Molly Roberts

I'm Eric Columbus, Lawfare senior editor, pinch-hitting for, uh, Il Capo di tutti capi, Ben Wittes.

It is 4:00 PM Eastern on July, on, sorry, on September 25th, and, uh, summer goes by so fast, and I am here with my fellow senior editors, uh, Anna Bauer, Roger Parloff, and Molly Roberts.

So one brief announcement, uh, before we begin.

Please make sure to tune in to Lawfare's YouTube channel, uh, at some point next week, uh, starting Tuesday morning, to watch the second installment of Lawfare's Deportation Inc., the Rise of the Immigration Enforcement Economy series, produced with SITU.

Thrilled to be back with you this week.

I am your host, Scott R. Anderson, to talk over some of the week's big stories with a few of my wonderful Lawfare colleagues.

Joining us this week is Lawfare executive editor, Natalie Orbit, back on the podcast for the first time in a little while.

Natalie, always good to have you on.

editor-in-chief of Lawfare, chief trialer and tribulator.

And I am here with four separate Lawfare senior editors in alphabetical order, Anna Bauer, Eric Columbus, Roger Parloff, and Molly Roberts, who with the last name beginning with R is going to tend to be late in the alphabetical order, but not as late as Benjamin Wittes, who will almost always be last.

Folks, the Kennedy Center, the board has voted to shut it down.

This was a decision made

And through it, you could see Trump and you could see he was reading something.

If you blew it up, it was a poster board that seemed to say Kennedy Center demolished through the window.

And I should say that Molly Roberts and Anna Bauer both instantly looked at the poster board and said, this is the work of William Pulte.

And I think that has since been confirmed that when he walked out of the plane, Pulte was carrying the press, the poster boards.

You are watching Lawfare Live, the trials and the tribulations of the Trump administration.

I am Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare, and I'm here with four Lawfare senior editors, Roger Parloff, Molly Roberts, Anna Bauer, and Eric Columbus, and one Lawfare associate editor named Peter Beck.

And we're gonna start with Peter Beck because the Alien Terrorist Removal Court has finished its first case, and Peter Beck is all over the Alien Terrorist Removal Court.

You can't file a piece of paper in the ATRC, as it is called, without Peter Beck grabbing it and reporting on it.

And, um, I think this is a, [sighs] a, a very good development, um, and it probably affects a lot more people than Professor Bakken alone, just at, at least not by its terms, but in its likely consequences.

Um, all right.

Um, let us turn back to Molly Roberts, the Lawfare, uh, senior editor with by far the most absurdly broad, uh, portfolio, her-- which includes golf-

[chuckles]

Uh, and, um, you know, it's not always that we get to feature ourselves at the beginning of Lawfare Live, the trials and tribulations of the Trump administration, but folks, that is what you are watching, and I am here with not one embarrassed senior editor of Lawfare, but four embarrassed senior editors of Lawfare.

Molly Roberts, Roger Parloff, Anna Bauer, and, uh, Eric Columbus, whom you've already heard from.

Uh, we got a lot of stuff to get through today.

Molly, we've had actions on the elections, uh, executive order.

Folks, this podcast is part of Lawfare's livestream series, Lawfare Live: The Trials and the Tribulations of the Trump Administration.

You can subscribe to our YouTube page to receive an alert the next time we go live.

Thanks this week to Molly Roberts, to Anna Bauer, to Roger Parloff, and to Eric Columbus for being on the show.

The Lawfare Podcast is produced by the Lawfare Institute.

Yeah.

So I started thinking, and on Lawfare Live the other day, had a conversation with Molly Roberts and Roger Parloff about, okay, so if we say no aesthetic standing arguments, who would have standing on the ballroom? And we kicked around some ideas, and I had two that I floated, and none of us thought either of them was plausible for different reasons.

The first was, okay, what about for the ballroom, some business owner who the ballroom looms over and thereby cuts their site line down? That person would certainly have standing.

The trouble is that the ballroom, while massive, is sitting in the middle of the White House complex and won't, in fact, loom over any business.

But John, while I've got you on the line, I want to ask you about a different And I would love to get your impressions of what happened.

Well, I would be happy to do so.

As you know, Molly was there as well.

And as I mentioned in the chat, and I think I can say on the show, this was my first time meeting Molly, but she was as mad as I have ever seen her because she was defeated in her ability to bring in her laptop by a petty functionary of the judicial branch.

Thanks for having me, Scott.

And of course, another Lawfare senior editor, Molly Roberts, also joining us.

Molly, thank you for coming back on the podcast.

Thank you.