From February 13, 2025: 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 as...
Feb 21, 2026•48 min
Alan Rozenshtein, research director at Lawfare , and Kevin Frazier, senior editor at Lawfare , speak with Amanda Askell, head of personality alignment at Anthropic, about Claude's Constitution , a 20,000-word document that describes the values, character, and ethical framework of Anthropic's flagship AI model and plays a direct role in its training. The conversation covers how the constitution is used during supervised learning and reinforcement learning to shape Claude's behavior; analogies to ...
Feb 20, 2026•48 min
This week, Scott sat down with his foreign-policy-minded colleagues Daniel Byman, Michael Feinberg, and Ari Tabatabai to talk through some recent big news stories around the world, including: “Beer Hall Push-back.” Over the weekend, a raft of bipartisan U.S. and European officials headed to Bavaria for the annual Munich Security Conference. Last year, Vice President J.D. Vance gave a barnburner of a speech, accusing European allies of restraining free speech and giving succor to the European far...
Feb 19, 2026•1 hr 17 min
The dramatic influx of immigration enforcement actions in Minnesota have landed an enormous number of people in detention. It's led to an unprecedented number of petitions for habeas corpus—that is, people arguing that their detention is unlawful. On today's podcast, Lawfare 's Executive Editor Natalie Orpett talked with John Albanese, an attorney at the law firm Berger Montague in Minneapolis, who represents people who are bringing these challenges. They talked about what the flood of habeas pe...
Feb 19, 2026•48 min
Lawfare Book Review Editor Jonathan Cedarbaum sits down with Justin Sherman, the CEO of Global Cyber Strategies, to discuss his new book, " Navigating Technology and National Security: The Intersection of CFIUS, Team Telecom, AI Controls, and Other Regulations ," in which Sherman describes and assesses the proliferation of U.S. regulatory programs designed to guard against national security risks arising from transactions involving technology and data. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfa...
Feb 18, 2026•54 min
Eric Ciaramella of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Francis Farrell, a reporter at the Kyiv Independent who covers military and security dynamics in Ukraine, join Lawfare ’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina for a look back at the first year of the Trump presidency through the lens of the war Ukraine. The three delve into the expectations surrounding the Trump administration's approach to Ukraine, the evolving battlefield situation, and the dynamics of U.S. aid. They also anal...
Feb 17, 2026•1 hr 6 min
In a live conversation on YouTube , Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Eric Columbus, Roger Parloff, and Anna Bower, Lawfare Public Service Fellow Troy Edwards, and Lawfare Student Contributor Peyton Baker to discuss the arraignment of Don Lemon and his co-defendants in Minnesota, affidavits released for the FBI search of Fulton County, the Justice Department’s attempt to wipe out Steve Bannon’s conviction, and more. You can find information on legal cha...
Feb 16, 2026•1 hr 42 min
From February 12, 2025: 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 e...
Feb 15, 2026•53 min
From February 7, 2025: 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. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare . You can also support ...
Feb 14, 2026•35 min
For today's podcast, we're bringing you the audio for a panel discussion that Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson hosted this past November, at a conference on Precision Lethality and Civilian Harm Mitigation, hosted by the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL) at the University of Pennsylvania. Joining him on the panel were Professor Claire Finkelstein, CERL's founder and director; Christopher Maier, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict in...
Feb 13, 2026•56 min
This week, Scott sat down with Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes, who recently returned from Ukraine, and Lawfare ’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina, to go through the latest developments in that country, including: “Cold War.” Russia’s ongoing winter campaign against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has created a humanitarian crisis in many parts of the country. In Kyiv, at least one major power plant has been completely destroyed, and many more energy sites have been damaged. Numerous other pa...
Feb 12, 2026•1 hr 21 min
Alan Rozenshtein, research director at Lawfare , speaks with Justin Curl, a third-year J.D. candidate at Harvard Law School, and Arvind Narayanan, professor of computer science at Princeton University and director of the Center for Information Technology Policy, about their new Lawfare research report, “ AI Won't Automatically Make Legal Services Cheaper ,” co-authored with Princeton Ph.D. candidate Sayash Kapoor. The report argues that despite AI's impressive capabilities, structural features o...
Feb 12, 2026•44 min
In his recent piece for Court Watch , a news site covering interesting, yet often overlooked federal court filings, Lawfare Associate Editor Peter Beck wrote about the Middle District of Georgia, which is “filled with rich news stories that even a few years ago would have been quickly reported” but which “now sits in a so-called ‘news desert,’ a place that is largely devoid of even a single newspaper, let alone a reporter dedicated to its federal court.” Out of Georgia’s 17 counties without a si...
Feb 11, 2026•33 min
Lawfare Senior Editor Eric Columbus talks with Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council to discuss what is—and isn’t—likely to look different in the upcoming year of Trump administration immigration policy. After a whirlwind year, ICE and CBP have a lot more resources than at the dawn of the administration—but also a lot more opposition. How will it all shake out? To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare . You can also support ...
Feb 10, 2026•53 min
In a live conversation on YouTube , Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Eric Columbus, Roger Parloff, and Molly Roberts to discuss a congressional hearing into ICE’s use of force in Minneapolis and Chicago, oral argument over DHS’s mandatory detention policy, a district judge rejecting Minnesota’s 10th amendment challenge to Operation Metro Surge, and more. You can find information on legal challenges to Trump administration actions here . And check out L...
Feb 09, 2026•1 hr 25 min
From April 1, 2024: In early February, the European Union approved a major overhaul of its immigration laws. If approved by EU member states, the pact will drastically curtail the rights of migrants and asylum seekers entering the European Union. It’s part of a trend we’re seeing all over the world, including here in the U.S. Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Steve Meili, Professor of International Human Rights Law at University of Minnesota Law School. They discussed the EU ...
Feb 08, 2026•55 min
From January 25, 2023: Judge Robert McBurney of the Superior Court of Fulton County held a hearing on Tuesday to decide whether or not to release the Fulton County Special Grand Jury's report on 2020 election interference in Georgia. Lawfare's Fulton County correspondent Anna Bower was in the room live-blogging the matter, and Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes caught up with her right after the hearing to talk it through. Why did the district attorney argue that the report should continue ...
Feb 07, 2026•43 min
Information about the recent protests in Iran and the regime's brutal crackdown are only starting to come to light, having been severely limited by the internet shutdown over the past few weeks. The picture that is emerging is horrifying: Thousands and possibly tens of thousands have been killed by regime security forces. In this episode, Lawfare Public Service Fellow Ariane Tabatabai talks to Nate Swanson and Iria Puyosa of the Atlantic Council to make sense of what has been going on in Iran an...
Feb 06, 2026•48 min
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Molly Roberts, Michael Feinberg, and Troy Edwards to talk through the week’s big warrant-related national security news, including: “Tulsi Went Down to Georgia, She Was Looking for a Vote to Steal.” This past week, the FBI executed a warrant to search Fulton County’s election center for ballots and equipment related to the 2020 election, with the help of an unlikely senior administration official: Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabba...
Feb 05, 2026•1 hr 23 min
On today's podcast, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett speaks with Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson about the recently announced U.S. plan to take possession of Venezuelan oil, sell it on the world market, and hold the revenue from those sales in accounts based in Qatar. Scott and Lawfare Contributing Editor Alex Zerden recently published an article in Lawfare digging into the complexities of the plan. Scott and Natalie talk through them all—what exactly this plan is, how it’s supposed to wo...
Feb 05, 2026•1 hr 4 min
Lawfare Senior Editor Michael Feinberg sits down with Matthew Guariglia and Brian Hochman to discuss their new book, “ The Church Committee Report Revelations from the Bombshell 1970s Investigation into the National Security State ,” in which they chronicle the law enforcement and intelligence community’s Cold War excesses, the Senate committee which uncovered them, and what we can learn about the resulting report in terms of our own era. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Su...
Feb 04, 2026•56 min
Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a professor at American University, discusses her new book, " Man Up: The New Misogyny & the Rise of Violence Extremism ," with Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman. She explains how different forms of misogyny shape lead to political and social violence, why most scholarship and media accounts usually ignore the role of gender, and what individuals can do to fight back. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare ....
Feb 03, 2026•51 min
In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Senior Editor Eric Columbus sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Roger Parloff, and Molly Roberts to discuss the FBI search of the election center in Fulton County, the arrest of protestors in Minnesota, including Don Lemon, a decision out of the 9th Circuit regarding temporary protected status for Venezuelans, and more. You can find information on legal challenges to Trump administration actions here. And check out Lawfare’s new homepage on...
Feb 02, 2026•1 hr 28 min
From January 27, 2025: In 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 o...
Feb 01, 2026•57 min
From July 16, 2024: On July 15, Judge Cannon granted former President Trump’s motion to dismiss the indictment brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith for the alleged mishandling of classified documents. She found that Smith was appointed as a special counsel in violation of the Appointments Clause of the Constitution. In a live podcast recording , Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes talked to Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett, Legal Fellow and Courts Correspondent Anna Bower, Senior Edi...
Jan 31, 2026•58 min
Kyle Cheney, senior legal affairs reporter for Politico, speaks to Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff about the thousands of habeas corpus cases he has pored through challenging a Trump administration policy requiring mandatory detention for most detained aliens. They discuss how judges have ruled on these cases, the degree to which those rulings do or don’t correlate with political expectations, the appellate prospects for such cases, and why they haven’t been resolved by class action. More re...
Jan 30, 2026•39 min
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Alan Rozenshtein, Eric Columbus, and Molly Roberts for a deep dive into two of the week’s big national security news stories: “Slipping Down the Slope.” Last week’s killing of 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has triggered what increasingly appears to be a national backlash against the Trump administration’s immigration policies and ICE’s violent tactics. Republicans and Democrats alike have...
Jan 29, 2026•1 hr 13 min
The crisis over President Trump's threats to annex Greenland appears to be over for now. But the second- and third-order consequences continue to unfold as NATO allies try to manage their relationship with the United States. In this episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Molly Roberts, Lawfare Public Service Fellow Ariane Tabatabai, and Egmont Institute Visiting Fellow John Drennan give an overview of the crisis and discuss its implications for the United States and NATO, as well as talk though how U.S....
Jan 29, 2026•42 min
Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sits down with Princeton PhD candidate Elizabeth Tsurkov to talk about the 903 days that she was held in captivity by Kata'ib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq. Tsurkov describes the circumstances of her detention, the realities of life in captivity, and the sociological study she undertook of her captors while imprisoned. Wittes and Tsurkov also explore changes in U.S. hostage policy under the Biden and Trump administrations, as well as how various gov...
Jan 28, 2026•1 hr 11 min
Andy Grotto, William J. Perry International Security Fellow and the founder and co-director of the Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), and Jim Dempsey, a senior policy adviser to that program and a Lecturer at the UC Berkeley Law School, join Lawfare ’s Justin Sherman to discuss their recent study on the U.S. military’s domestic operational technology (OT) cybersecurity vulnerabilities, domestic in...
Jan 27, 2026•49 min
