Nearly every news alert in 2025 has raised questions, some old, some new, about the law and national security.

And now you get the chance to ask Lawfare directly. It's time for our annual Ask Us Anything Mailbag podcast, an opportunity for you to ask Lawfare this year's most burning questions.

You can submit your question by leaving a voicemail at 202-643-8474.

Or by sending a recording of yourself asking your question to Ask Us Anything Lawfare at gmail.com by December 16th. I'm Isabella Royal, Internet Lawfare, with an episode from the Lawfare

for December 6th, 2025.

On November 26th, one National Guard member was killed and another critically injured in a shooting in Washington, D.C.

The alleged shooter was an Afghan National who was granted asylum following a temporary humanitarian parole program.

That same day, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced an indefinite halt to all immigration processing for Afghan nationals.

Two days later, on November 28th, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a pause on visa issuance to all people traveling on Afghan passports. The visa processing freeze extends to Afghans eligible for special immigrant visas based on their service to the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan,

many of whom are at risk of retaliation from the Taliban

if compelled to return or to remain in hiding at home. For today's archive, I selected an

episode from April 5, 2004, in which Natalie Orbit and Anne Meeker discussed how congressional

staffers helped Afghan allies flee Afghanistan run in the chaotic U.S. withdrawal in 2021.

The challenges staffers faced, the congressional weaknesses and strengths that the evacuation

exposed, and more.

I'm Natalie Orpett, executive editor of Lawfare, and this is the Lawfare podcast, April 5th, 2024.

A new report from the Pop-Vox Foundation focuses on a little-known and hugely unappreciated congressional effort,

that of congressional staffers helping Afghan allies flee the country during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

I sat down with the report's author Anne Meeker. We talked about what staffers did to help, the challenges they faced, and how the experience exposed both weaknesses and strengths in how Congress functions.

It's the Lawfare podcast April 5th, 2024, how congressional staffers helped our Afghan allies.

Okay, and so I've invited you on because you all wrote a really fascinating report looking at the way in which particularly congressional staffers responded to the fallout from the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

And I want to start by just asking you, how did this issue come to your attention and what motivated you to really

...