In a live conversation on February 28 , Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower and Roger Parloff and Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center Chris Mirasol about the detention of immigrants at Guantanamo Bay, the dismantling of USAID and the foreign aid freeze, the firing of probationary employees across the federal government, and more.You can find information on legal challenges to Trump adminis...
Mar 03, 2025•1 hr 29 min
From February 21, 2024: The advocacy group Protect Democracy last month issued an updated version of its report entitled, “The Authoritarian Playbook.” The new report is called, “The Authoritarian Playbook for 2025: How an authoritarian president will dismantle our democracy and what we can do to protect it.” It is a fascinating compilation of things that Donald Trump has promised to do and how they could likely be expected to affect American democracy if he is elected to a seco...
Mar 02, 2025•52 min
From March 14, 2022: Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine has undermined some of the fundamental assumptions underlying the security of Europe through much of the post-World War II era. As a result, several European nations have begun to consider dramatic changes in how they approach national security, both individually and collectively. To better understand how the war in Ukraine is reshaping the European security order, Scott R. Anderson sat down with two of his colleagues from the Brookings ...
Mar 01, 2025•58 min
On today’s episode, the Washington Post's West Africa bureau chief Rachel Chason and freelance journalist John Lechner join Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to talk about the current state of the Sahel and the many forces that have converged in the region over the past couple of years. They discussed Chason’s new series out in the Post, “Crossroads of Conflict,” which includes six rich portraits of Sahelian actors, including: an Islamist militant , a militia commande...
Feb 28, 2025•48 min
For 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 see...
Feb 27, 2025•45 min
This week, Scott joined his Lawfare colleagues Benjamin Wittes, Natalie Orpett, and Anastasiia Lapatina for a rare, all-in-person discussion of the week’s big national security news, including: “Chicken Kyiv, Served Cold.” The Trump administration’s vision for a peace settlement in Ukraine is coming into focus—and it’s not the one many Ukrainians and Europeans were hoping for. In negotiations that have largely excluded Ukrainian and European partners—and amidst a barrage of hostile attacks on Uk...
Feb 26, 2025•1 hr 22 min
On 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...
Feb 26, 2025•1 hr 2 min
Alexandra Reeve Givens, CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology; Courtney Lang, Vice President of Policy for Trust, Data, and Technology at ITI and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council GeoTech Center; and Nema Milaninia, a partner on the Special Matters & Government Investigations team at King & Spalding, join Kevin Frazier, Contributing Editor at Lawfare and Adjunct Professor at Delaware Law, to discuss the Paris AI Action Summit and whether it marks a formal pi...
Feb 25, 2025•48 min
In 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 th...
Feb 24, 2025•1 hr 24 min
From September 20, 2023: Economic warfare isn’t a new concept. Protectionist policies, asymmetrical trade agreements, currency wars—those are just a few examples of the economic levers states have long used to control outcomes. But in their new book , two political scientists, Henry Farrell and Abe Newman, argue that a technological innovation spurred on by free market embracers and coopted by the U.S. was an accidental entry point into a new era of economic statecraft—an era whose precise...
Feb 23, 2025•57 min
From June 11, 2021: Daniel Richman and Sarah Seo are professors at Columbia Law School, and they are co-authors of a recent article on Lawfare entitled, "Toward a New Era for Federal and State Oversight of Local Police." Benjamin Wittes sat down with them to discuss the article, the history of the federal-state relationship in law enforcement, how the feds came to play an oversight role with respect to police departments, the limits of that role inherent in the cooperative relationsh...
Feb 22, 2025•53 min
Before January, most Americans had probably never heard of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS), a Treasury Department agency that distributes payments from the federal government. But over the last month, this corner of government has appeared again and again in the headlines, as aides working with Elon Musk’s quasi-governmental DOGE initiative successfully gained access to BFS’s payment systems. After a flurry of litigation , a temporary restraining order now ba...
Feb 21, 2025•57 min
This week, Scott sat down with his colleagues Tyler McBrien and Roger Parloff, as well as special guest Claire Meynial, U.S. correspondent for Le Point, to talk over the week's big national security news, including: “Make Europe Aghast Again.” Vice President J.D. Vance stunned the Munich Security Conference last week with remarks that criticized European allies for suppressing far-right and anti-immigration voices while playing down threats from China and Russia. Combined with the Trump adm...
Feb 20, 2025•1 hr 16 min
On Jan. 29, President Trump ordered the expansion of facilities at Guantanamo Bay to hold migrants being deported from the United States. It was the latest—and perhaps most aggressive—move to deploy the U.S. military in pursuit of the administration's immigration policies. And it's not at all clear that there's a solid legal basis for doing it. Executive Editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Chris Mirasola, Assistant Professor at the University of Houston Law Center and author of a recent pi...
Feb 20, 2025•37 min
It’s been a wild and wooly week in Ukraine politics: Speeches from American officials have not been consistent with each other, American statements on Ukraine at the Munich Security Conference were not well received by European leaders, and domestic politics in Ukraine are getting worrisome. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sits down with Eric Ciaramella of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to talk about all of these issues and more. We value your feedback! Help us impro...
Feb 19, 2025•1 hr 1 min
Matt Perault, Head of AI Policy at Andreessen Horowitz, joins Kevin Frazier, Contributing Editor at Lawfare and Adjunct Professor at Delaware Law, to define the Little Tech Agenda and explore how adoption of the Agenda may shape AI development across the country. The duo also discuss the current AI policy landscape. 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 your su...
Feb 18, 2025•40 min
In 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 C...
Feb 17, 2025•1 hr 13 min
From August 18, 2021: Earlier this month, Tucker Carlson, whose nightly news show on Fox has become the most popular show in U.S. cable news history, traveled to Budapest to record a special version of his show. The centerpiece of his visit was an interview with Hungary's authoritarian leader, Viktor Orbán. But far from criticizing Orbán or questioning him on Hungary's increasing move away from liberal democracy, Carlson was all compliments, praising the fence that Hungary has built along its bo...
Feb 16, 2025•56 min
From July 14, 2020: In a 2018 poll, 74 percent of Americans said they believed that some group of unelected government and military officials was definitely or probably secretly manipulating or directing national policy. What is the actual history of presidents and Congress clashing with national security and law enforcement institutions? And how has that led to Trump's notion of a deep state out to get him? David Priess spoke with two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David Rohde of The New Yorker, wh...
Feb 15, 2025•52 min
In the last two years, there have been at least four incidents of damaged underwater infrastructure in the Baltic Sea. Be it Russian deliberate sabotage or accidents, NATO is looking for ways to enhance Europe’s maritime security. In this episode, Lawfare ’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina sits down with Minna Ålander, an Associate Fellow at Chatham House’s Europe Programme, to discuss what Europe can do to protect its waters. We value your feedback! Help us improve by sharing your thou...
Feb 14, 2025•33 min
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 e...
Feb 13, 2025•47 min
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare teammates Tyler McBrien and Nastya Lapatina and Lawfare friend Joel Braunold, Managing Director of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, to talk over the week's big national security news stories, including: “Mi Gaza Es Su Gaza.” President Donald Trump shocked the world last week when, in a joint press briefing with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he announced plans for the United States to “own...
Feb 12, 2025•1 hr 25 min
Jack 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 aut...
Feb 12, 2025•52 min
Chris 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 val...
Feb 11, 2025•45 min
In 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 mor...
Feb 10, 2025•54 min
From August 22, 2023: In 2003, President Bush created the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, and in the twenty years since, the program has been credited with saving over 25 million lives and stabilizing health systems around the world. On Sept. 30, 2023, the program will expire if Congress doesn’t act, putting millions of people at risk of losing access to HIV/AIDS treatment. Lawfare Associate Editor of Communications Anna Hickey sat down with Emily Bass, a writer and ...
Feb 09, 2025•41 min
From August 31, 2020: Earlier this month, the Trump administration re-imposed tariffs on aluminum imports from Canada, signaling a new salvo in the now years-long trade war it has been waging with countless U.S. trading partners. But what gives the president the authority to pursue such measures unilaterally, even when he lacks support from members of his own party in Congress? To talk through this question, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Kathleen Claussen of the University of Miami School of L...
Feb 08, 2025•56 min
On today’s podcast, Lawfare Associate Editor for Communications Anna Hickey spoke to Nayna Gupta, Director of Policy at the American Immigration Council, about the Laken Riley Act, the first piece of legislation signed by President Trump in his second term, its start as a messaging bill in the last Congress, and its impact on the immigration detention system. We value your feedback! Help us improve by sharing your thoughts at lawfaremedia.org/survey . Your input ensures that we...
Feb 07, 2025•34 min
Lawfare 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...
Feb 06, 2025•29 min
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Benjamin Wittes, Molly Reynolds, and Anna Bower to talk through another big week of national security news, including: “Checked Out and Off Balance.” Over its first two weeks in office, the Trump administration has pushed against the traditional limits of congressional authority by unlawfully impounding funds, terminating federal employees contrary to statute, and seeking to dismantle at least one federal agency contrary to statute. But the R...
Feb 05, 2025•1 hr 17 min
