The Lawfare Podcast

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Executive Editor Natalie Orpett and Senior Editors Michael Feinberg and Molly Roberts to talk through the week’s big international news stories, including:

“Full Metal Ballot.” For more than 160 years, federal law has made it a crime to bring “troops or armed men” to any place where an election is being held. But with President Trump refusing to rule out invoking the Insurrection Act, National Guard troops still on the streets of Washington, and the Justice Department preparing to send roughly 1,000 election monitors to polling sites across the country, many are worried about what voters will encounter on Tuesday. Military leaders say they have no plans to send troops to the polls, and a federal judge just reined in armed Homeland Security agents who had been going door to door questioning suspected noncitizen voters. What does the law actually allow federal personnel to do on Election Day? And what happens if the administration decides to test those limits anyway?
“Certifiable.” With Election Day less than a week away, the Justice Department has moved from warning about election fraud to actively trying to shape how votes get counted and certified. Last week, in Alaska, the Justice Department—acting on President Trump’s personal orders—sued to block certification of the U.S. Senate race if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses, citing possible voter confusion caused by a second candidate on the ballot named Daniel J. Sullivan. In California, DOJ has sued to stop officials from counting more than 20,000 mail ballots from voters it claims are “likely noncitizens,” threatened election officials in all 58 counties with prosecution, and even tried to leapfrog the trial judge by running straight to the Ninth Circuit, which promptly sent it back. Attorney General Todd Blanche insists DOJ isn’t trying to overturn anything. So what are these lawsuits really for? And what do they tell us about what the administration may have planned for after Nov. 3?
“Deepfake in the Heart of Texas.” Russia is back—assuming it ever left. Last week, researchers attributed a pair of AI-generated videos falsely accusing Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico of sexual abuse to Storm-1516, a Kremlin-linked influence operation that ran a similar play against Tim Walz in 2024. That same week, the top Democrats on the congressional intelligence committees, Sen. Mark Warner and Rep. Jim Himes, said a classified briefing showed Russia targeting Democrats and other supporters of Ukraine, with China and Iran running more targeted efforts of their own. All this comes after the Trump administration dismantled much of the federal apparatus for countering foreign election influence. How worried should we be about foreign meddling in the final days of the midterms? And what happens if the administration itself starts invoking foreign interference to cast doubt on the results?
In object lessons, Molly is keeping cozy with a surprisingly delicious parmesan cabbage soup. Scott is catching up on the historical horror book, "Between Two Fires." And for any The Velvet Underground fans, Michael recommends "Rock*: A Mainstream Alternative History of Alternative Mainstream Music."

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For today's podcast, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett is joined by Natan Sachs of the Center for Middle East Policy, Joel Braunold of the Center Project, and Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes to talk about the Oct. 27 elections in Israel. After record turnout by Israeli voters, especially Arab Israelis, we have an outcome—but the implications are far from clear. They unpack what happened and the questions that remain: Whether longtime Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has a path to staying in power, whether opposition parties can stay unified, and whether there’s any prospect of a governing coalition or if we’re heading toward another round of elections. The future of Israeli politics is still very uncertain. They explain why.

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Andy Hendrickson, the chief of the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology (OET), and Alice Jou, the chief of staff and deputy chief of OET, join Lawfare Contributor Justin Sherman to discuss the process for testing and certifying devices in the United States, the offshoring of that apparatus, and how some countries do not allow foreign bodies to certify equipment sold in their borders. They also discuss the national security risks of certain offshoring or foreign-owned or -based testing and certification bodies, a “Minnesota” lab that was actually based in China, the FCC’s “Bad Labs” rulemaking on the problem, and the future of the supply chain and risk space.
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Former NSC staffers Cole Bucy and Nate Swanson join Lawfare Contributing Editor and Vice President of Research, Security and Defense at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Ari Tabatabai and Lawfare Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee to discuss the Iran war eight months in and the administration's likely approach after the midterms.
Cole and Nate's new piece in Foreign Policy, "Trump Unleashed" outlines why the president might escalate against Iran and why none of his options is likely to get him what he wants. Ari and Julia also discuss their piece in Foreign Policy, "How Could Iran Happen? An Autopsy," examining how the president's war on the "Deep State" led to this debacle in the Middle East.
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In a conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Senior Editors Loren Voss, Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, Molly Roberts, and Roger Parloff to discuss developments in the litigation over the Trump administration’s plan for the East Potomac Park and Arch, the 9th Circuit ruling that President Trump exceeded his authority in the deployment of the National Guard in L.A., legal challenges to the Trump administration’s various actions surrounding the election, and more.

You can find information on legal challenges to Trump administration actions here. And check out Lawfare’s new homepage on the litigation, new Bluesky account, and new WITOAD merch.

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