Unitary Executive Theory and Court Expansion

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It's funny just listening to you, I think, well, that doesn't sound. Like they're not gonna do that. But then there's the part of me that's like, I don't know. Why would I have that confidence? They have done nothing to earn that confidence for me. This is the problem . Hello everyone, and welcome to the Illegal News. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the B ullwark. And as always, I'm not a lawyer. So each week, I've got a real lawyer who joins me and today is the great Leah Lipman, co host of the strict scrutiny podcast, professor of law at the University of Michigan, Go Blue, my producer put that in and author of the book, Lawless , how the Supreme Court runs on conservative grievance, fringe theories and bad vibes, which is out on paperback today. Very exciting. Yeah , I'm very exciting. It's like a sequel. I'm calling it Leah's version in the spirit of Taylor Swift since I got to write a new section and a bunch of updates. So I was just gonna ask that, is that, is that what gets to happen? Because this is the when you write a book about this particular moment in time, there's so many parts in the book where I say, at this moment, this thing is happening . It's like in I was just in Minneapolis and this was happening. And then I just read it for the audiooko and b I was like, well, that feels like a long time ago now. Exactly. So my initial manuscript kind of wrapped up in january twenty twenty five before Donald Trump really assumed office and we saw how his relationship with the Supreme Court might play out. And so I asked my publisher, basically, can I effectively write a new chapter and more about the court's relationship with Trump and what that says about the court and whatnot? And they said, Yes, so I just spun out a new section on the unitary executive the ory and a lot of what we've seen the Supreme Court do vis the Trump administration, which was fun in a dark kind of way. Yeah, I mean, I'm glad you did that, and I'm glad you're here today because it's June, and so I want to talk about the Supreme Court. So I needed a Supreme Court expert, which you are . But first I do have a couple of illegal news stories that I want to talk to you about that are just in the news. Have you been following the Gavin Newsom stuff? Like this is breaking news as we are ish yet last night. Gavin Newsom says that he is being investigated and his wife Jennifer is also seems to be part of this. And so when he announced this, he's like, he doesn't have any details as to the nature of the probe, but he is says he's being investigated. Any details that you know about this investigation or what it means? So I watched the video he released. I also read the stories detailing this. We don't really know exactly what they might be looking for . I do think this is another example of a politically vindictive investigation and potential prosecution , given that it seems Newsom and Newsom's family were targeted because he's a potential political rival of the president. I also think that Newsom's response to this, which is to say this is happening and to get out in front of it is the right one. This is what, you know, federal reserve chair, Jerome Powell did when he was also the target of a politically motivated investigation and prosecution . I think it is horrific that the admin istration is targeting Newsom's family seemingly, you know, who isn't herself, you know, an elected political official or running for office . And it is, of course, ridiculous, just r adonculous that this administration might give two shits how people are spending the money of a non profit or an institution. I mean, this is the president who attempted to take two billion dollars in taxpayer funds and gift it to himself so he could give it away to his friends. It's just absurd. So my first thought when I saw this from Newsom, it seems a hundred percent plausible that Trump is investigating him and his wife just for shits and giggles , like just to be a jerk because this is what they've been doing to all kinds of people. On the other hand , I also think that for some politicians who have bigger aspirations, like getting investigated by Trum p is the new hotness . It's like it's like yeah , like because they haven't actually gotten a subpoena yet . It doesn't, it's unclear whether it's a real investigation or whether somebody just called and asked questions , which is still bad because I mean, they do this, right? They just they call people up and make them make them sweat a little bit or make them feel uneasy and using the power of the state for that is obviously terrible, but like Newsom's just one of those guys that you feel like maybe enjoys it, just to smidge, like, oh yeah, I want to take you on. And you know, Mark Kelly, I did see a tweet from somebody that said con,gratulations to Gavin Newsom's fundraising team . Because there is this thing, right? If Trump's investigating you and you get to and I'll admit, I have respect though for this because so many people are cowering in the face of just the idea that somebody might ask questions. And so everybody whose posture in the face of it is go pound sand, like fine, let's do this, which has been kind of how Newsom has been. Like he has decided to adopt to the point of performance art adversarial posture to Trump. And that's good . But do you think I guess I don't know if I don't need you to ask answer the political question, but do you think that he's getting out in front of it in part as a like this is a good political space to be in? I think that that could be and I think that opportunity for him is an important contrast with other lower profile organizations and individuals who haven't been able to do that same thing. You know, this last week, MSN reported that the Ohio Voting Rights Organization was a subject of FBI raids and potential subpoenas where they were going around to staffers and canvassers asking for their electronic devices. And those individuals don't have the same sort of platform . And so even though some people like Gavin Newsom and his family , or say Jerome Powell, have the opportunity to push back and potentially use this to their advantage. The weaponization of law enforcement is still a serious concern. And it's also a concern because it is causing us to ask these questions and basically dismiss out of hand the possibility that this investigation might be onto something because so much of what the administration does is bullshit, right? Like for all we know , there are probably some people breaking the law, but anytime this DOJ issues a subpoena, calls a grand jury, starts a prosecution, initial thought and not unreasonably so is why are you doing this ? It's probably for a bad reason. Yeah, I mean, I felt this way about John Bolton, who like according to my off co host on this podcast , Andrew Weiss man said basically like no, that was a clean hit right on him. Like he did he did a bad thing and if you were in DOJ and they asked you to investigate that you would say yeah, I'll investigate this. This looks bad versus and so like we don't know though about Noosube, but you are right that because NooSub's not really my cup of tea as people who listen to me regularly know , but my first impulse is this is obvious ly political. Like no part of me is taking it seriously and you're right. It's the idea of she's using a nonprofit in some way that they want to like get in. I'm like, oh, whatever crypto scam , exactly. These guys, these guys are manipulating nonprofit law, for profit law, every single, I mean, I'm sorry, I was told the White House, you weren't supposed to be political on the lawn and I'm pretty sure they just held a UFC rally with like motor cross jumpers. So like what are we even doing here? There's no part of me that's like, yeah, you should really check into Lady Newsom's financial s. Like it's preposterous. But also not good, I guess that we start to feel sort of like, yeah, this is just where we are. Right. Where like we just anticipate the weaponization of government in this way, but now we've seen it. Yes, so much. We've seen it repeatedly, and we're seeing the spillover in cases out of Chicago, for example, where after the bombshell flame out of the Broadview six case, the indictment of the protesters of the Broadview Immigration Detention Facility you know kind of went down in flames and then we saw the release of the grand jury transcripts which just shows obvious prosecutorial misconduct. There are now being questions raised in a bunch of other cases out of Chicago involving the same prosecutors and other cases elsewhere. And so every instance of a clear political weaponization or clear prosecutorial misconduct is just further poisoning the well of DOJS an institution. Yeah. So last question on Newsom , I guess it does seem crazy that Trump is able to just direct DOJ to go after all of these people because even with Bolton where like he did the bad thing , you do wonder whether Bolton would have been in the crosshairs if Donald Trump hadn't wanted to mess with him . And so how is it that Trump can just stand up there and be like, and you're in trouble, and you're in trouble . Like how does that even possible? So we can thank the Supreme Court in part for this, and I'm not just saying that because my book is about the Supreme Court. You know, in the court's immunity decision from twenty twenty four , the court flat out said explicit ly that the president's powers over the DOJ over investigations and prosecutions were so expansive and so exclusive, it didn't matter if he was ordering sham investigations or prosecutions for an improper purpose. The president's powers were so exclusive. He could do with them basically whatever he wanted and no law could touch him. And if that kind of green lighting for the president is above the law, I think that has invited a lot of the abuses that we're seeing now. I want to talk about the Supreme Court in a minute, but is there a way to walk back what they've done with the complete immunity now that they're seeing the way that this is working? Now, I'm not saying this particular court gives a damn, but presumably in the future, we may have courts that give a damn . One can hope. So yes, there's always a way to walk back previous Supreme Court opinions. I mean, this current court is walking back and lighting on fire so many previous Supreme Court opinions. It's a case in point, but yes, a previous Supreme Court could address any case where some statute subjects the president or other executive officers to legal restrictions and say it's fine. It is fine for law enforce statutes to tell the president he can't order agencies to carry out investig ations for political reasons or for personal retribution, or it's fine to impose some limits on the president's powers even when those are powers that strike us as pretty executive in nature. Okay, well good. We can have some hope for that in the future. Next I want to talk to you about Trump's efforts to follow in Abe Lincoln's footsteps. Don't do Abe Lincoln dirty like that. I know . It's just a little it's a little law joke, a little habias corpus joke. But first, let's listen to an ad from our sponsor, laundry sauce. This show is sponsored by laundry sauce . Look, your laundry should not smell like the same stuff you use to disinfect your bathroom. Gross . Enter laundry sauce, the premium scented laundry pots that don't just clean your clothes, but leave them smelling amazing for days after washing. And I know this is true because my producer uses it and he smells terrific . 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We don't know. I hope there are tapes. I hope there are tapes . But one of the they're like sort of next drop in their big reporting after talking about the Epstein files and the way that the vice president and the cabinet took to the situation room to figure out how to manage the fallout from the Epstein files. It also turns out that the White House seriously considered suspending hab eas corpus last year as part of its immigration efforts, something no president has done since Lincoln and the Civil War. I actually do know about habeas corpus, mainly as a political science major because I remember my teacher asking like the theoretical question of us, was Lincoln right to suspend habeas corpus during the Civil War? And my answer as a nineteen year old with all the benefits of historical hindsight was, of course, of course he was correct to do this. As I've grown up, I can see how it's a much stickier thing. Anyway, I don't know if you think Lincoln was right or not, but I'm pretty sure you think Trump would be wrong to do it because what they want to do is use it to without any trials just deport as many immigrants as possible. Tell us about this. Yes, exactly. So it seems like some people in the administration were banding about the possibility that the president could suspend habeas corpus, again in the cases where they were seeking to carry out their mass deportation plan. The number of constitutional problems with this is so many. It would be not possible to cover all of them. But one is that the Constitution allows Congress to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, not the president. Part of the reason the Lincoln situation was sticky is the president suspended the writ. Now, he did so in part because the country was at war, Congress wasn't in session, and Congress came back to subsequently ratify his suspension of the writ. So it wasn't like a circumstance where he was just evading Congress and doing something he knew that the legislature wouldn't adopt. But second, the Constitution only allows suspension of habas in limited circumstances, including war, and indeed , ABS has only been suspended in wartime, whether that's after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Civil War , or whatnot. And the idea that the president can just declare, I want to carry out my mass deportation plan and therefore I get to suspend habeas corpus because I don't like the fact that these judges are giving people due process and determining whether I can actually deport or expel people is just antithetical to the concept of due process, the concept of the rule of law. So it was a pretty horrifying revelation, even if it wasn't an entirely unsurprising one. Yeah, this did not get as much play as the Epstein stuff , which is sort of a bummer because while the Epstein stuff is super explosive and really demonstrates what a political liability they thought it was and that they're really engaging in an active cover up , this is a tell in how far Trump is willing to go to find what they would say are like legal means or the predicate of legal means to do some terrible things . You teach a class on habeas. I do . And actually maybe maybe it's worth for the audience, since not everybody was a political science major at Kenya College , like talk about what habas is and why this is such so important. Habeas corpus is just Latin for have the body. And it's basically a right that guarantees you the ability to challenge your detention by an ex ecutive official in a court of law to ask a court to determine whether your detention is legal, whether the executive made a mistake and you actually can't be detained under the law or they misidentified you as someone else. And so many cases we've seen in the Trump administration underscore why due process is necessary. We have seen them detain American citizens for almost a month. We have seen them expel people to a notorious torture prison because of a paperwor k error. And those are the things that due process and habeas are designed to safeguard against, to ensure that the executive isn't wrongfully detaining people, isn't wrongfully removing them or expelling them. And that's the thing that the administration tried to get rid of. And it's such a core legal protection. It was included in the Constitution. It dates back to the Magna Carta. It was one of the colonists' complaints, you know, against the crown and it has just been a core feature of our constitutional system and all systems of the rule of law for so long. Right. And so you can see with Lincoln, you're in the middle of the civil war , half the country's trying to seced e, they are doing attacks or whatever. And so you're arresting people and you're holding them . And that is why they did this because they were American citizens who were rising up against the country , you could see how that's different a little like just on the margins , but pretty different from what Trump is trying to do here with immigrants. And so according to this news , Steven Miller wanted to suspend habeas and a lawyer within the White House wrote a memo to Susie Wells and said basically , don't be ridiculous. Suspending habias is nuts. Like what are you talking about? Did I summarize that correct ly? Oh, completely. Yeah. I guess it's good that that happened. It means that there are still lawyers in the White House that are saying , no, you can't just do this. Yeah. Good. I mean, yes, Ish, this was also a lawyer who had been on an assisting with the immunity case that we were just talking about as having such kind of disastrous consequences and far reaching executive claims. So the fact that it is now a major news story that we have a lawyer in the executive branch telling the president you can't unilaterally suspend habas corporation points. It is a testament to exactly how wild things have become. This is Stephen Miller, though, right? I mean, this is Stephen Miller trying to figure out any way around the law to hit whatever deportation numbers he's got in his head. So it is Stephen Miller, but also according to the story, it's JD Vance as well because he was also pushing the administration to invoke what's called the insurrection act , which is a law that allows the president to deploy the military for ordinary law enforcement purposes. You know, that's a law that has been invoked, you know, during the Roddy King riots, but that was at the request of a governor. You know, it hasn't been invoked over the objection of state governors or state officers , you know, except when you had southern state officials engaged in massive resistance to integration. And those were times when you had state officers effectively lining up state officers to block students from attending schools. The idea that you need an insurrection act because there are some middle aged white women in pussy hats blowing whistles when they see Ice agents is absurd. But that is what JD Vance was pushing for. So when I think back to like Minnesota , because it really was middle aged women with whistles slicking at ice, I hung out with them. They were all wearing long underwear, standing in the snow, and it was incredible. I'm Minnesota. They did our state proud. Oh yeah, congrats. It' wsonderful actually. I did write about this in the book. It was like such a striking thing at the time about what it looks like to resist in a very civically responsible way. Not just because it wasn't just the resistance wasn't just the way that they were tracking ice and all this, but also the ways that they built all this infrastructure basically from nothing to help people. Like they had a Dual network. This just really struck me. They had a food network. They had people there to give people who were coming out of the detention centers, like coats and stuff. It was incredible. Thinking about this going into twenty twenty six, it's always been Trump's go to move to be like there's an invasion , right? Like the caravans, the caravans were coming . Every time there's an election, suddenly there's a big threat . Do you think that this the fact that this was , you know, kind of shot down because this thing about JD Vance is you're really right. He is , he is not somebody interested in following the law at all either. But do you do you think that they will use this again? Like do you think this could come back up or do you think this is dead now that they've uncovered this and people have seen it? So my guess is there will still be some people in the administration who are pressing this legal theory or trying to find other ones that would allow them to deploy federal officers around the election, particularly in swing states in order to depress voting and voting turnout. But I think the one thing or a thing that I took as reason for optimism from the story is that the possibility of the insurrection act and suspending habias got batted down because they understood it would be a public relations disaster . And so the fact that people were up in arms about suspending habeas or invoking the insurrection act was enough to get the communications director and other people in the room to say, We just don't know if we can pull this off and it's not going to be worth it given the political damage this is going to cause us. And so I think it's important to continue talking about this and to get people to understand exactly how consequential and catastrophic it would be to have the president exercise these authorities to raise the costs if and when they attempt to consider them or exercise them in the future. I would not put it past them. No. I mean, I wasn't remotely surprised to see this. And you know what? This is part of what's crazy. I am disappointed that this isn't getting as much attention . Not that it's getting none, but you know, it's just not, it wasn't exploding the same way. I think it's because it feels like an arcane legal issue when actually it is like essential to what we're dealing with and how far they're willing to go. Okay , now we're going to get in the meat of the show, turn to your favorite topic, the Supreme Court, but before we do, let's take a break and hear from hers . This show is sponsored by hers . Between diets, workouts, and endless advice, it's hard to know what actually works for weight loss and what's worth your time. Your time's valuable, so make it worth it. That's why Hers offers access to an affordable range of FDA approved GLP one medications that now includes the Wagovi pill and the Wagovi pen . With Wagovi at Hur lsose up to twenty percent or more of your body weight when combined with diet and exercise . It helps you regulate your appetite, eat less, and keep weight off. Plus, Wagovi is the first ever GLP one pill for weight loss , so there are no needles needed, which is good because needles are scary sometimes. 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Thanks, Hers Okay , to wrap up, but also let's have an extensive conversation about this because there's a lot going on . I want to ask you about the Supreme Court because you're an expert in that. You were a Supreme Court clerk, and there's like nineteen opinions that we're still waiting on. It's June and June, I know what you're thinking. That's Pride month , but no , no. What it really is is Supreme Court Big Decision Month. I don't know when does the term officially end, but we are just a couple weeks away. Like there's not a lot of time left, and they got a lot of big decisions to get out. So can you tell us what are we really waiting to see? So by tradition, the Supreme Court releases opinions and argued cases before July starts before, the end of June. And then the new term officially won't start until October, but again, by convention, pest practice, they try to release all their opinions by the end of June, so they get their summer vacation. So we are waiting on nineteen cases , including some really huge ones. It is an unfortunate reality that pride basically now includes us all sitting around our computers refreshing our screens frantically to figure out what rights like we might lose and which rights we might have, etc because we're waiting on cases like birthright citizenship. We're waiting on cases like whether there are going to be independent agencies. We're waiting on cases involving absentee ballots and just a host of other big cases the court is going to release without really announcing that in advance. Like we never know what's coming and when. And so let's talk about the nineteen decisions, the big cases. So there's birthright citizenship, but what else are we waiting on? So I mentioned the case involving independent agencies. This is a case about whether the Supreme Court is going to say that the president has to have the power to fire people who head every single independent agency in the federal government except the Federal Reserve Board. And that case sounds kind of, I don't know, like technical or abstract, but it's so important given how much authority these different independent agencies have. I think people who have been following the news might have heard about the Department of Justice approving the settlement Paramount's Guidance and Time Warner. And that's a case where it looks like the administration is basically doing a solid to a company that did the administration a solid when Paramount took over CBS and effectively forced the network into giving more favorable coverage to the Trump administr ation. And so handing the president that power to control who heads these agencies that have these vast powers of awarding merger approvals or huge amounts of money in government contracts or deciding whether to enforce laws against corporations would just be an even greater expansion of presidential power beyond what this court has already gifted the president. And so that's one set of cases that I'm definitely watching closely. Do you think that there's is there anything else in there that's like a sleeper that you're scared about or like you don't know which way it's going to go? Yeah, so the case involving absentee ballots is definitely one I am anxious about. This is a case that asks the court to decide whether the federal statute that just establishes election day prevents states from counting absentee ballots that are received after election day even if they are postmarked on or by election day. And if the Supreme Court says, Yup, this federal statute prohibits states from counting those absentee ballots, that would nullify the election laws at almost half of the states, potentially in the lead up to the hugely consequential twenty twenty six midterms . And I think they would be effectively inviting future challenges to the very concept of absentee ballots and absentee voting given that absentee voting doesn't happen on election day. And so if this federal law sets up this one magical day of election day by which everything has to happen then we're kind of left wondering, well , why can there be absentee voting at all? Yeah, I mean, would that take away voting rights from like military people who are overseas, things like that? So that is a serious potential risk and that is part of what the state , Mississippi, was arguing in the case that you can't prohibit states from counting all of those absentee ballots because absentee ballots are one of the ways that we ensure service members overseas and their family members still vote. Now, the Republican National Committee, which was arguing that states can't count those absentee ballots, attempted to make a carve out and said because federal law establishes a specific procedure for getting ballots to uniformed overseas officers , then maybe their ballots can be counted, but it's not clear if that would include their family members and it's not clear whether the court would accept that theory if it says election day requires absentee ballots to be counted by then. So we just don't know. And that uncertainty is part of why that case scares me. It's funny, just listening to you, I think, well, that doesn't sound. Like they're not gonna do that. But then there's the part of me that's like, I don't know. Why would I have that confidence? They have done nothing to earn that confidence for me. This is the problem . It is bananas and, yet a court on the fifth circuit said, you're right, states can't count. Absentee ballots received after election day, and during the oral argument, it sounded like more than a few justices were open to the idea that indeed states can't count absentee balls received after election day. So it's a combination of just how sweeping the ruling would be and the fact that the justices didn't seem like they were just rejecting it out of hand like they were with the ch allenge to the birthright citizenship executive order , that makes me nervous waiting for the results in that case. Well, now I'm nervous. Now I'm nervous too. Okay . So the second piece on the conversation around the court , you know, they've issued some blockbuster opinions already. Like we've got these nineteen yet to come, but there's a lot of big stuff that's happened . Specifically the Kala Voting Rights Act comes to mind, which I talked about with your buddy Kate Shaw when she was on the show . And she was excellent. You guys are good over there. Scrutiny was she was great . So of the opinions issued so far this term , majority, dissent, concurrence, whatever . Are there any that you think will go down as sort of historically bad opinions , ones that will be referenced, you know, in law textbooks all the time later about like this court did some insane things. Here's one of the most insane . More people , more devices , more AI The way we live today takes a lot of energy. Wind and solar are powerful, but not always available . That's where natural gas comes in, with reliable energy whenever it's needed. 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The following is a Father's Day announcement from the Dad Alliance. The dad in your house will likely not tell you what he wants for Father's Day. It's not in his nature to ask for things from his children. So we , the Dad Alliance, are asking for weather tech on his behalf. American made floor liners and the cargo liner are just so baller. Gift cards are pretty rad too. Alrighty, this has been the Dad Alliance reminding you to turn the dang lights off when you leave a room and visit weathertech. com for your dad today. So Louisiana vs. Kelly, the Voting Rights decision and then the follow on case out of Alabama, I think are among the worst Supreme Court decisions of my lifetime . The court effectively nullified what remained of the Voting Rights Act, said sure, Congress amended the law to prohibit distr icting that had the effect of reducing the political power of minority voters. But we Supreme Court in all of our wisdom basically think that's a bad call. So we're just going to say that the statute prohibits intentional discrimination , even though Congress consciously decided that it would prohibit way more than that. And we're seeing the effects of that ruling as states are just falling all over themselves to redistrict in ways that effective erase the political power of racial minorities . And it is a recipe, I think, for a return to the demise of reconstruction when basically in the aftermath of reconstruction, you know, the former Confederacy and the Sou th effectively wiped out all of the political power that had been obtained by individuals who had been freed from slavery and erased the opportunities of elected officials who were themselves, you know, racial minorities. So those decisions are just horrible . And then the other from earlier this year is a decision that allowed the president to continue withholding federal funds that Congress had appropriated. This was in the USAID, the agency for International Development case. And that case was just so astonishing to me because under the Constitution, Congress has the power of the pur se. And Congress's power of the purse is like one of the key ways that Congress keeps a executive and a president in check. And so it's like yeah, it's the whole check part of the checks and balances that really rely on in the state . Exactly, exactly. So telling the president like, no, exactly, you can just nullify Congress's decisions and whatnot. Like that is a radical refashioning of the separation of powers and just gives the executive what was supposed to be one of Congress's most essential powers. I'm going to swerve just really quickly because we're on the courts, but it occurred to me. What is if Todd Blanche is confirmed because this is on my radar because it really looks like he's gonna get confirmed , are there ways that that interacts with the courts or I mean, at that point, does Trump just so firmly in control of everything Give me your worst case scenario . I mean, if Todd Blanche is confirmed, I think that is going to spell more ridiculous legal gambits like the one point seven seven six billion dollars insurrectionist slush fund. I mean, Todd Blanche was willing to try that out , I think it's going to spell more politically vindictive prosecutions because Todd Blanche is clearly willing to do effectively whatever the president wants, including initiating investigations and prosecutions for retribution and political gain. So how would that intersect with the courts? It's likely to create an additional influx of cases that are just obviously illegal and could and should undermine further the credibility of the federal government in the eyes of the court. And I think the concern is whether the Supreme Court will continue to towing the line it has, which is it basically refuses to call out president and the administration for its lies that is it won't say, Oh, you declared an emergency, but it's not actually an emergency. They might find other ways to invalidate the administration's actions, but if you give the head law enforcement position to someone who is so clearly willing to just weaponize investigations, prosecutions, and law enforcement, I do think you will need a court to say you can't be using massive power for these illegitimate reasons . That is a great point that actually, I'm glad I asked this question. Good job, Sarah, because this I hadn't quite thought of that, which is if Blanche is basically much like this idea of suspending habbeas, right? It's like how much can we test the waters? How far can we push the line? How far can we see if this Supreme Court when you've got Alito and Thomas feeling, you know, on their way out and what it you've called it like the Yolo Supreme Court ? Todd Blanche can give them a lot to yo about. Oh , he indeed can because he is yoloing over at DOJ. I mean, the idea that he would engineer this completely facitious litigation and then settle it on behalf of the DOJ and Trump to effectively create an entire federal spending program that's entirely at the president's discretion . That was so appalling that even Republican senators bulked at it. And so we know Todd Blanche is basically willing to try and do anything. And if you overwhelm the system with enough cases, it's hard to stop them all. Well , you clerked for Justice Kennedy , right? He was later the swing vote, like in his career, he was the swing vote. He's, you know, I got married because I had. So nice job. And so he was kind of seen as a moderate voice Is there anyone on the of the current conservative justice? Because I was going to ask you because now you're scared in the crap out of me. Is there anything that's making you optimistic? Is there any of the the things that they've come back with where you know, Amy Coney Barrett or somebody else sort of showed you that they have a limit that makes you feel reassured about the Todd Blanche of it all. So look, some of the justices , the Republican appointees have more limits than others do. The problem is that some of them have no limits at all . So to say, you know, those justices some lines in the sand that others do not is not that reass to me . And at least based on what I have seen , you know, Justice Barrett, the chief justice have been too willing to indulge the indulge the administration in their sweeping claims. You know, they were both in the majority in the immunity decision. Justice Barrett wrote the decision in the nationwide injunction case. She was in the majority when the court allowed the president to fire all of the federal officials in violation of federal laws to continue withholding federal funds in violation of congressional statutes to press forward with the immigration surge in Los Angeles , where the administration was allegedly engaged in racial profiling, including sweeping up some American citizens. And that the Kavanaugh stopped that was the Kavanaugh stop case. And so I just don't think they have enough lines or whatnot to give me enough reassurance that they would stop Blanche at a point where he actually needed to be stopped. They'll stop him at some things , but not in my view, remotely enough things to meaningfully safeguard the institution of DOJ and the rule of law. Now we're going to just do a little book talk, but we're related to the Supreme Court. What was it that you felt sort of desperate to add after writing the book where you were like, Oh man, I got to talk about this. Yeah, so I wrote a section on the unitary executive theory, this theory of presidential power that the administration has been pressing and they've been pressing it in part because they think they have a receptive audience at the Supreme Court and they do have a receptive audience at the Supreme Court. You know, the unitary executive theory is this theory that suggests all of the executive power is vested in the president . And because the president possesses all of the executive power, he has to be able to control anyone who's exercising significant executive power. And it was that theory that led the court in the immunity decision to say because investigations, prosecutions and law enforcement, those are executive powers, the president gets to have plenary control over anyone exercising those powers. So he can order them to do improper investigations, he can fire them if they are unwilling to start a sham prosecution, etc , etc . And it's that same theory that I think has been at play in a bunch of the cases where they have handed the president these huge massive powers that unsettle the checks and balances and the separation of powers. That's the theory that is at stake in the case about whether the president is going to have the power to fire everyone who heads these agencies that have the power to regulate corporations and enforce the law. So I really wanted to write about how the Supreme Court has similar views in some ways about executive power as the administration because I know the court can has and will occasionally rule against the administration and I just worry that those cases where it does rule against the administration are going to lead to an overemphasis on how the court is standing up to Trump or how the court is a meaningful check on the rule of law and the separation of powers when in my view, they have done so much to enable him , to lay the groundwork for his presidency, to allow him to continue asking for these absurd exercises of executive powers. So I wanted people to have that bigger picture as they are thinking about what the court's role in the second Trump administration has been. I can see why that would keep you up at night and mean you'd be desperate to get it in the book. You know, one of the things I remember about your book is I remember going through it I thought about this for my book was like you did a lot of here are some practical things you can do. You had recommendations at the end of things people could do. Does that still hold up? Like do you feel like people are doing those things or do you still think those are the right things to do? Or have you had any other subsequent thoughts since now we're in it? So I do think those still hold up because a lot of the advice was to stay engaged, stay involved as we were talking about , it was the public pushback and the public outcry over the insurrection act that stopped the administration. And I think that the public outcry over the court's demolition of the Voting Rights Act is going to be an important force in convincing people they need to turn out for the midterm elections. They need to ensure that other people turn out as well. And so educating people organizing them, that's always going to be an essential tool and one that is necessary to make democracy work. I do think that I would love to see more energy focused on the Supreme Court and how as we are thinking forward to a time when there is a party or an official in power who actually