The Lawfare Podcast

This episode of “Lawfare Live: “Trump’s Trials and Tribulations” was recorded on December 5 in front of a live audience on  Youtube  and Zoom. Lawfare  Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to  Lawfare  Senior Editors Anna Bower, Quinta Jurecic, and Roger Parloff,  Lawfare  Managing Editor Tyler McBrien, and  Lawfare  Executive Editor Natalie Orpett abo...

For today’s podcast, Lawfare General Counsel and Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Joel Braunold, Managing Director of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, for the latest in their series of podcast conversations on aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This time, they focused on what might be one of the most consequential developments in recent memory: Donald Trum...

This week, Scott was joined by his  Lawfare  colleagues Eric Ciaramella and Anastasiia Lapatina, as well as special guest Kyiv Independent reporter Francis Farrell, for an episode committed to one big topic: what Trump’s return to the White House might mean for Ukraine. They tackled the issue in three parts: “What Condition My Attrition Is In.” By most accounts, after more than two years...

Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sits down with Andrew Yeo, Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Program and SK-Korea Foundation Chair of the Center for Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, to talk about the current turmoil in South Korea. Within about 48 hours, there was a declaration of martial law, the National Assembly convened to rescind the declaration of martial law, Sout...

Ukraine has been pursuing NATO membership for many years. But what realistic options does it have in light of Russia’s full-scale invasion? Historian and author of a book about tensions between the NATO and Russia “ Not One Inch, ” Mary Sarotte, sits down with Lawfare Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina to describe what lessons Ukraine can take from the cases of Norway and West Germany. To rec...

Sherri Goodman was the first Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Environmental Security and has worked on issues around climate change, the environment, and security for more than 35 years. She joined David Priess to discuss her work on the staff of the Senate Armed Service Committee starting in the 1980s, her impressions of Senator Sam Nunn, her duties as the first Deputy Un...

Lawfare  Foreign Policy Editor and Georgetown professor Daniel Byman sits down with Charles Lister, Director of Syria and Countering Terrorism & Extremism Programs at the Middle East Institute for an update on the Syrian opposition taking Aleppo and the prospects for the civil war going forward. They discuss the status of the Syrian conflict; the nature of the key group, Hayat Tahrir...

Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff speaks with Claire Meynial, U.S. correspondent for the French news weekly Le Point, about her recent book, “La Guerre des Amériques,” or “The War of the Americas.” Meynial discusses how she came to write her book about the political divisions in America, based on hundreds of interviews across the country over the past three years. They discuss the resu...

From July 10, 2018: #AbolishICE is the hashtag that has proliferated all over Twitter. Anger over the family separation policy of the Trump administration has many people doubting whether the agency that does interior immigration enforcement is up to a humane performance of its task. Paul Rosenzweig, former policy guru at DHS where he supervised immigration matters, and Carrie Cordero, who has bee...

From April 23, 2019: Michael Anton, former Trump administration national security official and a research fellow at Hillsdale College, has published an  essay  in Foreign Policy explaining what he calls the 'Trump Doctrine' on foreign policy. Recently, Anton sat down with Jack Goldsmith to discuss the new article and the philosophy behind Trump's foreign policy, particularly with respect...

Despite the Russian launch of a new ballistic missile against Ukraine, the ATACMS not being a game-changer, and a front that is eroding in several key areas, Ukrainians are actually optimistic about the incoming Trump administration. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sits down with Lawfare Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina and Eric Ciaramella of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peac...

From March 12, 2019: As the nation braces for the forthcoming end of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into President Trump and his associates, The Lawfare Podcast decided to take a look back at the complete history of special prosecutors. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Andrew Coan, a professor of law at the James E. Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona. Coan recently pub...

Molly Reynolds, Senior Fellow at Brookings and Senior Editor at Lawfare , sits down with Mike Stern, a lawyer specializing in congressional legal issues and former Senior Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives, and Donald Sherman, Executive Director and Chief Counsel at CREW, to discuss the Senate confirmation process and expectations for congressional oversight in the 119th Congress. T...

Rachel Shelden is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Richards Civil War Center at Penn State University. She joined David Priess to talk about the disputed presidential election of 1876 and how the political system found a way to avoid widespread violence and another civil war while resolving it in 1877. They discussed Abraham Lincoln's huge impact on kids growing up...

Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sits down with Chris Mirasola, Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center, to discuss the legal and practical considerations surrounding a president’s ability to deploy the military at the U.S. southern border, particularly in light of President-elect Trump’s recent endorsement of “declar[ing] a national emergency” in order to “use mi...

At a  recent conference  co-hosted by  Lawfare  and the Georgetown Institute for Law and Technology, Georgetown law professor Paul Ohm moderated a conversation on "AI Regulation and Free Speech: Navigating the Government’s Tightrope,” between  Lawfare  Senior Editor Alan Rozenshtein, Fordham law professor Chinny Sharma, and Eugene Volokh, a senior fellow at Stanford U...

From July 27, 2023: Last month, Brazil’s highest electoral court found that former President Jair Bolsonaro had abused his political power in the 2022 elections because of his conduct in a meeting with foreign ambassadors in Brasília in July 2022. For this violation of the country’s election laws, the electoral court banned Bolsonaro from seeking public office until 2030. Lawfare  Managing Ed...

From June 30, 2023: On Thursday, South Africa’s Department of International Relations confirmed it would host the 15th BRICS Summit in August. Normally, this wouldn’t make the news. But because South Africa is a signatory to the International Criminal Court, the country is obligated under international law to arrest one of the summit’s invitees—Russian President Vladimir Putin—the moment he sets f...

After more than a year of pleas from Kyiv, the U.S. finally let Ukraine use Western long-range weapons for attacks inside Russia. Lawfare Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina sits down with Fabian Hoffman, a doctoral research fellow at the University of Oslo, to talk about the strategic and tactical effects of such attacks, what’s behind the timing of this decision, and why it took so long for the U...

This week, Scott sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Molly Reynolds and Alan Rozenshtein, and with University of Houston Law Center Assistant Professor of Law Chris Mirasola, to talk through the week’s big national security news, including: “Troops, There It Is.” President-elect Donald Trump raised eyebrows this week when he suggested that he intended to declare a national emergency and use U.S....

Since the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021, the country has been plagued by gang violence, a destabilized government, and an ongoing humanitarian crisis.  Lawfare  Associate Editor for Communications Anna Hickey sat down with Dr. Robert Fatton, emeritus professor of government and foreign affairs at the University of Virginia to discuss the rising gang violen...

Chris Johnson, Director of Legal Affairs and Space Law for Secure World Foundation and an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University, joins Kevin Frazier, Senior Research Fellow in the Constitutional Studies Program at the University of Texas at Austin and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to discuss the laws, policies, and geopolitical trends shaping the governance of space. The two analyze ho...

Donald Trump is going back to the White House and is already busy stocking his future Cabinet. Shane Harris sat down with two of The Washington Post’s best political reporters to talk about Trump’s victory, some of his initial choices for top national security positions--which are drawing extraordinary controversy--and what we might expect in Trump’s second term.  Ashley Parker and Josh Dawse...

Lawfare Associate Editor Olivia Manes sat down with with Marlene Laruelle, a Research Professor of International Affairs and Political Science at The George Washington University, and Director of GW's Illiberalism Studies Program, to discuss the financial, ideological, and historical connections between the American far-right and Russia. Marlene discussed the distinction b...

Christie Hicks, the Managing Attorney overseeing Earthjustice's Clean Energy Program, and Mandy DeRoche, a Deputy Managing Attorney in Earthjustice's Clean Energy Program, join Kevin Frazier, Senior Research Fellow in the Constitutional Studies Program at the University of Texas at Austin and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to explore the intersection of environmental law and national security as th...