Rational Security: The 'When the Bower Breaks News' Edition
Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
This week, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by Lawfare special Georgia correspondent Anna Bower to talk through the week's big national security news stories, including:
- “You Gotta Know When to Fulton.” Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has wrapped up her work with a special purpose grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump and his associates for potential 2020 election interference, and has said that charging decisions will be forthcoming. But why did she oppose the public release of the grand jury’s report? And what might that tell us about where the case is headed?
- “It Is Happening Again.” The brutal murder of Tyre Nichols by police officers in Memphis, Tennessee, is bringing back to the fore demands for police reform and greater accountability for the violence that our criminal justice system levels disproportionately against Black Americans. What lessons should we take from this case? Is there any way forward for change?
- “Drop the ‘Real.’ It’s Cleaner.” Former President Donald J. Trump is back on Facebook and Instagram, after parent company Meta lifted the permanent ban that had kept him off the platforms for promoting violence in relation to the Jan. 6 insurrection. Is this change the right policy? What might it mean moving forward?
For object lessons, Alan threw his endorsement behind HBO’s latest post-apocalyptic venture, The Last of Us. Quinta urged listeners to dig into the works of (Canadian) national treasure Alice Munro. Scott sang the praises of his new favorite kitchen multitasker. And Anna—seeing that the end of law school is nigh—decided to one-up Alan with her own post-apocalyptic recommendations, Station Eleven and The Leftovers.
Jen Patja is the editor and producer of the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security. She currently serves as the Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics, a nonprofit organization that empowers the next generation of leaders in Virginia by promoting constitutional literacy, critical thinking, and civic engagement. She is the former Deputy Director of the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier and has been a freelance editor for over 20 years.
Alan Z. Rozenshtein is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, Research Director and Senior Editor at Lawfare, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Previously, he served as an Attorney Advisor with the Office of Law and Policy in the National Security Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and a Special Assistant United States Attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland.
Quinta Jurecic is a fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and a senior editor at Lawfare. She previously served as Lawfare's managing editor and as an editorial writer for the Washington Post.
Scott R. Anderson is a fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and a Senior Fellow in the National Security Law Program at Columbia Law School. He previously served as an Attorney-Adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State and as the legal advisor for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.
Anna Bower is a senior editor at Lawfare. Anna holds a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Cambridge and a Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School. She joined Lawfare as a recipient of Harvard’s Sumner M. Redstone Fellowship in Public Service. Prior to law school, Anna worked as a judicial assistant for a Superior Court judge in the Northeastern Judicial Circuit of Georgia. She also previously worked as a Fulbright Fellow at Anadolu University in Eskişehir, Turkey.
A native of Georgia, Anna is based in Atlanta and Washington, D.C.
