davidasuper.bsky.social

this is borderline self-parody www.latimes.com/california/s...

Under both Obama and Biden, career DOJ officials would tell the White House it could not do something it wanted to do and then refuse even to fully explain its reasoning. The norms of DOJ independence were so strong that even senior officials would meekly accept DOJ's authority and abandon plans.

An exceptionally valuable 🧵 on the upcoming Israeli elections. I'm reasonably well-informed on Israeli politics but learned a great deal from this. Little is as it seems.

The Kremlin wants the world to forget who started the war. On 24 February 2022, Putin ordered an unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine, unleashing the largest war in Europe since the Second World War. The war was not ‘forced upon’ Russia. Russia chose to invade.

Today, another Russian smear campaign is trying to pretend that Ukraine, or Zelenskyy personally, rejected a good "peace deal" in Istanbul in 2022. ​The "peace plan" in question included strict limitations on the Ukrainian armed forces, rendering them harmless and defenseless.

Ukraine lacks the resources and the corruption to buy Trump/Witkoff/Kushner the way Putin can. Ukraine gave Pres. Trump the absurdly one-sided, extortionate minerals deal he demanded, and that bought them nothing. Ukraine has now proven where his loyalties lie. Endless groveling does not help.

U.S. arms manufacturers must be apoplectic right now, but there's nothing they can do. The credibility of U.S. arms internationally is now gone. Neither President Trump nor Elon Musk honor their commitments so no promises will matter. The loss of scale will raise U.S. defense procurement costs.

what the hell man, how f*cking corrupt do you need to be that the CEO of an energy company's like "nah, too corrupt for me, I'm out"

Wise words from Steve.

Not sure why Europe hasn't upped the pressure on Putin by saying that Russia's frozen assets will be used to fund Ukraine in stages until a ceasefire holds. Yes there are legal problems, but European security surely trumps them.

The richest man in the world who has funded Republicans to the tune of half a billion dollars this cycle is still going off on shadowy conspiracy theories by unnamed people to influence US elections.

Musk's DOGE detonated a "trust bomb" inside our natsec institutions, as @jimgoldgeier.bsky.social & I wrote in Feb '25 (headline not ours; our emphatic answer: yes). Now he's intervening directly in a way that gets Ukrainians killed and exposes allies. www.foreignaffairs.com/guest-pass/r...

In fact, russia is currently asking Ukraine to withdraw from parts of Donbas. If russia has won the war like Cenk Uygur, for eg, tells his audience, then why is Ukraine still in control of that territory? Who the hell falls for this nonsense?

Perpetuating a brutal war under the guise of ending it. Russia can always make up a false provocation to justify their resumed invasion, and western countries will either say "it's hard to tell what happened" or practice "escalation management" as Ukrainians die. This would be perfect for Putin.

Dunno. Maybe having an untrained, unconfirmed, unaccountable, and thoroughly corrupted member of the President's family engage in high-stakes diplomacy for the country without observing cyber security protocols might not have been the best idea after all. Hard to say.

OPINION | After teaching in Ukraine, Georgetown Law’s Professor @davidasuper.bsky.social pushes back on claims that President Zelenskyy is standing in the way of peace. Super argues Ukrainians would never accept Putin’s demands for capitulation. Read more here: https://bit.ly/3VOh6GV

My latest on why Pres. Trump is wrong that wartime elections would bring peace to Ukraine. The Ukrainian people would never accept the capitulation Trump/Putin demand, whoever is president. A change of presidents in Russia, however, likely would bring peace. thehill.com/opinion/inte...

A good metaphor also for the moral bankruptcy of the techbro slogan, "move fast and break things," that was once seen, in some quarters, as innovative and cool.

When you are the kind of person who thinks everything is about you...

Witkoff to Putin: "You talk so much about President Trump being a humanitarian. You're a humanitarian also, sir, I salute that. I commend you, I thank you." HE MURDERS BABIES! BABIES!!! In their strollers. He murders adults too, entire families. Every day. I can't believe I'm fucking watching this!

Interesting 🧵 about the plundering of Venezuela being conducted in our names and on the strength of U.S. military power. Turns out to be a scam to benefit well-connected insiders, not either country. Makes Teapot Dome look like a grade school bake sale.

One of my country's two designated negotiators publicly commends an indicted war criminal and kidnapper of children as a "humanitarian". Of course, with his boss, our President, a close friend of a famous pedophile, we should not be surprised that crimes against children do not bother him.

🚨This is the most dangerous thing Trump has said yet: "Russia hasn't been nearly what they could have been in Ukraine, and I appreciate that." With this, he has absolved Putin of all his war crimes and suggested he will accept even greater ones. What an abhorrent creature.

I've been involved in Supreme Court confirmation battles for almost 40 years. The road to a SCOTUS MAGA majority is paved with well-intentioned Democrats who let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Shooting at a car to stop a shoplifter is not justified. Even if no one was harmed, let alone shooting to death a 1 year-old baby.

And we are supposed to accept President Trump's assessment of what is a fair deal when one party is offering to enrich him, his family, and his friends?!? And if this is because Ukraine "doesn't have any cards", why does he keep demanding that Ukrainians give up their card of strategic bombing?

This is particularly true of the many firms that abandoned pro bono work last year in response to the Administration's threats of obviously groundless, easily defeated investigations. These firms absolutely do not believe that everyone deserves representation.

The very worst people...

Anti-Semitism is a vile and deadly disease that we are far from overcoming. It continues to startle me that some of the people who know this best have chosen to hobble the struggle against anti-Semitism by deliberately misapplying the label to legitimate political criticism of horrific war crimes.

Excellent summary all in one place.

"A sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon...the radio said 'they were just deportees'." The ability to deny the humanity of people we have been told to dismiss is, alas, quite timeless. They would never fly anyone they cared about in these planes or to these places.

Russia continues to bomb Ukraine and kill civilians every single night. Meanwhile, the FBI director is in Russia tweeting “From Russia, with Love.” Absolutely disgraceful.

People are claiming that Elon Musk messed with Starlink in Ukraine because Trump asked him. I think a more likely reason is that Ukraine damaging Russian data centers embarrassed Elon by showing how many of his Twitter followers are nonexistent and how much traffic on Twitter is driven by bots.

Mark Zuckerberg’s big Brazilian campaign contribution

So basically President Trump is helping Putin kill Ukrainian civilians to punish Ukraine for defending itself against Russian aggression and interfering with his PR strategy to cover up his defeat in the Iran War. Appalling.

Just because the committee includes someone who will be a leading candidate for her seat if she is removed, it's only par for the conflict-of-interest course in this Administration.

Outstanding 🧵 explaining the constitutional implications of the White House's war on Dem Members of Congress. Also worth remembering that these concerns drive the Founders to write them into the Constitution; they had no such concerns about Presidents but the Supreme Court made him a super citizen.

President Trump's diesel deal with Russia is a vile betrayal of this country's ideals, our Ukrainian and European allies, and the rule of law. It is economically incoherent. But it is also a sign of desperation. Putin would not make him out himself like this if Russia's economy was not in bad shape.

The Art of the Deal, folks. Donald is such an idiot.

If Trump were working directly for Putin this whole time, people ask, taking orders to destroy US democracy and the Western alliance, would anything look different? Yes. Trump would be more subtle about it.

Overt lawlessness has been routine for this Administration since January 2025. Nobody is taking care that the laws are faithfully executed. And the Supreme Court keeps coming up with more and more fanciful ways to prevent federal courts from hearing the cases.

President Trump's betrayal of Ukraine and Europe is morally reprehensible. But it is also idiotic economics. Widely traded commodities are not obtained by national governments doing deals. The amounts Putin promised are far less than U.S. exports. This is incompetent, soulless merchantilism.

So we are warring with Iran And Russia is supplying weaponry to Iran. And we are paying Russia to send us diesel fuel. Because we are warring with Iran the ships with the diesel can't get to us. So we are buying it from Russia, which... Yeah, this is some three-dimensional chess right here.

Putin has bought Trump with Russian diesel. Just before the US elections. Meanwhile, Russia keeps killing our children while they sleep at night. So Americans are now funding Russia’s war machine? I’m sorry, guys, but WHAT A FUCKING DISGRACE.