So opening acts just never sound quite as good as I wanted. I really enjoyed that show, but I can't wait to see her actually headline. She's coming to Union Stage, October 14th. Tickets to this scene to be available. It's a small venue. I think it's going to be an amazing show. Again, she is like does just epic, epic. Rock hooks and guitar work and vocals are really amazing. Her first album expectation, still my favorite albums I've listened to in a really, really long time, like years at this point. I think it came out in 2020. Her second one's pretty good, too. I love her first one. So if you're in D.C., come check it out. Throw some support Katie's way because she's phenomenal. And I'm shocked there. Tickets are still available for this show. But you should get on it while you still can, and you will see me there. Because I will be there, rain or shine, assuming I can get a babysitter. But so far, but we're optimistic about that. that front at least Kate bring us home what do you have for us today? I have a blue hippo that I just took off my shelf. It is a souvenir that my mom got me when we were one of my first trips to France and to Paris when I was in college. And we went searching for a blue hippopotamus, which was one of the best uses of indigo ever in ancient pottery from Egypt. And we did not speak sufficient French.

and we walked around the Lou saying, Ue'e le blue ipapata ma. to every, like, guard in this horrible accent. And we got, it took us, I think, like over an hour to find this. And it's like not even that. It's like lovely, but it's not that great. And so anyways, when we're on the plane home, my mom got me this little blue hippopotamus that she had gotten at the gift shop, which was much easier to find, I suspect, than the actual one in the Louvre. And, yeah. You can find that hippo actually at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. which they call it William for some reason, and it's become like a big symbol of the museum. Wonderful. Wonderful suggestion. A little culture, a little art, a little bit of everything here on Rational Security. But that brings us to the end of this week's episode. But remember, rational security is, of course, a production of lawfare. So be sure to visit us at lawfaremedia.org for our show page with linked to past episodes, for our written work and the written work of other lawfare contributors and for information on lawfare's other phenomenal podcast series. While you're at it, be sure to follow Lawfare and social media. Wherever you socialize your media, be sure to leave a rating or review wherever you might be listening and sign out to become a material supporter of Lawfare on Patreon for an ad-free version of this podcast and other special benefits. For more information, visit lawfaremedia.org slash support. Our audio engineer and producer this week, was me of me, and our music, as always, was performed by Sophia Yan, and we are once again edited by the wonderful Jen Pacha. On behalf of my guests, Kate and Eric, I am Scott R. Anderson, and we will talk to you next week. Until then, goodbye.

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