The Lawfare Podcast

It’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.

This week, Scott sat down with Lawfare’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina and Contributing Editors Eric Ciaramella and Alex Zerden to talk through the week’s big national security and foreign policy news, including: “The Road to Damascus.” Over the past two weeks, the Trump administration has done an extraordinary about-face on U.S. policy towards Syria, installing almost universal exceptions to most existing sanctions programs and promising to end others. European and other allies seem poised to follow suit, all in an effort to forestall the feared collapse of the post-Assad transitional government being headed by Ahmed al-Sharaa, himself a former terrorist leader. But will it be enough to put post-Civil War Syria on the road to recovery? And will this new policy orientation prove sustainable?“No Fly Zone.” Ukraine struck a historic blow deep into Russian territory over the weekend with a daring series of coordinated drone attacks—dubbed “Operation Spider Web”—that may have wiped out as much as a third of Moscow’s strategically important long range bombers. But will the attack help drive the costs of the conflict home to Russia, or trigger another round of escalation? And how will it be received by the Trump administration, several senior members of which are skeptical of U.S. support for Ukraine?“Double Taxation.” President Trump’s aggressive use of tariffs suffered a pair of defeats in federal court last week, as two different courts chose to enjoin them, for two different sets of reasons. While both decisions have since been stayed, it’s a discouraging sign for the viability of the legal authorities being relied on by the Trump administration. Yet President Trump has continued to threaten tariffs aggressively, including against Europe. How big a threat are these legal holdings to the Trump administration’s policy agenda? And how will they impact its efforts to negotiate new bilateral trade deals, with allies and rivals alike?In Object Lessons, Eric polished off the last of The Rehearsal’s Season 2 and was left in awe of the show’s ability to actually become a show. Nastya returned from colder climates with a warm endorsement of all things Finland: its history, its icy stare at Russia, and its impressive ability to survive both. Speaking of war, Scott dove sword-first into fantasy, reminded of Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law trilogy after the new release of “The Devils.” And Alex kept it historical with a recommendation of “The Watchdog: How the Truman Committee Battled Corruption and Helped Win World War Two,” by Steve Drummond.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.

Political scientists who study democratic backsliding—the slow erosion of a country’s institutions—have raised alarms about the state of democracy in the United States under the second Trump administration. At the same time, the administration has embraced technology—particularly AI—as a tool for implementing many of its policies, from immigration enforcement to slashing government functions and staffing. And the ties between Washington, D.C. and Silicon Valley appear tighter than ever, with Elon Musk wielding unprecedented control over the executive branch through his quasi-governmental DOGE initiative. How should we understand the connection between technology and democratic backsliding? Are they interlinked at this moment in the United States? How has technology played a role in supporting or undermining democracy during other historical moments?On May 2, Lawfare Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic moderated a panel discussion on these questions at Fordham Law School’s Transatlantic AI and Law institute, featuring panelists Joseph Cox, a journalist and co-founder of 404 Media; Orly Lobel, the Warren Distinguished Professor of Law and founding director of the Center for Employment and Labor Policy (CELP) at the University of San Diego; Aziz Huq, the Frank and Bernice J. Professor at the University of Chicago Law School; and James Grimmelmann, the Tessler Family Professor of Digital and Information Law at Cornell Tech and Cornell Law School. Thanks to Fordham for recording and sharing audio of the panel, and to Chinmayi Sharma and Olivier Sylvain of Fordham Law School for organizing the event.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.

Today, it’s Episode Four of Escalation, our latest narrative series co-hosted by Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien and Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina. Throughout the show, Nastya and Tyler trace the history of U.S.-Ukrainian relations from the time of Ukrainian independence through the present. You can listen to Escalation in its entirety, as well as our other narrative series, on our Lawfare Presents channel, wherever you get your podcasts.Episode Four explores the interconnected stories of a dirty presidential campaign, an assassination attempt, and a revolution, all of which preceded the 2008 NATO summit, in which the United States and European allies concoct a high-risk plan to protect Ukraine going forward.

For today’s episode, Lawfare General Counsel and Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Contributing Editor and leading sanctions expert Peter Harrell to talk over the not one but two judicial rulings that enjoined President Trump's tariffs last week.They discussed the similarities and differences between the two rulings, what seems likely to happen on appeal, and what it all might mean for the other, more well-established uses the executive branch makes of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), including its myriad longstanding sanctions regimes. 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.

In a live conversation on May 30, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Scott Anderson, and Roger Parloff to discuss legal challenges against President Trump’s executive actions, including two court rulings finding President Trump’s IEEPA tariffs to be unlawful, the government’s appeal of those rulings, the Supreme Court allowing Trump to end humanitarian status for 500,000 migrants, updates in CREW’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against DOGE, 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 here and new Bluesky account here.

From May 21, 2024: Across the country, state lawmakers are joining the effort to address the perceived national security threat from China by passing a number of measures attempting to curb Chinese influences in their states. One such effort in Florida prevents Chinese citizens from owning property in the state. Lawfare’s Associate Editor Hyemin Han spoke with Matthew Erie, Associate Professor at the University of Oxford, about what makes the Florida law and the ongoing litigation challenging it particularly notable, the state of property rights challenges against Chinese citizens across the U.S., the tension between state and federal oversight of national security issues, and how this fits into the growing economic battles between the U.S. and China.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.

From May 23, 2024: For today’s episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Chimène Keitner, a Professor of Law at UC Davis School of Law and former Counselor on International Law at the U.S. Department of State, to discuss the recent applications for arrest warrants filed by the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC), accusing several senior Hamas leaders as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant of crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza. They discussed the nature of the allegations, how the ICC has come to exercise jurisdiction over the Gaza conflict, and what impact this recent action may have on the broader conflict. 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.

Josh Batson, a research scientist at Anthropic, joins Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the Texas Law and Senior Editor at Lawfare, to break down two research papers—“Mapping the Mind of a Large Language Model” and “Tracing the thoughts of a large language model”—that uncovered some important insights about how advanced generative AI models work. The two discuss those findings as well as the broader significance of interpretability and explainability research.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.