The Week That Was: All of Lawfare in One Post

Bob Bauer explained that the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States sets the stage for future administrations to potentially extend presidential immunity to include protection from all criminal investigations, undermining presidential accountability.

Trevor Morrison argued that the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling potentially makes it impossible to prosecute future presidents for any official acts, no matter how egregious, jeopardizing separation of powers and potentially insulating former President Donald Trump from accountability for his efforts to subvert the 2020 election.

Quinta Jurecic explained the parallels between Trump v. Hawaii and Trump v. United States, which both featured two different approaches for evaluating presidential conduct: (1) evaluating institutional power of the presidency in the abstract and (2) evaluating Trump’s specific actions and statements.

Dan Maurer evaluated a hypothetical raised during the oral argument of the presidential immunity case asking whether a president would be immune from criminal charges even if he were to go so far as to order SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival.

On July 11, Benjamin Wittes was joined by Natalie Orpett and Anna Bower for this week’s episode of “Lawfare Live: Trump’s Trials and Tribulations,” to discuss the latest developments in Trump’s trial in the Southern District of Florida and take audience questions. 

On Lawfare Daily, Alan Rozenshtein and Molly Reynolds spoke with Bridget Dooling and Nick Bednar about the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which overruled the decades-long Chevron doctrine that required courts to defer to reasonable interpretations of their statutes.

Nick Weaver proposed that the Office of Foreign Assets Control ban companies from paying ransomware demands by imposing sanctions on individual ransomware gangs. He argued that by making all ransom payments illegal, attackers would be less likely to receive financial compensation, therefore disincentivizing them from conducting these attacks in the first place.

Gary McGraw, Dan Geer, and Harold Figueroa examined the concept of “data feudalism,” whereby a few powerful entities aim to secure control over large swaths of data. They explored the implications of this trend on competition, data accessibility, and the quality of machine learning models.

On Lawfare Daily, Kevin Frazier sat down with Chinmayi Sharma and Yonathan Arbel to discuss the origins, significance, and regulatory challenges of open-source AI, highlighting the passionate responses from the AI community.

Cullen O’Keefe proposed a “Chips for Peace” framework, a set of international commitments for countries to regulate artificial intelligence (AI) development and share AI benefits. He outlined how this framework aims to balance global security and AI-enabled growth, while acknowledging the significant challenges in implementation, such as monitoring, verification, and maintaining trust among member states.

On Chatter, Eugenia Lostri sat down with Joseph Cox to discuss his new book, “Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever,” about the FBI’s Anom sting operation.

On Lawfare Daily, Jack Goldsmith spoke with Christopher Kirchhoff about his new book entitled, “Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley are Transforming the Future of War.” They discussed the origins and aims of the Defense Innovation Unit, defense procurement issues, the importance of innovation for the Department of Defense to maintain its technological and military edge, and more.

On Lawfare Daily, Frazier spoke with Scott Singer about the increasing tensions between the United States and China over AI. They discussed potential challenges to China’s AI ambitions, the current bipartisan consensus on China’s use of AI, the race to develop artificial general intelligence, and more.

On Lawfare Daily, Tyler McBrien spoke with Sam Bresnick to discuss his new report, “China’s Military AI Roadblocks: PRC Perspectives on Technological Challenges to Intelligentized Warfare,” which analyzed dozens of Chinese-language journal articles about AI and warfare to figure out what Chinese leaders think about applying artificial intelligence in warfare.

In this week’s edition of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, Joshua Schwartz warned that the risk of nuclear use is growing, pointing to Russia’s nuclear threats, Iran’s increasing uranium stockpile, and China's nuclear arsenal expansion. To mitigate these dangers, he recommended recommitting to nuclear arms control, reducing nuclear proliferation, and adding safeguards to prevent rash nuclear first strikes.

William Yee discussed Singapore’s new Significant Investments Review Act, which implements a screening mechanism to scrutinize transactions with designated critical entities that might threaten national security. Yee argued that the law lacks clarity—noting its broad call-in power and loose definition of “national security”—and recommended that Singapore provide more detailed guidance and transparency to mitigate uncertainty for prospective investors.

Norman Feder evaluated the legality of the International Criminal Court prosecutor’s instruction of a panel of external legal experts to review the evidence in his investigation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant. He argued that the prosecutor’s decision to seek the panel’s review exceeded his authority, thereby undermining the fairness of the legal process.

On Rational Security, Scott Anderson, Eric Ciaramella, Jurecic, and McBrien discussed the week’s big national security news stories, including the NATO’s 75th anniversary summit in Washington D.C., the left-wing victories in both the French and the British elections, Trump’s efforts to distance himself from Project 2025, and more.

Mark MacCarthy explained that while a TikTok ban would be a poor policy choice, it isn’t unconstitutional because it can be justified on national security grounds as a measure to protect against foreign surveillance.

And to support Lawfare’s coverage of the Trump Trials—a first-of-its-kind project dedicated to providing in-depth coverage of the ongoing criminal proceedings against Trump in Washington, Florida, New York, and Georgia—please consider making a contribution here. Lawfare’s talented correspondents and analysts discuss the latest developments in the cases, explain the complex legal issues they raise, and consider what might come next in a wide range of content, including written analysis, podcasts, live and recorded virtual events, primary source document repositories, and infographics.

And that was the week that was.