> Will the next Democratic President do it to xAI? On what grounds?

Elon being affiliated with Trump. About the strength of logic that makes Dario woke.

> don't think that's the norm

Norms are different from law or contract. And yes, lots of service providers limit where their civilians can be deployed and under what circumstances.

> can totally understand the political desire for vengeance. But what's the actual legal justification for it?

President has core Constitutional control of the military.

> Democrats always sell themselves on "we obey norms"

That hasn't worked. The American electorate is looking for change. And up-and-coming Democrats are picking up on that.

> risk losing the people who supported them based on that word

The Democrat base absolutely wants vengeance. It doesn't play in swing states. But it probably also doesn't hurt. These are court politics, at the end of the day.

> Elon being affiliated with Trump. About the strength of logic that makes Dario woke.

I think you have to distinguish between the official justification and some of the associated political rhetoric.

Official justification: "Previous admin agreed contract with unprecedented terms, we demand those terms be removed, vendor is refusing to renegotiate"

Political rhetoric: "THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL NEVER ALLOW A RADICAL LEFT, WOKE COMPANY TO DICTATE HOW OUR GREAT MILITARY FIGHTS AND WINS WARS!"

If you forget about the political framing, and look at the official justification in the abstract, it doesn't actually seem facially unreasonable. The escalation to "supply chain risk" is a different story, but the core contract dispute and cancelling the contract as a result of it isn't.

So the question is, can Democrats come up with an equivalent abstract official justification–if so, what will it be? Or do they decide they don't even need that–in which case they aren't just matching Trump, they are going even further down the road to normlessness than he's gone.

> And yes, lots of service providers limit where their civilians can be deployed and under what circumstances.

There's a big difference between contracts for boots-on-the-ground and contracts for hardware/software. There is lots of precedent for contractual limitations on how boots-on-the-ground can be used. I'm not aware of similar precedent for hardware or software.

> That hasn't worked. The American electorate is looking for change. And up-and-coming Democrats are picking up on that.

Are they? Gavin Newsom? Zohran Mamdani? AOC? Do they actually sell themselves as "we see Trump breaking the rules, and we'll break them just as hard, even moreso"?

> The Democrat base absolutely wants vengeance. It doesn't play in swing states. But it probably also doesn't hurt.

It is too early to tell. You can argue in the abstract that X approximately equals Y, so if swing voters will tolerate the GOP doing X, they'll also tolerate Democrats doing Y – but the actual swing voters might not agree with you on that.