The Principle-Policy Gap in American Tax Attitudes

Ajay K. Mehrotra reviewed Andrea Campbell’s new book, “Taxation and Resentment: Race, Party, and Class in American Tax Attitudes,” on the American public’s opinion on taxes and its impact on U.S. tax policies. Mehrotra unpacked how Campbell addresses provocative questions on taxation, her predictions on the future of tax policy, the implications of her findings, and more.

One of the great puzzles of the recent tax-cutting frenzy is why have so many everyday Americans agreed to this new policy prescription? Why aren’t the majority of taxpayers in favor of higher taxes on the rich? Why do they support limiting estate taxes, which affect only the wealthiest Americans, or cutting the corporate tax? Self-interest, after all, would suggest that the non-rich majority would favor higher taxes on the minority of uber-wealthy individuals and companies that have prospered in our New Gilded Age from growing inequality and greater concentrations of wealth.

In her fascinating new book, “Taxation and Resentment: Race, Party, and Class in American Tax Attitudes,” MIT political scientist Andrea Louise Campbell takes on that set of questions. More broadly, Campbell addresses the fundamental query: “Why is it so hard to raise taxes in the United States? Why is it so difficult to fund government?” As one of the country’s leading experts on public opinion and American politics, she naturally turns for answers to public attitudes toward taxes.

America Used to Own the Internet. Now It’s Running Scared.

Nikolas Guggenberger argued that the United States’s increasingly restrictive attitude toward data exports is a sign of geostrategic weakness. Guggenberger explained how this defensive approach implies a lack of confidence in U.S. technological dominance, reveals a self-perception of vulnerability, and suggests a lack of control over platforms and tech infrastructure.

For most of the internet era, the United States has preached the gospel that free data should flow across open borders for information with no barriers to digital trade. When the European Union limited the flow of personal data across the Atlantic, U.S. officials cried foul. What the EU presented as fundamental rights grounded in human dignity, U.S. officials dismissed as thinly veiled protectionism, compensating for European weakness. The U.S. position was clear: Free data flows are good, and anyone who disagrees is either afraid or falling behind.

Then TikTok emerged—and the U.S. blinked.

Pulling Reports, Playing Politics

In the latest edition of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, Joseph Stabile examined the CIA’s intelligence assessment of the role of women in white supremacist violence, one of the many reports agency leadership has retracted for not meeting the CIA’s analytical standards. Stabile argued that the assessment’s withdrawal has less to do with a failed quality assurance test and more to do with a seemingly ongoing effort on the part of the intelligence community to appease the Trump administration’s political agenda.

Among these assessments, the retraction of one product in particular, “Women Advancing White Racially and Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremist [REMVE] Radicalization and Recruitment,” carries several concerning implications. The withdrawal of the report belies observable evidence about transnational extremist threats, contributes to the politicization of the intelligence community, and raises alarm in light of the administration’s ongoing spread of white supremacist rhetoric.

Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, April 10: Benjamin Wittes sat down with Eric Columbus, Molly Roberts, and Roger Parloff to discuss the D.C. Circuit’s denial of Anthropic’s motion to stay its supply chain designation, Judge Paul Friedman‘s rejection of the Pentagon’s revised press rules, Judge Leo Sorokin’s rejection of the Department of Justice’s attempt to obtain Massachusetts voter records, and more.

As introduced in a recent Lawfare piece, the team at Lawfare has compiled a database of more than 350 immigration habeas cases in which the team identified government noncompliance with federal court orders. The publicly available database compiles hundreds of dockets and filings into an easily searchable format and will continue to be updated as new cases arise. Check out the database here.

The Jan. 6 Project now holds five years of Lawfare analysis related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the government’s response. Explore our pieces, podcasts, and document repositories here.

Lawfare’s Domestic Deployments Tracker maps federal non-disaster deployments of the military within U.S. borders. You can read more about the tracker here.

The Trials of the Trump Administration, our coverage of Trump’s executive actions and their legal challenges, now includes a page devoted to tracking the status of Alien Enemies Act cases in federal courts. Find the page here.

Lawfare’s work is only possible through the support of our readers. Support Lawfare through our ongoing Givebutter campaign.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Become a material supporter on Patreon. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.

White House AI Framework Proposes Industry-Friendly Legislation

Jakub Kraus unpacked the White House’s newly released national framework for artificial intelligence (AI) and what it means for the future of AI legislation, including the preemption of “cumbersome” state AI laws, limits on liability for developers, and an overall aversion to heavy federal regulations.

On March 20, the White House released a “comprehensive” national framework for artificial intelligence (AI), three months after calling for legislative recommendations on the technology in an executive order that sought to curb certain state AI laws. The framework has already received support from influential Republicans in Congress, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who will likely work closely with the White House to advance AI legislation aligned with the framework. On the other side of the aisle, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), who serves alongside Cruz as ranking member of the Senate’s commerce committee, said the framework “identifies key areas to address.” Thus, the framework offers a fairly clear sketch of which types of AI policy could become U.S. law before the 2026 midterm elections.

Non-State Entities and National Security

David S. Kris examined how the increased implementation of non-state entities in national security operations exposes a governance gap, in which private actors lack accountability while state controls risk overreach. Kris argued that the existing frameworks for national security governance are outdated and require new safeguards to balance power between states and non-state actors.

In March, the Defense Department designated Anthropic a supply chain risk, sparking legal controversy. The designation came after Anthropic prohibited the use of its artificial intelligence (AI) model, Claude, for “mass domestic surveillance” and for “fully autonomous weapons.”

Apart from its fascinating particulars, this ongoing dispute reveals a fundamental shift: Non-state entities (NSEs) of various kinds—corporations, universities, and individuals—are becoming much more important for national security. These entities are increasingly enabling, and sometimes limiting, defense and intelligence activity. Unsurprisingly, states are pushing back, treating NSEs as rival geopolitical actors, and using a wide array of carrots and sticks to dominate them. Both trends—NSEs limiting states, and states dominating NSEs—stress existing frameworks for national security governance. Those frameworks were not designed for the current geopolitical reality and would benefit from a systematic review.

American Diplomats to Fight Propaganda … on X

In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren discussed the current state of the U.S.’s ability to defend against propaganda and disinformation from foreign actors, Salt Typhoon’s recent attacks on U.S. intercept and surveillance systems, and more.

In the short term, reinstating the State Department’s counter-propaganda programs won’t do much to turn around America’s messaging problems. Disinformation and propaganda, however, is a game that America’s adversaries are playing for the long term.

The State Department has known about this problem for a while. In October 2025, Intelligence Online reported that the department was thinking about reactivating some of its counter-propaganda offices. At some point, we expect the U.S. will start, once again, to actively counter these campaigns in an organized, centralized, and more effective way.

Lawfare Daily: Scaling Laws: How To Use, Govern, And Lead On AI?: Rep. Nick Begich (R-Alaska) joined Kevin Frazier to unpack the current state of AI policy in Congress, Alaska’s role as a leader in developing AI infrastructure, the use of AI in Rep. Begich’s office operations, and more.

Lawfare Live: The Trials of the Trump Administration, April 10: At 4 pm ET on April 10, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Eric Columbus, Molly Roberts, and Roger Parloff to discuss the D.C. Circuit’s denial of Anthropic’s motion to stay its supply chain designation, an update in the legal challenge to the attempted deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and more.

As introduced in a recent Lawfare piece, the team at Lawfare has compiled a database of more than 350 immigration habeas cases in which the team identified government noncompliance with federal court orders. The publicly available database compiles hundreds of dockets and filings into an easily searchable format and will continue to be updated as new cases arise. Check out the database here.

The Jan. 6 Project now holds five years of Lawfare analysis related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the government’s response. Explore our pieces, podcasts, and document repositories here.

Lawfare’s Domestic Deployments Tracker maps federal non-disaster deployments of the military within U.S. borders. You can read more about the tracker here.

The Trials of the Trump Administration, our coverage of Trump’s executive actions and their legal challenges, now includes a page devoted to tracking the status of Alien Enemies Act cases in federal courts. Find the page here.

Lawfare’s work is only possible through the support of our readers. Support Lawfare through our ongoing Givebutter campaign.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Become a material supporter on Patreon. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.

The Code Is Not the Law: Why Claude’s Constitution Misleads

Lisa Klaassen and Ralph Schroeder explained why Anthropic’s novel “constitution” for its artificial intelligence (AI) model Claude fails to lend constitutional or moral legitimacy to Claude in practice. Klaassen and Schroeder criticized the document for anthropomorphizing the AI tool, borrowing the language of public law for a private product, and obscuring the contractual obligations that may usurp the AI’s stated principals.

What Anthropic offers is not constitutional legitimacy so much as constitutional style: the jargon of higher principles, founding authority, and ordered power without the corresponding institutional guarantees that make those ideas real. There is no external contestation, enforceable body of rights, or shared mechanism of rule. The company remains, in the end, the author, interpreter, and arbiter of the principles by which it claims to be bound. That is why the document is worth reading closely. It tells us less about the moral personality of Claude than about the kind of authority Anthropic believes it should be able to wield over systems that may soon become difficult for other institutions, and the public at large, to do without.

Grammarly Lawsuit Shows Existing Laws Can Combat Deepfakes

Jennifer E. Rothman argued that the ongoing lawsuit against Grammarly for its allegedly unauthorized use of journalists’ and scholars’ writing style does not necessitate new legislation to protect people’s likeness from abuse by AI. Rather, Rothman suggested that the legal dispute reveals how existing federal and state privacy laws can strengthen the plaintiffs’ case against the AI tool.

In early March, Wired reported that the AI-powered software Grammarly, which promises its software tool will help guide and generate your writing, offered users the ability to edit text “in the style” of identifiable journalists and scholars without their consent, and allegedly singling out specific people by name, thereby signaling their participation or endorsement of the service. What might once have seemed like a parlor trick has now become the basis for litigation, raising foundational questions about identity, attribution, and control in an age of generative-AI authorship. One of the key tools to combat such overreaching impersonations is the right of publicity—a legal doctrine that gives individuals control over the use of their name, likeness, voice, and other recognizable aspects of identity when used without authorization by others. The right is governed primarily by state law.

Lawfare Daily: Katherine Pompilio on Tracking Government Non-Compliance in Habeas Corpus Cases: Molly Roberts sat down with Katherine Pompilio to discuss Lawfare’s new interactive tracker documenting instances of government non-compliance with federal court orders in immigration habeas cases. The duo’s conversation addressed why Lawfare built this tracker, what the dataset reveals about holding the Trump administration accountable, the absence of institutional record-keeping, and more.

Rational Security: The “Deeply Iran-ic” Edition: Daniel Byman, Tyler McBrien, and Natalie K. Orpett joined Scott R. Anderson to unpack the week’s biggest Iran-focused news stories, including the newly announced two-week ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran, President Trump’s use of increasingly outlandish rhetoric, and the state of U.S. public opinion on the conflict.

Lawfare Live: The Trials of the Trump Administration, April 10: At 4 pm ET on April 10, Benjamin Wittes will sit down with Eric Columbus, Roger Parloff, and Roberts to discuss the D.C. Circuit’s denial of Anthropic’s motion to stay its supply chain designation, an update in the legal challenge to the attempted deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and more.

As introduced in a recent Lawfare piece, the team at Lawfare has compiled a database of more than 350 immigration habeas cases in which the team identified government noncompliance with federal court orders. The publicly available database compiles hundreds of dockets and filings into an easily searchable format and will continue to be updated as new cases arise. Check out the database here.

The Jan. 6 Project now holds five years of Lawfare analysis related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the government’s response. Explore our pieces, podcasts, and document repositories here.

Lawfare’s Domestic Deployments Tracker maps federal non-disaster deployments of the military within U.S. borders. You can read more about the tracker here.

The Trials of the Trump Administration, our coverage of Trump’s executive actions and their legal challenges, now includes a page devoted to tracking the status of Alien Enemies Act cases in federal courts. Find the page here.

Lawfare’s work is only possible through the support of our readers. Support Lawfare through our ongoing Givebutter campaign.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Become a material supporter on Patreon. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.

The AI Revolution in Cyber Conflict

Lennart Maschmeyer described how artificial intelligence (AI) is shaping cyber conflict unevenly amongst actors and operations of different scales. Maschmeyer argued that while AI can improve the efficiency of large offensive operations, AI adoption is more effectively implemented in defensive strategies carried out by lower-level actors.

In short, the era of AI-powered cyberattacks has arrived. Consequently, determining the likely impact on cyber conflict and conflict at large is both urgent and important. As one report on the Mexican government intrusion put it, “[f]or any cyber-defender continuing to deny the impact of AI on attacker efficiency, welcome to Exhibit A.” But here lies the crux: Efficiency does not equal effectiveness.

How AI Data Centers Are Shaping Politics

Lam Tran examined how the rapid development of AI data centers and its stress on local infrastructure is growing into a political flashpoint—which has led to bipartisan backlash and is likely to continue influencing election, legislative, and policy debates at state and national levels.

Across the United States, the rapid buildout of hyperscale data centers to support artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure is no longer just a technological or economic development, but a political flashpoint with intense bipartisan pushback from local communities. The scale of the backlash has escalated a sense of urgency to act from both ends of the ideological spectrum. President Trump’s recent deal with major technology companies, also included in the White House’s National AI Legislative Framework—aimed at protecting American consumers from rising electricity costs tied to the AI data center boom—and the Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act, introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to impose a nationwide pause on new data center construction, both show that the politics of AI infrastructure has reached the national stage.

Lawfare Daily: Yaqiu Wang on Surveillance, Censorship, and Emerging Technologies in the PRC: Michael Feinberg sat down with Yanqiu Wang to discuss the role of emerging technologies in China’s surveillance and censorship apparatus.

As introduced in a recent Lawfare piece, the team at Lawfare has compiled a database of more than 350 immigration habeas cases in which the team identified government noncompliance with federal court orders. The publicly available database compiles hundreds of dockets and filings into an easily searchable format and will continue to be updated as new cases arise. Check out the database here.

The Jan. 6 Project now holds five years of Lawfare analysis related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the government’s response. Explore our pieces, podcasts, and document repositories here.

Lawfare’s Domestic Deployments Tracker maps federal non-disaster deployments of the military within U.S. borders. You can read more about the tracker here.

The Trials of the Trump Administration, our coverage of Trump’s executive actions and their legal challenges, now includes a page devoted to tracking the status of Alien Enemies Act cases in federal courts. Find the page here.

Lawfare’s work is only possible through the support of our readers. Support Lawfare through our ongoing Givebutter campaign.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Become a material supporter on Patreon. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.

The Situation: But Wait! There’s More!

Katherine Pompilio and Benjamin Wittes examined the implications of 355 immigration habeas cases in which the Lawfare team identified instances of government noncompliance with federal court orders, and drew out some of the lessons learned from the project.

It is generally not the province of the federal judiciary’s case tracking to track interstitial outcomes within cases—like whether the government is violating court orders. We humbly submit that when a coordinate branch of government has violated court orders in no fewer than, and surely more than, 355 separate cases in district courts around the country over a brief period of time, some kind of institutional monitoring is called for. And as long as the federal judiciary isn’t doing it, Lawfare will.

The Prosecution of Smartmatic

Molly Roberts unpacked the Department of Justice’s current investigation into voting systems vendor Smartmatic over an alleged violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act following the 2020 presidential election. Roberts explained that the case fits into a larger narrative of vindictive and selective prosecutions under the Trump administration.

What has Smartmatic done to run afoul of the White House? In reality, nothing—apart from providing ballot-marking devices to Los Angeles County for use in the 2020 race for the White House. But in the wild world of MAGA election denialism, Smartmatic is responsible for the rigging of voting systems around the world, including in the United States to steal that contest from Trump. The success of the company’s new motion depends on whether it can convince a judge that prosecutors are targeting Smartmatic not because of the facts of the case but because of this fantasy.

Breaking Down OMB’s Growing Use of Category C

William Ford and Cerin Lindgrensavage described how the Trump administration has increasingly used “Category C” apportionments across a wider range of accounts than previous administrations to withhold or delay federal funds from agencies until the end of the fiscal year.

Since January 2025, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has led an aggressive campaign to withhold federal funds from agencies and programs the Trump administration disfavors. Central to this effort has been OMB’s vigorous use—and at times abuse—of its authority under the Antideficiency Act to apportion the funds Congress appropriates. OMB has used its apportionment authority to delay agency access to funds by designating funds as “unallocated,” conditioning the release of funds on OMB’s approval of detailed “spend plans,” and waiting “longer than in past administrations” to approve apportionments in the first place.

But there is another, less publicized, tactic that OMB has used to tighten its control over—and in some cases deny agencies access to—congressionally appropriated funds: Category C. A Category C action sets aside, for use in a future fiscal year, funds that Congress has made available across multiple fiscal years (multi-year money) or without fiscal-year limitation (no-year money). When OMB apportions funds in Category C, it blocks an agency from spending that money in the current year unless OMB provides otherwise in a new apportionment or in a binding apportionment footnote.

Lawfare Daily: Arne Westad on ‘The Coming Storm’: Michael Feinberg sat down with Arne Westad to discuss 19th and 20th century global power politics and how the lessons learned from those conflicts can inform a better understanding of the rise of China on the contemporary global stage.

As introduced in a recent Lawfare piece, the team at Lawfare has compiled a database of 355 immigration habeas cases in which the team identified government noncompliance with federal court orders. The publicly available database compiles hundreds of dockets and filings into an easily searchable format and will continue to be updated as new cases arise. Check out the database here.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our development manager position! This is a critical role focused on donor relationships and fundraising strategies to support Lawfare’s fundraising capacity. Learn more about the position and apply here.

The Jan. 6 Project now holds five years of Lawfare analysis related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the government’s response. Explore our pieces, podcasts, and document repositories here.

Lawfare’s Domestic Deployments Tracker maps federal non-disaster deployments of the military within U.S. borders. You can read more about the tracker here.

The Trials of the Trump Administration, our coverage of Trump’s executive actions and their legal challenges, now includes a page devoted to tracking the status of Alien Enemies Act cases in federal courts. Find the page here.

Lawfare’s work is only possible through the support of our readers. Support Lawfare through our ongoing Givebutter campaign.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Become a material supporter on Patreon. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.

Revenge of Rumsfeld’s Fourth Quadrant—Closing the Strait of Hormuz

Herb Lin argued that the Trump administration’s piecemeal response to the Iranian closure of the Strait of Hormuz reflects a failure to prepare for a well-known risk of the U.S.-Israeli joint strikes. Using the concept of “unknown knowns,” Lin described how a long-anticipated scenario and its consequences were not translated into actionable plans, leading to the delays and improvisation seen in the U.S.’s actions when the closure occurred.

The administration judged that preventing an Iranian nuclear breakout and destroying its conventional military capabilities justified accepting the risk of Hormuz’s closure. The strategic calculus leading to that judgment could have been defensible. What is not defensible is accepting that risk without maintaining operational readiness for the consequences. Risk acceptance demands contingency preparation; it does not excuse its absence.

Security Versus Interoperability: Real Tension or False Dichotomy?

Daji Landis explored the merits of technology companies’ claims of security risks to push back against interoperability antitrust regulations, and proposed an analytical framework to strike a better balance between security and antitrust interests.

The recent introduction of the Digital Markets Act in the European Union kicked off a series of proceedings involving mandated interoperation. As Apple described it, “The basic idea is that developers should have access to the same tools in iOS and iPadOS as Apple, in order to ensure a level playing field.” The company pushed back on these remedies in a public-facing document. Interoperability, Apple argued, “would put users at risk, requiring them to open their devices—and their most sensitive data—to companies with a track record of violating their privacy.” Similarly, in the U.S. context, Google stated that “[t]he [interoperation] requirement … effectively requir[es] Google to endorse stores that might be full of harmful content, ranging from malware that can scam or extort users to pornography and hate speech,” in reference to the requirement that Google allow third-party app stores.

Technology companies are right that the potential for harm exists. But does this mean regulators should drop their antitrust efforts because of the grave security harm that Google and Apple argue will result? Not necessarily.

Myth of the AI Oracle

In the latest edition of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay Series, Joel Brenner explained that despite the increasingly widespread implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) in the national security apparatus, AI may not be capable of adequately responding to intelligence surprises due to the limitations of data and the nature of AI reasoning.

AI is capable of perfect recall, produces excellent summaries of available information, makes situational assessments almost instantly, and accelerates decision-making. It does so by expanding human capability in three dimensions: speed, scale, and complexity. But there are severe practical limits on its ability to make predictive judgments in complex environments. There are also equally severe limitations on the ability of computers of any level of power to do so. Understanding the reasons for these limits makes it less likely that users of this technology (or rather, technologies) will delude themselves about what it can and cannot do.

Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, April 3: Benjamin Wittes sat down with Anna Bower, Roger Parloff, Katherine Pompilio, and Molly Roberts to discuss Lawfare’s new database tracking government non-compliance in immigration habeas corpus cases, the firing of Pam Bondi as attorney general, legal challenges to President Trump’s new elections integrity executive order, and more.

As introduced in a recent Lawfare piece, the team at Lawfare has compiled a database of 300 cases of government non-compliance with federal court orders in immigration habeas corpus cases. The publicly available database compiles hundreds of dockets and filings into an easily searchable format and will continue to be updated as new cases arise. Check out the database here.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our Summer 2026 internship! This is a critical role that supports Lawfare’s editorial team. Undergraduate students in their sophomore, junior, or senior year are encouraged to apply. Learn how to apply here.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our development manager position! This is a critical role focused on donor relationships and fundraising strategies to support Lawfare’s fundraising capacity. Learn more about the position and apply here.

The Jan. 6 Project now holds five years of Lawfare analysis related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the government’s response. Explore our pieces, podcasts, and document repositories here.

Lawfare’s Domestic Deployments Tracker maps federal non-disaster deployments of the military within U.S. borders. You can read more about the tracker here.

The Trials of the Trump Administration, our coverage of Trump’s executive actions and their legal challenges, now includes a page devoted to tracking the status of Alien Enemies Act cases in federal courts. Find the page here.

Lawfare’s work is only possible through the support of our readers. Support Lawfare through our ongoing Givebutter campaign.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Become a material supporter on Patreon. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.

Three Hundred Habeas Cases in Which the Government Has Defied Court Orders

Katherine Pompilio and Benjamin Wittes introduced a dataset of 300 immigration habeas corpus cases in which courts found that the federal government failed to comply with judicial orders. Pompilio and Wittes described examples of a range of violations—missed filings, delayed releases, unauthorized transfers, failure to return property—that have occurred since the early months of the second Trump administration.

Both in Minnesota and in New Jersey, judges have taken steps to identify the breadth of the pattern in orders that have garnered significant press. For example, U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz in Minnesota has identified 210 orders in 143 cases with which the government failed to comply, noting that “the court is not aware of another occasion in the history of the United States in which a federal court has had to threaten contempt—again and again and again—to force the United States government to comply with court orders.” And U.S. District Judge Michael E. Farbiarz in New Jersey ordered the government to identify its own failures of compliance, producing a much-noted list of more than 50 failures of compliance—which U.S. District Judge Christine P. O’Hearn later described as incomplete.

The data assembled here, however, is different—more comprehensive across time and judicial geography than prior lists, vastly wider in number of cases, and analyzed and categorized with a consistent methodology notwithstanding different judges’ differing language about and toleration for government compliance failures. Unlike prior efforts to identify compliance failure on the part of the government, we have also endeavored to make the data underlying this study available to anyone who wants to use it. The data visualization that accompanies this article allows users to search cases by jurisdiction and by violation type, to see the nature of the violation in any case, to access the underlying dockets for each case, and to download data for further analysis.

FISA Section 702 Isn’t Broken. Why Are We Still Trying to Fix It?

Glenn S. Gerstell described the current debate over reauthorizing Section 702 of FISA as the expiration deadline approaches, outlining the concerns of abuse and disagreements over the inclusion of warrant requirements and data purchases. Gerstell recommended that Congress should hold off on making drastic changes to the national security authority and reauthorize Section 702 before it is too late.

Congress took the time in 2024 to thoughtfully balance the concerns of civil libertarians and others about the FBI’s Section 702 search process, recognizing the need for searches to be conducted quickly and effectively in national security investigations. In the ensuing years, there’s been no serious indication of abuse, the statute has been complied with, and the number of searches dramatically reduced—and the intelligence community feels the balance is about right.

It’s fair to consider intervening developments such as new judicial decisions, and it’s important to have a robust debate about these issues, in part to ensure public trust in the intelligence community’s work. But absent a showing of major new problems or a convincing change in legal opinion, it makes sense to stick with the current statute and see whether after a few years of operations the reforms are working the way Congress intended.

Congress: Give the President Discretion to Remove the Cuba Embargo

Rachel Alpert argued that the U.S. embargo on Cuba is unusually constrained by statute, which hinders the president’s ability to adjust sanctions and act quickly in crisis and limits U.S. policy options in the event of political change in Cuba.

With talk of regime change in the background, the Trump administration has turned up pressure on Cuba in recent weeks. This follows recent developments in Venezuela, where the United States captured Nicolás Maduro in January and has since engaged with Delcy Rodríguez by exerting pressure while also relieving certain sanctions. Without congressional action, however, the president is much more constrained in the ability to change sanctions on Cuba than Venezuela. In contrast to Venezuela, where sanctions are a matter of executive discretion based on a national emergency that President Obama originally declared under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the legal basis for the Cuba embargo is more complicated. The statutory codification of the Cuba embargo limits U.S. options to change sanctions, even if such changes are aimed at promoting stability and nudging Cuba toward a more democratic future—the goal of the embargo in the first place. Congress should amend these outdated laws that hinder the president’s ability to act quickly in a crisis by increasing the president’s ability to provide sanctions relief when warranted.

Understanding Iran’s Strategy—Then, Now, and Next

J. Dana Stuster reviewed Vali Nasr’s book, “Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History,” on Iran’s history and shifts in its security environment over the past century. Stuster applied the lessons learned from Nasr’s narrative to better understand Tehran’s strategy in the current conflict between the U.S., Israel, and Iran.

Now that the war is occurring, this history should inform how U.S. officials read the regime’s signals. It’s possible that the U.S. negotiating team meeting with Iranian diplomats were too dilettantish to understand the deal Iran was offering; it also seems possible that the Trump administration was set on war even as it went through the motions of diplomacy. But going forward U.S. officials should understand why, regardless of whether it was negotiating in good faith or bad, the Iranian leadership sees the Trump administration’s outreach as just the latest feint by Washington. The new war has only reinforced Tehran’s lack of faith in negotiations and the hardliners’ position in the government.

America’s Next Top (Cyber) Model

In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren unpacked the race in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry to develop the best AI models to identify cyber vulnerabilities, how Russia has turned to a Starlink competitor in its ongoing war against Ukraine, and more.

Based on the reports we are currently seeing, Claude looks to be the model of the month when it comes to finding zero-days. In the short term, cyber organizations should have access to a version of Claude, sans its cyber guardrails. Security requirements can make it hard to bring in outside tools quickly, but this is a necessity. They should be dedicating resources to experimenting with it for both offensive and defensive purposes.

In the long term, the focus should not just be on Claude. Give it a month and America’s next top cyber model may come from OpenAI, Google, or even xAI. Governments should take a portfolio approach so that they can pick and choose the models best suited to specific tasks.

Lawfare Daily: The Privacy Law That’s Supposed To Be Protecting Us Online Turns 40: In Michael R. Dreeben’s opening remarks from the joint Lawfare and Georgetown Law event, “Installing Updates to ECPA,” Dreeben discussed how Congress and the Supreme Court have addressed online privacy issues, the evolution of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, its relation to Fourth Amendment privacy and search protections, and where the law stands now.

Scaling Laws: Abundance & AI? Nicholas Bagley Explains: Kevin Frazier sat down with Nicholas Bagley to discuss how the Abundance Agenda—a philosophy focused on solving artificial scarcity by lowering regulatory and cost barriers—fits with AI policy and what this nexus means for the future of legal education and governance.

Lawfare Live: The Trials of the Trump Administration, April 3: At 4 pm ET on April 3, Wittes sat down with Anna Bower, Molly Roberts, and Roger Parloff, to discuss the oral arguments at the Supreme Court in the birthright citizenship case, a judge’s order to pause the White House’s ballroom construction, possible legal challenges to Trump’s new executive order on elections, and more.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our Summer 2026 internship! This is a critical role that supports Lawfare’s editorial team. Undergraduate students in their sophomore, junior, or senior year are encouraged to apply. Learn how to apply here.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our development manager position! This is a critical role focused on donor relationships and fundraising strategies to support Lawfare’s fundraising capacity. Learn more about the position and apply here.

The Jan. 6 Project now holds five years of Lawfare analysis related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the government’s response. Explore our pieces, podcasts, and document repositories here.

Lawfare’s Domestic Deployments Tracker maps federal non-disaster deployments of the military within U.S. borders. You can read more about the tracker here.

The Trials of the Trump Administration, our coverage of Trump’s executive actions and their legal challenges, now includes a page devoted to tracking the status of Alien Enemies Act cases in federal courts. Find the page here.

Lawfare’s work is only possible through the support of our readers. Support Lawfare through our ongoing Givebutter campaign.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Become a material supporter on Patreon. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.

MSPB Strikes Down Tenure Protections for Immigration Judges

Peyton Baker, Nick Bednar, and Amy Wildermuth examined the reasoning and implications of a recent Merit Systems Protection Board decision that reclassified immigration court judges as inferior officers subject to at-will removal.

The board’s conclusion rests on two premises: First, immigration judges are inferior officers under the Appointments Clause. Second, their duties are sufficiently significant that Congress may not insulate them from at-will presidential removal. The first premise is correct, though the board’s reasoning is incomplete. The second is wrong. It misreads the Supreme Court’s precedents and overlooks the supervisory framework that has long justified tenure protections for inferior officers. If accepted, the board’s approach would strip tenure protections from a wide range of career employees.

End of the Sde Teiman Abuse Case: The IDF MAG Withdraws Indictments

Yuval Shany and Amichai Cohen unpacked the Israeli Defense Forces’ military advocate general’s decision to withdraw charges against soldiers accused of abusing a Palestinian detainee at Sde Teiman. Shany and Cohen argued that the case and its resolution may indirectly endorse problematic right-wing narratives in Israel and further weaken perceptions of accountability within the Israeli military.

The serious abuse of detainees in Sde Teiman was initially handled strongly by the military police, but the strong political backlash has pushed the military legal system into a tailspin, resulting in professional misconduct and a thwarted prosecution. Cumulatively, the whole affair marks a low point for the rule of law in Israel. In order to bounce back, the legal system, including the military legal system, should find a way to assert its authority vis-a-vis the political environment—a development that appears unlikely in today’s climate of increased hostility between the legal and political universes in Israel.

What Is Trump’s ‘Election Integrity’ Order Even Trying to Achieve?

Molly Roberts and Loren Voss examined how President Trump’s new executive order would achieve its purported goal of heightening restrictions on mail-in ballots by expanding federal control over state-run elections. The duo explained that the order likely runs afoul of the Constitution and is the newest step taken by Trump to call into question the integrity of U.S. elections.

President Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order seeking to create federal lists of eligible voters that could then be used to restrict mail-in ballots. “I believe it’s foolproof,” he said. “And maybe it’ll be tested. Maybe it won’t.”

The order isn’t foolproof: The Constitution explicitly gives the states and Congress, not the White House, power over elections. Also, it will be tested: Already, top elections officials in Arizona and Oregon have vowed to take the White House to court over the directives, and so have a collection of voting groups. One or more are almost certain to have the standing necessary to challenge the measure in court.

But whether or not the president will ultimately lose in court, it’s worth trying to understand what the executive order appears to be trying to achieve, the precise steps the order purports to take, and the enforcement mechanisms by which it purports to take them.

Lawfare Daily: Beyond the Headlines: A History of U.S.-Iran Relations: Ariane Tabatabai sat down with John Ghazvinian to discuss the key events in the history of U.S.-Iran relations that have shaped the countries’ relationship today, their perceptions of one another, and more.

Rational Security: The “Chicken Sh*t Bingo” Edition: Anna Bower, Kate Klonick, and Kevin Frazier joined Scott R. Anderson to unpack a recent ruling in Anthropic’s lawsuit against the Department of Defense for its designation of the artificial intelligence (AI) company as a supply chain risk, the the global supply chain effects of Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, NASA’s Artemis II mission to orbit the moon, and more.

Lawfare Live: The Trials of the Trump Administration, April 3: At 4 pm ET on April 3, Benjamin Wittes will sit down with Roger Parloff, Bower, and Roberts to discuss the oral arguments at the Supreme Court in the birthright citizenship case, a judge’s order to pause the White House’s ballroom construction, possible legal challenges to Trump’s new executive order on elections, and more.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our Summer 2026 internship! This is a critical role that supports Lawfare’s editorial team. Undergraduate students in their sophomore, junior, or senior year are encouraged to apply. Learn how to apply here.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our development manager position! This is a critical role focused on donor relationships and fundraising strategies to support Lawfare’s fundraising capacity. Learn more about the position and apply here.

The Jan. 6 Project now holds five years of Lawfare analysis related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the government’s response. Explore our pieces, podcasts, and document repositories here.

Lawfare’s Domestic Deployments Tracker maps federal non-disaster deployments of the military within U.S. borders. You can read more about the tracker here.

The Trials of the Trump Administration, our coverage of Trump’s executive actions and their legal challenges, now includes a page devoted to tracking the status of Alien Enemies Act cases in federal courts. Find the page here.

Lawfare’s work is only possible through the support of our readers. Support Lawfare through our ongoing Givebutter campaign.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Become a material supporter on Patreon. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.

The State Department’s X Directive and the End of Platform Independence

Kate Klonick unpacked how a directive from the Department of State instructing U.S. embassies to use Elon Musk’s social platform, X, in coordinated campaigns to counter foreign propaganda is indicative of a broader shift in the relationship between government and tech companies towards the normalization of social media as a tool of statecraft.

The idea that the State Department would issue a formal cable endorsing a specific social media platform by name as a tool of U.S. diplomacy—let alone military psychological operations—would have been, until recently, almost unthinkable. But the structural transformation that has taken place over years has made the news feel almost ordinary today. It was a transformation that dismantled, piece by piece, the legal accountability, operational independence and institutional resilience that once made such a cozy relationship between government and platforms inconceivable.

The Perils of Privatized Cyberwarfare

Ronald J. Deibert explored the broader national security implications of allowing private companies to conduct offensive cyber operations on behalf of the U.S. government. Deibert explained that this shift towards privatization could create cybersecurity risks, complicate oversight mechanisms, provoke unpredictable countermeasures, undermine international norms, and more.

This piece argues that an authorization permitting the private sector to conduct OCOs would have dire consequences. Enlisting the private sector to undertake OCOs will complicate oversight, empower a dubious and corrupt industry, create counterintelligence risks, fuel a cyber arms race that could lead to system-wide instability, make critical infrastructure insecure, provoke countermeasures against perpetrators, and put civilians at risk. Whereas previous U.S. administrations have sought to contain these dynamics through law and policies, the Trump administration would instead facilitate them. Several U.S. adversaries, including Russia, China, and Iran, and at least one ally, the United Arab Emirates, already outsource offensive cyber operations to private firms. With the United States following in their path, it would normalize private-sector OCOs internationally, emboldening authoritarian and illiberal governments to undertake even more OCOs, and multiplying their negative implications on U.S. security.

Fulton County’s Uphill Battle for Ballots

Anna Bower examined how Judge J.P. Boulee may rule on Fulton County’s motion to compel the return of its 2020 presidential election ballots from the FBI after listening to arguments in a day-long evidentiary hearing.

On March 27, U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee held a day-long evidentiary hearing in Pitts v. United States, a case in which Fulton County officials are seeking the return of the county’s 2020 election materials, which were seized by the FBI earlier this year.

The hearing offered the clearest indication yet of how Judge Boulee might rule on Fulton County’s motion for return of property. Although the judge pressed both sides with pointed questions during the proceeding, he appeared skeptical that the county has made a sufficient showing to justify its requested relief.

Peter Beck shared Trump’s new executive order restricting mail-in ballots entitled, “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections,” which purports to expand federal control over state-run elections in order to crack down on election fraud.

Lawfare Daily: Joel Braunold on West Bank Violence and Israel’s New Lebanon Offensive: Scott R. Anderson sat down with Joel Braunold to discuss the latest developments in the Israeli-Palestine conflict, including a spike in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, the new Israeli military offensive in southern Lebanon, its implications for Israel’s parliamentary elections later this year, the impacts from the ongoing conflict in Iran, and more.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our Summer 2026 internship! This is a critical role that supports Lawfare’s editorial team. Undergraduate students in their sophomore, junior, or senior year are encouraged to apply. Learn how to apply here.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our development manager position! This is a critical role focused on donor relationships and fundraising strategies to support Lawfare’s fundraising capacity. Learn more about the position and apply here.

The Jan. 6 Project now holds five years of Lawfare analysis related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the government’s response. Explore our pieces, podcasts, and document repositories here.

Lawfare’s Domestic Deployments Tracker maps federal non-disaster deployments of the military within U.S. borders. You can read more about the tracker here.

The Trials of the Trump Administration, our coverage of Trump’s executive actions and their legal challenges, now includes a page devoted to tracking the status of Alien Enemies Act cases in federal courts. Find the page here.

Lawfare’s work is only possible through the support of our readers. Support Lawfare through our ongoing Givebutter campaign.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Become a material supporter on Patreon. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.

Hearing Dispatch: A Catch-22 for the Pentagon Press Corps

Molly Roberts unpacked the arguments made in a March 31 hearing over whether the Department of Defense complied with an earlier ruling striking down the Pentagon’s press access restrictions. The hearing focused on a new dispute between the government and the New York Times over the Pentagon’s revised policy.

“We used more words to say the same thing and to foreclose creative misinterpretations,” Cmdr. Tim Parlatore, special adviser to the self-styled Secretary of War, said in an interview, to, of all outlets, the New York Times. (The Defense Department also added insult to reinjury by closing the Correspondents Corridor that has for years served as a workspace for credentialed journalists covering the military—even physically tearing down the old signage designating the area. Now, reporters can’t enter the main building unescorted, and they will conduct future business in an as-yet-unfinished annex.)

Typically, the government doesn’t admit it’s contravening a judge’s order to the very entity that took it to court to secure that order to start with. But this administration, again and again, proves itself incorrigibly, and often illegally or unconstitutionally, atypical. Which is what brings your correspondent, along with many of the correspondents exiled from their eponymous corridor, to the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse at 9:30am on a Monday morning to watch Judge Friedman cheerfully preside over the hearing of the Times’s motion to compel compliance.

Syria: It Is Time to Complete the Work on Sanctions Relief

Ivonne Duarte-Peña argued that despite major sanctions relief, Syria remains economically isolated because lingering restrictions and weak financial governance deter banks and investors. Duarte-Peña suggested that Syria should fully reconnect to the global economy by implementing reforms to meet international financial and anti-corruption standards.

The recent news that the Central Bank of Syria has “completed the procedures for settling [its] banking relationship with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and reopening [its] account with them” is a major step forward that shows progress is possible. But the task of reintegrating Syria into the global economy must continue. This involves not only the Syrian government but also several international actors in the private and public sectors with the institutional wherewithal and expertise to back Syria’s work toward financial inclusion. Coordination and coherence among these actors will be crucial in the months ahead to ensure that efforts are timely and efficient, for the sake of the Syrian economy and of all Syrians.

Lawfare Daily: What’s Influencing Politics Online? X’s Algorithm, Creators, and the New Persuasion Machine: Renée DiResta sat down with Nathaniel Lubin and Philine Widmer to discuss how a platform’s algorithms and most trusted creators work together to shape what users see online and how they interpret it, the implications of this online influence, the future of political influence in an increasingly digital environment, and more.

Scaling Laws: How To Use, Govern, And Lead On AI?: Rep. Nick Begich (R-Alaska) joined Kevin Frazier to unpack the current state of artificial intelligence (AI) policy in Congress, Alaska’s role as a leader in developing AI infrastructure, the use of AI in Rep. Begich’s office operations, and more.

Lawfare No Bull: Senate Intelligence Committee Holds 2026 Worldwide Threats Hearing: Marissa Wang shared the audio from the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2026 Worldwide Threats hearing, in which Tulsi Gabbard, John Ratcliffe, Kash Patel, William Hartman, and James Adams testified about critical intelligence issues facing the U.S. in the coming year, including the ongoing war in Iran, the Russia-Ukraine War, cyberthreats posed by China and Russia, foreign threats to U.S. elections, and more.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our Summer 2026 internship! This is a critical role that supports Lawfare’s editorial team. Undergraduate students in their sophomore, junior, or senior year are encouraged to apply. Learn how to apply here.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our development manager position! This is a critical role focused on donor relationships and fundraising strategies to support Lawfare’s fundraising capacity. Learn more about the position and apply here.

The Jan. 6 Project now holds five years of Lawfare analysis related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the government’s response. Explore our pieces, podcasts, and document repositories here.

Lawfare’s Domestic Deployments Tracker maps federal non-disaster deployments of the military within U.S. borders. You can read more about the tracker here.

The Trials of the Trump Administration, our coverage of Trump’s executive actions and their legal challenges, now includes a page devoted to tracking the status of Alien Enemies Act cases in federal courts. Find the page here.

Lawfare’s work is only possible through the support of our readers. Support Lawfare through our ongoing Givebutter campaign.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Become a material supporter on Patreon. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.

The Trump Administration Comes for State Voter Rolls

Eric Columbus argued that the Department of Justice’s sweeping demand for state voter rolls lacks legal footing and is unlikely to succeed under judicial scrutiny. Columbus explained that the effort is likely less about enforcing election law than about casting doubt on election integrity—regardless of the results in court.

Since last May, the Department of Justice has been trying to acquire the voter rolls of every state and the District of Columbia. Forty-eight states have received requests—all but North Dakota (which does not require voter registration) and North Carolina (whose voter registration list the department obtained access to via separate litigation). The Justice Department has sued 29 of those states and D.C. when they refused to hand over the records. The department claims it needs and is entitled to the data to ensure that states are properly maintaining their rolls. Courts, so far, aren’t buying it. And there really isn’t much precedent for this.

So why is the Trump administration doing this?

AI and Privilege After United States v. Heppner

Justin Curl and Mihir Kshirsagar unpacked how the decision in United States v. Heppner will affect access to legal resources driven by artificial intelligence (AI). The duo examined how the court’s reasoning risks undermining attorney-client privilege, limits access to legal protections depending on a user’s resources, and discourages beneficial uses of AI in legal preparation.

Does a defendant who used an AI translator retain attorney-client privilege?

Not according to a recent decision from a judge in the Southern District of New York. On Feb. 17, Judge Jed Rakoff issued a written opinion in United States v. Heppner. This first-of-its-kind ruling found that documents created by a criminal defendant using Claude are not protected by attorney-client privilege or the work product doctrine.

While the ruling is correct in its conclusion, Judge Rakoff’s reasoning is problematic and goes beyond what was needed to resolve the case. Because he rested his analysis of a defendant’s right to prepare a defense on a company’s terms of service, Rakoff’s ruling has implications for how AI tools influence the accessibility of legal services.

Lawfare Live: The Trials of the Trump Administration, March 27: Benjamin Wittes sat down with Anna Bower, Molly Roberts, and Roger Parloff to discuss Judge Rita Lin’s order granting a preliminary injunction in Anthropic’s suit challenging its supply chain designation, a hearing in Fulton County’s suit over the FBI seizure of 2020 presidential election ballots from an election office in Georgia, a new push from the Trump administration to investigate New York Attorney General Letitia James, and more.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our Summer 2026 internship! This is a critical role that supports Lawfare’s editorial team. Undergraduate students in their sophomore, junior, or senior year are encouraged to apply. Learn how to apply here.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our development manager position! This is a critical role focused on donor relationships and fundraising strategies to support Lawfare’s fundraising capacity. Learn more about the position and apply here.

The Jan. 6 Project now holds five years of Lawfare analysis related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the government’s response. Explore our pieces, podcasts, and document repositories here.

Lawfare’s Domestic Deployments Tracker maps federal non-disaster deployments of the military within U.S. borders. You can read more about the tracker here.

The Trials of the Trump Administration, our coverage of Trump’s executive actions and their legal challenges, now includes a page devoted to tracking the status of Alien Enemies Act cases in federal courts. Find the page here.

Lawfare’s work is only possible through the support of our readers. Support Lawfare through our ongoing Givebutter campaign.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Become a material supporter on Patreon. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.

The Situation: Dominance Play

Benjamin Wittes examined the ongoing lawsuit over the Department of Defense’s designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk in context of the broader effort by the Trump administration to punish defiance, as seen in the cases against Harvard University, James Comey, Letitia James, Jerome Powell, and more.

The case isn’t really about anything more than that. The underlying issue is simply the lack of submission. And the point is not to win. The point is to emphasize to the next recalcitrant entity, person, company, or institution that it will have to defend itself if it asserts its rights—because the government will relentlessly come at those who don’t submit. It will come at the little guy. It will come just as relentlessly at the multibillion dollar corporation or the university with the endowment the size of the GDP of a small country. If you’re the little guy, they will keep coming until some court lets them send you to Liberia. And if you’re a frontier AI company with the temerity not to submit, they will use the opportunity of destroying you to create opportunities for businesses associated with friendlier billionaires who know to stay on side.

The key is to keep pushing—to raise the cost to everyone of defiance.

Sam Bankman-Fried and the Lies We Tell Ourselves

Peter Beck reviewed David Morris’s new book, “Stealing the Future,” which links Sam Bankman-Fired’s infamous crypto fraud case to the moral logic of effective altruism. Beck problematized the author’s focus on a single ideology, suggesting instead that Bankman-Fried’s downfall reflects a broader tendency—common in Silicon Valley and beyond—to justify wrongdoing through self-serving narratives.

In the end, the greatest moral of Morris’s tale may lie not so much in the ills of effective altruism as in the powerful appeal of believing our own lies. Bankman-Fried is likely as much a Republican, deregulation stalwart today as he was an effective altruist icon and the movement’s super hero donor before. He may have believed that his fraud at FTX was morally justified by effective altruism’s tenets, but effective altruism may also have been, as with so many justifications for criminal acts, a convenient facade. Tying Bankman-Fried’s crimes solely to the movement ignores the agency of a man who appears willing to contort his beliefs for a pardon today. Unfortunately, that susceptibility to one’s own often self-serving moral narratives is not unique to effective altruists, Silicon Valley, or Bankman-Fried.

Kodak to Deepfakes: Publicity Rights and Abuse of Our Likenesses

Michael Goodyear argued that existing and proposed anti-deepfake laws fall short and that the longstanding right of publicity may offer a better solution. Goodyear explained that treating such legislation as an intellectual property right could bypass defenses based in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, enable platform liability, and address both economic and dignitary harms arising from the misuse of people’s likeness.

While the world of AI-generated deepfakes and the internet would have been unimaginable to Warren and Brandeis, their concerns about the combined dangers of reproductive and sharing technologies were prescient. The parallels between the Kodak camera and deepfakes offer a valuable historical model for responding to the current moment. By navigating platform liability and dignitary harms, the right of publicity may offer the best hope for meaningfully curtailing deepfakes.

FBI Says Why Get a Warrant When You Have Kash

In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren unpacked the FBI’s confirmation that it has started purchasing Americans’ location data for national security purposes, the Federal Communications Commission’s push for domestic production of consumer router models, the Trump administration’s developing cyber strategy approach, and more.

In a Senate hearing last week, FBI director Kash Patel said the bureau is buying data that can be used to track Americans. The risk that the federal government could abuse purchased data was previously theoretical but now feels more immediate. Lawmakers should act to protect Americans’ civil liberties.

Lawfare Daily: How Two Intelligence Community Veterans View the Iran Conflict, with Chip Usher and Aaron Faust: William “Chip” Usher and Aaron Faust joined Scott R. Anderson to unpack the national security threats presented in Iran from the perspective of two long-time members of the intelligence community. Their discussion covered the potential challenges of large-scale military operations against Iran, where the Trump administration may take the conflict from here, and what Iran may do to respond.

Scaling Laws: Should AI Laws Be Subject To A Higher Standard? The Right to Compute with Kendall Cotton: Kevin Frazier sat down with Kendall Cotton to discuss Montana’s groundbreaking Right to Compute Act, a piece of legislation that is part of a larger goal for the state to protect access to artificial intelligence (AI) and related technologies. The duo discussed the history and reach of the act, why other states may want to pass similar legislation, and more.

Lawfare Live:The Trials of the Trump Administration, March 27: At 4 pm ET on March 27, Wittes sat down with Anna Bower and Roger Parloff to discuss the March 27 hearing where the government must defend its search warrant used to seize 2020 presidential election ballots from Fulton County, Minnesota’s lawsuit against the Trump administration for access to evidence related to three shootings by federal agents in January, and more.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our Summer 2026 internship! This is a critical role that supports Lawfare’s editorial team. Undergraduate students in their sophomore, junior, or senior year are encouraged to apply. Learn how to apply here.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our development manager position! This is a critical role focused on donor relationships and fundraising strategies to support Lawfare’s fundraising capacity. Learn more about the position and apply here.

The Jan. 6 Project now holds five years of Lawfare analysis related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the government’s response. Explore our pieces, podcasts, and document repositories here.

Lawfare’s Domestic Deployments Tracker maps federal non-disaster deployments of the military within U.S. borders. You can read more about the tracker here.

The Trials of the Trump Administration, our coverage of Trump’s executive actions and their legal challenges, now includes a page devoted to tracking the status of Alien Enemies Act cases in federal courts. Find the page here.

Lawfare’s work is only possible through the support of our readers. Support Lawfare through our ongoing Givebutter campaign.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Become a material supporter on Patreon. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.

The Transatlantic Relationship You Knew Is Gone

John Drennan and Ariane Tabatabai examined how decades of U.S. policy reversals across administrations have damaged NATO allies’ perceptions of U.S. reliability and global order. The duo cautioned that it may be impossible to reset U.S. foreign policy even with a new administration, and that a weakening alliance could harm U.S. and European security.

In recent years, U.S. policymakers have often treated credibility with allies as renewable: A new administration recommits to alliances after coming to power, and trust is therefore restored. But expectations no longer reset after an election. Instead, a pattern of repeated U.S. policy reversals across administrations in recent decades (accelerated since the first Trump administration) has altered how allies interpret U.S. politics. Now, allies are coming to view U.S. political volatility as a structural condition, not a one-off aberration. Instead of waiting for stability, U.S. allies now must plan for its absence.

Does Product Liability Offer a Route Around Section 230?

Jonathan G. Cedarbaum explained how plaintiffs in cases attempting to hold social media platforms accountable are using product liability law as a novel strategy to circumvent defenses based in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Cedarbaum discussed how the long-term success of this argument depends on how the courts ultimately reconcile Section 230, product liability doctrine, and First Amendment protections.

The KGM verdict has made headlines, and rightly so. But it is only one of dozens of cases in which plaintiffs in recent years have made use of a novel legal theory—product liability—and newly developed evidence—about the addictive nature of social media use and the harms that may flow from it—in an attempt to impose costs on social media companies for their dangerous offerings. For these plaintiffs to succeed, courts will have to rethink not just the scope of Section 230 but also basic elements of product liability law and the proper way to apply the First Amendment to many online activities. The conflicting answers courts have given so far suggest that it will be several years before we know whether this strategy for holding social media companies to account will prove effective.

Lawfare Daily: The Military Domestic Deployment Legal Framework: Are the Laws Fit for Purpose?: Linda Singh and Chris Mirasola joined Loren Voss to discuss the legal constraints of the Posse Comitatus Act when applied to domestic military deployments, the implications of expanding such deployments for civil-military relations, key issues to watch out for in the future of military deployments, and more.

Rational Security: The “Authentic Flavors, Real Fruit” Edition: Scott R. Anderson sat down with Tyler McBrien, Molly Roberts, and Renée DiResta to unpack the verdict against Meta for its algorithms causing harm to children’s mental health and facilitating child sexual exploitation, the SAVE America Act, and the rise of open source intelligence and growth of online prediction markets.

Lawfare Live:The Trials of the Trump Administration, March 27: At 4 pm ET on March 27, Benjamin Wittes will sit down with Anna Bower and Roger Parloff to discuss the March 27 hearing where the government must defend its search warrant used to seize 2020 presidential election ballots from Fulton County, Minnesota’s lawsuit against the Trump administration for access to evidence related to three shootings by federal agents in January, and more.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our Summer 2026 internship! This is a critical role that supports Lawfare’s editorial team. Undergraduate students in their sophomore, junior, or senior year are encouraged to apply. Learn how to apply here.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our development manager position! This is a critical role focused on donor relationships and fundraising strategies to support Lawfare’s fundraising capacity. Learn more about the position and apply here.

The Jan. 6 Project now holds five years of Lawfare analysis related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the government’s response. Explore our pieces, podcasts, and document repositories here.

Lawfare’s Domestic Deployments Tracker maps federal non-disaster deployments of the military within U.S. borders. You can read more about the tracker here.

The Trials of the Trump Administration, our coverage of Trump’s executive actions and their legal challenges, now includes a page devoted to tracking the status of Alien Enemies Act cases in federal courts. Find the page here.

Lawfare’s work is only possible through the support of our readers. Support Lawfare through our ongoing Givebutter campaign.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Become a material supporter on Patreon. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.

Fulton County’s Battle for Ballots: A Primer

Anna Bower unpacked the government’s arguments for the warrant to search and seize hundreds of boxes containing 2020 presidential election ballots from the Fulton County election office in Georgia. Bower argued that the seizure omitted exculpatory evidence and rests on weak legal theories and fraud claims, raising broader concerns of institutional integrity in the U.S. justice system.

The affidavit supporting the Fulton County search warrant does not hold up under scrutiny. Its theory of probable cause relies on allegations that are legally uncertain, factually unsupported, or directly contradicted by prior investigations—investigations whose exculpatory findings it consistently omits. These and other deficiencies will be tested at the evidentiary hearing on Friday, as Judge Boulee considers whether they are sufficient to satisfy Rule 41(g)’s demanding “callous disregard” standard. That determination may hinge in part on whether the judge requires Evans to testify, potentially shedding light on what he knew—or should have known—when he swore out the affidavit supporting the warrant.

But what unfolds in Judge Boulee’s courtroom on Friday cannot address the deeper institutional questions this episode raises. A ruling returning the ballots would still leave unanswered how a warrant so fundamentally flawed—built on stretched legal theories and cherry-picked facts—cleared internal Justice Department review and received a magistrate’s approval to authorize the extraordinary seizure of ballots from more than half a million voters in a state whose election the president had sought to overturn.

Potential Partners on the Ground in Iran

In the latest edition of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, Ido Levy assessed whether a U.S.-Israeli alliance with Iranian Kurds serving as partners inside Iran would effectively undermine the Islamic regime. Levy wrote that the Iranian Kurdish armed groups’ limited capabilities, regional constraints, and the need for sustained military commitment makes this a risky, long-term proposition rather than a quick solution.

Even if they do begin operating in Iran, Iranian Kurdish groups are not likely to conduct significant operations outside the Kurdistan region. An armed uprising to overthrow the regime in other areas could certainly benefit from a Kurdish rebellion, pulling regime attention to multiple fronts, but the Kurdish groups will most likely not do it by themselves. They might cooperate with other opposition groups in this endeavor, sharing intelligence and know-how with those seeking to rebel. But it is not certain this would happen, and there are opposition groups concerned that a Kurdish offensive could encourage secessionism and lead to civil war or a breakup of Iran.

Ban Pay-to-Play National Security Approvals

Ashley Deeks and Kristen Eichensehr argued that Congress should pass legislation to prevent the government from demanding additional payments from private companies to secure national security deals or contracts. Deeks and Eichensehr explained that these arrangements distort decision-making, create corruption risks, and undermine national security and economic fairness principles.

But the current administration’s move to demand payments for national security-related approvals is unique to it. These payment demands are among the most pernicious and most dangerous features of the NCE. Although we think that trying to foster national security by relying on corporate actors raises certain risks to public law values generally, the payment demands do something different. They turn national security into what Senator Warner called a “tradable item.”

White House Takes Aim at Biased AI in Government, Leaves Key Gaps

Merve Hickok unpacked the goals and shortcomings of the Office of Management and Budget’s newly released memo on public trust in artificial intelligence (AI), which Hickock explained leaves gaps in enforcement that risk entrenching biased and unreliable AI systems across federal agencies.

More and more agencies will use LLMs for their mission operations. Each deployment will impact the organizational efficiency, quality, and reliability of public services. The Public Trust AI Memo is a good starting point for demanding these systems are trustworthy and free of bias. However, the Public Trust AI Memo fails to put in controls to ensure the outcomes actually reflect the aspiration. It enables flexibility in the information vendors should provide, and allows them to self-evaluate their performance. These shortcomings will impact how effectively the new requirements protect Americans’ rights. More worryingly, the Trump administration provides a free pass to existing LLM contracts and is hesitant to hold current vendors accountable.

Lawfare Daily: CPPA’s Tom Kemp on Data Brokers, Privacy, and State Enforcement: Tom Kemp joined Justin Sherman to discuss California’s new Delete Request and Opt-out Platform system, which is part of the state’s ongoing efforts to ensure residents can effectuate their privacy rights. The duo’s conversation also covered interstate collaboration on data privacy issues, the data broker industry, the risk of foreign adversaries accessing Americans’ personal data, and more.

Lawfare Live: A Hearing on Anthropic’s Preliminary Injunction Motion: On March 24, Wittes sat down with Kate Klonick, Roger Parloff, and Molly Roberts to debrief a preliminary injunction hearing in Anthropic’s ongoing lawsuit challenging the Department of Defense’s designation of the AI company as a supply chain risk.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our Summer 2026 internship! This is a critical role that supports Lawfare’s editorial team. Undergraduate students in their sophomore, junior, or senior year are encouraged to apply. Learn how to apply here.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our development manager position! This is a critical role focused on donor relationships and fundraising strategies to support Lawfare’s fundraising capacity. Learn more about the position and apply here.

The Jan. 6 Project now holds five years of Lawfare analysis related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the government’s response. Explore our pieces, podcasts, and document repositories here.

Lawfare’s Domestic Deployments Tracker maps federal non-disaster deployments of the military within U.S. borders. You can read more about the tracker here.

The Trials of the Trump Administration, our coverage of Trump’s executive actions and their legal challenges, now includes a page devoted to tracking the status of Alien Enemies Act cases in federal courts. Find the page here.

Lawfare’s work is only possible through the support of our readers. Support Lawfare through our ongoing Givebutter campaign.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Become a material supporter on Patreon. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.

The Situation: The Enduring Truths of the Mueller Report

Benjamin Wittes explored four important truths established by the Mueller Report’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Wittes argued that these findings remain essential for understanding President Trump’s behavior and second term as president, even if the report never produced legal accountability.

Here I would like to do something a little bit different and talk about the text of the Mueller Report, the more-than-400-page document that resulted from Mueller’s investigation. The report itself has gotten strangely lost in the discussions of Mueller’s virtues, the hopes people invested in him, and his confrontation with Trump. And it’s easy to understand why: Trump won. The ship sailed. For all the votive candles and Mueller Time shirts and memes, the investigation never did generate accountability for Trump. Indeed, while Trump was later impeached twice, neither time was it over allegations that Mueller investigated.

And yet, the Mueller Report contains a number of important truths—enduring truths—about Trump, about the people around him, and about The Situation more generally. These are truths one simply cannot doubt, however much smoke gets thrown up around them, if one bothers to spend quality time with the document.

The Europeanization of Deterrence

Ariane Tabatabai and John Drennan explained how French President Emmanuel Macron’s push for a Europe-based nuclear deterrence strategy reflects growing doubts from allies about the U.S.’s reliability and an increasing desire for greater strategic autonomy.

Although European allies have not yet concluded that the U.S. nuclear umbrella needs wholesale replacement, they are deciding how much autonomy to seek amid structural shifts in the transatlantic relationship. In a scenario where European allies look to gradually disentangle their security from Washington, they may look to several models beyond the one proposed by Macron to decrease their reliance on U.S. extended deterrence, especially if France fails to convince them of the credibility of its advanced deterrence model. While the development of an independent French model would benefit the United States by supporting existing U.S. extended deterrence commitments, new nuclear weapons programs in Europe would present significant challenges for the United States’ long-standing policy against proliferation. As a result, Washington might have to make the difficult choice of pressuring an ally to prevent proliferation or live—in increasingly unstable times—with more nuclear-armed states.

Supreme Court Argument Preview: When Does Asylum Begin at the Border?

Joshua Villanueva and Michael Endrias unpacked the key facts, central arguments, notable amicus briefs, and possible decisions in a border asylum case at the Supreme Court. The pair explained that the Court’s decision will have major consequences for asylum-seekers and U.S. immigration policies.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a border asylum case on March 24 to decide whether the government may nullify the Immigration and Nationality Act’s (INA’s) asylum and inspection requirements by stopping asylum-seekers inches before they cross the border at a port of entry and turning them back to wait in Mexico. In Noem v. Al Otro Lado, the Court must decide if the INA’s definition of “arrives in the United States” stretches to cover someone who stands at the very threshold of a port of entry but has not yet set foot on U.S. soil.

This question carries real weight because “arrival” serves as the gateway in the INA’s asylum and inspection process. If someone halted on the Mexican side of a port of entry is still considered to have “arrived,” then the law’s asylum protections and inspection rules kick in right at the port of entry’s edge. If not, the government’s obligations only begin once the person sets foot on U.S. soil, meaning Customs and Border Protection (CBP) could avoid the INA’s inspection and asylum-processing requirements simply by stopping asylum-seekers just short of the border line. The result would make access to asylum depend on the government’s ability to keep applicants physically outside the line. The Court’s decision will ultimately define how far the INA’s protections extend when border policies keep asylum-seekers just out of reach.

Lawfare Daily: The Gulf Widens: Elisa Catalano Ewers joined Tabatabai to discuss Iran’s intentions and capabilities in the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S.’s response and capability gaps, how allies and partners have participated in the conflict, and more.

Scaling Laws: Why Data Governance Is the Key to AI Biosecurity, with Jassi Pannu and Doni Bloomfield: Alan Z. Rozenshtein sat down with Jassi Pannu and Doni Bloomfield to discuss Pannu and Bloomfield’s proposed framework for strengthening biological data governance to reduce the risks of biosecurity attacks powered by artificial intelligence (AI).

Lawfare Live: A Hearing on Anthropic’s Preliminary Injunction Motion: On the evening of March 24, Wittes will sit down with Kate Klonick, Roger Parloff, and Molly Roberts to debrief a preliminary injunction hearing in Anthropic’s ongoing lawsuit challenging the Department of Defense’s designation of the AI company as a supply chain risk. The livestream is tentatively scheduled for 6:30 pm ET, but is subject to change depending on when the hearing concludes. The official start time of the livestream will be announced on Lawfare‘s social media and YouTube page once the hearing concludes.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our Summer 2026 internship! This is a critical role that supports Lawfare’s editorial team. Undergraduate students in their sophomore, junior, or senior year are encouraged to apply. Learn how to apply here.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our development manager position! This is a critical role focused on donor relationships and fundraising strategies to support Lawfare’s fundraising capacity. Learn more about the position and apply here.

The Jan. 6 Project now holds five years of Lawfare analysis related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the government’s response. Explore our pieces, podcasts, and document repositories here.

Lawfare’s Domestic Deployments Tracker maps federal non-disaster deployments of the military within U.S. borders. You can read more about the tracker here.

The Trials of the Trump Administration, our coverage of Trump’s executive actions and their legal challenges, now includes a page devoted to tracking the status of Alien Enemies Act cases in federal courts. Find the page here.

Lawfare’s work is only possible through the support of our readers. Support Lawfare through our ongoing Givebutter campaign.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Become a material supporter on Patreon. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.

The Strait of Hormuz and the Limits of Maritime Law

Bertina Kudrin explained how Iran’s escalation of attacks in the Strait of Hormuz exposes gaps in international maritime law, more specifically how existing frameworks struggle to regulate modern economic warfare in a globalized economy where disruptions harm not just belligerents, but also the entire global trade system.

The attacks are clear-cut instances of “economic warfare,” using military means to disrupt commerce to weaken the adversary’s will to fight, by both sides. So far, international humanitarian law has never fully prohibited economic warfare, and classic naval warfare doctrine, as reflected in the 1994 San Remo Manual, a highly influential nonbinding restatement of treaty and customary international law governing armed conflict at sea, permits blockade as a lawful method of war if it meets certain criteria. But the situation in the strait raises a deeper question: whether these doctrines—developed largely in an earlier era of maritime conflict—are capable of addressing the modern forms of economic warfare that can disrupt global markets rather than merely weaken an adversary’s ports or trade.

A Litigation Playbook for Narrative Warfare

Renée DiResta discussed Sen. Eric Schmitt’s (R-Mo.) book entitled, “The Last Line of Defense: How to Beat the Left in Court,” in which Schmitt positions the courtroom as a venue to generate attention rather than to seek justice. DiResta criticized the book’s misrepresentations of evidence, its obfuscation of legal losses, and its manipulation of litigation as a tool for attention and ideological warfare that undermines the merits of the justice system.

“The Last Line of Defense: How to Beat the Left in Court” is standard populist fare with a requisite Orwell epigraph, appropriate signifiers of contempt (“experts™”), and roughly three references per chapter. It is written for an audience that will not catch the falsehoods, or which might cheer them because the right enemies are being owned. But as a glimpse into worldview and strategy, it is instructive. The key takeaway is that the filing is the victory, outcomes are secondary, and hallowed institutions—courts, now the Senate—are performance venues.

The story is the point. Whether the story is true is someone else’s problem.

Digital Domains Are the New Battlefield

In the latest edition of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay Series, Lauryn Williams examined how warfare in the digital domain—including in outer space, the electromagnetic spectrum, the information space, and cyber operations—is playing out in the U.S.-Israel-Iran conflict and argued that warfare in multiple domains is likely to become more central in this and future conflicts.

When the world woke up to news of a massive U.S.-Israeli military operation in Iran on Feb. 28, the early headlines were digital as well as kinetic. Anthropic’s Claude AI tool reportedly aided the U.S. military in selecting targets for missile strikes; an alleged Israeli cyberattack compromised the widely used BadeSaba religious calendar application to send anti-regime messages; the Iranian regime imposed an internet blackout and the U.S. military claimed that cyber and space operations had “disrupted” Iran’s communications; and electronic warfare activity spiked concurrently, hampering GPS navigation systems for ships passing through the Gulf.

These events reveal a truth of modern warfare: Air campaigns like Operation Epic Fury are being fought and shaped in digital domains, including cyberspace, the information space, the electromagnetic spectrum, and outer space. Lines between these domains are blurring with growing implications for the future of modern conflict.

The Situation: Meanwhile, Part II

Benjamin Wittes unpacked how even without the ongoing political turmoil rooted in the actions of the Trump administration, major anxieties—such as the threat of human obsolescence from the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) and the everchanging landscape of technology in warfare—would still unsettle society. Wittes suggested that even if unconnected, “The Situation” prevents the U.S. from seriously confronting these crises.

But count me skeptical. Sometimes, multiple apocalypses just happen to converge on the same place and time—and really have very little to do with one another.

Except, of course, in the sense that the leadership apocalypse which is The Situation makes it impossible to confront any of our other challenges successfully. It guarantees that we will not thoughtfully confront the future of violence, for example. And it guarantees as well that we will race forward into our own human obsolescence worried only that China will get there first.

Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, March 20: Wittes sat down with Molly Roberts, Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, Roger Parloff, and Kate Klonick to discuss Judge James Boasberg’s opinion quashing the Department of Justice’s subpoenas in the investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, the government’s response in Anthropic’s lawsuit challenging the Department of Defense’s designation of the AI company as a supply chain risk, a judge’s reinstatement of U.S. Agency for Global Media employees, the newly released video depositions of Department of Government Efficiency employees, and more.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our Summer 2026 internship! This is a critical role that supports Lawfare’s editorial team. Undergraduate students in their sophomore, junior, or senior year are encouraged to apply. Learn how to apply here.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our development manager position! This is a critical role focused on donor relationships and fundraising strategies to support Lawfare’s fundraising capacity. Learn more about the position and apply here.

The Jan. 6 Project now holds five years of Lawfare analysis related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the government’s response. Explore our pieces, podcasts, and document repositories here.

Lawfare’s Domestic Deployments Tracker maps federal non-disaster deployments of the military within U.S. borders. You can read more about the tracker here.

The Trials of the Trump Administration, our coverage of Trump’s executive actions and their legal challenges, now includes a page devoted to tracking the status of Alien Enemies Act cases in federal courts. Find the page here.

Lawfare’s work is only possible through the support of our readers. Support Lawfare through our ongoing Givebutter campaign.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Become a material supporter on Patreon. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.

Fourth Amendment Law by Analogy

Matthew Tokson reviewed Orin Kerr’s book, “The Digital Fourth Amendment: Privacy and Policing in Our Online World,” which synthesizes over 40 Fourth Amendment issues into a larger narrative of modern digital privacy law. While Tokson critiqued Kerr’s balancing of investigative efficiency over privacy, Tokson still found Kerr’s proposals to be informative and compelling.

In “The Digital Fourth Amendment,” Kerr illuminates the major Fourth Amendment cases of the past century in an engaging, story-first way. He clarifies the issues that today’s judges are likely to face and explains them in a manner that readers with no prior knowledge of Fourth Amendment law can understand. His individual arguments are thoughtful and often compelling, and the breadth and depth of his knowledge of Fourth Amendment law is unparalleled. “The Digital Fourth Amendment” offers an excellent overview of Fourth Amendment law in the modern world. At the same time, Kerr’s heavy reliance on analogies to the physical world often leads him to under-protect online data, which today may reveal remarkably large portions of people’s lives. The further away new technologies get from traditional Fourth Amendment contexts, the less guidance and constraint the analogical approach provides.

The New War in Afghanistan

In the latest edition of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, Alexander Palmer explained why the escalating conflict between Pakistan and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan reflects a critical breakdown of their former proxy relationship. Palmer warned that the crisis could lead to increased regional instability and open up vacuums for terrorist organizations to attempt to fill, creating rippling effects for U.S. national security.

The “open war” between Pakistan and its former Taliban allies could mark the end of Islamabad’s decades-long strategy of supporting militant proxies to exert influence over Afghanistan. Islamabad lacks a clear path to eliminating the threat posed by the TTP, now backed by an Afghan government that was once dependent on Pakistan for its survival. While outside powers like the United States may see the conflict as peripheral, the presence of international terrorist organizations, most notably al-Qaeda and ISKP, means that chaos in the region could lead to attacks outside of it.

Successful War Leaves Iran With One Option, Cyber

In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren unpacked how Iran may escalate its use of cyber operations to retaliate against the U.S.-Israeli strikes on its soil, Meta’s announcement of the rollback of end-to-end encrypted messages on Instagram, President Trump’s open telephone interviews on the war in Iran, and more.

Unlike nuclear weapons programs, or ballistic missiles, cyber forces don’t require significant industrial capacity and vulnerable supply chains. This makes them far more resilient to conventional attacks. Sure, you can disrupt hacking operations for a short while with bombs, but it is hard to completely destroy capacity without somehow killing all of Iran’s hackers. Cyber forces are the cockroaches of state power.

They’re not just a tool of last resort, though. Investing in cyber capabilities makes sense for Iran.

Lawfare Daily: Can the President Declare an Elections Emergency?: Anna Bower and Molly Roberts joined Benjamin Wittes to discuss Bower and Roberts’ recent Lawfare article on Trump’s draft executive order that attempts to assert greater federal control over U.S. elections, what such an executive order could do in practice, and its likelihood of coming to fruition.

Lawfare Live: The Trials of the Trump Administration, March 20: At 4 pm ET on March 20, Wittes sat down with Eric Columbus and Roger Parloff to discuss the ongoing litigation over the Trump administration’s immigration policies, a judge’s order to reinstate employees of the international broadcaster Voice of America, and more.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our Summer 2026 internship! This is a critical role that supports Lawfare’s editorial team. Undergraduate students in their sophomore, junior, or senior year are encouraged to apply. Learn how to apply here.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our development manager position! This is a critical role focused on donor relationships and fundraising strategies to support Lawfare’s fundraising capacity. Learn more about the position and apply here.

The Jan. 6 Project now holds five years of Lawfare analysis related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the government’s response. Explore our pieces, podcasts, and document repositories here.

Lawfare’s Domestic Deployments Tracker maps federal non-disaster deployments of the military within U.S. borders. You can read more about the tracker here.

The Trials of the Trump Administration, our coverage of Trump’s executive actions and their legal challenges, now includes a page devoted to tracking the status of Alien Enemies Act cases in federal courts. Find the page here.

Lawfare’s work is only possible through the support of our readers. Support Lawfare through our ongoing Givebutter campaign.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Become a material supporter on Patreon. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.

The Right Remedy in the Anthropic Case

Alan Z. Rozenshtein argued that because the Department of Defense unlawfully used national security authorities in its designation and ban of Anthropic as a supply chain risk, the courts should block the action, but should still allow the government to stop contracting with the company through ordinary legal channels.

There is no question about the government’s right to stop doing business with Anthropic. If the Pentagon needs AI models without usage restrictions, it can transition to vendors willing to provide them. The government’s purchasing discretion is broad, and courts should respect it. But that discretion operates through a system Congress built over decades, with competitive bidding requirements, individualized judgments by contracting officers, and—if the government truly believes a vendor cannot be trusted—a debarment process with real procedural protections. When the government bypasses it through an anti-espionage statute repurposed for a contract dispute and a social media post that overrides dozens of agencies’ procurement authority and procedures, the court should push back—not by forcing the government to buy a particular product, but by making it follow the law.

Article I and the Major Questions Doctrine After Learning Resources

David Del Terzo explained how the Supreme Court’s disagreement over the Major Questions Doctrine in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump creates uncertainty about the limits of executive power and leaves the door open for the president to invoke his authority over spending, export controls, and foreign investment.

That constraint is real, but it does not dissolve the analytical framework Learning Resources established. The key move, under Gorsuch’s structural approach, is not asking whether an action involves foreign affairs but whether the power being exercised has an independent Article II basis that would survive the statutory delegation failing—and that question yields different answers across the landscape: appropriations diversion cleanest against the government, outbound investment restrictions close behind, civilian export controls more contested, CFIUS review most defensible but thinning as its jurisdiction expands. Whether a future Court majority will adopt Gorsuch’s structural sorting mechanism, or resolve these cases instead through Barrett’s more contextual textualism, or decline to apply the MQD in foreign affairs at all, remains open. Learning Resources did not close these questions—it opened them. Indeed, whether, and in what form, the MQD as articulated by the Learning Resources plurality will survive is, at this point, something of a major question.

The Hegseth Doctrine? Military-Academic De-coupling Competition

J.B. Branch and Allan E. Cameron warned that the Defense Department’s move to cut military education at elite universities will allow foreign adversaries like China to gain a long-term advantage over the U.S. by weakening domestic technological innovation, talent cultivation, and strategic competitiveness.

In continued collaboration, our political perspectives may differ. Our professional backgrounds certainly do. But on this point there is agreement. Curtailing military access to such environments narrows the range of strategic dialogue and weakens, rather than strengthens, American national security.

Marissa Wang shared the intelligence community’s 2026 Annual Threat Assessment evaluating what it views as the most significant national security threats facing the United States over the coming year.

Lawfare Daily: Iran Will Retaliate in the U.S., and We May Not See It in Time: Troy Edwards joined Michael Feinberg to discuss why the U.S. may not be adequately prepared to detect acts of retaliation from Iran due to the Trump administration’s weakening of the U.S.’s national security apparatus.

Rational Security: The “Take a Light Out of Crime” Edition: Scott R. Anderson sat down with Natalie K. Orpett, Benjamin Wittes, and Ariane Tabatabai to unpack the latest updates in the ongoing war between the U.S., Israel and Iran, including Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S.’s struggle to secure European support, the U.S. strike on an Iranian elementary school, and more.

Lawfare Live: The Trials of the Trump Administration, March 20: At 4 pm ET on March 20, Wittes will sit down with Eric Columbus and Roger Parloff to discuss the ongoing litigation over the Trump administration’s immigration policies, a judge’s order to reinstate employees of the international broadcaster Voice of America, and more.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our Summer 2026 internship! This is a critical role that supports Lawfare’s editorial team. Undergraduate students in their sophomore, junior, or senior year are encouraged to apply. Learn how to apply here.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our development manager position! This is a critical role focused on donor relationships and fundraising strategies to support Lawfare’s fundraising capacity. Learn more about the position and apply here.

The Jan. 6 Project now holds five years of Lawfare analysis related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the government’s response. Explore our pieces, podcasts, and document repositories here.

Lawfare’s Domestic Deployments Tracker maps federal non-disaster deployments of the military within U.S. borders. You can read more about the tracker here.

The Trials of the Trump Administration, our coverage of Trump’s executive actions and their legal challenges, now includes a page devoted to tracking the status of Alien Enemies Act cases in federal courts. Find the page here.

Lawfare’s work is only possible through the support of our readers. Support Lawfare through our ongoing Givebutter campaign.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Become a material supporter on Patreon. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.

The GSA’s Draft AI Clause Is Governance by Sledgehammer

Jessica Tillipman explained that while the General Services Administration’s proposed contract clause on the procurement of artificial intelligence (AI) systems is a much-needed expansion of oversight, it falls short of adequately addressing commercial AI buying issues such as data-use limits, testing rights, meaningful disclosure, supply chain transparency, and more.

Federal procurement has always wrestled with competing priorities—flexibility versus uniformity, integrity versus efficiency, socioeconomic goals versus open competition. The data and governance challenges in AI procurement are another version of that structural tension. I do not envy the policymakers trying to balance protecting legitimate government interests with preserving the commercial relationships that make these products worth buying.

The draft gets the diagnosis mostly right. But it has responded to an existing governance gap with a clause that tries to do too much at once through the wrong channel, risking both overreach and distortion. Moving from governance as a “blocker” to governance by sledgehammer is not a cure. It is just the next iteration of the same pathology.

Two Illegal Biolabs Reveal Gaps in U.S. Biosecurity

Sam Howell warned that the discovery of Chinese Communist Party-linked biolabs in the U.S. exposes major gaps in domestic biosecurity. Howell urged policymakers to reduce biological weapons-based national security risks by expanding government oversight of private biolab research and improving the understanding and detection of biological threats.

The discovery of CCP-linked biolabs in Las Vegas and Reedley should serve as a wake-up call for U.S. policymakers. These facilities should not be treated as isolated incidents—they expose critical gaps in the U.S. biosafety and security landscape that foreign adversaries, or even malicious domestic actors, can exploit. Absent comprehensive oversight of private biological research, mandatory reporting requirements for pathogen acquisition, and a deeper understanding of how biological agents might be weaponized, the United States remains vulnerable. Policymakers must act decisively to close the gaps before another unauthorized biolab is discovered—or, worse, before American citizens pay the price for one that goes undetected.

AEA Litigation: Enforcing Congress’s Limits on Delegated Power

Andrew Kent argued that the Trump administration’s application of the Alien Enemies Act to alleged members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan organized crime group, stretches the act beyond its original meaning and is an unlawful use of legislation meant for wartime military threats.

If mere presidential say-so that an attempted, threatened, or actual “invasion” and “predatory incursion” has occurred were to be deemed fully sufficient by the courts, the AEA would amount to a blank check that the executive branch could use in ways Congress never intended. Detainees would get only the form but little of the substance of the judicial review they have been promised by the Supreme Court. In W.M.M., the court can—and should—rule that the AEA is being applied illegally without needing to decide all of the potential questions about judicial deference to the president under the AEA.

The Situation: Meanwhile

Benjamin Wittes reminded readers of the anger-inducing, seemingly unending newstream from recent days, including issues concerning rule of law, third party wars, bizarre weather events, the ongoing investigation of Jerome Powell, and more.

The very essence of The Situation is a bewildering, disorienting blizzard of stuff being thrown at you all at once. Yes, it’s flooding the zone with shit, but it’s not all shit. Some of it is war and death and some of it is illegal stuff, and some of it is policy craziness, and some of it you can’t even tell if it’s related to The Situation at all. And some of it is other actors doing other-actor things. And some of it is the weather. And some of it is a meteor blowing up over Cleveland. And it all happens at the same time.

And so you experience the news as a kind of panic attack, a breathless list of things that are happening that may or may not be connected, but they—individually and collectively—make you breathe faster, make your pulse race. And critically, they make you angry.

Lawfare Daily: National Security, Counterintelligence, and Counterespionage: A Guide for the Perplexed: Derek Pieper joined Michael Feinberg to discuss how counterintelligence investigations differ from counterespionage, what is needed for success in each, and the risks of politicizing national security issues.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our Summer 2026 internship! This is a critical role that supports Lawfare’s editorial team. Undergraduate students in their sophomore, junior, or senior year are encouraged to apply. Learn how to apply here.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our development manager position! This is a critical role focused on donor relationships and fundraising strategies to support Lawfare’s fundraising capacity. Learn more about the position and apply here.

The Jan. 6 Project now holds five years of Lawfare analysis related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the government’s response. Explore our pieces, podcasts, and document repositories here.

Lawfare’s Domestic Deployments Tracker maps federal non-disaster deployments of the military within U.S. borders. You can read more about the tracker here.

The Trials of the Trump Administration, our coverage of Trump’s executive actions and their legal challenges, now includes a page devoted to tracking the status of Alien Enemies Act cases in federal courts. Find the page here.

Lawfare’s work is only possible through the support of our readers. Support Lawfare through our ongoing Givebutter campaign.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Become a material supporter on Patreon. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.

Iran Will Retaliate in the U.S. We May Not See It in Time.

Troy Edwards, Bruria Haya Friedman-Feldman, and Vishnu Kannan warned that, because the Trump administration has deteriorated the government’s national security apparatus, the U.S. is more vulnerable to an Iranian attack, whether through acts of terrorism, cyberattacks, election interference, or more.

Reducing our capacity to monitor, prevent, and respond to Iranian attacks at home at a time of heightened risk—brought on by U.S. international conflict with a foreign state sponsor of terror—poses a serious national security concern. The recent history of Iranian operations on U.S. soil shows how our agencies and procedures can effectively thwart such attempts when they are at full capacity. In contrast, a survey of how this administration has dramatically weakened those agencies and procedures shows how vulnerable the U.S. and its citizens may be to Iranian attacks now.

Canadian Courts Are Holding the Line on National Emergency Powers

Anvesh Jain examined how a recent Canadian court decision that limits the government’s use of emergency powers demonstrates strong judicial enforcement of statutory limits on executive authority, which differs from the more lenient approaches observed in other countries’ courts in the Western hemisphere.

The Federal Court’s decision in Canadian Frontline Nurses and the FCA’s subsequent appellate ruling in Canadian Civil Liberties Association confirm that in Canada, the existence of an emergency remains a question of law and fact subject to judicial determination. These rulings vindicate the promise of the post-1982 constitutional project, underscoring a legal culture where “necessity [remains] a high bar” and in which “the exercise of all public power must find its ultimate source in a legal rule.” By anchoring emergency powers within this rights-based framework, Canada has charted a course distinct from the more permissive approaches seen elsewhere in the hemisphere, undergirding a system that expects its executive to rigorously defend the necessity of its actions.

Tyler McBrien shared the U.S.’s letter to the UN Security Council laying out its justification for the attacks on Iran as a matter of self defense and collective defense of Israel.

Lawfare Daily: Inside Iran’s Complicated Relationship with Russia: Hanna Notte joined Anastasiia Lapatina to discuss Iranian-Russian cooperation in the context of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, Russia’s role in negotiating the Iran nuclear deal, challenges to Iran and Russia’s relationship, and more.

Scaling Laws: Is AI a Death Sentence for Civic Institutions? with Jessica Silbey and Woodrow Hartzog: Alan Z. Rozenshtein sat down with Jessica Silbey and Woody Hartzog to discuss the pair’s paper, “How AI Destroys Institutions,” which examines the threats posed by artificial intelligence (AI) systems democratic society and civic institutions. Their conversation covered how the rise of AI contrasts from past technological transitions, whether AI-generated decisions are legitimate enough to constitute rule of law process, and more.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our Summer 2026 internship! This is a critical role that supports Lawfare’s editorial team. Undergraduate students in their sophomore, junior, or senior year are encouraged to apply. Learn how to apply here.

Lawfare is now accepting applications for our development manager position! This is a critical role focused on donor relationships and fundraising strategies to support Lawfare’s fundraising capacity. Learn more about the position and apply here.

The Jan. 6 Project now holds five years of Lawfare analysis related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the government’s response. Explore our pieces, podcasts, and document repositories here.

Lawfare’s Domestic Deployments Tracker maps federal non-disaster deployments of the military within U.S. borders. You can read more about the tracker here.

The Trials of the Trump Administration, our coverage of Trump’s executive actions and their legal challenges, now includes a page devoted to tracking the status of Alien Enemies Act cases in federal courts. Find the page here.

Lawfare’s work is only possible through the support of our readers. Support Lawfare through our ongoing Givebutter campaign.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Become a material supporter on Patreon. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.