Compiled by Athena Smith.
Articles
Can the Attorney General Remove Assistant U.S. Attorneys at Will?
Nick Bednar analyzed District Judge Jesse Furman’s decision in Maurene Comey’s lawsuit against the Trump administration, in which Comey alleges that she was removed under Article II because her father—former FBI Director James Comey—is critical of President Trump. Bednar explained how Judge Furman allowed Comey to file her lawsuit in district court and, if the ruling holds, the hope it may offer for other federal employees removed from their positions.
Furman closed by warning that accepting the government’s theory would “risk a return to the spoils system that Congress has sought to end since the nineteenth century.” Congress enacted the Due Process Amendments to protect attorneys, such as AUSAs, from arbitrary or politically motivated removals. Whether those protections survive depends on whether the Supreme Court is prepared to hold, for the first time, that Congress may not protect inferior officers from removal.
Assume Speech: A First Amendment Approach to Regulating AI Model Weights
Ben Vagle argued that the government faces a dilemma in regulating open-weight artificial intelligence (AI) tools because currently the only realistic tool, the export control system, could damage the AI ecosystem by allowing the government to restrict models with few checks. Vagle outlined how a government export control regime could be configured if model weights themselves—which are trained on text and generate speech—are protected under the First Amendment.
That is dangerous territory. As a matter of policy, does the government want to risk losing? And does the public want to risk the government winning? Neither outcome is appealing. A loss would remove the government’s ability to regulate the release of model weights at all in the near term and might smother any energy Congress had to create a regime that can survive a First Amendment challenge.
Podcasts
Lawfare Daily: FCC’s Bad Labs Rulemaking with FCC’s Andy Hendrickson and Alice Jou: Justin Sherman sat down with Andy Hendrickson and Alice Jou to discuss the process for testing and certifying devices in the United States, the national security risks of offshoring of that apparatus, the future of the supply chain and risk space, and more.
*Support *Lawfare
*Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Become a material supporter on Patreon. Sign up to receive *Lawfare
