The Lawfare Podcast

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Managing Editor Tyler McBrien and Senior Editors Anna Bower and Michael Feinberg to talk through the week’s big news in national security, including:
“Third Country’s the Charm.” On Tuesday, the Supreme Court cleared the way—for the third time—for the Trump administration to resume deporting migrants to “third countries” with which they have no connection, staying a lower court ruling that found the policy unlawful and agreeing to hear the case on the merits in December. The decision comes days after the administration quietly flew a group of Somali men—some with no criminal records, who had been held at Guantánamo Bay for a month after being told their plane was only stopping in Cuba to refuel—to Mogadishu, on a flight that departed hours after an appeals court made clear the third-country removal policy was blocked. It also comes as lower courts are increasingly finding the administration in contempt for violating their orders in deportation cases, and as the full D.C. Circuit weighs whether Judge James Boasberg can continue his contempt inquiry into last year’s Alien Enemies Act flights. What does this pattern tell us about the administration’s relationship with the courts? And how far it is willing to push its immigration agenda?
“Here Comes the Bribe.” Last week, ProPublica revealed that, by late 2024, FBI anti-corruption agents believed they had enough evidence to seek a sweeping bribery investigation stemming from a defense contractor’s illegal donations to Maine Senator Susan Collins and other members of Congress—only for the probe to die when the Trump administration gutted the FBI and Justice Department units that handle public corruption cases. Collins denies any wrongdoing and has called the contractor a liar, but the story has become a central issue in her tight reelection race. It’s also just the latest in a string of stories raising questions about public integrity in and around the Trump administration, from the Putin-linked Russian oligarch that secretly bankrolled Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding, to the Kash Patel- and Todd Blanche-studded wedding of former U.S. Attorney Alina Habba to a Turkish businessman with close ties to the Erdoğan government—with mixed martial arts manager Abdelaziz Ali, a former FBI source and suspected double agent, in attendance. What does the Collins story tell us about what happens when no one is minding the store on public corruption? And how worried should we be about who is buying access to the president’s inner circle?
“Manufactured Content.” President Trump escalated his war on the press this month, banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House and having the Secret Service seize their reporters’ press passes over what he described as years of unfair coverage. A federal judge has since temporarily ordered their access restored, finding the ban likely violated their due process rights. But the White House isn’t just restricting who gets to tell its story—it’s also paying to tell its own, launching a series of taxpayer-funded TV ads that feature President Trump and closely track his campaign messaging, including one nearly identical to a 2024 campaign spot, just weeks before the midterms. The White House insists these are merely public service announcements. Is the administration breaking longstanding norms in an effort to take control of the narrative? And are there any legal limits that might stop it?
In object lessons, Mike has two cautionary tales about tech appeal: “When We Cease to Understand the World” and “The Maniac.” Tyler is embracing sexy technical gear with a recommendation of Field Mag. Scott is returning to an old favorite that just understands him: “Fantasy Football Punishments for Your Work League that Violate the Geneva Convention.” And Anna is delighted by a more cutthroat side of cutting-edge: the National Havoc Robot League.
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On today's podcast, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett sits down with Rachel VanLandingham, a professor at Southwestern Law School and a retired Lt. Colonel in the U.S. Air Force, to talk about the many ways in which the Trump administration has been remaking DoD. Some changes are announced loudly—the ban on transgender service members and the so-called “High-T” initiative—while others are taking place through quiet bureaucratic moves, like changes to personnel management. But all are combining to reshape the U.S. armed forces according to a new vision. They talk about how these changes are being implemented, what’s rhetoric and what’s reality, and what impact it’s all having on the Department and the troops themselves.
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Lawfare Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee sits down with Jonathan Czin, the Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies and fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution, to unpack Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington, his first in 11 years.
The two former CIA and National Security Council colleagues discuss what each side walked away with, including a two-month extension of the trade truce and potential channels on artificial intelligence and military crisis communications. They look at the implications for Taiwan, the war in Iran, and how the loss of China expertise and policy staff showed in the summit’s preparation and readouts.
For further reading, see:
Jonathan Czin, “What Trump Doesn’t Understand About Xi,” The Atlantic
The White House fact sheet on the state visit
Xinhua’s summary of the visit’s eight outcomes
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On September 29 at 9:30 a.m. ET, the full D.C. Circuit will hear oral argument over Judge Boasberg's inquiry into whether top Trump administration officials committed criminal contempt when they sent 137 Venezuelans to CECOT, a notorious El Salvador prison. Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Senior Editors Anna Bower, Roger Parloff, and Molly Roberts to break down what happened.
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Lawfare Senior Editor Kevin Frazier is joined by Scaling Laws co-host Assemblyman Alex Bores of New York, AVERI Director of U.S. Policy Nat Purser, and Institute of Law and AI Managing Director of U.S. Law Mackenzie Arnold to discuss recent developments in the AI risk environment, what led us here, and what comes next for domestic and AI foreign policy. They also touch on other major pieces of AI news including President Trump’s announcement of an “AI Force” and an AI Czar, projections for the September 24 U.S.-China Summit, and other recent developments.
If you want to catch up on some of the major incidents driving the vibe shift, check out the podcast, “Lawfare Daily: Peter Salib on the Legal and Policy Ramifications of the OpenAI-Hugging Face Postmortems.”
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