Pretext under Department of Commerce v. New York

Department of Commerce v. New York, 588 U.S. 752 (2019) — courts "are not required to exhibit a naiveté from which ordinary citizens are free." Even where an agency has statutory authority, courts must reject action where the stated rationale is a "contrived" pretext for the actual motive.

Applied to the Supply Chain Designation. The "story" the record tells does not match the explanation given: Michael's same-day cordial emails to Amodei ("I think we are very close here") cannot be squared with his contemporaneous characterization of Anthropic as an "unacceptable national security threat"; Hegseth's days-earlier Defense Production Act threat treats Anthropic as essential and contradicts the "supply chain risk" framing.

How the doctrine plays in the FASCSA case, where the record before the D.C. Cir. is narrower.

Whether the OpenAI parallel deal further strengthens pretext on disparate treatment.