The Week That Was

Loren Voss launched Lawfare’s Domestic Deployments Tracker, which maps the use of U.S. military forces on domestic soil. Voss described the lack of transparency that has hindered research on domestic deployments over the last three presidential administrations and explained how this new tool can be used.

On Lawfare Live: The Trials of the Trump Administration, Natalie Orpett sat down with Voss, Eric Columbus, Anna Bower, and Roger Parloff to discuss a court hearing on whether Lindsey Halligan was lawfully appointed as U.S. attorney, a judge’s ruling granting a permanent injunction in the challenge to National Guard deployment in Oregon, and more. You can also find the recording on Lawfare’s YouTube channel.

Joshua Villanueva, Kristijan Barnjak, and Rebecca Qiu summarized each party’s written and oral arguments in the tariffs dispute currently before the Supreme Court and sketched a history of the lower court challenges that led to this consolidated case.

Mary Hampton Mason argued that the power to sue individual federal officers for money damages—established by Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents in 1971—is a poor remedy for federal agents’ unconstitutional conduct. Mason contended that the Supreme Court should overrule Bivens, clearing the way for Congress to protect people in the United States through legislation.

On Lawfare Daily, Michael Feinberg sat down with Fareed Zakaria to discuss Zakaria’s book “Age of Revolutions,” which was recently reissued with a new afterword on the second Trump administration. The two discussed intellectual, cultural, and populist revolutions across history; the relationship between revolution and governance; the most salient lessons from successful revolutions; and more.

Benjamin Wittes asserted that the most recent government shutdown marked a total substantive failure for Democrats but likely earned them some political points.

On Rational Security, Orpett, Columbus, and Molly Roberts joined Scott R. Anderson to discuss the end of the government shutdown, President Trump’s recent spate of pardons for those accused of trying to manipulate the 2020 election results, Justice Department investigations into government reports alleging Russian support for the Trump candidacy, and more.

Wittes reflected on how the president’s relatively low approval ratings impact his capacity for political action.

Columbus examined the Justice Department’s decision to charge individuals who attacked an immigration detention facility with “material support” to Antifa “terrorists.” Columbus warned that, while the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on Antifa as a terrorist threat have little legal substance, they indicate a broader and more concerning campaign to link the president’s left-wing critics to terrorism.

Preston Marquis examined congressional debates over reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a powerful but controversial intelligence collection tool poised to sunset in approximately six months. Marquis also analyzed how Biden-era reforms to Section 702 and various “wild cards”—including President Trump’s stance on the matter—are influencing lawmakers’ priorities during these debates.

Feinberg reviewed Patrick McGee’s book “Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company.” Feinberg praised McGee’s rigor and summarized his account of how Apple became complicit in authoritarian repression to access Chinese factories and markets.

Ariane Tabatabai compared Russia’s gray zone activity against NATO allies to China’s incremental pressure on Taiwan and highlighted how the two powers have learned from each other.

Anastasiia Lapatina examined tactical and strategic shifts in how Russia and Ukraine target each other’s energy infrastructure, focusing on Russia’s region-by-region effort to knock out Ukraine’s energy grid and Ukraine’s long-range drone attacks on Russian oil.

Yotam Berger parsed the legal and procedural approaches Israel might take to prosecuting hundreds of Hamas militants accused of participating in the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.

Thomas N. Burrows argued that Mailyn Fidler’s October article in Lawfare overstated the novelty and scope of the UN Cybercrime Convention, particularly where Fidler compared it to a global mutual assistance treaty. Burrows emphasized similarities between the convention and past UN treaties and underscored the robustness of the convention’s safeguards for human rights.

On Lawfare Daily, Kate Klonick and Alan Rozenshtein sat down with Tim Wu to discuss Wu’s new book “The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity.” The three also discussed the other two books in Wu’s “trilogy,” the evolution of online platforms during the 15 years that have passed since Wu began writing, the solution set for platform-related problems, and more.

Jakub Kraus warned that the Trump administration’s restrictive posture and mixed policies toward “high-skilled immigration” are hurting U.S. firms’ capacity to recruit top artificial intelligence (AI) researchers. Kraus urged immigration policymakers to promote AI competitiveness by safeguarding pipelines for AI talent.

On Scaling Laws, Anton Korinek, Nathan Goldschlag, and Bharat Chandar joined Kevin Frazier to discuss AI’s impact on jobs, what a labor transition from humans to AI might look like, policy interventions to promote shared prosperity, and more.

And in the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren discussed Meta’s financial windfall from scam ads, state-backed hackers’ apparent self-restraint while attacking supply chains, new moves to crack down on scammers in the UK, and more.

And that was the week that was.