The Week That Was

Benjamin Wittes argued that the House of Representatives should vote to impeach Emil Bove III. Wittes suggested that even if the House does not successfully remove Bove from office, it will at the very least send an important message about the Senate’s failure to perform its duty and provide whistleblowers and members of the Justice Department with the opportunity to testify before Congress. 

Wittes argued that Senate Republicans’ decision to confirm Emil Bove III to a lifetime appointment on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals—despite three whistleblowers’ allegations against him for corrupt behavior—is indefensible. Wittes highlighted that while some might view Bove’s appointment to the Third Circuit as the political equivalent of putting him in “storage” away from the executive branch, he is now well positioned to be President Trump’s next Supreme Court nominee.

Julia Rose Kraut and Tyler McBrien detailed the legislative history and the U.S. government’s previous invocations of 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(4)(C), the foreign policy provision the Trump administration used to justify the detention of Mahmoud Khalil and others. The authors argued that despite shifting targets and legal reasoning, the government’s motivation behind the ideological exclusion and deportation of foreign noncitizens has remained consistent: the suppression of dissent.

Raphael Goldman argued that the post-removal detention of Venezuelan nationals—whom the Trump administration designated as members of the Tren de Aragua gang—in the notorious Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo prison in El Salvador was unlawful. Goldman suggested that such extraterritorial jailing violates the requirements for criminal punishment outlined by the Constitution.

On August 1 at 4 pm ET, Wittes sat down with Anna Bower, James Pearce, Renée DiResta, and Michael Feinberg to discuss the misconduct complaint filed against Judge James Boasberg, the preliminary injunction denied in litigation over the firing of the head of the U.S. Copyright Office, and more.

Aaron Zelinsky and David Reiser unpacked the whirlwind of events surrounding the controversial appointment of Alina Habba as acting U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey. Zelinsky and Reiser argued that while the Constitution’s Appointments Clause gives the president the power to nominate an inferior officer, the administration’s efforts to keep Habba in the interim position indefinitely disregards the requirement of Senate confirmation and Congress’s role in structuring the executive branch. 

Mark Nevitt provided eight lessons from the devastating floods in Kerr County, Texas, arguing that climate-resilient solutions must be taken into account to prevent future tragedies resulting from extreme weather events.

Wittes considered why the markets appear to be doing well despite the Trump administration’s attacks on the rule of law, and cast doubt on the theory that governance and the economy are not interconnected.

Natalie Orpett responded to the D.C. Circuit’s 2-1 decision to  allow then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to lawfully withdraw from plea agreements military prosecutors made with three 9/11 defendants detained at Guantanamo. Orpett argued that the ruling is indicative of a lack of faith in the military commissions system’s ability to hold terrorists answerable for their crimes using the law.

On Lawfare Daily, Wittes sat down with Pearce, Scott Anderson, and Roger Parloff to talk about the Supreme Court’s ruling allowing for the removal of officials, the ongoing dismantling of executive agencies, the latest developments in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case, and more.

On Rational Security, McBrien, Orpett, and Kevin Frazier joined Anderson to take stock of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the White House’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Plan, the D.C. Circuit’s decision to nullify plea deals made by several Guantanamo Bay detainees, and more.

Wittes argued that Israeli policy in Gaza is unjustifiable, and that even if the Israel’s actions cannot be legally defined as a genocide does not mean that the country’s operations are worthy of support.

On Lawfare Daily, Anderson sat down with Joel Braunold to take stock of the ongoing famine in Gaza, how the broader military conflict between Israel and Hamas has contributed to the humanitarian crisis, what the increasing pressure on Israel to respond to the famine means for the future of Israeli-Palestinian relations, and more.

Mykhailo Soldatenko considered alternative security arrangements for Ukraine—permanent neutrality or nonalignment—given that the country’s accession to  NATO appears unlikely, and explained how the adoption of either of these policies could bring Moscow back to the negotiating table in peace talks with Kyiv.

Iain Nash discussed the case of U.S. v. Eaton—in which a judge ordered the Eaton Corporation to turn over employee data stored in Ireland—and whether the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation can block U.S. subpoenas, U.S. law enforcement requests for evidence stored in Europe, and challenge U.S. regulatory demands.

Justin Sherman sat down with Candace Rondeaux to discuss her recent book entitled “Putin’s Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia’s Collapse into Mercenary Chaos,” the rise of the Wagner Group, Wagner’s role in Russia’s military objectives abroad, and more.

Zachary Burdette argued that although fears surrounding China’s ability to target U.S. satellites are increasingly overblown, the U.S. must still take the threat of Beijing outpacing the United States seriously and invest in more robust space architecture, capabilities, and concepts. 

Clark McCauley reviewed Emilie A. Caspar’s latest book entitled, “Just Following Orders: Atrocities and the Brain Science of Obedience.” McCauley suggested that Caspar’s experimental design—meant to test Stanley Milgram’s agentic shift hypothesis, which has been used to explain why people obey morally reprehensible orders—was flawed, rendering the book’s conclusions dubious.

Frazier took stock of some of the most important provisions in the White House’s recently released AI Action Plan, arguing that the plan—which was well-received across a diverse range of actors—might be more difficult to implement than initially thought due to its scope.

On the Tuesday episode of Scaling Laws, Lauren Wagner and Andrew Freedman joined Frazier to take stock of the current AI regulatory space, the difficulties implementing effective AI governance with bills such as SB 813, and more.

Sayah Kapoor joined Frazier to discuss the skepticism surrounding artificial general intelligence, bottlenecks in AI adoption, the transformative power of mass AI adoption, and more.

On the Friday episode of Scaling Laws, Alan Rozenshtein and DiResta joined Frazier to take stock of President Trump’s policies on “ Woke AI,” the White House’s AI Action Plan, and more.

Peter Salib reviewed the findings of an Anthropic study on rogue AI, highlighting that when threatened with a shutdown, nearly every AI model was willing to engage in targeted malicious activity—including blackmailing, corporate espionage, and murder.  Salib called upon AI policymakers to rethink their perception of AI as a passive tool and regulate the models more closely.

Rozenshtein sat down with Sezaneh Seymour and Brandon Wales to discuss their new Lawfare research report entitled “Partners or Provocateurs? Private-Sector Involvement in Offensive Cyber Operations,” if offensive cyber operations should be a government-only function, and more.

Richard Salgado and Kenneth Propp highlighted that the U.S.—amid the ongoing dispute with the U.K. over encryption protections—can exercise Article 12.3 of the U.S.-U.K. Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD) Act agreement to protect U.S. providers, preserve the CLOUD Act agreement between the two countries,  and lay the foundation for future long-termCLOUD Act agreements with other countries.

And in the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren compared incidents in 2021 and 2025 in which Chinese hackers exploited Microsoft SharePoint’s vulnerabilities, the lawsuit Clorox filed against an information technology company over a breach of Clorox’s network security, and more.

And that was the week that was.