Stevenson’s army, August 13

– It’s clear that Donald Trump had an arrogant disregard of the Presidential Records Act and an overweening indifference toward safeguarding classified documents. What isn’t clear is whether he will be prosecuted for violations of law. Charlie Savage describes the laws mentioned in the FBI search warrant.

– Dan Froomkin, a media critic, wants us to learn about “stochastic terrorism,” the statistical likelihood that people will act violently if provoked by commentators. It looks like that’s what happened in Ohio.

– I’ve been reading Dana Milbank’s new book on how the GOP embraced nastiness as a way to win elections [which, sadly, worked]. I’d seen that work in congressional campaigns, but I was shocked to be reminded that right-wing commentators urged violence long before the Trump years — in the 1990s against Clinton policies and in the early Obama years. The language was as bad as any nowadays — but today there’s Fox News and social media to amplify the calls for violence.

My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).