The Lawfare Podcast

This week, Scott sat down with co-hosts emeritus Benjamin Wittes, Quinta Jurecic and Lawfare's new senior legal fellow James Pearce to talk through the week's biggest national security news stories, including:“Midnight Planes Going Anywhere.” The Supreme Court has weighed in on the Trump administration’s decision to quickly fly dozens of Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador with little to no meaningful process, holding that those detained had to be provided notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal, but only through habeas in their place of detention. Meanwhile, we are still awaiting the Court’s final decision on whether a lower court can direct the executive branch to seek the return of another man who was removed to El Salvador by mistake. What will these decisions mean for the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation policies?“All the King’s Horses and All the King’s Men, Won’t Be Able to Put Humphrey’s Together Again.” Watchers of the D.C. Circuit may have suffered whiplash this week, as an appellate panel reversed a district court’s conclusion that the Trump administration’s removal of statutorily protected members of the Merit Service Protection Board and National Labor Review Board was most likely unlawful, only for the panel itself to be reversed in short order by the whole en banc court. The issues now seem clearly poised for review by the Supreme Court. Is Humphrey’s Executor and other case law preserving independent agencies toast? Or might the Court stop short of killing independent agencies altogether?“A Duty of Pander.” Attorney General Pam Bondi punished a Justice Department attorney this week after he admitted to a federal court that he had not been provided adequate answers to some of the court’s questions. It’s the latest in a parade of disciplinary actions accusing attorneys of disloyalty for engaging in candor with the federal courts over the confusion that some of the Trump administration’s policies have caused. Is the Attorney General within her rights to crack down on these actions? And what impact will her demand for loyalty have on the Justice Department’s relationship with the federal courts?For object lessons, Quinta recommended the movie "Margin Call" as a reflection on the last financial crisis, as we prepare for the next one. Ben brought attention to Russia's brutal and inhumane attack on a children's playground in Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelensky's hometown of Kryvi Rih, which underscores just how committed Russia really is to peace. Scott shared his latest home pizza discovery—a one hour no-knead recipe for pan pizza crust from King Arthur's Baking—as well as his next experiment: an all edge pieces pan pizza. And James gave a double-header object lesson, sharing his participation in the Baker to Vegas footrace and his reading of another story about something even more inhuman: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

On today's episode, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett spoke with Tara Varma, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, about the latest in French politics. On March 31, far-right leader Marine Le Pen was convicted of embezzlement and banned from politics, though polling showed her in the lead for the 2027 presidential elections. In the last few weeks, current French president Emmanuel Macron has been carving out a place for French leadership amidst the upheaval in Europe’s relationship with the United States. Meanwhile, the push to build European defense capacity—and Trump’s new tariffs—are raising a lot of complicated questions.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.

Lawfare Associate Editor for Communications Anna Hickey spoke to Director of the Center for Climate Security Erin Sikorsky about the omission of climate change from the Annual Threat Assessment, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s testimony in front of Congress, and the national security risks of climate change.Read Sikorsky’s article here.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.

For 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 practice, the logic behind them (or lack thereof), and whether his use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose them will really survive judicial scrutiny.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 April 4, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower and Roger Parloff, Lawfare Legal Fellow James Pearce, and Georgetown professor Steve Vladeck to discuss the status of the civil litigation against President Trump’s executive actions, including the deportation of individuals to an El Salvador prison, the federal funding freeze, the targeting of law firms, and more.

From 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.

From March 20, 2024: Since World War II, the United States and its currency, the dollar, have come to play a central role in the broader global economy. And in recent decades, policymakers have used this role as a weapon, cutting off access to malign actors and punishing those who act contrary to U.S. national security interests. But cultivating such primacy has proven to be a double-edged sword, with more complicated ramifications for many Americans. In her new book “Paper Soldiers: How the Weaponization of the Dollar Changed the World Order,” Bloomberg reporter Saleha Mohsin digs into the history of the dollar’s role in the global economy and what its increasing weaponization may mean moving forward. Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson recently joined Mohsin to discuss her new book and what we should all know about the new economic and political moment we are living through. 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.

Hillary 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.”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.

For today’s episode, we’re bringing you the opening episode of our podcast Escalation. Escalation is a multi-part narrative podcast hosted by Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien and Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina. Escalation lays bare the stakes of the Russo-Ukrainian War through powerful storytelling and compelling voices. It reveals forgotten promises and fragile alliances that have shaped the U.S.-Ukraine relationship and how the decisions of policymakers in Washington, Kyiv, and Moscow have global consequences.In Episode One: Chicken Kiev: The world watches the Cold War end and the Soviet Union break apart. And after centuries of Russian rule, Ukrainians may soon have their independence back. But in Washington, there’s fear that that independence could actually make the world more dangerous.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.