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The Lawfare Podcast
Rational Security: The “Berry Boy Blue” Edition
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This week, Scott sat down with Rational Security veterans and Lawfare colleagues Benjamin Wittes and Molly Reynolds to talk through the week’s big national security news, including:
- “House Odds.” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson scored an unlikely win last week, when he kept the narrow (and notoriously fractious) Republican house majority united enough to pass its own continuing resolution to keep the government open—and then successfully got enough Democrats to acquiesce to debate on it for it to pass through the Senate without amendment. What does this tell us about the current dynamics in Congress—and what the Democratic minority in either chamber might realistically hope to achieve moving forward?
- “This Pressure Goes to Eleven.” The Trump administration amped up military operations in the Middle East this week, taking out a senior ISIS leader in Iraq, pursuing an aggressive set of airstrikes against the Houthis in Yemen, and greenlighting a renewal of Israeli hostilities in Gaza, seemingly ending the weeks-long ceasefire that had prevailed there. The common thread across all three sets of action seems to be Iran, a regime that the Trump administration has both socked with a return of maximum pressure sanctions and sought to engage on possible negotiations over its nuclear program. Is this new maximum maximum-pressure campaign likely to work? What risks and benefits does it present?
- “Saying the Quiet Part Incredibly Loud and at Length.” President Trump gave an unprecedented speech at the Justice Department last week, where he spent over an hour misrepresenting the criminal cases that had been made against him prior to his rising to the presidency and naming specific individuals as enemies who he indicated should be arrested. What motivated his address? And what will it mean for the campaign of vengeance he is slowly rolling out against his perceived political enemies?
In object lessons, Molly momentarily set aside her usual evangelism for regional NPR-affiliate podcasts to champion Good Politics/Bad Politics, a Substack deep-dive into U.S. elections and governance by Jonathan Bernstein, Julia Azari, and David S. Bernstein. Scott, ever the escapist, steered clear of wands and wizardry but still embraced fantasy with Lev Grossman’s “The Bright Sword.” And Ben lamented the recent gutting of Voice of America—only to note that those voices haven’t vanished. They’re just looking for a new frequency.
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Lawfare Archive: The Court at War
01:03:03|From December 26, 2023: The Supreme Court during World War II issued some of the most notorious opinions in its history, including the Japanese exclusion case, Korematsu v. United States, and the Nazi saboteur military commission case, Ex parte Quirin. For a fresh take on these and related cases and a broader perspective on the Supreme Court during World War II, Jack Goldsmith sat down with Cliff Sloan, a professor at Georgetown Law Center and a former Special Envoy for Guantanamo Closure, to discuss his new book, which is called “The Court at War: FDR, His Justices, and the World They Made.” They discussed how the Court's decisions during World War II were informed by the very close personal bonds of affection that most of the justices had with President Roosevelt and by the justices’ intimate attachment to and involvement with the war effort. They also discussed the fascinating internal deliberations in Korematsu, Quirin, and other momentous cases, and the puzzle of why the same court that issued these decisions also, during the same period, issued famous rights-expanding decisions in the areas of reproductive freedom, voting rights, and freedom of speech.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 Archive: Protests, the Police, and the Press
48:20|From June 21, 2023: Carolyn Cole, a Pulitzer-Prize winning staff photographer for the Los Angeles Times, has covered wars and other conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kosovo, Liberia, Sudan, Nicaragua, Haiti, and the U.S.-Mexico border. Over the course of her 30 year career, she has been seriously injured on the job precisely once—when members of the Minnesota State Patrol pushed Cole over a retaining wall and pepper sprayed her so badly that her eyes were swollen shut. Cole was in Minneapolis in the summer of 2020 to cover the protests after the murder of George Floyd. She was wearing a flak jacket marked TV, a helmet, and carried press credentials at the time of her attack. Cole’s story is not unique among the press corps. According to a new report out this week from the Knight First Amendment Institute called “Covering Democracy: Protests, the Police, and the Press,” in 2020, at least 129 journalists were arrested while covering social justice protests and more than 400 suffered physical attacks, 80 percent of them at the hands of law enforcement. As Joel Simon, author of the report and former Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, writes, “The presence of the media is essential to dissent; it is the oxygen that gives protests life. Media coverage is one of the primary mechanisms by which protesters’ grievances and demands reach the broader public.”Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Joel, as well as Katy Glenn Bass, the Research Director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, to discuss the report, the long legacy of law enforcement attacks on journalists covering protests in America, who counts as “the press” in the eyes of the court, and what can be done to better ensure press freedom.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 Daily: U.S. Troops on the Streets of Los Angeles
01:25:21|For today's episode, Lawfare Senior Editor and General Counsel Scott R. Anderson sat down with three leading legal experts on domestic military deployments: William Banks of Syracuse University College of Law, Laura Dickinson of the George Washington University Law School, and Chris Mirasola of the University of Houston Law Center. They discussed the legality of the Trump administration's decision to deploy U.S. troops on the streets of Los Angeles, where the state of California's legal challenge is likely to head, the Trump administration's broader ambitions to involve the military in immigration enforcement, and what it all may mean for the domestic use of the military elsewhere moving forward.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.Escalation, Episode Seven: Boiling the Frog
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Rational Security: The “How Many Constitutional Crises Can We Fit Into One Episode?” Edition
01:17:17|This week, Scott sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Molly Reynolds and Quinta Jurecic, and Contributing Editor Chris Mirasola, to focus on the week’s big domestic news, including:“Drama Majors, Meet Major Drama.” In the glittering city of Los Angeles, the Trump administration has taken the dramatic step of calling up the California National Guard and deploying them alongside active duty Marines to secure federal personnel and facilities, specifically against protestors demonstrating against the Trump administration’s draconian immigration policies. Is this the beginning of a broader threat to the constitutional order, as some of Trump’s critics say it is? And what should we make of President Trump’s suggestion that he may yet invoke the controversial Insurrection Act?“Precision Rescission, What’s Your Mission?” The Trump administration has asked Congress to formally rescind a slice of the federal spending it has been withholding since entering office, specifically relating to foreign assistance and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting—a request the House seems poised to move on this week. How likely is it that Congress will agree to the cut in funds? And what will the implications be for relevant legal challenges and Trump’s broader agenda?“There and Back Again.” After an unexpected journey and epic delays on the part of the government, the Trump administration has finally repatriated Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador—only to charge him with human trafficking and other federal crimes in Tennessee. How serious are the charges against him? And is this likely to be a win or loss for the administration’s broader immigration agenda?In object lessons, Molly shared a ranking of New York mayoral candidates by their bagel orders—and whose order is so bad, it’s a schmear on their very New Yorker-ness. Quinta recommends Ava Kofman’s profile of Curtis Yarvin in the New Yorker as a masterclass in the art of meticulous evisceration. Scott introduced his 4-year-old to his old Tintin books by Hergé—because it’s never too early to get into the drawbacks of colonialism. And Chris fled real DC drama for fake DC drama with The Residence on Netflix.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 Daily: Christina Knight on AI Safety Institutes
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