Nick Bednar analyzed the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. Slaughter, which overruled Humphrey’s Executor and held that Congress cannot limit the president’s authority to remove principal officers of independent agencies. Bednar explained that the majority’s indeterminate language—relying on the broad term “subordinates” rather than the traditional principal/inferior officer distinction—leaves open whether the removal power now extends to inferior officers and civil service employees.
On Lawfare Daily, Natalie Orpett sat down with Bednar to discuss two Supreme Court rulings, in Slaughter v. Trump and Cook v. Trump, issued the previous week that will have a huge impact on the president's authority to remove personnel at agencies that Congress set up to be independent. They unpacked what the opinions say, what they fail to say, and what it means for the workforce that makes the federal government function.
On this week’s Lawfare Live: The Trials of the Trump Administration, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Molly Roberts, Kate Klonick, Eric Columbus, and Roger Parloff to discuss the Supreme Court's decisions on birthright citizenship, the president's ability to fire the heads of independent agencies, constitutional protections for location data, and more.
Roberts analyzed President Trump’s March 2026 executive order on mail-in voting. While the order’s technocratic process of creating mailing lists may seem innocuous, a recent Department of Homeland Security memo reveals the administration’s desire to aggressively create “citizen lists,” likely disregarding privacy laws in the process.
On Lawfare Daily, Orpett sat down with Columbus, Roberts, and Parloff to discuss the Supreme Court’s recent decisions in immigration cases, a federal judge squashing portions of Trump’s mail-in voting executive order, John Bolton pleading guilty, an update in the criminal prosecution of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and more.
Alex Zerden and Rachel Lyngaas argued that the Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI) is overdue for reform. Zerden and Lyngaas explained that more than two decades after its founding in the wake of 9/11, TFI’s name, structure, and component mandates no longer reflect its actual work, and suggested that TFI change its name, establish a permanent chief economist, and return the U.S. Secret Service to the Treasury Department to give the office a criminal enforcement capability it currently lacks.
In Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series last week, Bennett Clifford questioned the continued use of nihilistic violent extremism as a term to describe the often hyper-online threat actors, whom the FBI says are inspired “primarily from a hatred of society at large.” The term, he argued, lacks clear meaning and, as a result, prevents policy from being adequately tailored in response.
On Lawfare Daily, Daniel Byman sat down with Javier Corrales to discuss the Trump administration’s efforts to pressure Cuba and spur regime change there. They discussed why the Cuban regime stays in power, the effectiveness of different U.S. policy instruments used against Cuba, why Corrales thinks that the Venezuela approach would probably not work in Cuba, and what a post-communist Cuba might look like.
Ahead of next week’s NATO summit in Ankara, John Drennan and Ariane Tabatabai analyzed the Trump administration’s vision for “NATO 3.0,” the newest step in the administration’s efforts to increase burden sharing between member countries. Drennan and Tabatabai agreed that member countries needed to increase their efforts, but argued that it must not be viewed as an end in itself, but rather as part of NATO’s goal of deterring Russia.
Yuval Shany and Amichai Cohen analyzed Israel’s High Court of Justice’s decision compelling the Israeli government to resume the International Committee of the Red Cross’s access to Palestinian prisoners after a yearslong ban. While Shany and Cohen credited the court for reaffirming legal limits on government conduct amid war, they argued that the decision is a weaker win for judicial oversight than it seems: the government mounted no real defense, and the court itself may have delayed ruling until the hostage crisis ended to avoid political backlash.
In the latest edition of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, Alvin Wang Graylin and Jon J. Rosenwasser highlighted two assumptions in U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) policy discussions: that the U.S. can stay ahead in the AI race by denying foreign access to top U.S. models and that AI regulation slows progress in the race against China. Graylin and Rosenwasser argued that both assumptions are flawed and that continued belief in them harms the U.S.’s position in the AI race.
Nicholas Felstead argued that Anthropic’s recent call to “slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development” would require coordination between AI companies in a way that could violate antitrust laws. He identified a core tradeoff between the ability of a pause to address safety concerns and the likelihood it would be viewed as unlawful collusion.
On Lawfare Daily, Klonick and Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Cory Doctorow about his new book, “The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI.” They discussed the historic investment bubble being built on top of the AI boom, whether the AI bubble will actually burst or merely deflate, the "reverse centaur,” and more.
And Paul M. Barrett reviewed Josh Tyrangiel’s book, “AI for Good: How Real People Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Fix Things that Matter.” Barrett applauded the book’s rigorous reporting on case studies of AI deployment for good and highlighted its call for individualized, human-driven analysis when implementing AI tools in daily operations, especially in fields like education and medicine.
And that was the week that was.
