Shows
The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Live: Judge Dismisses Indictments Against James Comey and Letita JamesAt 4 pm ET, Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett will sit down with Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff and Lawfare Contributor James Pearce to discuss a judge dismissing the indictments against both former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, ruling that Lindsey Halligan was not properly appointed to served as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.You can also watch the conversation on YouTube.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-t...
2025-11-2440 min
The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, Nov. 21In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Molly Roberts, Roger Parloff and Eric Columbus and Lawfare Public Service Fellow Loren Voss to discuss a judge ordering the Trump administration to end the National Guard deployment in D.C., updates in the prosecutions of Letitia James and James Comey, a hearing in Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s civil case, and more.You can find information on legal challenges to Trump administration actions here. And check out Lawfare’s new homepage on the litigation, new Bluesky account, and new WITOAD merch.To receive ad-fre...
2025-11-241h 45The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: All Things Ukrainian Energy with Anastasiia LapatinaLawfare Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina has written two recent articles for Lawfare on energy and the Ukraine war. The first deals with the ongoing Russian attacks on the Ukrainian civilian power grid—attacks which actually interfered with the recording of this very podcast. The second details an ongoing corruption scandal rocking the Ukrainian political system, emerging from an alleged kickback scheme in the energy sector. Lapatina sits down with Benjamin Wittes to talk about the current power outage affecting her ability to record, the Russian strikes, the Ukrainian strikes against Russia, and the most significant corruption scandal to affect Pr...
2025-11-2049 min
The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Live: Discussing the Hearings on James Comey’s Prosecution and the Alien Enemies ActAt 4pm ET on Nov. 19, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Molly Roberts, Anna Bower, and Roger Parloff to discuss two court hearings that occurred that day. First they discussed the hearing in the prosecution of James Comey. Then they briefly discussed the hearing in J.G.G. v. Trump, over potential contempt proceedings against the government concerning actions taken surrounding the deportation of some El Salvador immigrants to CECOT.This episode is a part of Lawfare’s new livestream series, Lawfare Live: The Now. Subscribe to Lawfare on Substack or...
2025-11-1953 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, Nov. 14In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Roger Parloff and Eric Columbus and Lawfare Public Service Fellow Loren Voss to discuss an update in the Georgia prosecution of President Trump, a hearing on whether Lindsey Halligan was lawfully appointed as U.S. attorney, a district court barring the deployment of National Guard to Portland, and more.You can find information on legal challenges to Trump administration actions here. And check out Lawfare’s new homepage on the litigation, new Bluesky account, and new WITOAD merch.To receive ad-free podcast...
2025-11-171h 29The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: Will Generative AI Reshape Elections?From November 29, 2023: Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard a great deal over the last year about generative AI and how it’s going to reshape various aspects of our society. That includes elections. With one year until the 2024 U.S. presidential election, we thought it would be a good time to step back and take a look at how generative AI might and might not make a difference when it comes to the political landscape. Luckily, Matt Perault and Scott Babwah Brennen of the UNC Center on Technology Policy have a new report out on...
2025-11-1549 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, Nov. 7In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Molly Roberts, Roger Parloff and Eric Columbus to discuss the criminal trial of the man who threw a sandwich at a federal immigration officer in D.C., a hearing in the prosecution of James Comey, litigation over the conditions of an immigration detention center in Illinois, and more.You can find information on legal challenges to Trump administration actions here. And check out Lawfare’s new homepage on the litigation, new Bluesky account, and new WITOAD merch.To receive ad-free podca...
2025-11-101h 41The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: The Dangers of Deploying the Military on U.S. SoilFrom November 6, 2024: For today’s special episode, Lawfare General Counsel and Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson held a series of conversations with contributors to a special series of articles on “The Dangers of Deploying the Military on U.S. Soil” that Lawfare recently published on its website, in coordination with our friends at Protect Democracy.Participants include: Alex Tausanovitch, Policy Advocate at Protect Democracy; Laura Dickinson, a Professor at George Washington University Law School; Joseph Nunn, Counsel in the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center; Chris Mirasola, an Assistant Professor at the University of Houston La...
2025-11-081h 33The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Supreme Court Oral Arguments on President Trump’s TariffsIn a live conversation on November 5, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Lawfare Contributing Editor Peter Harrell and Georgetown Law Professors Marty Lederman and Kathleen Claussen to discuss what occurred during oral arguments in the legal challenge to President Trump’s tariffs at the Supreme Court and how the justices may rule.This episode is a part of Lawfare’s new livestream series, Lawfare Live: The Now. Subscribe to Lawfare on Substack or YouTube to receive an alert for future livestreams.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at w...
2025-11-071h 02The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, Oct. 31In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Contributor Marty Lederman, Public Service Fellow Loren Voss, and Senior Editors Scott R. Anderson, Roger Parloff and Eric Columbus to discuss the Supreme Court’s handling of the legal challenge to the federalization of the National Guard in Chicago, James Comey’s motions to dismiss the indictment against him, ongoing politicization at the Department of Justice, litigation over the Trump administration’s attempt to suspend SNAP during the government shutdown, and so much more.You can find information on legal challenges to Trump administratio...
2025-11-031h 42The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, Oct. 24In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Contributor James Pearce and Senior Editors Scott R. Anderson, Molly Roberts, Roger Parloff and Eric Columbus to discuss the arraignment of Letitia James, legal challenges to the appointments of Lindsey Halligan and Alina Habba to be U.S. attorneys, litigation over the federalization and deployment of National Guard, and so much more.You can find information on legal challenges to Trump administration actions here. And check out Lawfare’s new homepage on the litigation, new Bluesky account, and new WITOAD merch.To receive ad-free podca...
2025-10-271h 34The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: Gabe Rottman on the Justice Department's New Guidelines on Press SubpoenasFrom June 5, 2023: It's been about six months since the attorney general issued new guidelines on compulsory process to members of the press in criminal and national security investigations, and two officials of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press—Bruce Brown and Gabe Rottman—wrote a detailed analysis of the document in two parts for Lawfare. Rottman joined Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes to go through the document carefully: the long history that led to it, the shifting policies that have gotten more restrictive over the years since the Supreme Court ruled in Branzburg v. Hayes, the ramp-up of...
2025-10-2540 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Serhii Plokhii on the History of the Nuclear Arms RaceLawfare Contributor Mykhailo Soldatenko sits down with Serhii Plokhii, Harvard History Professor and a leading authority on the history of the Cold War and Ukraine, to discuss his new book, "The Nuclear Age: An Epic Race for Arms, Power and Survival," that tells a history of nuclear proliferation and international efforts to tame it. They discuss the role of fear and prestige in a country's decision to acquire nukes, nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, preventive wars against nuclear aspirants, Ukraine's decision to give up nuclear weapons it inherited from the Soviet Union, and more. You may als...
2025-10-1559 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: Cox and Wyden on Section 230 and Generative AIFrom May 2, 2023: Generative AI products have been tearing up the headlines recently. Among the many issues these products raise is whether or not their outputs are protected by Section 230, the foundational statute that shields websites from liability for third-party content.On this episode of Arbiters of Truth, Lawfare’s occasional series on the information ecosystem, Lawfare Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic and Matt Perault, Director of the Center on Technology and Policy at UNC-Chapel Hill, talked through this question with Senator Ron Wyden and Chris Cox, formerly a U.S. congressman and SEC chairman. Cox and Wyden drafted Sectio...
2025-10-0530 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: The Law of the ShutdownIn this episode, Molly Reynolds, Senior Fellow at Brookings and contributing editor at Lawfare, sits down with Nick Bednar, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota and contributing editor at Lawfare, and Sam Berger, Senior Fellow on the Federal Fiscal Policy team at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. They discuss why government shutdowns happen, what determines what functions keep operating, how the Trump administration is using this shutdown to pursue novel cuts to the federal workforce, and how to think about the shutdown in the broader context of the Trump administration’s exercise of executive po...
2025-10-0351 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: The Justice Department as a Political WeaponIn a live conversation on September 29, Lawfare Senior Editor Kate Klonick spoke to Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare Senior Editor Anna Bower, and Professor of Practice at New York University Bob Bauer about the recent indictment of former FBI Director James Comey and what it says about the Trump administration’s ongoing politicization of the Department of Justice. This conversation is a part of our newly-launched show, Lawfare Live: The Day After, on Substack. You can join us for the next one by becoming a free subscriber to our Substack at lawfare.substack.com.To receive ad-free podcasts, b...
2025-09-3052 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Analyzing the Administration's New Counterdrug ApproachLoren Voss, Public Service Fellow at Lawfare, sits down with Dan Byman, Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor and the Director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; Ryan Berg, Director of the Americas Program and Head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative also at CSIS; and Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson. They talk about the new United States approach to drug smuggling, the lethal strikes against drug smuggling boats, and the ongoing counterdrug efforts in Mexico.Anderson applies international law to the facts as known on the military stri...
2025-09-2452 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: Jane Bambauer, Ramya Krishnan, and Alan Rozenshtein on the Constitutionality of the TikTok BillFrom September 18, 2024: Jane Bambauer, Professor at Levin College of Law; Ramya Krishnan, Senior Staff Attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute and a lecturer in law at Columbia Law School; Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, join Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare, to break down the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’ hearing in TikTok v. Garland, in which a panel of judges assessed the constitutionality of the TikTok bill.To recei...
2025-09-2142 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: How the FBI is Combating Cyberattacks, with Brett LeathermanFrom March 28, 2024: One of the gravest threats to U.S. national security today—and also one of the newest—is the risk of cyberattacks. They come in many forms, and they can incapacitate companies, institutions, and even the government. To better understand these threats—and how the government is responding to them—Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett and Lawfare Contributing Editor Brandon Van Grack sat down with Brett Leatherman, Deputy Assistant Director for Cyber Operations at the FBI. They discussed the FBI's recent operations, threats from both state actors and criminal gangs, and the role of the private secto...
2025-09-0754 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: U.S. Military Conducts Lethal Strike on Venezuelan ‘Drug Boat’In a live conversation on Sept. 4, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson and Professor of Law at Cardozo Law School Rebecca Ingber to discuss the U.S. strike on an alleged “drug boat” traveling from Venezuela, the president’s authority to use lethal force outside of war, and more.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Ac...
2025-09-0500 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Federal Judges Rule Against Trump on National Guard Deployment, Tariffs, and Removal of Migrant Children to GuatemalaIn a live conversation on Sept. 2, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Scott R. Anderson, Anna Bower, and Lawfare Public Service Fellow Loren Voss to discuss Sunday’s emergency hearing in L.G.M.L. et al. v. Kristi Noem—in which Judge Sparkle Sooknanan blocked the Trump administration’s plans to send unaccompanied migrant children to Guatemala—Judge Charles Breyer’s ruling in Newsom v. Trump which found that President Trump’s use of the National Guard and U.S. Marines in Los Angeles violated the Posse Comitatus Act, and the Federal Circuit Court of Appe...
2025-09-0356 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Pocket Rescissions in CongressOn today’s episode, Molly Reynolds, Contributing Editor at Lawfare and Senior Fellow at Brookings, sits down with Zach Price, Associate Professor of Law at UC Law San Francisco, and Phil Wallach, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, to discuss pocket rescissions as an approach to cancelling funds previously approved by Congress. They cover whether the practice is legal, how it threatens Congress’s institutional power, and how they fit in with broader efforts by the Trump administration.For more, take a look at the following pieces on Lawfare:“Past Pocket Rescissions Are Not Precedents for Po...
2025-09-0236 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Unpacking Security Guarantees for UkraineOn today’s episode, Lawfare’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina sits down with Eric Ciaramella, a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Lawfare Contributing Editor, to discuss the history of American security commitments abroad and how it can help inform the debate around security guarantees for Ukraine.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privac...
2025-08-2859 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: The European Court of Human Rights Takes on Digital Rights in War, with Asaf Lubin and Deb Housen-CourielFor today's episode, Lawfare Senior Editor and General Counsel Scott R. Anderson sits down with Lawfare Contributing Editor and Indiana University Maurer School of Law professor Asaf Lubin and Hebrew University of Jerusalem professor Deborah Housen-Couriel to talk over the European Court of Human Rights' recent decision in Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia.Together, they discuss how the opinion lays new ground in discussing digital rights in wartime, what issues still need to be developed further, and what it all might mean for warfare in the future, both good and bad.For more, read...
2025-08-2247 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: The Alaska Summit and Its FalloutIn a live conversation on August 18, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to Lawfare Legal Fellow Mykhailo Soldatenko, Lawfare Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina, and Carnegie Senior Fellow Eric Ciaramella about President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s meeting in Alaska on Aug. 15, Trump’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and other European leaders, in the White House on Aug, 18, and what it all means for the future of the Russo-Ukrainian War.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at htt...
2025-08-191h 09The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: Ukraine Invades RussiaFrom August 14, 2024: Over the past week, Ukrainian forces have launched a major incursion into Russia proper, occupying 1,000 square kilometers in Kursk Oblast, which borders Ukraine. The operation, which caught both Russia and the United States by surprise, is the first major Ukrainian offensive in more than a year. In this episode, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sits down with Lawfare's Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina and Eric Ciaramella of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to discuss the operation. What do we know amidst the Ukrainian media blackout? What is Ukraine trying to achieve militarily? How will the Kursk operation affect the...
2025-08-161h 14The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: Is Complying with the Law of War a Defense to Genocide?From June 13, 2024: On today’s episode, Lawfare General Counsel and Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Gabor Rona, Professor of Practice at Cardozo Law, and Natalie Orpett, Lawfare’s Executive Editor, to discuss their recent Lawfare piece examining whether a state pursuing an armed conflict in compliance with international humanitarian law could nonetheless violate the Genocide Convention. They discussed how these two areas of law intersect, their relevance to the ongoing proceedings over Israel’s conduct in Gaza before the International Court of Justice, and what the questions their analysis raises might mean for the future of accountabilit...
2025-08-0354 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: Amanda Tyler on Rahimi and Taking Guns Away From LoyalistsFrom December 27, 2023: The Supreme Court last month heard oral arguments in United States v. Rahimi, in which the Court will decide the constitutionality of a federal law that criminalizes the possession of firearms by individuals on whom state courts have imposed domestic violence protective orders. This case came to the Court following its June 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. In that case, the Court determined that whether a law violates the Second Amendment depends on whether there is a “representative historical analogue” for the contemporary law. Amanda Tyler, the Shannon Cecil Turner Professo...
2025-08-0240 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Sezaneh Seymour and Brandon Wales on Private-Sector Cyber OperationsAlan Rozenshtein, Senior Editor and Research Director at Lawfare, sits down with Sezaneh Seymour, Vice President and head of regulatory risk and policy at Coalition and a former Senior Adviser on the National Security Council staff, and Brandon Wales, Vice President for cybersecurity strategy at SentinelOne and the former Executive Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), to discuss their new Lawfare Research Report, “Partners or Provocateurs? Private-Sector Involvement in Offensive Cyber Operations.”They talk about why, in the face of escalating cyber threats from state and criminal actors, U.S. officials are reevaluating the policy...
2025-07-2948 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: AI Policy Under Technological Uncertainty, with Alex “amac” MacgillivrayFrom July 23, 2024: Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and Senior Editor at Lawfare, and Matt Perault, the Director of the Center on Technology Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, sat down with Alexander Macgillivray, known to all as "amac," who was the former Principle Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the United States in the Biden Administration and General Counsel at Twitter.amac recently wrote a piece for Lawfare about making AI policy in a world of technological uncertainty, and Matt and Alan talked to him about how to do j...
2025-07-2640 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: The End of USAID, with Nicholas KristofSince Jan. 20, 84% of U.S. Agency for International Development grants and contracts have been terminated and 93% of agency staff have been fired. On July 1, the State Department absorbed the remaining staff and grants. On Lawfare Daily, Lawfare Associate Editor for Communications Anna Hickey spoke to New York Times opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof about the global impact of the Trump administration's dismantling of the USAID and foreign assistance cuts. They discussed what Kristof saw in his reporting trips to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Kenya, and South Sudan, and how the cuts to foreign assistance put U.S. national security at risk.
2025-07-1737 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Reparations for Russia's Aggression Against Ukraine with Markiyan Kliuchkovskyi and Patrick PearsallLawfare Legal Fellow Mykhailo Soldatenko and Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sit down with Markiyan Kliuchkovskyi, Executive Director of the Register of Damage for Ukraine at the Council of Europe and a former legal advisor of the Office of the President of Ukraine, and Patrick W. Pearsall, an international arbitration and disputes partner in the Washington D.C. office of Gibson Dunn and Global Co-Chair of the Geopolitical Strategy and International Law practice who directs the International Claims and Reparations Project at Columbia Law School. Markiyan and Patrick played a key role in proposing and designing Ukraine's reparations st...
2025-07-161h 13The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: David Noll on Civil Contempt Against a Defiant ExecutiveAlan Rozenshtein, Senior Editor and Research Director at Lawfare, sits down with David Noll, a Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School, to discuss his new Lawfare Research Report, “Civil Contempt Against a Defiant Executive.” They talk about the widespread assumption that the judiciary is powerless if the executive branch chooses to defy court orders, largely because enforcement mechanisms like the U.S. Marshals Service reside within the executive branch.Noll argues that this view is mistaken and overlooks the significant enforcement powers the courts possess that are independent of the executive. Noll and Rozenshtein discuss non-custodial sanctions...
2025-07-151h 11The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Bribery and the Second Trump Administration with John KellerJohn Keller, now a partner at Walden, Macht, Haran, & Williams, channeled his experience as the former chief of the Public Integrity Section at the Department of Justice to talk about bribery with James Pearce, Lawfare Legal Fellow. After explaining the basics of bribery law and whether a current or former president could face a bribery prosecution, Keller analyzed whether three episodes from the first six months of the second Trump administration could plausibly be characterized as bribery: Paramount’s $16 million settlement of Trump’s lawsuit while Paramount awaits federal approval of a merger, law firms agreeing to provide pro bono...
2025-07-1158 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily, Bonus Edition: Unpacking the July 7 Hearing for Kilmar Abrego GarciaOn July 8, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down for a bonus edition of Lawfare Live with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower and Roger Parloff to discuss Kilmar Abrego Garcia's July 7 hearing in federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
2025-07-1039 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: The Double Black Box: Ashley Deeks on National Security AILawfare Senior Editor Alan Rozenshtein sits down with Ashley Deeks, the Class of 1948 Professor of Scholarly Research in Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, to discuss her new book, “The Double Black Box: National Security, Artificial Intelligence, and the Struggle for Democratic Accountability.” They talk about the core metaphor of the book: the idea that the use of artificial intelligence in the national security space creates a "double black box." The first box is the traditional secrecy surrounding national security activities, and the second, inner box is the inscrutable nature of AI systems themselves, whose decision-making proces...
2025-07-0955 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Michael Feinberg on Leaving the FBIUntil late May, Michael Feinberg was a senior FBI counterintelligence agent focused on China. All that changed one weekend, when the Deputy FBI Director found out that he was still friends with a former FBI official who had been fired years ago. In his first interview following his essay, “Goodbye to All That,” in Lawfare last week. Feinberg sat down with Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes to discuss his career, his resignation, and the climate inside the Bureau.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a...
2025-07-0853 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: Mike Johnson’s National Security AgendaFrom November 7, 2023: You probably already know that Rep. Mike Johnson is the new Speaker of the House. What you may not know is that every single one of the issues on his plate is a national security issue, at least in the short term. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editor and Brookings Senior Fellow Molly Reynolds to talk it all through. They talked about Israel aid, Ukraine aid, Taiwan assistance, the border, FISA Section 702, government shutdowns, and more. It's a rollicking conversation through a crazy bunch of issues that are all on the front burner of t...
2025-07-0449 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Prosecuting the Sahel's War Influencers with Lindsay FreemanOn today’s episode, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sits down with Lindsay Freeman, Director of Technology, Law & Policy at the Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley School of Law, to discuss her recent Lawfare article, “War Crimes for Fun and Profit.” They talk about how and why so-called war influencers linked to private military companies such as the Wagner Group in the Sahel are posting “conflict content” online. They also address why this graphic and gory content, which often amounts to self-incriminating evidence of war crimes, has led to so little accountability. And finally, they discuss efforts to close that impunity gap...
2025-07-0143 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: A Right to Warn: Protecting AI Whistleblowers with Charlie BullockIn the wake of controversy over OpenAI’s restrictive nondisclosure agreements, a bipartisan group of senators has introduced the AI Whistleblower Protection Act. In this episode, Lawfare Research Director Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Charlie Bullock, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Law & AI and co-author of a new Lawfare article on the bill, about its key provisions. They discuss why this bill is an important, light-touch proposal that offers a way to increase government access to information about AI risks.They cover two of the bill's most important features: how it fills a significant gap in exis...
2025-06-2541 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: U.S. Strikes on Iranian Nuclear FacilitiesIn a live conversation on June 23, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to Lawfare Senior Editor Scott Anderson, Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor and CSIS fellow Daniel Byman, and Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution Suzanne Maloney about the American attacks on Iranian nuclear sites, what the reaction within Iran has been, whether the strikes were legal under domestic and international law, and more.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support th...
2025-06-2459 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: El Salvador’s President Cracks Down on Gangs—and DemocracyFrom May 9, 2023: Since March 2022, El Salvador has been under a state of exception as its President Nayib Bukele seeks to crack down on the country’s powerful gangs. Bukele, who once described himself on Twitter as the “world’s coolest dictator,” has engaged in a prolonged attack on El Salvador’s democratic institutions. And the crackdown has resulted in a range of human rights abuses. At the same time, Bukele really does seem to have been successful in curbing gang violence, and his popularity is sky high. To understand the situation in El Salvador, Lawfare Senior Editor Quinta Jureci...
2025-06-211h 05The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Trump’s Rescissions Request, Impoundments, and the Litigation Over Foreign AssistanceFor today’s episode, Lawfare General Counsel and Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson and Lawfare Senior Editor and Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Molly Reynolds sat down for a conversation about the rescissions package President Trump recently put forward to Congress, how it relates to the litigation over the president’s attempted cuts to U.S. foreign assistance, and what it all signals about how the administration intends to handle impoundments moving forward.Discussed in this episode:“The Myth of Presidential Impoundment Power” from Protect DemocracyTo receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon...
2025-06-2059 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: Jack Goldsmith and Bob Bauer on Reforming the Insurrection ActFrom April 12, 2024: The Insurrection Act is a provision that allows the president to deploy the U.S. military for domestic law enforcement. It’s been invoked dozens of times by presidents to respond to crises in the over 230 years that it’s been around, but it hasn’t been reformed in centuries. In recent years, the Insurrection Act has come back into public focus because of its implication in a number of domestic crises, prompting a renewed conversation about whether it’s finally time to curb the sweeping powers afforded to the executive in this unique federal law.On Apr...
2025-06-1957 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: Protecting Civilians in Gaza and Beyond with Marc Garlasco and Emily TrippFrom January 18, 2024: Last month, the Department of Defense released its first-ever policy on civilian harm reduction. But as Marc Garlasco recently wrote in Lawfare, “[T]he policy comes at an awkward time … The U.S. military has issued guidance on how to protect civilians during operations just as its close ally Israel has reportedly killed thousands of Palestinians with American bombs.” And yet, many aspects of the new policy are nothing short of groundbreaking.Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Marc, a former targeting professional and war crimes investigator and current military advisor at PAX, as...
2025-06-0757 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: WITAOD?Lawfare Senior Editor Anna Bower has been on a quest. She wants to identify the administrator of DOGE. It's partly a comedic bit. And her lengthy article on the subject on Lawfare last week is laugh-out-loud funny. But it's also deadly serious. She came on the Lawfare Podcast to discuss the serious questions behind WITAOD with Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare...
2025-06-0652 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: A Tumultuous Week in Ukraine-Russia Relations, with Anastasiia Lapatina and Mykhailo SoldatenkoIt’s been a big week in Ukrainian-Russian relations. There were surprise attacks, an amassing of troops, the blowing up of bridges, and peace talks in Istanbul that didn’t really go anywhere. To talk through all of this and more, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina and Legal Fellow Mykhailo Soldatenko.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare....
2025-06-0558 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Page Hedley and Gad Weiss on OpenAI’s Latest Corporate Governance PivotPage Hedley, Senior Advisor at Forecasting Research Institute and co-author of the Not for Private Gain letter urging state attorneys general to stop OpenAI’s planned restructuring, and Gad Weiss, the Wagner Fellow in Law & Business at NYU Law, join Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at Texas Law and Senior Editor at Lawfare, and Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor at Minnesota Law and Senior Editor at Lawfare, to analyze news of OpenAI once again modifying its corporate governance structure. The group break down the rationale for the proposed modification, the relevant underlying law, and the significance of corporate gove...
2025-05-2247 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: How China Might Coerce TaiwanFor today's episode, Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman talked with Evan Braden Montgomery and Toshi Yoshihara, both Senior Fellows at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, to discuss their recent Lawfare article, "Beijing's Changing Invasion Calculus: How China Might Put Taiwan in its Crosshairs." Together they discuss how China might use a blockade, subversion, and nuclear threats to intimidate Taiwan, the United States, and key regional states like Japan. They also discuss how Taipei and Washington might change their approach to reduce the risk of Taiwanese coercion.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a La...
2025-05-1536 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Cullen O’Keefe on the Impending Wave of AI AgentsCullen O’Keefe, Research Director at the Institute for Law and AI, joins Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at Texas Law and a Contributing Editor at Lawfare, and Renée DiResta, Associate Research Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown and a Contributing Editor at Lawfare, to discuss a novel AI governance framework. They dive into a paper he co-authored on the concept of "Law-Following AI" or LFAI. That paper explores a near-term future. Imagine AI systems capable of tackling complex computer-based tasks with expert human-level skill. The potential for economic growth, scientific discovery, and...
2025-05-1437 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: Intimidation of State and Local Officeholders with Maya KornbergFrom February 22, 2024: As a new report on the intimidation of state and local officeholders from the Brennan Center for Justice points out, “The January 6 insurrection at the Capitol seemed to mark a new peak in extremist intimidation targeting public officials. But it was hardly the only act of political violence to break the period of relative stability that followed the assassinations of the 1960s.” Citing the 2017 shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise, last year’s hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, and many other cases, the report paints a troubling picture of today’s climate of political violence in America. To talk t...
2025-05-1148 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Alexis Loeb on Kleptocracy and National SecurityIn her recent Lawfare article, Alexis Loeb—a former deputy chief of the Jan. 6 Capitol Siege Section at the U.S. Department of Justice and a current partner at Farella, Braun, and Martel—discussed Attorney General Pam Bondi’s memo dismantling the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative. On today’s episode, Loeb joined Lawfare Associate Editor Olivia Manes to talk about the work that the Kleptocracy Team conducted, why it mattered for national security, and whether the Justice Department’s actions are part of a broader administrative trend towards non-enforcement of corruption.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material S...
2025-05-0745 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: Greg Johnsen and Scott Anderson on the Fight Against the HouthisFrom January 16, 2024: Over the last two months, Houthi militants have waged more than 27 attacks against merchant shipping and U.S. and partner forces in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, purportedly in response to the war in Gaza. These attacks have significantly disrupted global shipping and surged the Middle East into an even more precarious security situation. Following a large-scale Houthi attack on U.S. and British ships, the U.S. and U.K. on Jan. 11 launched over 150 munitions targeting almost 30 Houthi sites in Yemen. The U.S. on Jan. 12 carried out another...
2025-05-0350 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: The Israeli Judicial System on the BrinkFrom March 6, 2023: Amichai Cohen and Yuval Shany are both Israeli legal scholars and longtime Lawfare contributors. Shany is a professor of international law at the Hebrew University Law School in Jerusalem. Cohen is a professor at Ono Academic College. They are both scholars at the Israel Democracy Institute, and together they are also co-authors of a six-part series in Lawfare about the ongoing effort by the Israeli government to alter the Israeli judicial system. It is a detailed account of a very serious reform operation in Israel, one that the authors argue is dangerous. They joined Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes t...
2025-04-1952 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Trump’s New Global Tariffs and the Court Fights to Come, with Peter Harrell and Jennifer HillmanFor today’s episode, Lawfare General Counsel and Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Lawfare Contributing Editor Peter Harrell, who was previously Senior Director for International Economics on the National Security Council, and Professor Jennifer Hillman of the Georgetown University Law Center, a former member of the WTO’s appellate body and senior U.S. trade official, to discuss the new global tariffs that President Trump imposed last week and the legal fight that is beginning to emerge over them.Together, they discussed how dramatic a break the Trump administration’s policies are from past practi...
2025-04-081h 02The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: Government Use of Open-Source InformationFrom January 26, 2024: In front of a live audience at the Knight Foundation's INFORMED conference in Miami, Florida, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke with Hon. Kenneth L. Wainstein, Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security; Jameel Jaffer, Executive Director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University; and Lawfare Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic about government surveillance of open source social media.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support th...
2025-04-0656 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Hillary Hartley and David Eaves on 18F, Its Origin, Legacy, and LessonHillary Hartley, the former Chief Digital Officer of Ontario and former Co-Founder and Deputy Executive Director at 18F, and David Eaves, Associate Professor of Digital Government and Co-Deputy Director of the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at University College London, join Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at Texas Law and Contributing Editor at Lawfare, to discuss the recent closure of 18F, a digital unit within the GSA focused on updating and enhancing government technological systems and public-facing digital services. Hillary and David also published a recent Lawfare article on this topic, “Learning from the Legacy of 18F...
2025-04-0442 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: War Powers and the Latest U.S. Intervention in Yemen with Brian Finucane, Jack Goldsmith, and Matt GluckFrom January 30, 2024: U.S. military operations against Houthi rebels in Yemen have escalated rapidly in recent weeks, culminating in a number of major strikes aimed at degrading their ability to threaten Red Sea shipping traffic. But the war powers reports the Biden administration has provided to Congress are raising questions about how it is legally justifying this latest military campaign. To discuss the burgeoning conflict in Yemen and what it might mean for war powers, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Brian Finucane, Senior Adviser at the Crisis Group; Lawfare Co-founder and Harvard Law Schoo...
2025-03-301h 04The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: El Salvador’s President Cracks Down on Gangs—and DemocracyFrom May 9, 2023: Since March 2022, El Salvador has been under a state of exception as its President Nayib Bukele seeks to crack down on the country’s powerful gangs. Bukele, who once described himself on Twitter as the “world’s coolest dictator,” has engaged in a prolonged attack on El Salvador’s democratic institutions. And the crackdown has resulted in a range of human rights abuses. At the same time, Bukele really does seem to have been successful in curbing gang violence, and his popularity is sky high. To understand the situation in El Salvador, Lawfare Senior Editor Quinta Jureci...
2025-03-221h 05The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Derek Thompson on Abundance and a New Political OrderDerek Thompson, a senior editor at The Atlantic and co-author (with Ezra Klein) of Abundance, joins Renée DiResta, Associate Research Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown and a Contributing Editor at Lawfare, and Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the UT Austin School of Law and Contributing Editor at Lawfare, to discuss the theory of Abundance and its feasibility in an age of political discord and institutional distrust.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-tim...
2025-03-1847 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: Jeff Kosseff on Why the First Amendment Protects False SpeechFrom October 6, 2023: The First Amendment protects speech, but what kind? True speech, sure. But what about false or misleading speech? What if it's harmful? After all, you can't yell fire in a crowded theater—or can you?To answer these questions, Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota and Senior Editor at Lawfare spoke with Jeff Kosseff, who is an Associate Professor of Cybersecurity Law in the United States Naval Academy’s Cyber Science Department and a Contributing Editor at Lawfare. Jeff is releasing his latest book this month, titled "Liar in a Crowded T...
2025-03-1543 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: A World Without CaesarsThis episode of the Lawfare Podcast features Glen Weyl, economist and author at Microsoft Research; Jacob Mchangama, Executive Director of the Future of Free Speech Project at Vanderbilt; and Ravi Iyer, Managing Director of the USC Marshall School Neely Center.Together with Renee DiResta, Associate Research Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown and Contributing Editor at Lawfare, they talk about design vs moderation. Conversations about the challenges of social media often focus on moderation—what stays up and what comes down. Yet the way a social media platform is built influences everything from wh...
2025-03-1451 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: How Much Trouble is NATO Really In? with Scott R. AndersonFrom February 26, 2024: At a South Carolina campaign rally on Feb. 10, former President Donald Trump told a crowd of supporters that while he was president he told “one of the presidents of a big country” in the NATO alliance that he would not protect that country from a Russian invasion if that country didn’t pay. Trump then said, “In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.” Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson to talk through Trump’...
2025-03-0859 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: The Impoundment Crisis, One Month InIn the first weeks of the second Trump administration, the Office of Management and Budget abruptly froze trillions of dollars in federal funds—sparking a crisis over impoundment, the executive branch’s assertion of authority to refuse to distribute money appropriated by Congress. Since then, the administration has attempted to withhold further funds disbursed by specific agencies and attempted to dismantle some agencies altogether. Many of these efforts have been blocked by courts. But Congress—the branch of government whose constitutional authority is being usurped—has remained strikingly quiet.To discuss the state of play on impoundment, Lawfare...
2025-03-0650 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: The State of the Gaza Ceasefire and Related Issues, with Joel BraunoldFor today's episode, Lawfare General Counsel and Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Joel Braunold, the Managing Director for the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace and a Contributing Editor at Lawfare, to discuss the end of the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire and other recent developments relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict.Together, they discussed how the terms of the ceasefire were changing, recent tensions between Israel and the new Syrian regime over threats to Druze communities, and how the Trump administration is trying to navigate it all. To receive a...
2025-03-0554 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Trump’s Tariffs and the LawFor today’s episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Kathleen Claussen, an expert in international economic law and professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, and Lawfare Contributing Editor Peter Harrell, a non-resident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to discuss the ambitious set of tariffs the Trump administration has imposed or threatened over its first month in office.They discussed the tariffs Trump has imposed so far, what seems to be coming over the horizon, and how they all line up with the legal authorities he is using to im...
2025-02-2745 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: The Fate of UkraineOn Feb. 24, Fiona Hill (Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Center on the United States and Europe), Constanze Stelzenmüller, (Director at the Center on the United States and Europe; Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Center on the United States and Europe; and Fritz Stern Chair on Germany and Trans-Atlantic Relations), Anastasiia Lapatina (Ukraine Fellow, Lawfare), Tyler McBrien (Managing Editor, Lawfare), and Benjamin Wittes (Editor-in-Chief, Lawfare) recorded a live discussion at the Brookings Institution on "Trump’s return and the fate of Ukraine" and Lawfare and Goat Rodeo's new narrative podcast series on the U.S. and Ukraine, Escalation. We value...
2025-02-261h 01The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, Feb. 21In a live conversation on February 21, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Scott Anderson, and Roger Parloff about the Justice Department moving to drop the criminal case against NYC Mayor Eric Adams and lawsuits challenging executive actions by President Trump and his administration, including the dismantling of USAID, DOGE’s communications with executive agencies, and the attempt to ban transgender service members from the military.We value your feedback! Help us improve by sharing your thoughts at lawfaremedia.org/survey. Your input ensures that we deliver what matters most to you. Thank you for...
2025-02-241h 24The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, Feb. 14In a live conversation on February 14, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Scott Anderson, and Roger Parloff and Managing Editor Tyler McBrien about the lawsuits challenging executive actions by President Trump and his administration, including the foreign aid freeze, access to Treasury Department systems by associates of the Department of Government Efficiency, and the firing of the head of the Office of the Special Counsel.You can find information on legal challenges to Trump administration actions here.We value your feedback! Help us improve by sharing your thoughts at lawfaremedia.org/sur...
2025-02-171h 12The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Are the Courts Ready for a Trump Presidency?Only a few weeks have passed since inauguration, but President Trump's barrage of executive orders has already generated dozens of legal challenges. Which raises the question: are the courts up to the job? Executive Editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare's Editor-in-Chief, to discuss his recent article, “Are the Courts Up to the Situation?,” published in Lawfare earlier this week. They talked about the courts' role in the face of unprecedented assertions of executive power, how they're faring so far, and what comes next.We value your feedback! Help us improve by sharing your thoughts at law...
2025-02-1347 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Jack Goldsmith on Trump v. United States and Executive PowerJack Goldsmith, the Learned Hand Professor at Harvard Law School and co-founder of Lawfare, joins Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota and Senior Editor at Lawfare, to talk about his recent Lawfare article discussing last year's Supreme Court decision in Trump v. United States and its implications for executive power. They discuss how the ruling extends beyond presidential immunity, the broader shift toward a maximalist theory of executive authority, and what this means for the future of American democracy.We value your feedback! Help us improve by sharing your thoughts at lawfaremedia.org...
2025-02-1251 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Chris Miller and Marshall Kosloff on the Abundance Agenda’s Implications for National SecurityChris Miller, a professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and Marshall Kosloff, Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center and co-host of the Realignment Podcast, join Kevin Frazier, a Contributing Editor at Lawfare and adjunct professor at Delaware Law, and Alan Rozenshtein, Senior Editor at Lawfare and associate professor of law at the University of Minnesota, to discuss AI, supply chains, and the Abundance Agenda.We value your feedback! Help us improve by sharing your thoughts at lawfaremedia.org/survey. Your input ensures that we deliver what m...
2025-02-1144 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Discussing Litigation Against Trump Administration ActionsIn a live conversation on February 7, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Quinta Jurecic, and Roger Parloff about the lawsuits against executive actions by President Trump and his administration, including the actions by DOGE to gain access to executive agencies, the attempt to dissolve USAID, the attempt to produce a list and potentially fire FBI agent and employees who were involved with the Jan. 6 investigations, and more.We value your feedback! Help us improve by sharing your thoughts at lawfaremedia.org/survey. Your input ensures that we deliver what matters most to you...
2025-02-1053 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Understanding the War in SudanLawfare Foreign Policy Editor and Georgetown professor Daniel Byman sits down with Holly Berkley Fletcher, a former Senior Africa Analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, to discuss the complex and tragic situation in Sudan and her recent Lawfare article on the subject, “The Sudan War and the Limits of American Power.” They talk about the initial hope following the overthrow of Omar al-Bashir in 2019, the subsequent military conflicts in Sudan, the country’s humanitarian crisis, the role of regional powers, and the challenges faced by civilians and the international community in addressing the ongoing violence and suffering. We valu...
2025-02-0628 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: The Legality of OPM's "Deferred Resignations”On Jan. 28, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent out an email offering a “deferred resignation program” to over 2 million federal employees, encouraging them to resign effective Sept. 30. The offer is only open until Feb. 6—and in the intervening days since OPM announced the program, federal employees have received a blizzard of followup emails offering confusing and rapidly changing information. Writing in Lawfare, Nick Bednar has examined the OPM offer and raised questions about whether federal employees who take this option will be able to seek legal recourse if their contract is not paid out. On the podcast, Bedn...
2025-02-0547 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Nick Bednar on Trump's Civil Service Executive OrdersIn today’s episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Alan Z. Rozenshtein speaks with his University of Minnesota Law colleague, Nick Bednar, about the wave of Day 1 executive orders affecting the civil service. Bednar recently analyzed these orders in a piece for Lawfare. They discuss what the orders say, how they might be challenged in court, and what this means for the next four years and beyond.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show...
2025-01-281h 04The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Discussing President Trump’s First Batch of Executive OrdersIn a live conversation on January 23, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to Lawfare Senior Editors Scott R. Anderson, Anna Bower, Quinta Jurecic, and Alan Rozenshtein and assistant law professor at Pace University Amelia Wilson about the first batch of executive orders by President Trump in his second term, including suspending enforcement of the TikTok ban, the use of the military at the border, the birthright citizenship order, and the legal challenges some of these orders are facing.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a...
2025-01-2756 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: A Jan. 6 Committee Staffer on Far-Right ExtremismFrom February 15, 2023: The Jan. 6 committee’s final report on the insurrection is over 800 pages, including the footnotes. But there’s still new information coming out about the committee’s findings and its work.Last week, we brought you an interview with Dean Jackson, one of the staffers who worked on the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation into the role of social media in the insurrection. Today, we’re featuring a conversation with Jacob Glick, who served as investigative counsel on the committee and is currently a policy counsel at Georgetown’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. His work in the J...
2025-01-2657 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: The West Bank and the Israel-Hamas WarFrom November 3, 2023: Since Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, the Israel-Hamas war has largely been fought in Gaza, a small strip of land along the border of the Mediterranean Sea. But farther inland, there has been an uptick in hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians in the Palestinian territory of the West Bank. Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem says that at least 13 Palestinian herding communities in the West Bank have been forcibly displaced since the beginning of the war due to Israeli settler violence and intimidation, and nearly 100 Palestinians in the territory are reported to have been killed sinc...
2025-01-2555 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Discussing Recent Disruptions to Undersea Cables with Kevin FrazierSenior Editor at Lawfare Eugenia Lostri sits down with Kevin Frazier, Lawfare’s Tarbell Fellow in Artificial Intelligence, to discuss recent disruptions to undersea cables. They talk about the ongoing investigations; the challenges that weather, cooperation, and jurisdiction can present; and the plans in place to protect the cables from accidents and sabotage.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See...
2025-01-2140 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Rubio, Ratcliffe, and Bondi Confirmation Hearings DispatchIn a live conversation on January 15, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien and Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower and Scott Anderson about the second day of confirmation hearings for President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet. They discussed the hearings for Pam Bondi’s nomination to be attorney general, John Ratcliffe’s nomination to be CIA director, and Marco Rubio’s nomination to be secretary of state, and how collegial or contentious each hearing was.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time...
2025-01-161h 00The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Anna Bower on the Confirmation Hearing of Pete HegsethIn a live conversation on January 14, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to Lawfare Senior Editor Anna Bower about the confirmation hearing of Pete Hegseth by the Senate Armed Services committee on his expected nomination to be secretary of defense, the first confirmation hearing for one of President-elect Trump’s cabinet nominations in his second term.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Aca...
2025-01-1556 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: The Proposed New FARA Regulations, with DOJ Official Jennifer GellieFor today’s episode, Jennifer Gellie, the Chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section ("CES") in the National Security Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, sits down with Lawfare Senior Editor and General Counsel Scott R. Anderson and Lawfare Contributing Editor and Morrison Foerster partner Brandon Van Grack to discuss new proposed regulations her office has issued for implementing the Foreign Agents Registration Act ("FARA"). They cover how the role of FARA has changed in recent decades, what the new regulations change and leave the same, and what the Justice Department's FARA-related priorities are likely...
2025-01-141h 05The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: TikTok Ban at the Supreme CourtIn a live conversation on January 10, Lawfare Tarbell Fellow in Artificial Intelligence Kevin Frazier talked to Lawfare Senior Editor Alan Rozenshtein and Senior Staff Attorney at the Knight Institute Ramya Krishnan about the Supreme Court oral arguments over the legislation passed by Congress that bans TikTok unless its parent company ByteDance divests from the app, the arguments made by the different sides, and their predictions about how the Court might rule.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter...
2025-01-1351 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: The New January 6 ReportsOn today’s podcast, Lawfare Senior Editor and Brookings Senior Fellow Molly Reynolds is joined by Quinta Jurecic, a Fellow at Brookings and Senior Editor at Lawfare, and Ryan Reilly, Justice Reporter at NBC News, to discuss a long-awaited report on Jan. 6 from the Department of Justice’s Inspector General, as well as a new report from House Republicans focusing on the pipe bombs planted outside the Democratic and Republican National Committees as part of the violence that day. They explore what the reports do—and do not—cover, how they fit in with other investigative work on the insurrec...
2025-01-0657 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: Countering Extremism Within the MilitaryFrom April 8, 2022: Last week on Lawfare Live, Jacob Schulz sat down with Andrew Mines, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. Mines helps lead the Program on Extremism's efforts to keep track of criminal charges resulting from the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill siege. They talked about the U.S military’s efforts to counter extremism within its ranks. Mines is the recent author of a Lawfare piece on the subject, and they talked through the history of the problem, the history of Defense Department efforts to fix it and where the department is still coming up short.
2025-01-0448 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Ask Us Anything About 2024It's time for Lawfare's annual "Ask Us Anything" podcast.You called in with your questions, and Lawfare contributors have answers! Benjamin Wittes, Kevin Frazier, Quinta Jurecic, Eugenia Lostri, Alan Rozenshtein, Scott R. Anderson, Natalie Orpett, Amelia Wilson, Anna Bower, and Roger Parloff addressed questions on everything from presidential pardons to the risks of AI to the domestic deployment of the military.Thank you for your questions. And as always, thank you for listening.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a...
2025-01-021h 15The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: The Justice Department, Congress and the PressFrom June 15, 2021: A spree of stories has emerged over the last week or so that the Justice Department under the prior administration obtained phone and email records of several journalists, several members of Congress and staffers, and even family members. It has provoked a mini scandal, calls for investigation, howls of rage and serious questions. To discuss it all, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Gabe Rottman of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, former FBI agent Pete Strzok, Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic and Berkeley law professor and Lawfare contributing editor Orin Kerr. They talked about what we...
2024-12-2148 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Susan Landau and Alan Rozenshtein Debate End-to-End Encryption (Again!)In response to the compromise of telecommunication companies by the Chinese hacker group Salt Typhoon, senior officials from the FBI and CISA recommended that American citizens use encrypted messaging apps to minimize the chances of their communications being intercepted. This marks a departure in law enforcement’s position on the use of encrypted communications. Susan Landau, Professor of Cyber Security and Policy in Computer Science at Tufts University, and Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School and Research Director and Senior Editor at Lawfare, sat down with Lawfare Senior Editor Eugenia Los...
2024-12-1851 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Understanding the DC Circuit Court's Decision on TikTokAt a virtual panel conversation co-hosted by Lawfare and NYU's Center for Technology Policy, center Director Scott Brennen moderated a conversation between Lawfare Senior Editor and University of Minnesota law professor Alan Rozenshtein, University of North Carolina law professor Mary-Rose Papandrea, and Georgetown law professor Anupam Chander, about the recent D.C. Circuit decision upholding the TikTok divestment-or-ban law and what that means for the future of both TikTok and the First Amendment.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https...
2024-12-1356 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Congress After the 2024 ElectionsLawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Molly Reynolds and Quinta Jurecic to discuss how Congress may change given the results of the 2024 election, what congressional oversight might look like during President-elect Donald Trump’s second term, how Congress will work with Trump’s administration, and more in a live recording on Lawfare’s YouTube channel.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/c/trumptrials.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare.
2024-11-091h 10The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: What Does a Second Trump Term Look Like?On Tuesday, November 5, former President Trump won the 2024 presidential election, becoming the second president to win a non-consecutive second term. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Alan Rozenshtein, Scott R. Anderson, Anna Bower, and Quinta Jurecic to discuss what happens now. They talk about what a second Trump administration may bring and what to keep an eye out for during the transition in a live recording on Lawfare’s YouTube channel.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time dona...
2024-11-071h 08The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Archive: The Soleimani Strike Two Years LaterFrom: January 5, 2022: Two years ago this week, the head of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Qassem Soleimani, was killed in an American strike. At the time, we convened a group of Brookings and Lawfare experts to talk about the potential benefits and risks of the strike, and two years later, we got the gang back together. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Suzanne Maloney, the head of Foreign Policy program at Brookings and an Iran specialist; Dan Byman, terrorism expert, Middle East scholar and Lawfare’s foreign policy editor; and Scott R. Anderson, Lawfare senior editor and Brookings...
2024-09-2251 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Kevin Frazier on Prioritizing AI ResearchAssociate Professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and Lawfare Senior Editor Alan Rozenshtein sits down with Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor of Law at St. Thomas University College of Law, Co-Director of the Center for Law and AI Risk, and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare. They discuss a new paper that Kevin has published as part of Lawfare’s ongoing Digital Social Contract paper series titled “Prioritizing International AI Research, Not Regulations.”Frazier sheds light on the current state of AI regulation, noting that it's still in its early stages and is often under-theorized and under-enforced. He und...
2024-09-0332 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Eugenia Lostri and Justin Sherman on Security by Design in PracticeAs part of Lawfare’s Security by Design Project, Eugenia Lostri, Lawfare’s Fellow in Technology Policy and Law, and Justin Sherman, CEO of Global Cyber Strategies, published a new paper, “Security by Design in Practice: Assessing Concepts, Definitions and Approaches.” Lawfare Senior Editor Stephanie Pell talked with Eugenia and Justin about the paper’s exploration of the meaning of security by design, scalability solutions and processes for implementing security by design principles across an organization, and the need to engender a corporate culture that values security.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/law...
2024-08-1952 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Is Complying with the Law of War a Defense to Genocide?On today’s episode, Lawfare General Counsel and Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Gabor Rona, Professor of Practice at Cardozo Law, and Natalie Orpett, Lawfare’s Executive Editor, to discuss their recent Lawfare piece examining whether a state pursuing an armed conflict in compliance with international humanitarian law could nonetheless violate the Genocide Convention. They discussed how these two areas of law intersect, their relevance to the ongoing proceedings over Israel’s conduct in Gaza before the International Court of Justice, and what the questions their analysis raises might mean for the future of accountability for genocide.
2024-06-1353 minThe Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Behind the Scenes of Lawfare's Trump New York Trial CoverageThe first criminal trial of a former president of the United States began in April and reached a verdict on May 30. As Lawfare readers and listeners know, we covered the trial in great detail. Normally based in Washington, D.C., we opened a temporary “bureau” in New York City so that we could report on each and every day of the proceedings from inside the courtroom. We produced written and oral dispatches every day on top of our usual deep-dive analysis of the legal issues at stake. So we’ve talked a lot about the trial itself. This time, we’re ta...
2024-06-1148 min
The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Trump Trials and Tribulations Weekly Round-up (May 15, 2024)This episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” was recorded on May 15 in front of a live audience on YouTube and Zoom. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes talked to Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff, Managing Editor Tyler McBrien, and Legal Fellow and Courts Correspondent Anna Bower about the lack of action in Fulton County, the Southern District of Florida and D.C. They then took a deep dive into the New York City Trump trial and looked ahead to whether there are witnesses left in the case. And of course they took audience questions from Lawfare Material Supporters on Zoom.T...
2024-05-161h 02
The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Trump Trials and Tribulations Weekly Round-up (May 8, 2024)This episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” was recorded on May 8 in front of a live audience on YouTube and Zoom. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes talked to Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff, Managing Editor Tyler McBrien, and Legal Fellow and Courts Correspondent Anna Bower about Judge Cannon’s order suspending the trial start date of May 20 in the classified documents case, the Georgia Court of Appeals decision to hear former President Trump and his co-defendants’ appeal of Judge McAfee’s decision keeping DA Fani Willis on the case, and more. And of course they took audience questions from Lawfare Material Supporters...
2024-05-091h 11The Lawfare PodcastLawfare Daily: Presidential Immunity at the Supreme CourtIn today's Lawfare Podcast, Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Quinta Jurecic, Roger Parloff, and Alan Rosenstein. In a live conversation recorded less than an hour after Supreme Court Oral Arguments concluded, they discussed presidential immunity, and whether former president Trump is immune from prosecution for his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/c/trumptrials.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/law...
2024-04-2653 min