Podcast
The Lawfare Podcast: Patreon Edition
Hosted by The Lawfare Institute · EN
The Lawfare Podcast features discussions with experts, policymakers, and opinion leaders at the nexus of national security, law, and policy. On issues from foreign policy, homeland security, intelligence, and cybersecurity to governance and law, we have doubled down on seriousness at a time when others are running away from it. Visit us at www.lawfaremedia.org.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
114episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Lawfare Daily: How Ukraine Is Winning the Drone War
3d ago00:30:35Tap to summarizeUkraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina sits down with Jimmy Rushton, a Kyiv-based journalist and security analyst who recently published, “How Ukraine gained the upper hand in the drone war against Russia,” in the Kyiv Independent. They talk about how the balance of power in the drone war seems to have shifted in Ukraine’s favor, Russia's latest missile strike on Kyiv, and what it all means for Russia’s broader strategic position in its war against Ukraine. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcribe →
Rational Security: The “Potty Like It’s 1999” Edition
4d ago01:07:27Tap to summarizeThis week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Anna Bower and Eric Columbus, and his Brookings colleague Molly Reynolds, to talk through a couple of the week’s big news stories in domestic politics, including:“The Grift That Keeps On Giving.” Last week, the Justice Department announced the creation of a so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund of nearly 1.8 billion taxpayer dollars, from which purported victims of politically motivated prosecutions can apply to receive payments. The fund was created as part of a settlement with President Trump and his sons, who sued the IRS for 10 billion dollars over the leak of his tax returns. So far, pardoned Jan. 6 rioters, former Congressman George Santos, Trump’s ex attorney Michael Cohen, and even former FBI Director James Comey have all said that they are considering applying, and three lawsuits have already been filed challenging the fund. How did Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS lead to this fund? And how do we see these legal challenges playing out in court?“Lame Duck Around and Find Out.” President Trump’s preferred primary picks have cruised to victories in Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Georgia Republican primaries, ousting incumbents Senator Bill Cassidy and Representative Thomas Massie as some of the few voices of dissent within the Republican Party. But Trump’s involvement in the primaries has come at a political cost, with outgoing members voicing their criticism and even going so far as to buck the president on legislation. Last week, Cassidy flipped his vote in favor of a critical war powers resolution in the Senate, which could undermine the administration’s legal justification for the war. With such close margins in Congress, how do we expect this new YOLO faction to impact the president’s agenda before the midterms?While we introduced a third topic, we frankly ran out of time this week. Sorry about that! We’ll circle back to it in the weeks ahead.In object lessons, Molly is hooked on the fish-focused local NPR podcast, “Catching The Codfather.” Eric is looking to catch a killer with the latest Hugh Jackman movie (which he thinks is shear perfection). Scott is caught up in the latest “Storm,” featuring Yung Lean. And Anna has caught basketball fever, both with the Knicks’ return to the NBA Finals, and also with the (much-more-affordable-but-equally-entertaining) NY Liberty. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcribe →Lawfare Daily: Russia’s ‘Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks,’ with Sean Wiswesser
4d ago00:35:44Tap to summarizeSean Wiswesser, author of the new book, “Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks: Russian Intelligence and Putin’s Secret War,” and a former senior operations officer with the CIA, joins Lawfare’s Justin Sherman to discuss the major Russian security organs and their training, characteristics of Russian “sticks-and-bricks” surveillance and counter-surveillance tradecraft, and the Russians’ use of coercion, kompromat, and sex (often dubbed “sexpionage”) to recruit and pressure people. They also discuss corruption in the Russian intelligence services, illegals and assassination programs, brazenness and sloppiness in Russian operations, and the future of the Russian intelligence threat to the United States and the West. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcribe →Lawfare Daily: Investigating the Investigators: Sophia Yan on Journalism in the PRC
5d ago00:46:30Tap to summarizeSenior Editor Michael Feinberg sits down with Sophia Yan, a senior foreign correspondent with The Telegraph, to discuss her time reporting on the Chinese government, and how it leveraged its security services to investigate her in turn. Sophia recently wrote in-depth about this experience in “The secret Chinese surveillance programme tracking people like me,” in The Telegraph. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcribe →Lawfare Daily: How the World Sees Trump’s America with Eve Fairbanks and Madeleine Schwartz
6d ago00:50:27Tap to summarizeOn today’s episode, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sits down with Eve Fairbanks, a writer and journalist based in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Madeleine Schwartz, founder and editor-in-chief of The Dial, a magazine of international writing, to discuss The Dial’s forthcoming book, “How We See it: The World Looks at America in the Age of Trump” (out June 9 from The New Press). They speak about several essays in the collection, which is made up of contributions by journalists from around the world who probe their home countries’ complex relationships with the United States—relationships made even more complex under the current administration. They also dive deep on Fairbanks’s essay on the South African perspective. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcribe →May Minipod: How Could the Supreme Court Be Reformed?
1w ago00:32:00Tap to summarizeOn this month’s minipod, Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett talked with Lawfare Contributing Editor and a Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at New York University School of Law Bob Bauer about proposals for jurisdiction-stripping and other reforms for the Supreme Court. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcribe →Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, May 22
1w ago01:37:37Tap to summarizeIn a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, and Roger Parloff discussed the Department of Justice’s newly-announced “Anti-Weaponization Fund” which purports to “hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare,” oral argument in Anthropic v. U.S. Department of War before the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and more.You can find information on legal challenges to Trump administration actions here. And check out Lawfare’s new homepage on the litigation, new Bluesky account, and new WITOAD merch.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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcribe →Lawfare Archive: Why Public Health is Critical to National Security
1w ago00:56:37Tap to summarizeFrom April 2, 2025: Atul Gawande is a surgeon and a public health expert. He's also the former head of global health at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), an agency that the Trump administration has prioritized for dismantling since its first day in office. On today's episode, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Gawande to discuss what USAID does, the consequences of destroying it, and why public health is so important to U.S. national security.Editor's Note: This episode was recorded on March 27, 2025. The following day, the Trump administration announced that USAID would be dissolved by the end of this fiscal year. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcribe →Lawfare Archive: Former Deputy Chief of the Justice Department's Capitol Siege Section Alexis Loeb on President Trump's Pardons
1w ago00:38:50Tap to summarizeFrom January 23, 2025: Alexis Loeb, the former Deputy Chief of the Capitol Siege Section of the Department of Justice, sits down with Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff to talk about President Trump's blanket pardons and commutations for everyone her unit prosecuted. She discusses how she became involved with the cases; how they were handled by prosecutors, judges, and juries; a couple of cases she personally prosecuted; and her views on the impact of Trump's pardon proclamation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcribe →Lawfare Daily: Trump Sues Self, Settles
1w ago00:48:55Tap to summarizeThis week, the Department of Justice announced that Trump and his sons dropped their lawsuit against the IRS and Treasury in exchange for a $1.776 billion fund for Trump’s allies and blanket immunity from government suits for the Trump family.Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes talks with Senior Editor Eric Columbus about what the settlement means, where it came from, and what can be done about it. You can read much more in the piece Eric co-authored with Senior Editor Anna Bower in Lawfare here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcribe →