Today’s Headlines and Commentary

Elliot Setzer
Tuesday, April 7, 2020, 11:44 AM

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Brookings

Wisconsin’s in-person primary election will take place today after the state Supreme Court overruled the governor’s executive order to postpone the election, reports NPR. An hour later in a separate matter, the U.S. Supreme Court partially blocked a lower court’s extension of the absentee ballot deadline in the state in a 5-4 decision, writes Politico.

President Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro warned the White House in late January that the coronavirus crisis could cost the United States trillions of dollars and put millions of Americans at risk, reports the New York Times. Navarro’s memo is the most direct warning known to have circulated inside the administration in the time period during which it took its first steps to confront the potential crisis.

A report by the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services found that a severe shortage of tests, protective gear, staff and space are impeding hospitals’ ability to combat the novel coronavirus, writes the Washington Post.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was moved to intensive care in hospital yesterday after his coronavirus symptoms worsened, according to the BBC. He asked Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab to be deputized “where necessary” while Johnson continues treatment.

A United Nations investigation into attacks on humanitarian sites in Syria concluded yesterday that the Syrian government or its allies had committed most of them, reports the New York Times. However, the report refrained from specifically identifying Russia as a perpetrator, despite strong evidence that a Russian warplane had carried out one of the attacks that the board of inquiry reviewed.

The world’s largest oil producers are closing in on the terms of a deal to mitigate the devastating impact of the coronavirus crisis on the oil market, writes Bloomberg. Saudi Arabia and Russia are hammering out an agreement to curb output, which would require some form of co-operation with the U.S.

ICYMI: Yesterday on Lawfare

Lester Munson shared an episode of Fault Lines discussing how to combat extremism with Farah Pandith, Special Representative to Muslim Communities.

Jordan Schneider shared an episode of ChinaTalk on how the Chinese Community Party’s international propaganda efforts.

Jane Chong argued that liability for insecure software is already a reality, but the question is whether Congress will step in to give insecure software liability a coherent legal structure.

Malcolm Jorgensen analyzed the International Criminal Court’s authorization of an investigation into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan and identified the investigation as the culmination of a complex debate over the politics of a probe into the court’s most powerful critic.

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Elliot Setzer is a Knight-Hennessy Scholar at Stanford Law School and a Ph.D student at Yale University. He previously worked at Lawfare and the Brookings Institution.

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