Today's Headlines and Commentary

The State Department announced on Monday that the U.S. has reached the limit on the number of deployed nuclear warheads that the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with Russia allows, the Wall Street Journal reports. New START limits the U.S. and Russia to “no more than 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads” each. In an official statement, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said that Russia has repeatedly affirmed its commitment to the arms reduction treaty. Washington and Moscow will confirm their commitments by exchanging data on their strategic nuclear arsenals in the coming month.

Ernst & Young discovered that the Defense Logistics Agency, one of the Pentagon’s largest agencies, cannot account for hundreds of millions of dollars in spending, Politico reports. The internal audit raises serious questions about the ability of the Defense Department to manage its $700 billion budget, let alone the additional budgetary requests the Trump administration intends to make later this month. To some members of Congress such as Sen. Chuck Grassley, the gaps in and striking disorderliness of the Defense Logistics Agency’s financial records suggest that a full audit of the Defense Department might be impossible, despite the congressional mandate to carry one out.

In a tweet on Monday morning, President Trump accused Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, of being “one of the biggest liars and leakers in Washington,” the New York Times reports. The president added that Schiff “must be stopped.” The president’s accusation against Schiff came as the ranking Democrat is expected to call for a House intelligence committee vote on Monday afternoon to release Democrats’ rebuttal to the Nunes memo. In another tweet on Monday morning, President Trump praised Rep. Devin Nunes, describing the House intelligence committee chairman as “a man of tremendous courage and grit, [who] may someday be recognized as a Great American Hero for what he has exposed and what he has had to endure!”

A bomb reportedly filled with chlorine gas was dropped on the rebel-controlled town of Saraqeb in Syria, the BBC says. The Syrian Civil Defense shared that nine people were affected by the attack, including three of its rescue workers, known as the White Helmets. Elsewhere in the northwestern province of Idlib, Russian and Syrian government airstrikes killed a minimum of 20 people. Air and artillery strikes by the regime in the rebel-controlled Eastern Ghouta region killed another 24 people. Nine of the dead, including two children, were civilians.

Thousands of Islamic State fighters and family members have escaped the American-led coalition’s efforts to annihilate the remnants of the terrorist organization in eastern Syria, the Times reports. According to military and intelligence assessments, some insurgents lie in hiding near Damascus, awaiting orders, while others have joined al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch. Still, other former ISIS fighters, those of foreign birth, have paid smugglers vast sums of money to get them across the border into Turkey, with the ultimate goal of returning to their countries of origin. Because of its still expansive network in Syria and abroad, the Islamic State retains its capacity to carry out and inspire terrorist attacks, despite its staggering territorial losses.

The Defense Department has fired Harvey Rishikof, the overseer at the military commissions at the Guantanamo Bay naval station, the Miami Herald reports. The overseer’s firing does not affect the military trials currently in progress, including those of the five men accused of orchestrating the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The reason for the Pentagon's decision to remove Rishikof remains unclear.

ICYMI: This Weekend on Lawfare

Jack Goldsmith discussed the implications of White House Counsel Donald McGahn's cover letter to the release of the Nunes memo.

Michael Smith called for a more aggressive set of government policies and laws to motivate technology companies to contribute more to counterterrorism efforts.

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