This week on Angry Planet we have returning guest and former judge advocate Dan Maurer. The last time he was on the show, Maurer walked us through the consequences of a Supreme Court ruling that asked the question: is it illegal for the President to order SEAL Team Six to kill people? It was a surreal question that now feels more pressing.
A US Carrier Strike Group is moving into South American waters to support America’s highly kinetic War on Drugs. Military lawyers might have advised the Trump administration that extra-judiciously executing alleged criminals in international waters is, in fact, illegal. But Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is no fan of military lawyers and fired the Judge Advocate General (JAG) of both the Army and the Air Force. The Pentagon plans to turn as many as 600 of the remaining military lawyers into immigration judges.
The second Trump administration is perverting the law and sidelining anyone that might tell them it’s a bad idea. Since he was last on the show, Maurer has retired from the Army and is now a professor at Ohio Northern University’s college of law. He’s here to tell us how bad things are and how much worse they might get.
The terminal parent metaphor
A story that only ends one way
What’s a JAG?
Hegseth’s JAG hate
Law as perversion
Are these strikes legal? “No.”
“It can be lawful, but not moral.”
Legally speaking, you can’t be a combatant and a criminal.
When Truman tried to take over the steel industry.
Can state authorities arrest the feds?
Life after Trump time
Are Military Lawyers Being Sidelined?
Defining ‘Rebellion’ in 10 U.S.C. § 12406 and the Insurrection Act
