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.

The administration is calling this a non-international armed conflict, thereby justifying

that they're allowed to use this kind of force. I think that's faulty anyway, but you can't just

declare it a non-international armed conflict, and it makes it so because you say so.

It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Natalie Orpat, executive editor of Lawfare, with Frank Rosenblatt, a professor at MC Law and former Lieutenant Colonel and Judge Advocate General in the U.S. Army.

And Colby Voki, former Lieutenant Colonel and Judge Advocate General in the U.S. Marine, and Colby Voki, former the Lieutenant Colonel and Judge Advocate General in the U.S.

Marine Corps.

For both of our careers, we were told to provide independent legal advice to our commanders.

We would call them like we saw them.

Sometimes lawyers wouldn't always agree on things, but we would, you know, hash things out

and come to some sort of

workable solution on what the legal advice in a situation is. Early in 2025, that seemingly has

changed. Today we're talking about unlawful orders in the military. What obligation military personnel

have to disobey? Who determines what's lawful?

And how we should think about the ongoing boat strikes in the Caribbean.

So I do want to start with the legal framework at issue here and really drill down on what these

responsibilities are, where they come from, et cetera.

And then afterwards, I'd love to speak with you about your

experiences generally and your experiences working more recently on the Orders Project, which, as I

...