Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, Jan. 5
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 7 January 2026
⏱️ 80 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Scott Anderson, Michael Feinberg and Eric Columbus and Lawfare Associate Editor Katherine Pompilio to discuss the Supreme Court’s decision on President Trump’s domestic deployment of the National Guard in many cities, Jack Smith’s testimony in front of the House, developments in Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case, a hearing in the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, and moreYou 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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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare, with Lawfare senior editors, |
| 0:08.5 | Scott R. Anderson, Eric Columbus, Mike Feinberg, Anna Bauer, and Roger Parloff. |
| 0:16.3 | This is a two-week round-up special edition of the trials and tribulations of the Trump administration that covers the holidays. |
| 0:27.2 | It covers all the things that you missed while lying on the beach with a Mai Tai and thinking that you were not thinking about the trials and tribulations of the Trump |
| 0:42.3 | administration. They were still thinking about you and they stored up in a big pile to be discussed |
| 0:51.3 | now. |
| 1:00.4 | So, Scott, the most important single development while we were all lying on the beach with our mitis |
| 1:05.4 | was that the Supreme Court, who came off the beach for a moment, to issue a major opinion on |
| 1:15.0 | National Guard deployments that caused the president to kind of give up on National Guard deployment |
| 1:22.8 | in American cities. It's kind of a big deal. What happened? Yeah. So on December 23rd, we finally got the |
| 1:30.8 | long-awaited decision in Trump v. Illinois. For those who may not recall, this was the case where |
| 1:37.3 | after the attended deployment of Illinois, federalization, I should say, of Illinois National Guard |
| 1:43.7 | personnel and deployment |
| 1:44.5 | of them to Chicago was enjoined by first a federal district court and then the Seventh |
| 1:50.3 | Circuit Court of Appeals on Appeal. And I should note they enjoin the deployment of the troops, |
| 1:54.2 | actually the federalization was allowed to proceed. The administration quickly went to the |
| 1:59.4 | Supreme Court. This was back in the fall, I think I actually |
| 2:01.7 | had towards the end of October, maybe the beginning of November, and said, Supreme Court, please |
| 2:05.9 | intervene and clarify that the president has the authority to do this. They actually request |
| 2:10.0 | an immediate administrative stay. That is something the court has been willing to hand down in a |
| 2:14.6 | number of other cases, but they did not do it here. Instead, we saw a months-long deliberation involving an additional round of briefing solicited by the |
| 2:23.7 | court on the issue that ended up deciding it for majority of the justices. And that was probably |
... |
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