Anna Bower, Julia Curlee, Renée DiResta, Michael Feinberg, Molly Roberts, and Loren Voss unpacked President Trump’s recent speech on the integrity of the 2020 elections and the declassified document releases that accompanied it. They broke down each of Trump’s allegations, the administration’s playbook for politicizing intelligence, and the consequences such rhetoric could have ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
On Lawfare Daily, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan spoke with Roger Parloff about their recent book, “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.” They discussed how close Trump has come to suspending habeas corpus, how the Supreme Court’s immunity decision has shaped his conduct, his vindictive prosecutions, his firings of national security professionals at the behest of Laura Loomer, and more.
Also on Lawfare Daily, Natalie Orpett sat down with Elizabeth Goitein, Joseph Nunn, and Voss to discuss the state laws governing the National Guard and what they mean for domestic deployments in the United States. They talked about what the National Guard is allowed to do, the constitutionality of state laws, and more.
David S. Rubenstein analyzed how courts have allowed and disallowed states from regulating federal contractors operating in their jurisdictions. He explained that states are largely allowed to enforce generally applicable laws against contractors, but cannot use regulation to single them. Rubenstein also explored how states can leverage their market influence to indirectly regulate federal contractors.
On this week’s Lawfare Live: The Trials of the Trump Administration, Bower, Eric Columbus, and Parloff discussed this week's hearing on the subpoenas sent to New York Times reporters, the court-appointed U.S. attorney in W.D. Washington challenging his termination, the first convening of the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, and more.
On Lawfare Daily, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Columbus, Bower, Roberts, and Parloff to discuss the Senate confirmation hearing for acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, subpoenas sent to New York Times reporters, a judicial opinion voiding President Trump’s settlement with the IRS, and more.
On Lawfare No Bull, Sarah Willrich shared edited audio of the July 15 confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee for Jay Clayton, President Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence.
Joshua Villanueva explained the difficulty of categorizing commercial satellites under international law given the overlap between civilian and military uses. Villanueva argued that military utility alone is insufficient to deem satellites a valid wartime target, proposing instead a six-factor framework in which operational integration into military activity is the most significant element.
Matthew Forst reviewed Doyle K. Hodges’s book, “The Rise of US Military Legalism: A New Theory of Military Professionalism.” Forst praised the book’s account of how military decision-making shifted from a premise of individual judgment and ethics norms to careful parsings of legal texts to justify military action.
Katherine Yon Ebright argued that those who encourage the return of the Monroe Doctrine, and its detractors, misunderstand its original intentions. Yon Ebright explained that the Monroe Doctrine was originally interpreted as supporting anti-imperialism and constitutional limitations on the president’s war powers, and that this conception only began changing later, in the 20th century.
On Rational Security, Scott Anderson talked through the week’s big national security news stories with Columbus, Curlee, and Roberts, including President Trump’s election speech and document release, the Justice Department’s issuance of subpoenas to reporters from The New York Times, the confirmation hearings of Jay Clayton and Todd Blanche, and more.
On Lawfare Daily, Anastasiia Lapatina sat down with Francis Farrell to discuss the Ukrainian president’s decision to replace the country’s minister of defense, the mass protests that happened as a result of his firing, how the decision will impact the course of the war, and more.
Also on Lawfare Daily, Lapatina talked to Fabian Hoffman about what it would take for Ukraine to produce Patriot interceptor missiles, if the United States gave it the license to do so.
Curlee considered what lessons China may be taking from the U.S and Israeli war with Iran for its own potential invasion of Taiwan. She highlighted three key takeaways: decapitation strikes have limited efficacy alone, chokepoints are cheap to deny but costly to reopen, and together, these factors mean the illusion of a short conflict can quickly turn into a drawn-out war of attrition—one Taiwan may not be prepared to endure.
In the latest edition of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, Safa Al-Saeedi and Christina Bouri analyzed how the ongoing conflict in Yemen has driven the collapse of the country’s healthcare system. They explained that, in addition to the U.S. cutting funding last year, Yemen’s split between the Houthi authorities and the internationally recognized government has left aid organizations navigating rival health systems, identification documents and supply chains—resulting in a patchwork system susceptible to politicization.
Doni Bloomfield and Jeff Gordon considered the inconsistencies of the Trump administration’s export controls policy, arguing that the oscillation between stringent limitations on sales and permissiveness harms U.S. companies’ ability to generate revenue from sales to China, in turn limiting their capacity for the long-term research and development that maintains the U.S.’s technological edge. To rectify this, Bloomfield and Gordon proposed tightening export controls while providing a tax credit to offset the revenue loss.
Anton Leicht and Alasdair Phillips-Robins warned that U.S. policy is unprepared to respond to future novel threats posed by leaps in artificial intelligence (AI) development. They argued that without preemptive action—primarily by the executive branch, with Congress eventually following through with legislation—the U.S. response will struggle to balance the risks of governmental overreach against the danger of moving too slowly to address vulnerabilities.
On Scaling Laws, Alex Bores joined Kevin Frazier and Alan Z. Rozenshtein to discuss his congressional campaign platform centered on AI policy. They talked about what he heard from voters about AI, how the millions of dollars coming into the race changed its dynamics, the proper allocation of AI regulatory authority between states and the federal government, and more.
Mackenzie Arnold and Stephan Llerena highlighted the surprising point that OpenAI was likely not required to disclose the recent hacking of Hugging Face conducted by rogue OpenAI AI agents. Arnold and Llerena explained why existing state laws do not compel disclosure and suggested that, rather than sharing partial reports after attacks, companies and state agencies collaborate to create a baseline of information that enables a more rapid response.
Belen Pisaniello, Sunoo Park, and Daniel R. Thomas discussed the chilling effects that contract and anti-hacking law can have on researchers who expose vulnerabilities in good faith.
Also on Scaling Laws, Courtney Cox joined Frazier to discuss her forthcoming article, “Hardwiring Hercules?,” in which Cox argues that the debate over a “right to a human decision” has missed a central problem: normative uncertainty.
And in the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren discussed signals from the Trump administration and China indicating their intention to regulate open-weight AI models, the recent hacking of Hugging Face, sentencing in the U.K. of the Scattered Spider group hackers, and more.
And that was the week that was.
