Melissa, Leah, and Kate are joined by Professor Kate Masur of Northwestern to talk about just how illegal and off-the-wall Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship is. Then, the hosts cover the multitude of other horrors coming out of the executive branch, preview February’s SCOTUS cases, touch base with the wackos at the Fifth Circuit, and ask the all-important question: are the mens okay?
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President Donald J Trump’s administration has been invoking a conservative legal theory as justification for his claim to possess king-like presidential powers. This new supercharged version of the “unitary executive theory” may just be extreme enough to stick in the craw of some conservative judges, but will it find a warm welcome when it inevitably lands at the Supreme Court, and should we brace for the overturning of 90 years of precedent in the form of Humphrey’s Executor? Dahlia Lithwick’s guest this week is Deepak Gupta, former senior counsel at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and founding principal of Gupta Wessler LLP, who is now fighting for his former colleagues' jobs in court. Gupta is also representing Gwynne A Wilcox, the Chair of the National Labor Relations Board who was fired via late night email in a case that is likely headed to SCOTUS.
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OA 1128 - First: an urgent question from a patron on Trump’s latest executive power grab. Matt explains the history of the “unitary executive theory” and the Federalist Society-backed movement to give the President more power than an actual king.
Then: Rutgers Law professor Katie Eyer studies, teaches, and litigates the law of anti-discrimination with a specialty in LGBTQ rights. She joins to discuss the current state of the law in the shadow of the Supreme Court’s forthcoming decision in U.S. v. Skrmetti and the wake of Donald Trump’s recent anti-trans executive orders. Which, if any, of these orders should we actually be concerned about? What does it mean that the fight for trans lives is now becoming a federal issue? Can Trump really just instruct the federal government to ignore the Supreme Court’s extension of employment protections to LGBTQ employees in Bostock v. Clayton County? Professor Eyer takes up these questions and many more as we find reasons both for concern and for hope.
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OA1127 + T3BE59!
Our breakdown of the Thursday Night Massacre continues, with Liz Skeen. Then, it's T3BE time!
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A Federal District Court has temporarily halted an executive order from President Trump that purports to halt wide swaths of federal spending. This impoundment of funds duly appropriated by Congress may violate the Constitution as well as federal statutes. We bring an expert on the relationship between Congress and the Presidency, Professor Josh Chafetz, and he takes us back to 17th century and Britain, through the American founding, into the early republic, and indeed into the presidency of Richard Nixon to give a full historical and originalist background. But there’s more, with modern statutes, Supreme Court cases, structural analysis - in short, everything. And for good measure, we dive a little deeper into some statements by Vice President Vance which seem to suggest that he thinks the President is not bound by the Supreme Court’s decisions and orders. Professor Amar appeared on CNN to discuss this, and now he expands on those comments. Lots of depth in this episode, and as usual, CLE credit is available for lawyers and judges by visiting podcast.njsba.com.
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OA1126 - Law'd Awful Boves
We interrupt your regularly-scheduled LAM for readings and commentary on the documents at the heart of what has quickly become one of the most shocking events in the 155-year history of the U.S. Department of Justice: the openly corrupt dismissal of all charges against New York City mayor Eric Adams in exchange for his cooperation with Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Gavel Gavel contributor Liz Skeen joins to share her perspective as both a New York City lawyer and resident as we work through the dueling letters which have been publicly released so far from former US Attorney for SDNY Danielle Sassoon, Acting Deputy AG Emil Bove, and former Assistant US Attorney Hagan Scotten together with DOJ’s motion to dismiss.
Former U.S. Attorney for SDNY Danielle Sassoon’s letter offering her resignation if DOJ continues to move forward with filing a motion to dismiss the federal criminal case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams (2/12/25)
Live from Fordham Law, Leah, Melissa, and Kate stay on the Trump 2.0 chaos beat. They cover the continued ransacking of the federal government by the new administration, lawlessness at the DOJ, and the gutting of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Finally, they take some time to consider just how much this new administration hates women.
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On Monday, President Trump’s personal lawyer and Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered prosecutors to drop federal corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Adams had been courting President Trump for weeks, including with a pre-inauguration visit to Mar A Lago, but the shape of the deal struck between the accused Mayor and the incoming administration came into clear view with a flurry of Department of Justice resignations on Thursday. On this week’s episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick speaks to Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney, and host and executive producer of the podcast Talking Feds. Harry explains why the so-called “Thursday Night Massacre” is not the kind of scandal even this administration can shrug off while yelling something about the “deep state” and “weaponization”.
Next, Dahlia turns to the chaotic, destructive and dangerous “spontaneous disassembly” of much of the federal government currently taking place at the hands of Elon Musk with guest Sam Bagenstos, former general counsel of the United States Department of Health and Human Services until December 2024, also former general counsel for the Office of Management and Budget from January 2021 until June 2022. Now a professor at the University of Michigan, Sam explains what happens when the federal government stops working, and why persistently asking whether or not we’re in a constitutional crisis is simply the wrong question.
Want more Amicus? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes with exclusive legal analysis. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Amicus show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen.
Divided Argument is live from the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, hosted by the Northwestern Federalist Society! We discuss whether we are in the middle of a constitutional crisis, the coming demise of Humphrey's Executor, and various shadow docket developments. Then we preview the issues at stake in next month's oral argument about firearms liability, Smith & Wesson v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos.
OA1125 - (NOTE: Acting US Attorney for SDNY Danielle Sassoon’s resignation letter and DOJ acting deputy Emil Bove’s acceptance of that letter were published while we were recording this episode, and hours before the Trump administration was enjoined by a DC federal judge from suspending international aid. The news hose never stops!)
For this Rapid Response Friday, we do our best to answer some of your questions about waves hands in the general direction of DC.
Why is the media reporting the illegal attempts to fire (among others) the head of the Office of Special Counsel and 17 investigators general like a normal federal HR issue? Did FEMA really just straight-up steal $80 million from New York City’s bank account? Is it now legal to bribe foreign companies abroad and act as an unregistered foreign agent at home? Why are we sending Venezuelan asylum seekers with no criminal records or gang affiliations to Guantanamo Bay just weeks after DHS Secretary Kristi Noem promised that it would only be housing the “worst of the worst”? And just where exactly is the “Gulf of America” anyway? These and other questions from the week’s news are answered within.
