Reza Torkzadeh, Daily Journal; AI, ethics, and the lawyer's duty after Noland v. Land of the Free
"Noland establishes a bright line for California lawyers. AI may assist with drafting or research, but it does not replace judgment, verification or ethical responsibility. Technology may change how legal work is produced -- it does not change who is accountable for it."
Merle Jantz, Freedom To Read; Freedom To Read
"Patrons will tell you: There’s a lot to love about Mt. Lebanon Public Library. Award-winning programs for all ages, knowledgeable and committed staff members, a wide and lovingly curated collection of items from multiple media and plans for a building renovation. Enough good stuff to make it a thriving community hub. But one thing stood out above all the rest, and caught the eye of the Pennsylvania Library Association’s Library of the Year selection board, which chose Mt. Lebanon from among 630 public libraries, marking the first time any Allegheny County library has received the award. The library is the commonwealth’s first (and at press time only) book sanctuary.
The Chicago Public Library and the City of Chicago launched the first book sanctuary in 2022, declaring themselves a space for endangered stories and calling for others to join the movement. Currently, there are 5,361 book sanctuaries across the country.
What’s a book sanctuary?
It’s a space where access to books and the right to read them are protected. A book sanctuary is committed to doing at least one of the following:
This means the library will not remove or relocate any materials from the library’s collection, as long as those materials meet the standards of the approved policy."
Michael Auslin , The Wall Street Journal; ‘The Library of Congress’ Review: Corridors of Knowledge
"When the president unexpectedly fired the librarian of Congress, a prominent legislator denounced the “open despotism which now rules at Washington.” The year was 1829, and as Andrew Jackson installed a political ally as librarian, it was Henry Clay who accused the president of being a threat to democracy.
This is but one vignette from Jane Aikin’s comprehensive history “The Library of Congress” (Georgetown, 356 pages, $32.95), which shows how bare-knuckled domestic politics have often shadowed the crown jewel of America’s intellectual institutions. In April, the library turned 225 years old, secure in its position as one of the world’s largest libraries. It now houses approximately 178 million items, from ancient clay tablets to Stradivarius violins, from the Gutenberg Bible to ever-expanding digital records."
Laura Romero and Luke Barr , ABC News; Kristi Noem directed Venezuelans to be sent to El Salvador after federal judge ordered deportation planes turned around: DOJ
"Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem directed that hundreds of Venezuelan men who were removed from the U.S. in March be transferred to El Salvador, despite a federal judge ordering deportation planes turned around, according to a new court filing from Trump administration lawyers.
In the filing late Tuesday, the Department of Justice said that DOJ and DHS officials conveyed their legal advice to Noem after U.S. District Judge James Boasberg gave first an oral directive and then a written order that sought to block the deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.
"After receiving that legal advice, Secretary Noem directed that the AEA detainees who had been removed from the United States before the Court's order could be transferred to the custody of El Salvador," DOJ said on Tuesday."
The Florida Bar; GEORGE C. YOUNG AMERICAN INNS OF COURT EXPLORES ETHICS AND PITFALLS OF AI IN THE COURTROOM
"The George C. Young American Inns of Court continued its ongoing focus on artificial intelligence with a recent program titled, “The Use of AI to Craft Openings, Closings, and Directing Cross-Examination: Ethical Imperatives and Practical Realities.”...
Demonstrations showed that many members could not distinguish AI-generated narratives from those written by humans, highlighting the technology’s increasingly high-quality output. However, presenters also noted recurring drawbacks. AI-generated direct and cross-examinations frequently included prohibited or incorrect elements such as hearsay, compound questioning, and fabricated details — jokingly referred to as “ghost people” — distinguishing factual hallucinations from the better-known “phantom citation” problem.
The program concluded with a reminder that while AI may streamline drafting and help lawyers think creatively, professional judgment cannot be outsourced. The ultimate responsibility for accuracy, ethics, and advocacy remains with the lawyer."
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ; Report: US envoy coached Putin aide on how Russian leader should pitch Trump on Ukraine peace plan
"President Donald Trump’s chief interlocutor with the Russian government last month advised a senior aide to Vladimir Putin on how the Russian leader should go about pitching the U.S. president on a peace plan aimed at bringing an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to a transcript of the call published by Bloomberg News on Tuesday.
Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, according to a transcript of the Oct. 14 call published by the news service, advised Putin’s foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov that Putin should call Trump to congratulate him for the Gaza peace deal, say Russia had supported it and that he respects the president as a man of peace."
Ronald Mann , SCOTUSblog; Court to consider billion-dollar judgment for copyright infringement
"The court will hear its big copyright case for the year during the first week of the December session, when on Monday, Dec. 1, it reviews a billion-dollar ruling against Cox Communications based on its failure to eradicate copyright infringement by its customers."
JULIANNE HILL, ABA Journal; Is unauthorized artificial intelligence use in law school an honor code violation?
"With generative artificial intelligence’s growing availability and acceptance into students’ workflow, some law schools are wondering whether unauthorized AI use should be an honor code violation—something that could potentially trip up aspiring lawyers in the character and fitness portion of the bar licensure process...
Lack of clarity
The problem stems from unclear AI policies within law schools and universities, says Daniel W. Linna Jr., a senior lecturer and the director of law and technology initiatives at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law in Illinois.
These cases “illustrate why these policies are problematic,” says Linna, a 2018 Journal Legal Rebel.
The vast majority of policies that Linna has seen at law schools don’t draw firm lines between what is and what isn’t acceptable...
“We don’t have a good means of policing this,” Linna says. “What if someone is wrongly accused and or maybe even makes innocent mistakes? This should really force law schools to reconsider what we’re trying to accomplish with these policies and whether we’re doing more harm than good.”...
Along with clear AI policies, says Kellye Testy, the executive director and CEO of the Association of American Law Schools, the solution includes solid ethical training for law students to use AI before entering the workplace, where comfort with the tool will be expected."
Lisa Peet, Library Journal ; A Victory for IMLS as Court Blocks Trump’s Attempt to Dismantle Agency
"In a summary judgment on November 21 in Rhode Island v. Trump, Judge John J. McConnell Jr. ruled that the Trump administration’s attempt to shut down the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), along with other federal agencies, was illegal and unconstitutional.
McConnell’s ruling permanently enjoins the administration “from taking any future actions to implement, give effect to, comply with, or carry out the directives contained in the Reduction EO with respect to IMLS,” as well as the Minority Business Development Agency, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, and the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness.
Shortly after President Trump issued a March 14 executive order that called for the elimination of IMLS and six other government agencies, two separate lawsuits were filed: American Library Association v. Sonderling by the American Library Association (ALA) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; and Rhode Island v. Trump by a coalition of 21 state attorneys general."
"A federal judge declined to dismiss a copyright-infringement claim in a proposed class action led by Mike Huckabee, accusing Bloomberg LP of using a pirated dataset to train its AI model.
Judge Margaret M. Garnett said she couldn’t evaluate Bloomberg’s defense that its use of authors’ books to train BloombergGPT was fair use under US copyright law without a factual record, denying its motion to dismiss in a Monday opinion filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York."
John Ismay, The New York Times ; How the Coast Guard Revised Its Policy on Swastikas, Nooses and Bullying
"The revisions set off a backlash. Seth Levi of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights group, called the new policy “a national embarrassment.”
Just hours later, on Thursday night, the Coast Guard’s leadership gave assurance that the public display of hateful symbols would continue to be banned. But whether a service member could display such symbols in private remained unclear...
Why did the Coast Guard make the changes?
Neither the Coast Guard nor the Homeland Security Department offered an explanation for why the “hate incident” category was eliminated, nor why officials felt the need to create a distinction between public and private displays of symbols like nooses and swastikas.
The ban on gender identity issues, however, came straight from the White House."
Apoorva Mandavilli, The New York Times; Doctor Critical of Vaccines Quietly Appointed as C.D.C.’s Second in Command
"Dr. Ralph Abraham, who as Louisiana’s surgeon general ordered the state health department to stop promoting vaccinations and who has called Covid vaccines “dangerous,” has been named the second in command at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Department of Health and Human Services did not announce the appointment, and many C.D.C. employees seemed unaware of it. But the C.D.C.’s internal database lists Dr. Abraham as the agency’s principal deputy director, with a start date of Nov. 23. The appointment was first reported by the Substack column Inside Medicine."
Nathan Wilk , Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB); White Bird Clinic sues Willamette Valley Crisis Care over misuse of trade secrets, copyright infringement
"Eugene’s White Bird Clinic is suing a rival nonprofit, Willamette Valley Crisis Care, over copyright infringement and the stealing of trade secrets.
WVCC was founded after White Bird shuttered CAHOOTS services in Eugene in April. The new nonprofit hopes to launch a similar mobile crisis intervention program and has multiple former CAHOOTS staff members on board.
White Bird is now alleging that minutes before WVCC co-founder Alese “Dandy” Colehour sent a resignation letter to White Bird earlier this month, they downloaded confidential client information, training manuals and other materials to give to the newer non-profit.
White Bird is also accusing the WVCC of infringing on its CAHOOTS trademark through advertising materials and other public outreach efforts, and of passing off White Bird’s services as its own."
Patrick Farrell , The New York Times; Joan Didion’s Thanksgiving: Dinner for 75, Reams of Notes
"She described making the roux, stirring slowly with a wooden spoon “until the flour turns the color of a dark pecan,” then casually adding ingredients as the day went on: bacon strips left over from breakfast, the stock from a chicken roasted the day before, “the bay leaf from the tree in front, the cilantro from the sea wall.”
She apparently never completed the essay, which seems apt. The point was not the finished dish, but the making.
“Yesterday I made a gumbo, and remembered why I love to cook,” she wrote. “Intent is everything, in cooking as in work or faith.”"
Sarah Ewall-Wice , The Daily Beast ; GOP Civil War Erupts Over Trump’s ‘Garbage’ Peace Plan
"President Donald Trump’s proposed peace plan to end the brutal war in Ukraine was met with fierce opposition from members of his own Republican Party.
GOP lawmakers warned the 28-point deal appeared to be a complete cave-in to Russian President Vladimir Putin."
Bill McKibben, The Guardian; They’re doing to America what they did to Christianity
"Trumpism’s most revealing and defining moments – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most dangerous, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – came earlier this autumn. In the course of a few weeks, the US president started showing everyone his plans for a gilded ballroom twice the size of the White House and then began unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to build it. Then, after nationwide protests against his rule, he posted on social media an AI video of himself wearing a crown and piloting a fighter jet labeled “King Trump”, which proceeded to bomb American cities and Americans with a graphically vivid load of human poop.
He has done things 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of deaths from his cuts to USAID is 600,000 and rising, and this week a study predicted his fossil fuel policies would kill another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have dared – really, no other president would have imagined – unilaterally destroying large sections of the White House in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of some of the richest Americans, almost all of whom have business with the government. And no one – not Richard Nixon, not Andrew Jackson, not Warren Harding, not anyone – would have imagined boasting about defecating on the American citizenry. Even the worst American leaders were willing to maintain the notion that they represented all the people; Trump has managed to turn America’s idea of itself entirely upside down. And he has done it with the active consent of an entire political party. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, when asked about the poop video, for once did not bother lying that he had not seen it. Instead he said: “The president uses social media to make the point. You can argue he’s probably the most effective person who’s ever used social media.”
As disorienting as it is to watch the president try to upend the old idea of democracy and replace it with its polar opposite, there is one large group of Americans who should not find it completely novel. That is those of us – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were raised as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have watched over the years as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we grew up with into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they turned a figure of love into a figure of hate who blesses precisely the cruelties that he condemned in the Gospel; we went from “the meek shall inherit the Earth” to “the meek shall die of cholera.” This has happened more slowly, over decades instead of months, but it is nonetheless unsettling in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
What particularly hurts is the fact that at no point did we manage to fight back, not effectively anyway. Without intending to, we surrendered control of the idea of Jesus. It is a story that may provide some insights into how to fight the attack on democracy.
Many readers, younger ones especially, will require some backstory. In 1958, President Dwight Eisenhower laid the cornerstone for the building that would house the National Council of Churches on the Upper West Side of Manhattan – on that day, according to a history of Protestantism by Mark Silk, a cool 52% of Americans were part of the so-called mainline denominations: Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Episcopalians and the like. That meant most of the nation subscribed at least nominally to a religious life marked by a kind of polite civic normality and a somewhat progressive reading of the Bible – every one of these denominations eventually backed the civil rights movement, and Dr Martin Luther King’s March on Washington was literally planned from the Methodist national headquarters, the closest private building to the Capitol. (Catholicism accounted for another third of Americans, an important piece of the story I will get to eventually.)
In the 60 years since, all that has changed; the mainline denominations are now barely a sixth of the population, our churches largely aged and declining. Now the most public and powerful forms of Christianity, the vast and often denominationally independent megachurches and TV ministries, are as wildly different from that version of Protestantism as Donald Trump is from Eisenhower.
Paula White-Cain, for instance, who leads the newly created “White House Faith Office”, held a livestreamed prayer service the day after the 2020 election to call on “angelic reinforcement” from Africa and South America to swing the election away from Joe Biden. Doug Wilson, the self-taught pastor who co-founded Pete Hegseth’s denomination has insisted that it was a mistake to let women vote. (He also teaches that sex “cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party”, because “a man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.”)
Christianity, it must be said, has always trafficked in angels and had some serious trouble with the role of women. The actually distinctive thing about this newly ascendant version of Christianity is that it meshes easily with the savage cruelty of the new political order, one whose tenets and tempers are directly contradictory to that older version I grew up in. They share the same forms, in that all pay homage to Jesus and quote from the Bible, just as the president still inhabits the same White House (or what is left of it). But the Jesus of this imagination – muscular, aggressive and American – is a different man than the one I grew up worshipping. The idea that he can be invoked to justify cutting off aid to foreign countries and bundling immigrants into the back of unmarked vans is repulsive to me, but also mystifying – as if gravity suddenly pulled objects upward.
So let me first describe the Jesus that I grew up with, because theoretically Jesus is the center of any Christian faith, and because the fastest-growing cadre of Americans might have little sense of him since they are atheists or agnostics or nones. I have no problem with any of these traditions, or with any other faith (of my three particular political heroes, only one – Dr King – is a Christian. Gandhi was Hindu, and his colleague, the too-little-known Abdul Ghaffar Khan – was a Muslim). But I do think that there are pearls of great price in the Christian story (though it should be said that I am no theologian, only a layperson and occasional Sunday school teacher).
It is emphatically not the story of a mighty king arising; instead, a baby is born to homeless parents in a garage, who must quickly flee to a different country to evade secret police. The baby grows up in humble circumstances, a working carpenter; his message is about love for others, especially for the poor – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, expressed by feeding and sheltering. Christ’s response to violence is to turn the other cheek – not as an act of passive acceptance, but as a way to educate the attacker; his crime policy is that if someone steals your coat you should give him your sweater too. This person’s message is sufficiently subversive that he is eventually put to death by the reigning imperial power, but that execution is powerless to quell his spirit or his message, which then spreads across a growing community of followers who try to behave as he had...
The obvious and straightforward fact that the Jesus of the gospels calls for a kind of radical love centered on the poor is what has always made Christianity something of a scandalous religion: appealing to the masses, but because of its inherent radicalness needing to be contained. In the 1950s it was contained by dilution – Protestantism was so dominant that it basically baptized the status quo.
The 1960s broke that – the leadership of these churches, who were among the most committed followers of Jesus, found that they had little choice but to march in Selma, literally or figuratively. But many of their followers did not want to; they had been on board because Protestantism was part of the fabric of American life, not a challenge to it. Membership in mainline churches began dropping off. And for many of those who still felt a cultural or personal need for Christianity, evangelicalism was on the rise: it meshed wonderfully with the emerging Reagan-era emphasis on individualism and spoke directly to Americans who rejected the movements of the civil rights era.
The idea that personal salvation – as opposed to concern for others – was at the heart of Christianity always bordered on the heretical, but over the decades it has morphed into the absurd farce we see now, where Jesus is held to bless every show of dominance and aggression we can imagine. There is, by now, a well-established genre of Republican officials posing for Christmas cards with submachine guns; Nashville Republican congressman Andy Ogles passed them out to his entire family for a picture. He was one of the congresspeople who led the charge not only to freeze USAID funding for the poorest people in the world, but to use that money instead for increased deportations from this country. It is as if he had decided to see exactly how un-Christlike it was possible for one human being to be – indeed, he demanded that the local private Christian college Belmont University lose federal funding because it had a hope, unity and belonging department that he thought was too much like “DEI”.
Evangelicals are not unanimous in their support for Trump. For years I have written a column for the progressive evangelical magazine Sojourners, for example, but even its publishers would confess that they are very much a minority. Realistically, white evangelicalism is the base of Trump’s support, and this flock has not broken with him the way many of his other followers have in the past nine months.
For most readers, rightly, none of this inside baseball will matter much. For me, personally, it certainly does: it is as weird to me as a Christian as it is to me as an American to see King Trump fantasizing about offloading his bowel movements from a plane on our heads. But the reason I bother to write about it is not personal but strategic. That is because mainline Protestantism made a serious mistake: surrendering its vision of Jesus without much of a fight. It is not entirely gone – there remain thousands of wonderful and vibrant congregations, and leaders like the Rev William Barber who occasionally manage to break through in public. Episcopal bishop Mariann Edgar Budde raised a ruckus this winter when, with Trump in attendance, she prayed for him to show compassion to immigrants; there have been more than a scattering of pastors in the protests outside immigration offices, just as there are in almost every social movement in this country. But these exceptions prove, I fear, the rule of general passivity: in general, the old mainline Christianity never was able to offer a very potent defense against the aggressive and toxic new forms of Christianity."
Robert Booth, The Guardian; Minister indicates sympathy for artists in debate over AI and copyright
"The technology secretary, Liz Kendall, has indicated she is sympathetic to artists’ demands not to have their copyrighted works scraped by AI companies without payment and said she wanted to “reset” the debate.
In remarks that suggest a change in approach from her predecessor, Peter Kyle, who had hoped to require artists to actively opt out of having their work ingested by generative AI systems, she said “people rightly want to get paid for the work that they do” and “we have to find a way that both sectors can grow and thrive in future”.
The government has been consulting on a new intellectual property framework for AI which, in the case of the most common large language models (LLMs), requires vast amounts of training data to work effectively.
The issue has sparked impassioned protests from some of Britain’s most famous artists. This month Paul McCartney released a silent two-minute 45 second track of an empty studio on an album protesting against copyright grabs by AI firms as part of a campaign also backed by Kate Bush, Sam Fender, the Pet Shop Boys and Hans Zimmer."
“This is a real victory for all library professionals who are trained to select age-appropriate, developmentally appropriate material for students in both public and private schools,” Gillian Wilcox, the ACLU of Missouri’s director of litigation, told The Independent. “It is a real insult to their training and professionalism for the government to think that it knows better what books belong in those schools, and it’s an insult to parents as well.”
The now-void law, passed by Missouri lawmakers in 2022, expanded the state’s regulations on pornography to create the offense of providing explicit sexual material to a student. It applied only to those “affiliated with a public or private elementary or secondary school in an official capacity.”
The law is part of a larger trend placing higher scrutiny on what books are offered by libraries and schools. In Missouri, efforts earlier this year to place new restrictions on digital libraries and expand the officials who could face prosecution were debated but did not pass."
Harold G. Begay , Navajo Times; Power of traditional knowledge in modern education
"Re-envisioning humanity’s relationship to nature, authentic Native knowledge, and advancing scientific frameworks is deserving of rediscovery and serious attention. Our systemic traditional knowledge has always been our guiding light, deeply embedded in our worldview, our interpretation of the natural world, and its profound link to contemporary science.
Our schoolchildren and students deserve challenging academics to acquire the tools critical to re-envision humanity’s relationship with nature and to rediscover the importance of our authentic heritage, Native knowledge. It is important to reconsider, invest in, and deepen our understanding of humanity’s connection to nature, our authentic Native knowledge, and the advancement of scientific frameworks. These areas are worthy of renewed educational discovery and meaningful exploration."
Krista Allen, Navajo Times ; Nygren served with ethics complaint as questions go unanswered
"President Buu Nygren was formally served Friday with an ethics complaint outlining four counts of alleged violations of Navajo Nation law, marking a new stage in the case filed by Special Prosecutor Kyle T. Nayback.
The summons, stamped by the Window Rock Judicial District on Nov. 21, gives the president 30 days to file a written response with the Navajo Nation District Court in Window Rock.
The complaint accuses Nygren of misusing public resources, directing staff to conceal improper spending and placing a relative in a political job after being warned the hire violated Navajo Nation personnel rules. The filing seeks his removal from office, a five-year ban on public employment, forfeiture of up to one year of compensation and restitution for unauthorized spending."
Peter Chakerian, Cleveland.com; Rock Hall ‘fair use’ ruling raises big questions for creators
"Seeing things from both sides
“It can be a slippery-sloped and indeed it was a slippery slope,” said attorney Mark Avsec, partner and vice chair of the Intellectual Property Group of Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff.
Avsec was part of the funk-rock band Wild Cherry (“Play That Funky Music”) and was an original member of Donnie Iris & the Cruisers. The keyboardist-songwriter wrote or co-wrote all the latter band’s music, was its sole lyricist and produced all of its albums.
“[C]ases started evolving to where any derivative work based on a copyrighted work was almost by definition transformative and therefore a fair use,” he said.
“That can’t be right. A copyright owner’s ability to authorize or not authorize derivative works based on the copyrighted work is an important right under the Copyright Act.”
Avsec said that the Supreme Court’s ruling in the recent Warhol case reset things."
Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times; Trump’s Neville Chamberlain Prize
[Kip Currier: Thomas Friedman speaks out persuasively for Ukraine and its brave people, at a time when so many in positions of leadership and political influence are disgracefully silent.
Ukraine is the U.S.'s ally. Ukraine's people are fighting to uphold its democracy and freedoms.
And yet Trump again and again sides with Russia and its tyrannical autocrat Vladimir Putin against Ukraine and its stalwart leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Who in the U.S. Congress will stand up for and beside Ukraine when courage and moral clarity are needed most?]
[Excerpt]
"Finally, finally, President Trump just might get a peace prize that would secure his place in history. Unfortunately, though, it is not that Nobel peace prize he so covets. It is the “Neville Chamberlain Peace Prize” — awarded by history to the leader of the country that most flagrantly sells out its allies and its values to an aggressive dictator.
This prize richly deserves to be shared by Trump’s many “secretaries of state” — Steve Witkoff, Marco Rubio and Dan Driscoll — who together negotiated the surrender of Ukraine to Vladimir Putin’s demands without consulting Ukraine or our European allies in advance — and then told Ukraine it had to accept the plan by Thanksgiving.
That is this coming Thursday.
If Ukraine is, indeed, forced to surrender to the specific terms of this “deal” by then, Thanksgiving will no longer be an American holiday. It will become a Russian holiday. It will become a day of thanks that victory in Putin’s savage and misbegotten war against Ukraine’s people, which has been an utter failure — morally, militarily, diplomatically and economically — was delivered to Russia not by the superiority of its arms or the virtue of its claims, but by an American administration.
How do you say “Thanksgiving” in Russian?
To all the gentlemen who delivered this turkey to Moscow, I can offer only one piece of advice: Be under no illusions. Neither Fox News nor the White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt will be writing the history of this deal. If you force it upon Ukraine as it is, every one of your names will live in infamy alongside that of Chamberlain, who is remembered today for only one thing:
He was the British prime minister who advocated the policy of appeasement, which aimed to avoid war with Adolf Hitler’s Germany by giving in to his demands. This was concretized in the 1938 Munich Agreement, in which Chamberlain, along with others in Europe, allowed Germany to annex parts of Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain boasted it would secure “peace for our time.” A year later, Poland was invaded, starting World War II and leading to Chamberlain’s resignation — and his everlasting shame...
Trump, facing blowback from allies, Congress and Ukraine, said Saturday that this was not his “final offer” but added, if Zelensky refuses to accept the terms, “then he can continue to fight his little heart out.” As always with Trump, he is all over the place — and as always, ready to stick it to Zelensky, the guy fighting for his country’s freedom, and never to Putin, the guy trying to take Ukraine’s freedom away.
What would an acceptable dirty deal look like?
It would freeze the forces in place, but never formally cede any seized Ukrainian territory. It would insist that European security forces, backed by U.S. logistics, be stationed along the cease-fire line as a symbolic tripwire against any Russian re-invasion. It would require Russia to pay a significant amount of money to cover all the carnage it has inflicted on Ukraine — and keep Moscow isolated and under sanctions until it does — and include a commitment by the European Union to admit Ukraine as a member as soon as it is ready, without Russian interference.
This last point is vital. It is so the Russian people would have to forever look at their Ukrainian Slavic brothers and sisters in the thriving European Union, while they are stuck in Putin’s kleptocracy. That contrast is Putin’s best punishment for this war and the thing that would cause him the most trouble after it is over.
This would be a dirty deal that history would praise Trump for — getting the best out of a less than perfect hand, by using U.S. leverage on both sides, as he did in Gaza.
But just using U.S. leverage on Ukraine is a filthy deal — folding our imperfect hand to a Russian leader who is playing a terrible one.
There is a term for that in poker: sucker."
