Today’s Headlines and Commentary

Vishnu Kannan
Tuesday, July 2, 2019, 4:04 PM

Police in Hong Kong retook control of the Legislative Council building which protestors broke into and occupied on Monday for almost three hours, CNN reports. The Chinese government called the protests an “undisguised challenge” to Hong Kong’s system of governance, damaging to the rule of law and social order, CNN also writes.

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Police in Hong Kong retook control of the Legislative Council building which protestors broke into and occupied on Monday for almost three hours, CNN reports. The Chinese government called the protests an “undisguised challenge” to Hong Kong’s system of governance, damaging to the rule of law and social order, CNN also writes.

Some fleets of oil tankers are “going dark” when they pick up cargo in Iran to avoid punishment from the U.S.,” the New York Times writes.

A cyberattack forced a Georgia state agency to shut down some court websites, AP reports. The extent of the ransomware was not explicit.

A report by Israeli cybersecurity company Check Point says a suspected Libyan hacker used Facebook to spread malware, according to Bloomberg. A fake page, impersonating the head of the militia fighting Libya’s government, posted infected links that reached about 50,000 users from North Africa, Europe and the U.S.

Germany fined Facebook for violating its internet transparency law, Reuters says. The company will have to pay 2 million euros for underreporting the number of complaints it received regarding illegal content.

ICYMI: Yesterday on Lawfare

Mira Rapp-Hooper and Matthew Waxman summarized their recent Washington Quarterly paper, arguing that the post-World War II expansion of the presidential alliance powers have enabled President Trump to weaken alliances from within.

Margaret Taylor accepted responsibility for not identifying the now-suspended State Department protocol officer’s reported propensity for intimidating colleagues with a whip during the vetting process when she worked for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Evelyn Douek analyzed Facebook’s progress report on its ongoing civil rights audit.

Vishnu Kannan shared the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit’s unredacted opinion in Doe v. Mattis.

Bobby Chesney and Steve Vladeck shared the most recent episode of the National Security Law Podcast, in which they discuss the D.C. Circuit Court’s unredacted ruling in Doe v. Mattis, border wall litigation, the Supreme Court’s decision in the census case and more.

Hadley Baker shared appellate briefs from both parties in Trump v. Mazars USA.

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Vishnu Kannan is special assistant to the president at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Previously he was a James C. Gaither Junior Fellow in Carnegie’s Technology and International Affairs Program, a researcher at Lawfare and the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and an intern at the Brookings Institution. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University where he studied International Relations, Political Theory and Economics.

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