This week, Scott sat down with Lawfare Senior Editor and co-host emeritus Alan Rozenshtein and Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett to talk through the week’s big national security news, including: “Lowering the Bar.” Last week, the Trump administration took aim at two leading law firms—Covington & Burling and Perkins Coie—by repealing lawyers’ security clearances and setting limits on the extent to which government actors can contract with them, on the apparent grounds that they worked f...
Mar 12, 2025•1 hr 14 min
Jack Goldsmith sits down with Zachary Price, Professor of Law at UC Law San Francisco and author of the new book, “ Constitutional Symmetry: Judging in a Divided Republic ,” which argues for judges to make decisions that work “symmetrically” across major partisan and ideological divides. He explores the implications of this theory in the context of the Trump administration's legal actions, particularly regarding the removal power and the Supreme Court's evolving jurisprudence. The two discuss th...
Mar 12, 2025•54 min
Carla Reyes, Associate Professor of Law at SMU Dedman School of Law, and Drew Hinkes, a Partner at Winston & Strawn with a practice focused on digital assets and advising financial services clients, join Kevin Frazier, Contributing Editor at Lawfare , to discuss the latest in cryptocurrency policy. The trio review the evolution of crypto-related policy since the Obama era, discuss the veracity of dominant crypto narratives, and explore what’s next from the Trump administration on this comple...
Mar 11, 2025•40 min
In a live conversation on March 7 , Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett, sat down with associate professor of law at the University of Minnesota Law School Nick Bednar and Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower and Scott Anderson to discuss legal challenges to the Trump administration’s executive actions, including DOGE attempting to enter the U.S. African Development Foundation, the firing of probationary employees across the executive branch, and more. Support this show http://supporter.acast.c...
Mar 10, 2025•1 hr 30 min
From March 1, 2022: Over the past week, the United States and its allies have responded to Russia's military invasion of Ukraine with some unprecedented actions of their own—economic sanctions that target Russia in ways that have never been tried before, let alone applied to one of the world's largest economies over just a handful of days. To discuss this revolutionary sanctions strategy and what it may mean moving forward, Scott R. Anderson sat down with two sanctions experts: Julia Friedlander...
Mar 09, 2025•56 min
From 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 La...
Mar 08, 2025•1 hr
For today's episode, Lawfare general counsel and senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Edward Fishman, a senior research scholar at the Center for Global Energy Policy within Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, to discuss his new book: "Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare."They discussed Fishman's own career at the cutting edge of economic statecraft, the evolving toolkit it has come to present U.S. policymakers, the role he thinks it ...
Mar 07, 2025•1 hr 7 min
In 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...
Mar 06, 2025•51 min
This week, Scott was joined by his Lawfare colleagues Molly Reynolds and Quinta Jurecic to work through the week’s big national security news stories, including: “Kyiv Calm and Tarry On.” This past Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the White House for what turned into a disastrous meeting, in which President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance baited him into a heated public argument over Russia’s invasion of his country. In its aftermath, Trump refused to sign the m...
Mar 05, 2025•1 hr 18 min
For 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 D...
Mar 05, 2025•54 min
Tim Fist, Director of Emerging Technology Policy at the Institute for Future Progress, and Arnab Datta, Director of Infrastructure Policy at IFP and Managing Director of Policy Implementation at Employ America, join Kevin Frazier, a Contributing Editor at Lawfare and adjunct professor at Delaware Law, to dive into the weeds of their thorough report on building America’s AI infrastructure. The duo extensively studied the gulf between the stated goals of America’s AI leaders and the practical hurd...
Mar 04, 2025•42 min
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 administration actions here . Support...
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 second term in office...
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 commander , a Russian mercenary ...
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 Inst...
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 the military. We value you...
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 conto...
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 relationship that law ...
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 bars these aides from accessing ...
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 administ...
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 piece in...
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 improve by...
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 support—...
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 Counsel. You can find informat...
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
