Roundup: Russia; Admin State; Trump Assassination 3-D Recreation

First Russia. The continuing news from the Ukraine front is that Russia is making steady progress, with increased momentum. More and more analysts are predicting a Ukrainian military collapse by Labor Day, as casualties and surrenders of Ukrainian forces have escalated alarmingly above previous unsustainable levels. Doug Macgregor posted this—and there have been similar reports during the past week:

Douglas Macgregor @DougAMacgregor

BREAKING: Kiev ready for peace talks with Russia on ‘fair’ terms –

11:55 AM · Jul 27, 2024

While this might appear on its face to be good news—Ukraine waking up and smelling the coffee, recognizing they’ve been sold out—as always, there’s a catch. What Russia may have considered “fair” in April, 2022, at Istanbul has beyond any shadow of a doubt changed drastically. Russia has been forced to wage a war it never wanted to wage, and has suffered casualties at least on a par with US losses in Vietnam. Ukraine will pay for that, to the tune of dismemberment. Russia will define “fair.”

The NYT also had an interesting report, which requires a bit of reading between the lines:

A Mysterious Plot Prompts a Rare Call From Russia to the Pentagon

Russia’s defense minister said he needed to talk to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin about an alleged Ukrainian operation. What happened next remains murky.

Here’s the barebones version of what happened:

On July 12, Russian Defense Minister Belousov called Lloyd Austin ”to relay a warning.”

The Russians had detected a Ukrainian covert operation in the works against Russia that they believed had the Americans’ blessing. Was the Pentagon aware of the plot, Mr. Belousov asked Mr. Austin, and its potential to ratchet up tensions between Moscow and Washington?

The phrase “to relay a warning” is the key part. American officials routinely lie and deny involvement in terror attacks. No doubt Belousov asked Austin if Austin was aware of the plot, but at the same time Belousov probably had full confidence in Russian intel reports. So the key part of the call was probably “to relay a warning”: Russia would retaliate. You have been warned. Proceed at your own peril.

As usual, the American side expressed surprise and lack of awareness. The Russians would have been totally unimpressed, given the past history of American support for deadly attacks on Russia. However, Belousov’s call had its intended effect:

… the Americans contacted the Ukrainians and said, essentially, if you’re thinking about doing something like this, don’t.

The American side preserved deniability—not that the Russians would have taken it at all seriously. Note the subtly but significant differences in the American and Russian reactions for publication:

Pentagon and White House officials say nothing has happened — yet. They have declined to describe the call in detail but stressed the need for dialogue among adversaries.

A Russian Defense Ministry statement after the July 12 call confirmed that Mr. Belousov initiated it, adding that “the issue of preventing security threats and reducing the risk of possible escalation was discussed.”

As with Ukrainian calls for “fair” terms for peace, it’s far late in the day for the US to be seeking dialogue with an “adversary” that it has repeatedly lied to. The Russian statement, by contrast, seems to point back to relaying a warning, reminding of red lines and the consequences (escalation) of crossing them.

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Yesterday I very briefly noted a federal court case involving the NLRB. I should have noted the inaccuracies in the article I linked to, contenting myself with once again stressing the importance of the recent SCOTUS decisions that overturned the previous judicial rule of deference to supposed “experts”, ensconced in administrative agencies of the federal government. I received a comment which I took to be from a writer sympathetic to labor interests, who was obviously distressed at the articles claim that the court had held the NLRB to be “unconstitutional.” That, of course, was not the case, and I hastened to explain that in broad terms, while inviting legally informed comment that would go into more depth. Commenter Cassander stepped up, and I reproduce his lengthy response below. I will only add up front that the rule of “Chevron deference” to agency experts was a fairly recent court imposed rule. Overturning that rule was not an attack on administrative agencies as such. It was an attack on unfair procedures as well as the distortions that have been introduced into public life by the well known phenomenon of “agency capture”—by which the industries to be regulated come to control the regulators.

Cassander:

I'll take a shot. Not correcting anything...just expanding a bit.

The conservative objection to Chevron Deference has been that under Chevron the 'reasonable' reading of a law by an unelected, non-legislative agency has been given 'deference' by the courts when the law is ambiguous.

Conservative legal scholars for decades have objected that this legal doctrine has allowed (by definition) un-elected agencies (although nominally answerable to an elected President) to usurp the role of the elected Legislature. As a practical matter, they argue, the Chevron Doctrine has allowed agencies to use ambiguous laws to regularly expand the regulatory power of the Administrative State.

I.e., to expand the regulatory power of the Administrative State in ways that could not be reasonably be derived from valid interpretation of the original legislation. Arguably, such expansions should only be carried out by the passage of new laws or amendments to the old law—a legislative function—not by the action of an agency of the Executive branch. In fact, as Cassander hints further down, there is often collusion between Congress and the agencies: Laws are deliberately left ambiguous so that activist agencies can run riot pushing progressive agendas.

Under the Supreme Court's recently decided Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo case, federal judges will no longer have to give deference to agencies in the interpretation of ambiguous laws. This doesn't mean that agency interpretations won't be upheld in court cases, it just means they will not be entitled to any special 'deference'.

Proponents of the end of Chevron argue that it is properly the province of judges to interpret ambiguous laws without allowing the agency proposing an interpretation to put its thumb on the scales through 'deference'.

Opponents say that judges will now have the power to decide what a law means 'for themselves' (as opposed to what the agency thinks it means). They argue that this will allow courts to usurp the policy-making power which the Constitution assigned to the legislative and executive branches.

(Keep in mind, that judges will not decide what a law means 'for themselves'. They will be deciding between interpretations proposed by opposing litigants in cases brought before them.)

Proponents of the end of Chevron say that if a law is ambiguous and a court decides that its interpretation is less expansive than an agency would like, the agency is free to go back to Congress and ask that the law be amended to clearly encompass the agency's preferred interpretation.

Opponents of the end of Chevron say this will open up a Pandora's Box of unintended consequences as the interpretation of 'policy-making' regulation is shifted from agencies *with expertise* to a smorgasbord of 850 federal judges spread across the country who were appointed by Presidents from different parties and who represent a broad spectrum of political ideologies.

So...we'll see how the new rule works out in practice. As for me, I've felt for a long time that the true culprit is Congress itself which regularly abdicates its duty when it passes ambiguous laws which has allowed agencies to use 'deference' to expand their regulatory powers. I'll be looking to Congress to up its game and take more responsibility for the reasonable interpretation of the laws which it passes.

The obvious remedy for the possible confusion of judges with differing legal philosophies interpreting the jungle of federal regs is, as Cassander says, for Congress to step up and do its job. The fundamental rule of respect for the law as written remains in place and has not been displaced by the SCOTUS.

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Lastly, I want to recommend a NYT article that came out on July 23:

How the Trump Rally Gunman Had an Edge Over the Countersnipers

The Times recreated, in 3-D, the lines of sight for three countersniper teams and the would-be assassin.

Here’s a tiny example of the excellent graphics in the article. My paste job doesn’t preserve the labels. The bold black dot to the left is Crooks’ position, the bold black dot to the lower right is Trump. The three grayish dots are the positions of the counter sniper teams. The gray shading indicates the trees. The article discusses in detail what the counter snipers had in their fields of vision, and especially the issue of the trees that obscured Crooks from the sniper team that faced in his direction:

Here is a key paragraph:

The New York Times used drone photography to build a 3-D model and recreate the lines of sight for both the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, and three teams of countersnipers — two federal and one local. The analysis shows that Mr. Crooks, 20, who appears to have flown a drone to survey the site the morning of the rally, exploited one of the few blind spots within a rifle’s range of Mr. Trump, raising questions about serious lapses in security planning for the event.

Compare that with this passage (minus the graphics and drone shots):

The Times used a spatial technique called viewshed analysis to calculate what areas would have been visible from the northern countersniper team’s position, taking into account obstructions like trees and buildings. The analysis confirmed that Mr. Crooks chose a prime spot that allowed him to stay largely out of sight — even from a countersniper team that had been facing his direction for a length of time — as he prepared for the first shot.

A second Secret Service countersniper team was positioned on the roof of a barn farther to the south and west. It had been monitoring a different area — initially facing away from the gunman, videos posted to social media show.

Video footage shows the countersnipers later turning toward the gunman’s direction one minute and 35 seconds before the first shot was fired. This is the view they would have had when they turned around.

Read it all, but here are a few observations.

1. Crooks’ use of a drone and choice of a perch suggest a relatively sophisticated approach to the task he had set himself.

2. Those decisions by Crooks—coupled with the extreme lack of security—allowed Crooks to get off an unhurried first shot. That is usually the crucial shot, because reaquiring the target quickly and accurately enough for effective additional shots at that range, with only a red dot sight, would be difficult. As it was, Trump reacted faster than Crooks could get off a second aimed shot—quickly dropping to the floor of the stage.

3. The video footage that shows the second SS team reorienting toward Crooks and away from their assigned zone of coverage strongly suggests that they had received some communication alerting them to the Crooks threat. At a guess, the team facing Crooks may have been having trouble seeing Crooks through the trees and called for the second team to face around, realizing that they would have a better line of sight.

4. We continue to get additional troubling information about events on the ground. The key issue remains the decision making in the chain of command that created the window of opportunity for Crooks.