Lawfare Daily: The Year That Was: 2025

Dec 26, 2025

Guest

Scott R. Anderson

Guest

Roger Parloff

Roger Parloff, Senior Editor focused on litigation, dives deep into the Alien Enemies Act and the complexities of ongoing detainee cases. Scott R. Anderson, a specialist in war powers, discusses significant military actions in the Middle East and innovative counter-narcotics strategies at sea. Together, they reflect on a whirlwind year, highlighting the challenges of national security and the evolving landscape of U.S. foreign policy, making for a captivating and insightful conversation.

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INSIGHT

Doge Reshaped Federal Bureaucracy

"Doge" reshaped the federal bureaucracy and raised lasting questions about norms and the balance of power.
Courts repeatedly intervened but many legal challenges remain unresolved into 2026.

ANECDOTE

Secret Alien Enemies Act Removals

Roger Parloff recounts the secret Alien Enemies Act proclamation and removals to El Salvador that began in March.

INSIGHT

Justice Department Politicized

The administration centralized control of Justice Department priorities and used prosecutions selectively to reward allies and punish opponents.
Lawfare tracked dismissals, politicized appointments, and prosecutorial irregularities throughout 2025.

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Every year, Lawfare publishes a retrospective of the year that passed. Today, we’re pleased to bring you an audio debrief of that article, The Year That Was: 2025, which you can read in full on our website starting December 31.

Lawfare is focused on producing timely, rigorous, and non-partisan analysis of “hard national security choices.” And this year, that work was—to use an expression as tired as we are—like drinking from a firehose. We did our best to keep up. We published more than 1,000 articles, podcasts, videos, research papers, and primary source documents. We did livestream round-ups and rapid-response videos. We produced five different podcasts and an investigative video series. We built data visualizations and trackers to make sense of complicated unfolding events. You can find all that and more for free on our website, lawfaremedia.org.

It’s impossible to capture everything that happened in 2025 in the world of national security. But here’s what stood out to the Lawfare team—and what they have to say about. In this episode, you’ll hear from Executive Editor Natalie Orpett on Lawfare’s work in 2025 and from Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes on The Situation. You’ll hear from Senior Editors Anna Bower on DOGE, Roger Parloff on the Alien Enemies Act, Molly Roberts on politicization of the Justice Department, Eric Columbus on impoundments, Scott R. Anderson on war powers, and Kevin Frazier on AI and the states. You’ll hear from Public Interest Fellows Loren Voss on domestic deployments of the military, and Ariane Tabatabai on foreign policy. You’ll hear from our Managing Editor, Tyler McBrien, on our narrative podcast series, Escalation. You’ll hear from Associate Editors Katherine Pompilio on the Jan. 6 pardons and Olivia Manes on rolling back internal checks at the Justice Department. You’ll hear from our Fellow Jakub Kraus on AI, and you’ll hear from Contributing Editor Renée DiResta on election integrity capacity.

And that’s just a sampling of Lawfare’s work.

It’s The Year That Was: 2025. We’ll see you next year.

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