The Week That Was

Annie I. Antón, Robert Chesney, Herb Lin, Michel Paradis, Paul Rosenzweig, Richard Salgado, Peter Swire, Nicholas Weaver, and Benjamin Wittes shared remembrances for their friend and longtime Lawfare Contributing Editor Stewart Baker, who passed away unexpectedly on April 30, 2026.

Anna Bower shared 61 transcripts and excerpts of testimony heard by the Fulton County special purpose grand jury in 2022 to investigate whether President Trump and his allies had illegally interfered in the 2020 presidential election. These transcripts were obtained by Lawfare and have been hidden from public view—until now.

On Lawfare Daily, Wittes sat down with Bower, Molly Roberts, Roger Parloff, and Nick Bednar to discuss the second indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, updates in Maureen Comey’s litigation challenging her firing from the Department of Justice, the oral argument at the Supreme Court over the cancellation of Temporary Protected Status, and more.

Also on Lawfare Daily, Kate Klonick sat down with Michael R. Dreeben, Adam Unikowsky, and Salgado to discuss Chatrie v. United States, a case on the constitutionality of geofencing warrants before the Supreme Court. The group discussed Unikowsky’s arguments on behalf of Chatrie, Salgado’s technologist amicus brief, Dreeben’s involvement in the precursor case of Fourth Amendment issues in tech, and more.

And again on Lawfare Daily, Klonick sat down with Steve Vladeck to discuss the impact of the New York Times’s “shadow papers” story, the omnipresent Supreme Court shadow docket, and the differences between “the courts” and “the Court” in the Trump administration.

Christopher Hardee wrote that the Department of Justice’s prosecution of the Southern Poverty Law Center for federal fraud charges is politically motivated and legally unsubstantiated. Hardee framed the investigation as part of the Trump administration’s broader effort to target left-leaning organizations while downplaying far-right extremism.

On Rational Security, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Tyler McBrien, Parloff, and Roberts to discuss the Trump administration’s second indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, the 60-day mark of the ongoing Iran War, the administration’s national security justifications for the White House ballroom construction project, and more.

On Lawfare Daily, Peter Beck sat down with Patrick Radden Keefe to discuss Radden Keefe’s new book, “London Falling,” which centers on his investigation of a London teenager’s fatal plunge into the Thames. The duo also discussed how U.K.’s acquiescence to foreign influence impacted the life of Zac Brettler, the rise of the London criminal underworld, Radden Keefe’s writing process, and more.

Renée DiResta argued that two recent settlements involving allegations of government pressure on social and conservative media are being mistakenly portrayed as legal validation of claims that the Biden administration engaged in media censorship. Instead, DiResta explained that these are negotiated agreements and contain no evidence of a Biden-era “censorship regime.”

Philip W. Rohlfing argued that new limits on data retention are undermining U.S. national security efforts to counter evolving drone threats. Rohlfing contended that Congress should allow for limited retention for defensive purposes so agencies can better detect and respond to the emerging drone threat without weakening privacy protections.

Anderson argued that the Trump administration is pressing the War Power Resolution’s limits by claiming pauses in combat with Iran reset the law’s 60-day deadline, allowing military operations to continue without the required formal congressional authorization.

On Lawfare Daily, Nicholas Enrich joined Anna Hickey to discuss Enrich’s new book, “Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower's Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID,” which shares an internal perspective of the agency’s dismantling during the early months of President Trump’s second term. The pair discussed the impact of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s dismantling on global health programs, the role of political appointees and DOGE, and the consequences for international aid and global health.

Miro Sedlák and Milan Turaj examined the limits imposed by international humanitarian law on targeted strikes. Using the 1999 NATO air campaign over Kosovo and recent conflicts, the pair showed how aggressors push the limits of legality in large-scale infrastructure attacks by considering interconnected infrastructure as a single target system, rather than individually assessing each of its components as discrete targets.

Orde Kittrie argued that the failure of international authorities to address Hamas’s continuous use of human shields—which constitutes a war crime under international law—weakens these institutions’ legitimacy, undermines the law of armed conflict, and creates incentives for terrorist groups and authoritarian militaries to use similar tactics in future conflicts.

Beck shared the Trump administration’s 2026 Counterterrorism Strategy memo, which lays out the administration’s plan to monitor and counter what the White House identified as the three major types of terror groups: narcoterrorists and transnational gangs, Islamist terrorist organizations, and violent left-wing extremists.

Max Bearinger and Danica Choi unpacked a complaint filed with the United Nations special rapporteur alleging that the Trump administration’s policies targeting immigration judges and attorneys violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The duo contended that even if the administration does not address the alleged violations of international law, the complaint brings international attention to a broader pattern of actions by the Trump administration that undermine due process and the rule of law.

Charles Sun examined how the U.S.’s strategy of restricting Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) chip exports may unintentionally strengthen China’s AI ecosystem by increasing foreign firms’ dependence on state-subsidized domestic infrastructure and incentives. Sun explained that while export controls restrict supply, they fail to address the deeper “demand-side” system of subsidies, regulation, and state alignment that drives Chinese AI development.

In the latest edition of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy essay series, Ruby Scanlon examined how China’s ambitions for rapid AI adoption are being tempered by concerns about the future of work and employment. Scanlon argued that this growing tension between innovation and fear of social unrest may be constraining China’s AI diffusion.

Jim W. Ko and Jonathan Stroud explained how the Trump administration is using “managed federalism”—in the form of funding incentives, executive coordination, and policy signaling—to centralize control over AI governance by shaping the conditions of policymaking and influencing how states regulate AI.

Dean W. Ball and Kevin Frazier explained that, although the Trump administration likely lacks the legal authority to enforce a system of mandatory pre-deployment vetting for advanced AI models, existing agencies such as the Center for AI Standards and Innovation and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are better equipped to facilitate voluntary testing and preparedness.

In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren unpacked the Trump administration’s proposal to apply stricter oversight to American AI models, Australia’s newly launched cyber incident review board, and more.

In the latest edition of Lawfare’s Research Paper series, Cullen O’Keefe, Christoph Winter, Matthijs Maas, and Janna Tay introduced a report from the inaugural Workshop on Law-Following AI, in which scholars explored how AI systems could be better designed to refuse illegal actions and comply with legal standards.

And that was the week that was.