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The Illegal News with Sarah Longwell

S2 Ep153: Reporters Now Need ESCORTS to Do Their Jobs at the Pentagon (w/ Elliot Williams)

The Illegal News with Sarah Longwell

The Bulwark

Politics, News, Society & Culture

4.93.4K Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2026

⏱️ 67 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sarah Longwell and Elliot Williams explain a series of legal fights that go to the core of how the country operates—from whether birthright citizenship could actually be undone, to a new immigration detention policy that could keep people locked up for years.

They also discuss the Pentagon’s escalating clash with the press and what it means for the First Amendment and the surreal push to rewrite the January 6th attack on the Capitol.

Correction (March 31, 2026, 9:20 p.m. EDT): Elliot Williams mistakenly mentioned San Antonio, Texas as the location of a court conducting legal proceedings involving abortion pills; in fact, the court is in Amarillo, Texas.

Transcript

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1:10.7

Hello everyone and welcome to the illegal news. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the

1:16.0

bulwark, and because I'm not a lawyer, which may come as a surprise to everybody, I have invited

1:21.3

Elliot Williams, the great Elliott Williams, to help break down the legal news. He is the CNN legal analyst, author of the book Five Bullets. Oh, I should have had my copy. It's like right over there. If I could just grab it, pretend I'm holding it. Guys, go get his book Five Bullets. It's super good. And most importantly, he is a lawyer. So he's going to talk about legal stuff with me. Elliot, thanks for being here. Yeah, you know, it's funny.

1:44.6

And I think I've said this before. Remember when they used to call Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump's fake TV lawyer? I'm actually a fake TV lawyer. It's honest work if you can find it. But it is a thing. Meaning you're a real lawyer on the fake news. Oh, that's actually probably the best way to put it, because I actually do have a law license, despite the fact that, you know, I do play fake TV law. But we're good. We're good. We're going to make some real law today, so we're good. Well, there's some interesting stuff, and you were, you were, which I found out on this show one time, and it was embarrassing for me and be like, you were?

2:18.0

But you were ICE's lawyer back in the day.

2:20.5

Well, it's not one that I talk about a great deal.

2:23.6

And that's why it was surprised you.

2:24.9

But no, I was at ICE for something like four and a half or five years as head of the legislative affairs office there.

...

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