Armed Conflict Courts & Litigation Cybersecurity & Tech Executive Branch Foreign Relations & International Law

Lawfare Daily: The Year that Was

Natalie K. Orpett, Anna Bower, Roger Parloff, Molly Roberts, Katherine Pompilio, Olivia Manes, Eric Columbus, Loren Voss, Scott R. Anderson, Ariane Tabatabai, Tyler McBrien, Jakub Kraus, Kevin Frazier, Renée DiResta, Benjamin Wittes, Jen Patja
Friday, December 26, 2025, 7:00 AM
Lawfare contributors reflect on 2025.
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Every year, Lawfare publishes a retrospective of the year that passed. Today, we’re pleased to bring you an audio preview of that article, The Year That Was: 2025, which you can read in full on our website soon.

Lawfare is focused on producing timely, rigorous, and non-partisan analysis of “hard national security choices.” And this year, that work was—to use an expression as tired as we are—like drinking from a firehose. We did our best to keep up. We published more than 1,000 articles, podcasts, videos, research papers, and primary source documents. We did livestream round-ups and rapid-response videos. We produced five different podcasts and an investigative video series. We built data visualizations and trackers to make sense of complicated unfolding events. You can find all that and more for free on our website, lawfaremedia.org.

To sum up just a sampling of what Lawfare has done this year, we’re bringing you analysis from our team. In this episode, you’ll hear from Executive Editor Natalie Orpett on Lawfare’s work in 2025 and from Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes on The Situation. You’ll hear from Senior Editors Anna Bower on DOGE, Roger Parloff on the Alien Enemies Act, Molly Roberts on politicization of the Justice Department, Eric Columbus on impoundments, Scott R. Anderson on war powers, and Kevin Frazier on AI and the states. You’ll hear from Public Interest Fellows Loren Voss on domestic deployments of the military, and Ariane Tabatabai on foreign policy. You’ll hear from our Managing Editor, Tyler McBrien, on our narrative podcast series, Escalation. You’ll hear from Associate Editors Katherine Pompilio on the Jan. 6 pardons and Olivia Manes on rolling back internal checks at the Justice Department. You’ll hear from our Fellow Jakub Kraus on AI, and you’ll hear from Contributing Editor Renée DiResta on election integrity capacity.

And that’s just a sampling of Lawfare’s work.

It’s The Year That Was: 2025. We’ll see you next year.

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.

Topics:
Armed Conflict Courts & Litigation Cybersecurity & Tech Executive Branch Foreign Relations & International Law
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Natalie K. Orpett

Natalie K. Orpett

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Natalie Orpett is the executive editor of Lawfare and deputy general counsel of the Lawfare Institute. She was previously an attorney at the law firm Jenner & Block, where she focused on investigations and government controversies, and also maintained an active pro bono practice. She served as civilian counsel to a defendant in the Guantanamo Military Commissions for more than eight years.
Anna Bower

Anna Bower

@annabower
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Anna Bower is a senior editor at Lawfare. Anna holds a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Cambridge and a Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School. She joined Lawfare as a recipient of Harvard’s Sumner M. Redstone Fellowship in Public Service. Prior to law school, Anna worked as a judicial assistant for a Superior Court judge in the Northeastern Judicial Circuit of Georgia. She also previously worked as a Fulbright Fellow at Anadolu University in Eskişehir, Turkey. A native of Georgia, Anna is based in Atlanta and Washington, D.C.
Roger Parloff

Roger Parloff

@rparloff
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Roger Parloff is a journalist based in Washington, D.C. For 12 years, he was the main legal correspondent at Fortune Magazine. His work has also been published in ProPublica, The New York Times, New York, NewYorker.com, Yahoo Finance, Air Mail, IEEE Spectrum, Inside, Legal Affairs, Brill’s Content, and others. An attorney who no longer practices, he is the author of "Triple Jeopardy," a book about an Arizona death penalty case. He is a senior editor at Lawfare.
Molly Roberts

Molly Roberts

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Molly Roberts is a senior editor at Lawfare. She was previously a member of the editorial board at The Washington Post, where she covered technology, legal affairs and more, as well as wrote columns about everything from cryptocurrency grift and graft to panda diplomacy at the National Zoo.
Katherine Pompilio

Katherine Pompilio

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Katherine Pompilio is an associate editor of Lawfare. She holds a B.A. with honors in political science from Skidmore College.
Olivia Manes

Olivia Manes

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Olivia Manes is an associate editor of Lawfare. She holds an MPhil in politics and international studies from the University of Cambridge and a dual B.A. in international relations and comparative literature from Stanford University. Previously, she was an associate editor of the Cambridge Review of International Affairs.
Eric Columbus

Eric Columbus

EricColumbus
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Eric Columbus is a senior editor at Lawfare. He previously served as special litigation counsel at the U.S. House of Representatives’ Office of General Counsel from 2020 to 2023. During the Obama administration, he served in political appointments at the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security.
Loren Voss

Loren Voss

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Loren Voss most recently served as Director for Defense Policy and Strategy at the National Security Council. She chairs the Lieber Society on the Law of Armed Conflict at the American Society of International Law and previously served as a Senior Advisor for the Department of Defense and taught classes on domestic deployment of the military and disinformation at GW Law. Loren previously served on active duty in the U.S. Air Force.
Scott R. Anderson

Scott R. Anderson

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Scott R. Anderson is a fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and a Senior Fellow in the National Security Law Program at Columbia Law School. He previously served as an Attorney-Adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State and as the legal advisor for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.
Ariane Tabatabai

Ariane Tabatabai

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Dr. Ariane Tabatabai is a Public Service Fellow at Lawfare. Previously, she served in a number of roles in the U.S. Departments of State and Defense, including most recently as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Education and Training. She is the author of No Conquest, No Defeat and the co-author of Triple Axis, as well as a number of peer-reviewed articles.
Tyler McBrien

Tyler McBrien

TylerMcBrien
tylermcbrien.com
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Tyler McBrien is the managing editor of Lawfare. He previously worked as an editor with the Council on Foreign Relations and a Princeton in Africa Fellow with Equal Education in South Africa, and holds an MA in international relations from the University of Chicago.
Jakub Kraus

Jakub Kraus

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Jakub Kraus is a Tarbell Fellow writing about artificial intelligence. He previously worked at the Center for AI Policy, where he wrote the AI Policy Weekly newsletter and hosted a podcast featuring discussions with experts on AI advancements, impacts, and governance
Kevin Frazier

Kevin Frazier

@kevintfrazier
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Kevin Frazier is an AI Innovation and Law Fellow at UT Austin School of Law and Senior Editor at Lawfare .
Renée DiResta

Renée DiResta

@noUpside
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Renée DiResta is an Associate Research Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown. She is a contributing editor at Lawfare.
Benjamin Wittes

Benjamin Wittes

benjaminwittes.lawfaremedia.org
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Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books.
Jen Patja

Jen Patja

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Jen Patja is the editor of the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security, and serves as Lawfare’s Director of Audience Engagement. Previously, she was Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics and Deputy Director of the Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier, where she worked to deepen public understanding of constitutional democracy and inspire meaningful civic participation.
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