The Lawfare Podcast

Natan Sachs is the Director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. He joined Lawfare 's Editor in Chief, Benjamin Wittes, to discuss the resignation of Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz, the fate of Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government, and Israeli perceptions of the Gaza war. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a  Lawfare  Material Supporter at&nbs...

Paul Sparrow, who served as Director of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum from 2015 to 2022, has written the book  Awakening the Spirit of America  about the war of words between FDR and Charles Lindbergh in 1940-41. He joined host David Priess to discuss his path to the FDR Library, the history of presidential libraries, how the Roosevelt-Lindbergh war of wo...

The first criminal trial of a former president of the United States began in April and reached a verdict on May 30. As  Lawfare  readers and listeners know, we covered the trial in great detail. Normally based in Washington, D.C., we opened a temporary “bureau” in New York City so that we could report on each and every day of the proceedings from inside the courtroom. We produced written...

Charlotte Willner, Executive Director of the Trust and Safety Professional Association, and David Sullivan, Executive Director of the Digital Trust & Safety Partnership, join Lawfare' s Tarbell Fellow Kevin Frazier and Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic to discuss content moderation in the age of AI. Following 97 self-described data labellers, content moderators, and AI workers publishing an  o...

From March 3, 2020: The population of Africa is projected to double by 2050, giving the continent one quarter of the world's people by then. Nigeria alone will have a larger population than the United States. To the extent they aren't so already, the world's problems and opportunities will be Africa's, too, and African problems and opportunities will also be the world's. David Priess spoke about d...

This episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” was recorded on June 6 in front of a live audience on  YouTube  and Zoom. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes talked to Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff, Lawfare Courts Correspondent and Legal Fellow Anna Bower, and New York Times reporter Alan Feuer about the Georgia Court of Appeal's order staying trial court proceedings in the...

From October 27, 2018: There is a caravan—you've probably heard something about it. Stephanie Leutert, director of the Mexico Security Initiative at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, has heard something about it. On Friday, Benjamin Wittes caught up with Leutert to talk about her time on the Mexico-Guatemala border traveling with migrants who are following a trail no...

In 2022, Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection and Stafford Rosenbaum filed a lawsuit against ten Wisconsin fraudulent electors, Kenneth Chesebro, and James Troupis for their efforts to subvert the 2020 election. Earlier this year, ICAP reached two settlements with the defendants, which resulted in thousands of pages of text messages, emails, and o...

This week, Quinta and Scott were joined by Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to discuss how he is coping with the end of the New York trial and to run through some of the week’s big national security news stories, including: “A Perfect Conviction.” Last week, after less than two days of deliberation, a jury in New York state criminal court found former President Trump guilty of all 34 criminal...

On today’s episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sits down with Alex Iftimie, a Deputy General Counsel at OpenAI, to talk over their recent report revealing that OpenAI has shut down several state-backed information operations using OpenAI’s artificial technology services. They discussed the operations themselves, how OpenAI is investigating and responding to such activities, and what t...

Ashley Deeks, Professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, and Dr. Mark Klamberg, Professor at Stockholm University, Visiting Professor at American University, and Fellow with the Atlantic Council, join Lawfare 's Tarbell Fellow Kevin Frazier and Senior Editor Alan Rozenshtein to discuss the weaponization of AI. The group explores a number of related topics including ongoing domestic and...

In the wake of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union set off on the great space race, competing to see which super power could put the first human in space and eventually land them on the Moon. As historian John Strausbaugh writes, that race should have been over before it even started.  Strausbaugh’s new book,  The Wrong Stuff: How the Soviet Space Program Crashed and Bur...

This episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with author, attorney, legal scholar, and  Lawfare  Contributing Editor Michel Paradis to discuss the 80th anniversary of D-Day and his new book, “The Light of Battle: Eisenhower, D-Day, and the Birth of the American Superpower. ” They discussed understudied aspects of Eisenhower’s unique personal and professional histor...

Rachel Rizzo, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center, joins Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to talk about last month’s NATO Youth Summit. Building off of her chapter  “NATO, Public Opinion, and the Next Generation: Remaining Relevant, Remaining Strong,”  in the 2021 book, “NATO 2030: Towards a New Strategic Concept and Beyond,” Rizzo discusses what NATO...

From July 31, 2018: For years, Shane Harris of the Washington Post has been fascinated with the search for extraterrestrial life in the universe. But that search raises a profound question: Should we try to communicate with aliens? Is there a risk to alerting a potentially hostile species to our presence? On July 12, Shane moderated a conversation hosted by Future Tense with Lucianne Walkowicz, th...

From August 19, 2020: Late last week, the UN Security Council voted down a resolution, offered by the United States, to indefinitely extend a conventional arms embargo on Iran set to expire in October. The lifting of the arms embargo was one of the sweeteners that was part of the Obama administration's Iran nuclear agreement. Now, the Trump administration has announced it will begin the process of...

This episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” was recorded on May 30 in front of a live audience on  YouTube  and Zoom. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes talked to Lawfare Senior Editors Quinta Jurecic and Roger Parloff about the timing of the D.C. case, Judge Aileen Cannon's denial of Special Counsel Jack Smith's gag order request in Florida, updates in the Fulton County case...

This episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations, N.Y. Dispatch” was recorded on May 30 in front of a live audience on YouTube and Zoom. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes talked to Lawfare Senior Editors Quinta Jurecic and Roger Parloff, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien, and Courts Correspondent and Legal Fellow Anna Bower about Trump's conviction in his N.Y. criminal case. Trump w...

This week, a Quinta-less Alan and Scott sat down with Lawfare all-stars Natalie Orpett, Eugenia Lostri, and Kevin Frazier to talk about the week’s big national security news, including:  “Waiting to Expel.” The New York Times reported this week that the anticipated transfer of almost a dozen detainees from Guantanamo Bay to Oman was halted in the wake of the Oct. 7 massacre. This as Oman is r...

Former FCC Chair Tom Wheeler joins Lawfare Tarbell Fellow Kevin Frazier and Lawfare Senior Editor Alan Rozenshtein to discuss the latest developments in AI governance. Building off his book, “Techlash: Who Makes the Rules in the Digital Gilded Age?” Wheeler makes the case for a more agile approach to regulating AI and other emerging technology. This approach would likely require the creation...

On May 14, the Georgian parliament passed a controversial foreign agent bill titled “Transparency of Foreign Influence,” which has led to mass protests across the country. Although President Salome Zourabichvili's vetoed the bill, Georgia Dream, the majority party, overturned the veto on May 28, ensuring the enactment of this legislation. Lawfare  Associate Editor for Communications...

It's Trump's Trials and Tribulations, New York Trial Dispatch, May 28. Roger Parloff sat down with Benjamin Wittes, Anna Bower, Tyler McBrien, and Katerine Pompilio to discuss what happened in the courtroom today. The podcast was edited by Noam Osband of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for...

Raised in Mā’ohi Nui (French Polynesia), Dr. Anaïs Maurer is assistant professor of literature at Rutgers University and author of  The Ocean on Fire . Her research and writing, including this book, have explored the intersection of the legacy of colonial powers' massive nuclear detonations in Oceania, critical threats from climate change, and the stori...

Between June 6–9, voters across the EU’s member states will go to the polls to select members of the European Parliament. For today’s episode, Brookings Senior Fellow and Lawfare Senior Editor Molly Reynolds chatted with Tara Varma, Visiting Fellow, and Sophie Roehse, Senior Research Assistant, both of the Center for the United States and Europe at Brookings, to discuss these elections, what they...

From August 12, 2020: President Trump recently issued executive orders aimed at banning TikTok and WeChat from operating in the United States. To discuss the sanction, Bobby Chesney sat down with Dr. Sheena Chestnut Greitens, an associate professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and a faculty affiliate with the Strauss Center for International Security and...