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Trump's Trials and Tribulations: The 14th Amendment Goes to the Supreme Court Jan 13, 2024

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It's another episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” recorded on January 11 in front of a live audience on YouTube and Zoom. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke with Lawfare Senior Editors Quinta Jurecic and Roger Parloff, and Lawfare Legal Fellow Anna Bower, about the closing arguments in the New York civil case, about the Supreme Court's decision to grant Trump's petition for it to review the Colorado Supreme Court's decision barring him from the ballot under the 14th Amendment, and about the flurry of motions filed in Fulton County by the January 8 deadline. They also checked in on the Southern District of Florida to see what was, or wasn't, going on, and took audience questions from Lawfare’s Material Supporters on Zoom.

To be able to submit questions to the panelists, become a Material Supporter at lawfaremedia.org/support.

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Lawfare Archive: Gregory Johnsen Answers "What is a Houthi?" Jan 13, 2024

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From September 26, 2015: On this week’s Lawfare Podcast, Gregory Johnsen outlines the current state-of-play in Yemen. Johnsen, who is a writer-at-large for Buzzfeed News, a doctoral candidate at Princeton University, and an all-things-Yemen-expert, walks Ben through the byzantine power politics in Sanaa that led to the conflict now engulfing Yemen and he explains why the war shouldn’t be viewed as just another Sunni-Shia fight. Yet while he clarifies that the issues that sparked the war are much more local, he warns that the longer the conflict goes on, the more likely it is to expand. Johnsen also outlines the events that led to the Saudi intervention and whether or not Yemen—which he says is really twelve separate factions now—can ever be put back together again.

Johnsen is the author of The Last Refuge: Yemen, al Qaeda, and America’s War in Arabia. Follow him on Twitter for the latest updates on Yemen.

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Trump’s Civil Fraud Trial Jan 12, 2024

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On January 11, 2024, Donald J. Trump arrived in a New York courtroom for closing arguments in the civil fraud case against the former president, his company, and his adult sons. The suit, brought by the state’s attorney general Letitia James, alleges that Trump and his company misled lenders about the former president’s net worth in order to secure better business deals. The case is not Trump’s only legal trouble, but it’s one that could have a consequential impact for his family business and the image he has crafted for himself as a richer-than-rich, deal-making business man.

What are the legal issues at stake? What might Trump argue on appeal? And how could the outcome affect Trump’s finances?

To talk it all through, Lawfare Legal Fellow and Courts Correspondent Anna Bower spoke with Tristan Snell, former New York Assistant Attorney General and lead prosecutor in the Trump University fraud case. Tristan is also the author of a forthcoming book called, “Taking Down Trump.”

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Chatter: “The Day After” and Dad with A. B. Stoddard Jan 11, 2024

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Brandon Stoddard was one of the most accomplished executives in broadcast television history. In his career at ABC, he helped bring to the small screen such legendary mini-series as “Roots” and “The Winds of War,” as well as the acclaimed television series “Moonlighting” and “Roseanne.” But arguably his most consequential and controversial decision was to air the made-for-TV movie “The Day After,” which graphically depicted the effects of a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Stoddard faced opposition from his colleagues, pundits, and even the Reagan White House, which pressured ABC to pull the film. But having conceived of the project as an impetus for people around the world to grapple with the potential of a devastating war, Stoddard forged ahead and broadcast the film in November 1983.

It was an epochal event in U.S. history. One hundred million people tuned in to watch, and the movie became the most-watched in television history. It was a national moment of the kind Americans rarely share today.

Journalist A. B. Stoddard, Brandon’s daughter, spoke with Shane Harris about her dad’s determination to air the film and what he hoped to achieve. Stoddard is well known for her political commentary and work at The Bulwark. But today, she shares personal memories of her father, his illustrious career, and the legacy of his work. In November of last year, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of “The Day After,” she wrote a column, “The Day My Father Scared America.”

Among the works mentioned in this episode:

A.B. Stoddard’s column on her dad

https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/brandon-stoddard-the-day-after

Shane’s previous conversation with Nicholas Meyer, who directed “The Day After”

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-day-after-with-nicholas-meyer/id1593674288?i=1000558946928

A.B. Stoddard’s columns for The Bulwark

https://substack.com/@abstoddard

The catalog of Brandon Stoddard’s work

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0830992/

Brandon Stoddard’s induction in the Television Academy Hall of Fame

https://www.emmys.com/bios/brandon-stoddard

“The Day After” (on YouTube)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utGRP9Zy1lg

Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Jay Venables of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.

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Yuval Shany and Amichai Cohen on the Israeli Supreme Court's Bombshell Jan 11, 2024

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The Israeli Supreme Court—in the middle of the war in Gaza—handed down a decision that amounts to a kind of death blow to Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu's judicial reform project.

Before October 7, judicial overhaul was all that anybody was talking about in Israeli politics—you know, a five-part legislative plan to assert parliamentary control over the judiciary and reduce Israel's checks and balances into a more majoritarian system. Only one part of it passed, and the Supreme Court has now struck it down in a decision that sharply divided the court on some questions and reflected significant unity on others.

To discuss the 700-page ruling, we brought back our Israeli judicial overhaul team: Yuval Shany of Hebrew University and Amichai Cohen of Ono Academic College. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke with them about what the court did and what the court didn't do, about their doing it in the middle of a war and whether that was truly necessary, and about where the judicial politics of Israel go from here.

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The Aftermath S2E1 - The Grossly Impudent Lie Jan 10, 2024

Show notes

It’s been three years since the insurrection of January 6th. There have been congressional investigations, prosecutions, and legal reforms, and it’s looking like 2024 will be the year that Donald Trump and his inner circle finally confront the criminal justice system. But is that enough to respond to an existential threat to our democracy?

It all started with a lie: that Trump had won the 2020 election. So we begin there, with a look at the man who—other than Trump—mattered more to the Big Lie than anybody else: Rudy Giuliani.

Guests include: Kyle Cheney, Congressional Reporter at POLITICO & Aaron Blake, Political Reporter and author of the upcoming Campaign Moment newsletter at the Washington Post.

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Israel, Gaza, and the Law of War Jan 04, 2024

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The conflict between Israel and Hamas is provoking heated debates about which side is in the right. Each accuses the other of things like war crimes. Oftentimes, they’re expressing a political or moral judgment—but the fact is, these are also legal terms.

So for this discussion, we’re going to step back from the debates and try to take a dispassionate look at the law that applies here—international humanitarian law, or IHL.

To do that, Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Gabor Rona, who previously served as the legal adviser for the International Committee for the Red Cross. They talked about what IHL has to say about the most heated debates of this conflict, including the high number of civilian casualties in Gaza and Hamas’s use of human shields. They talked about the gaps in the law. And they talked about whether the law even matters here.

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How Are the TikTok Bans Holding Up in Court? Jan 03, 2024

Show notes

In May 2023, Montana passed a new law that would ban the use of TikTok within the state starting on January 1, 2024. But as of today, TikTok is still legal in the state of Montana—thanks to a preliminary injunction issued by a federal district judge, who found that the Montana law likely violated the First Amendment. In Texas, meanwhile, another federal judge recently upheld a more limited ban against the use of TikTok on state-owned devices. What should we make of these rulings, and how should we understand the legal status of efforts to ban TikTok?

We’ve discussed the question of TikTok bans and the First Amendment before on the Lawfare Podcast, when Lawfare Senior Editor Alan Rozenshtein and Matt Perault, Director of the Center on Technology Policy at UNC-Chapel Hill, sat down with Ramya Krishnan, a staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, and Mary-Rose Papandrea, the Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law. In light of the Montana and Texas rulings, Matt and Lawfare Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic decided to bring the gang back together and talk about where the TikTok bans stand with Ramya and Mary-Rose, on this episode of Arbiters of Truth, our series on the information ecosystem.

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Ask Us Anything About 2023 Jan 02, 2024

Show notes

Welcome to our annual “Ask Us Anything” episode, a hallowed Lawfare tradition. Every news alert in 2023 seemed to bring new questions. But fear not, because Lawfare has answers. Lawfare senior editors answered listener-submitted questions on the Israel-Gaza War, military aid to Ukraine, the Trump trials, gag orders against the former president, the presidential pardon ability, violence against elected officials, efforts to combat corruption, and more. What a year!

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Lawfare Archive: Hardcore Dan Carlin Jan 01, 2024

Show notes

From September 27, 2014: A few weeks ago, Benjamin Wittes began listening to a podcast called Hardcore History, which is the brainchild of a fellow named Dan Carlin. Carlin was doing a series of episodes on World War I, and Hardcore History is—let's just say—a different sort of podcast. The episodes are very long, very involved, and to Ben at least, completely riveting. Ben can't recommend it highly enough. Carlin, a former radio talk show host, also runs a podcast called Common Sense, which focuses on contemporary political issues and features Carlin's eclectic political views—many of which Ben disagrees with intensely. Literally millions of people are downloading Carlin's lectures on World War I and other major events in mostly military history. Ben caught up with Carlin this week to discuss the World War I series, Hardcore History more generally, and his views on matters surveillance, ISIS, and overseas intervention.

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