The Week That Was

Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, Michael Feinberg, Natalie K. Orpett, and Molly Roberts examined the charges facing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the challenges Maduro might mount in defense, including head of state immunity, improper venue, and illegal arrest. The authors assessed how each challenge in this unprecedented case might test the boundaries of longstanding legal doctrines.

Scott R. Anderson assessed a range of international and domestic legal arguments the Trump administration could make to justify deposing Maduro. Anderson emphasized that a possible “second wave” of operations—especially one involving ground troops—could strain expansive domestic military authorities to their limit.

On Lawfare Live, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Anderson, Dana Stuster, and Loren Voss to discuss the Trump administration’s attack on Venezuela and the operation that led to the capture of Maduro and his wife, First Lady Cilia Flores. You can access this episode as a podcast episode here.

On Rational Security, Orpett, Roberts, and Wittes joined Anderson to discuss the capture of Maduro, the drug- and weapons-related charges that he and Flores face in New York, who exactly is running Venezuela now, and more.

Katherine Pompilio reported on Maduro's Jan. 5 hearing at the Southern District of New York courthouse, where Maduro and Flores were respectively arraigned on four and three counts related to drug trafficking and possession of destructive devices.

Isabel Arroyo shared the recently unsealed indictment against Maduro and Flores handed up by a grand jury in the Southern District of New York.

At the end of the year, the Lawfare team reflected in “The Year That Was” on the major national security topics of 2025, including the rise of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), domestic deployments and the legal questions they raise, novel interpretations of constitutional war powers, and a retrospective on the first full year of The Situation.

Wittes discussed three overarching trends in the trajectory of The Situation this past year, as well as why he chose to term the U.S.’s current crisis of democracy “The Situation” in late 2024.

On Lawfare Daily, Wittes, Anderson, Voss, Bower, Columbus, Orpett, Roberts, Kevin Frazier, Jakub Kraus, and Roger Parloff answered listener-submitted questions on everything from presidential immunity and artificial intelligence (AI) regulations to domestic military deployments.

On Scaling Laws, Frazier and Alan Rozenshtein sat down with Connecticut State Senator James Maroney and Neil Chilson to analyze how federal and state governments regulated—and did not regulate—artificial intelligence (AI) in 2025. The four also discussed their predictions for American AI policy in 2026.

On Rational Security, Wittes, Bower, and Tyler McBrien joined Anderson to discuss listener-submitted topics and object lessons, including parallels between the lead-up to the Iraq War and the recent escalation in the Caribbean, what sphere of influence Western Europe is in today, how to reverse growing tolerance for illiberal democracy, and whether Wittes’s martial arts challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin is still on.

On Lawfare Daily, Anderson, Voss, and Ariane Tabatabai discussed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2026. The trio evaluated key NDAA provisions as well as how Congress is reasserting itself vis-à-vis the Trump administration on matters related to national defense.

On Lawfare Live, Wittes sat down with Anderson, Bower, Feinberg, Columbus, and Pompilio to discuss the Supreme Court’s decision on President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in multiple U.S. cities, deposition testimony from the former special counsel who investigated President Trump,  Judge Howell's rejection of a challenge to the Trump administration's $100,000 H-1B visa application payment, developments in Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case, and more. You can access this conversation as a podcast episode here.

Arroyo shared the transcript of former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s closed-door deposition testimony on Dec. 17 before the House Judiciary Committee, which focused on the appropriateness of Smith’s criminal investigations into then-former President Trump.

Wittes considered a few reasons why House Republicans chose to share video of the tense private deposition with Smith.

Olivia Manes and Wittes revisited Judge Paula Xinis’s opinion ordering the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia one month ago, examining how it condenses and explains the government’s record of misconduct and lies in the case.

On Lawfare Daily, Bower, Columbus, and Feinberg discussed the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis this week. The discussion covered the information that was available about the incident, the federal government’s investigation of the shooting, and the legal frameworks governing state prosecutions of federal officers.

Chris Mirasola argued that President Trump’s Dec. 15 executive order categorizing fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction is not a valid justification for domestic military deployments. Mirasola explained why fentanyl fails to meet the statute enacting Section 282’s definition of a weapon of mass destruction, and suggested that even if it did, the use of the military would still be inappropriate.

Dan Maurer urged Congress to pass legislation clarifying what constitutes an unlawful order, then provided a series of suggested amendments to the Uniform Code of Military Justice aimed at achieving that clarity.

Emphasizing the importance of soldiers’ allegiance to constitutionally designated civilian authorities, Jason Smith argued that structured dissent and resignation—not discretionary, officer-initiated resistance—is the proper response to military orders that appear unlawful or anti-democratic.

On Lawfare Daily, Columbus, Quinta Jurecic, and Molly Reynolds joined Orpett to discuss the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The four discussed what Congress has done, what it hasn’t, and how we should understand the legacy of Jan. 6—so far.

On Lawfare Daily, Feinberg and Mary Clare Jalonick discussed Jalonick’s novel “Storm at the Capitol,” an oral history of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. The pair reflected on the lessons that can be learned from that historic day five years later.

Laura Field, author of “Furious Minds,” delivered her second lecture on the intellectual movement that has emerged around Trumpism, the factions competing to shape its ideology, and its cultural dynamics. The second lecture is now available here.

Michael Vandergriff warned that the State Department’s designation of four loosely organized “Antifa-linked” groups in Europe as foreign terrorist organizations creates an avenue for the Trump administration to characterize domestic political activity as linked to foreign terrorism, which could empower the executive to invoke broad counterterrorism authorities that are likely to raise civil liberties concerns.

On Lawfare Daily, Feinberg sat down with Tom Brzozowski to discuss recent changes initiated by the White House and Justice Department to domestic terrorism investigations and prosecutions, with a focus on how those changes’ resemble pre-Church Committee practices.

Annette Weinke reviewed Jacob Kushner’s “Look Away: A True Story of Murders, Bombings, and a Far-Right Campaign to Rid Germany of Immigrants,” which chronicles the rise of neo-Nazi terrorism in Germany and the role of Beate Zschäpe, a terrorist who was convicted in 2018 of murdering immigrants. Weinke called attention to Kushner’s emphasis on the unwillingness of German authorities to see the anti-immigrant murders for what they were and echoed Kushner’s warning that U.S. authorities should not ignore the dangers of white supremacist terrorism.

Peter Dombrowski and Simon Reich examined the role of lawfare in global politics and argued for the U.S. to replace the use of adversarial tactics in international law with a strategy of legal statecraft. The authors explored the implications of the legal statecraft approach in a case study from the South China Sea and made predictions about the U.S.’s future approach to international law.

Amichai Cohen and Yuval Shany examined the scandal embroiling Israel’s justice system that began with a notorious, video-documented incident of prisoner abuse at Sde Taiman improvised detention facility. Cohen and Shany explained how a military advocate general’s (MAG) choice to secretly authorize leaking the video—and then to cover up the leak—has fueled not only a battle between different ideological factions of the Israeli government to oversee the MAG’s investigation, but also a broader crisis for Israel’s rule of law.

McBrien shared President Trump’s executive order directing the withdrawal of all executive departments and agencies from over 60 international organizations and treaties.

Timothy Heath argued that excessive attention to China’s military hardware leads analysts to overestimate China’s ability to win a war with the United States. Heath drew a distinction between “political” and “warfighting” militaries and described how China’s insecure leadership, untested operational capabilities, and politicized military could reduce their chances of success in a direct military conflict.

Thomas Colley reviewed Daniel Silverman’s book, ​​“Seeing Is Disbelieving: Why People Believe Misinformation in War, and When They Know Better,” which examined the relationship between people’s proximity to war zones and their susceptibility to false information. Colley proposed that Silverman’s research can be applied to understanding misinformation patterns during other types of traumatic events, such as pandemics or natural disasters.

Elaine Korzak identified three core issues that hamper international progress on regulating commercial spyware and outlined, as well as how stakeholders can leverage existing policy levers and current political momentum to address those issues.

Susan Landau, Matt Blaze, and Steven M. Bellovin examined two ways the U.K. government’s  vague order requiring Apple to grant them access to encrypted cloud backups of U.K. citizens might operate in practice. The authors explained how both approaches could raise significant logistical problems and jeopardize the country’s cybersecurity, potentially enabling adversarial actors to gain access to sensitive information.

And on Scaling Laws, Frazier sat down with Ziad Reslan to talk about iterative deployment, OpenAI’s approach to testing and deploying its models. Reslan explained the rationale behind iterative deployment and discussed the extent to which it has worked as intended.

And that was the week that was.