Page B1From§Eachthe coffee break edition — 31 August 2026
As it ran on the front
Equal enforcement of the law, a modest civic habit, died this week, quietly, the way most of these things go, not shot, not repealed, just left off the agenda until nobody remembered to renew it. It was born sometime around the idea that the law applies the same whether you're a person in a boat or a corporation in a boardroom, and it lived a long, uneven life, penny-ante violations chased hard, big-ticket violations chased soft, but it was, at minimum, still on the books.
This week the Pentagon released newly unclassified images of suspected drug boats, alongside an official warning that the response to them will be lethal. That's one file. In the other file, the current administration's approach to corporate lawbreaking was described, on the record, as politely asking companies to behave. Read those two documents back to back and you start to understand what actually died. It wasn't enforcement. Enforcement's alive and well, for boats. What died was the idea that enforcement was ever really about the law, as opposed to about who's easiest to hit.…
…(cont) He is survived by a stack of strongly worded letters, none of them opened twice. He is preceded in death by the fine, the audit, and the subpoena, all of which used to do this job before someone decided a memo was cheaper. It's an old story around here, been writing versions of it since the type was set by hand, and I'll say plainly, it's a bit of malarkey to call a polite request a regulatory plan, and it's also, and I don't say this often, a bit of a shit deal for anyone who isn't a corporation, since the alternative enforcement model, the one for boats, does not involve a memo.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you write your regulator and ask, politely, whether they still have the number for the subpoena.
“One category gets a warning shot and the other gets a strongly worded memo, and it tracks pretty cleanly with who's got a lobbyist on retainer. The government picked its enforcement model, and it isn't about the size of the violation, it's about who can hire the law firm.”
“The maritime interdiction policy addresses a documented narcotics threat, full stop, that's a national security matter, and the corporate compliance approach is about efficient regulation, not a — I mean yes, one gets lethal engagement and the other gets a letter, but those aren't really comparable frameworks, so.”
The receipts
The Pentagon has failed its audit eight years running - the only major federal agency never to pass one Military Times, 19 December 2025
Newly unclassified Pentagon images show suspected drug boats as official issues deadly warningExclusive Pentagon photos show suspected drug-smuggling boats under U.S. military surveillance as Operation Southern Spear reaches 67 strikes at sea.
The post The Trump Administration’s Plan for Protecting Consumers? Politely Ask Companies to Behave. appeared first on ProPublica .
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.