Episodes
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It wasn’t a great week for speaking truth to power. ABC’s decision to settle Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit to the tune of $16 million at the behest of parent company Disney sent shockwaves through newsrooms around the country. Coupled with Trump’s lawsuits pending against publishers, journalism prize organizations, CBS, and this week’s news that the President-elect is suing an Iowa pollster and the newspaper that published her poll for “election interference”, rising fears about the freedom of the press are pretty understandable. On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by storied media columnist Margaret Sullivan and First Amendment scholar Sonja R West to understand the protections in place and the pinch points for a free press under Trump.
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Last week, we examined the deeply worrying prospect of Kash Patel, FBI director. This week, that possibility became even more worrisome with respect to the future of the FBI, all sparked by current director Christopher Wray’s announcement of his intention to step down. To kick off this week’s show, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern, who explains why Wray’s decision is very bad news for the law and the rule of law.
Next, the planet: Last summer, we tried to absorb the sheer scale of the shift in the constitutional landscape following a run of cases at the end of the last term that gave the courts the power to reshape the administrative state from the bench, and to impede the tools of the environmental protection trade at a time when the climate is in crisis. But the news cycle moved on and the global climate alarm got snoozed again. That alarm was surely ringing again at One, First Street this week, when a case that could reshape the nation’s biggest environmental law was argued at the Supreme Court.
Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado comes to the court as a dispute over how much review is due to a railroad plan that will carry waxy, crude oil through environmentally sensitive areas, and send said waxy crude on its way to already polluted and health blighted gulf communities. Sam Sankar of Earth Justice was on hand to explain how this weedy case paints a very clear picture of the Supreme Court conservative majority’s fondness for grabbing cases that are vehicles for achieving their preferred policy outcomes, but then finding themselves in a bit of a pickle when its time to craft a new test for an old problem.
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Episodes manquant?
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What do people inside the Department of Justice think about their once-colleague and possible-future-overlord, Kash Patel? On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by former US Attorney Joyce White Vance to discuss the frightening implications of Patel's potential nomination as FBI Director under the incoming Trump administration. They explore Patel's contentious history, including his time in the DOJ, his authorship of the Nunes memo, and his bottomless loyalty to Trump. They also discuss the broader consequences of Patel’s stated desire to use the Justice Department as a tool for political retribution, including threats to journalists and DOJ officials, and what his targeted individuals can do in the face of this new, chilling reality.
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When it comes to gender affirming care for teenagers, parents’ rights no longer matter. Doctors’ opinions no longer matter. Next week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in United States. v Skrmetti, challenging Tennessee’s ban on healthcare for trans kids, and upending half a century of gender protection doctrine.
Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Chase Strangio, co-director of the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project, who will also be the first openly trans lawyer to argue at SCOTUS when he argues, alongside the Biden administration, representing the parents and physician of trans adolescents seeking care, in what will be the biggest trans rights case the court has ever heard. Chase and Dahlia dig through the doctrine to reveal the conservative legal movement’s deep hypocrisy when it comes to trans rights as compared to the rights of parents and doctors when it comes to abortion.
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If you had forgotten the chaos of Trump 1.0, the frenzied first two weeks of transition to Trump 2.0 has surely been a stark reminder. A pair of random billionaires are claiming in advance that SCOTUS will back their extra-governmental plans for a slash and burn policy for federal agencies; accusations of sexual misconduct swirl around cabinet picks; nominations are being retracted and replaced, and while all of this happens we are waiting to see whether Republicans in the Senate will step into a role of moderation, or just roll over. This matters a lot with respect to what the federal judiciary is going to look like, how much scrutiny is applied to the most outlandish cabinet nominees, and the independence of the Justice Department.
On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who has spent years investigating the dark money plot to control the courts, and who knows from firsthand experience why the justice department is different from other agencies.
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Trump’s announcement of Matt Gaetz as his pick to head the Justice Department was met with gasps around the Capitol. Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Slate’s senior legal writer Mark Stern to, yes, gasp together, but also to dig into what this stunt Attorney General appointment means for the law and the rule of law.
Next, Dahlia talks to Dr. Mary Anne Franks, author of Fearless Speech about the new era of censorship we are entering under the unprecedented power of Elon Musk and the oligarchs screaming “free speech” as they sue in their forum-shopped court of choice.
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We are, most of us, still very much in the post-election fog. It’s early days and while the fog persists, some of the shape of the future is very clear: despite his felonies, his lies, his promised mass deportations and threats of vengeance, President Donald J Trump will re-enter the White House in 2025 better organized, with a clearer mandate, and with the seal of approval of the popular vote. On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Protect Democracy’s Ian Bassin to discuss navigating the challenges that lie ahead for American democracy, as we collectively struggle to make sense of this pivotal moment and to emerge from the fog with a flicker of hope.
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In this extra episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern wade through the immediate aftermath of the election. Will splitting the ticket on abortion protect abortion rights nationally? (No) What will the federal government look like at 12:02 pm on January 20th, 2025? (very different than at 11:58 am that day) Are all of Brett Kavanaugh’s wildest unitary executive dreams about to come true? (looks likely!)
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This week’s show is unapologetically long, deep, and hopeful. Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Yale history professor Timothy Snyder to talk about his new book, On Freedom, and to have the audacity to re-imagine freedom on the precipice of an election that could turn the United States hard right into tyranny. Next, Dahlia is joined by Rick Hasen, Director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law School, for a gut-check about how the election might go, legally speaking, and a reminder that “too early to call” is a pro-democracy posture on election night—even as the former guy almost certainly claims victory before the clock strikes midnight—regardless of the actual results.
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It’s easy to dismiss nativist rhetoric as mere Trumpy “locker room talk.” But when it comes to immigration, deportation and even detention, rhetoric about foreigners and violent invaders is actually a legal long game. Toward the end of the summer of 2023, Katherine Yon Ebright, counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, noticed that rightwing anti immigration groups and the Trump campaign had started talking in earnest about using a very old law with a very dark history, in order to do very chilling things to immigrants. She started researching the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, the sole operative part of the notorious Alien and Sedition Acts. By October 2024, Donald Trump was invoking the statute in most of his stump speeches, saying he intends to use it to carry out the mass deportations of non-citizens, without due process and with domestic law enforcement deployed to full effect. We are already seeing Texas trying to use the language of “foreign invasion” to achieve exactly these ends. On this week’s Amicus podcast, Dahlia Lithwick asks Katherine Yon Ebright to help the rest of us catch up with her deep dive on this dangerous law, and to explain why we should take the threats to use it literally and seriously.
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You’re nervous. We’re nervous. As we stop for gas with almost two weeks to go before November 5th, we’re kicking the tires of American democracy to see if it’s roadworthy. On this week’s show, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Matthew Seligman, one of the authors of How to Steal a Presidential Election, to examine the legal avenues available to Donald J Trump and his band of merry lawyers to subvert the presidential election. Seligman answers Amicus listeners’ most common election question: Can MAGA electors refuse to certify the election if they disagree with the outcome?
Next, Dahlia talks to retired respected conservative federal judge J Michal Luttig, who is raising the alarm about the Supreme Court’s willful ignorance when it comes to defending democracy from Donald J Trump. Judge Luttig says part of the blame for the January 6th insurrection lies with the Supreme Court, and warns the court’s majority is poised to tip the scale for Trump this time around.
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“Prosecutors elicited perjury and a man's gonna go to his death. We can't allow that to happen.” – Paul Clement, October 9th, 2024.
This week the US Supreme Court heard arguments in the latest chapter in the complex and prolonged legal battle involving Richard Glossip, who has been on Oklahoma's death row since his conviction for a 1997 murder-for-hire. Following two independent investigations into allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, suppression of material evidence, and a history of inadequate defense counsel, Oklahoma’s Attorney General took the bold step of confessing to constitutional error in the case and supporting a new trial. But Oklahoma’s State Supreme Court is pressing on with Glossip’s execution, and so, on Wednesday morning, the High Court heard a case long on the appearance of process and short on actual justice. Don Knight, Richard Glossip’s attorney of almost 10 years, provides insights into the flawed process, and the shocking revelations from newly discovered evidence boxes. This case highlights broader questions about justice, fairness, and trust in the American legal system…. Leading us to an update from the latest inductee to the Lady Justice Hall of Fame – Amicus listener Barbara Hausman-Smith, and her one-woman protest at One First Street. Listen to the end of the show to find out what links this 76-year-old grandmother from Maine to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and SCOTUS’s landmark decision to legalize equal marriage in Obergefell in 2015.
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Democracy had a pretty rough ride at the Supreme Court last term. Presidents have criminal immunity now! Agency experts aren’t the experts anymore! Sure, you can convert that rifle into an automatic weapon! And guess what? More horrors await us this term.
But we are not going to spend this last episode before the start of a new term dispassionately picking over a smattering of cases for a lawyerly preview, or helplessly doom spiraling. Instead, we will hear from two women who refuse to blithely accept what the High Court is handing down—two women who have decided to do something, in very different ways.
You’re going to find out why one of these women will head to SCOTUS on Monday in the suit she wore to argue before the High Court 44 years ago. Dahlia Lithwick will ask the other woman, Skye Perryman of Democracy Forward, about the legal theories, doctrine tracking, and litigation strategies her organization is deploying to fight for democracy in the courts –– even (and especially) in courthouses and cases far from One First Street, where until now, the conservative legal movement has had almost free reign. Because any honest preview of the new Supreme Court term needs to look wider and deeper than the handful of cases docketed for the coming weeks.
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State Supreme Courts are vital to the functioning of American democracy. They are also where voting rights are enforced or eviscerated. This is especially true of North Carolina’s State Supreme Court, a battleground court in a battleground state. On a special bonus episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Stern (your Amicus Plus dream team) are joined by Justice Allison Riggs of North Carolina’s State Supreme Court for an in-depth interview on what’s at stake in North Carolina this year, and the path forward for progressive priorities and jurists in state courthouses.
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In this week's Amicus, Mark Joseph Stern steps in for Dahlia Lithwick to preview the upcoming Supreme Court term and dive into the high-stakes case of Garland v. VanDerStok. This critical case examines the legality of 'ghost guns'—untraceable firearms that can be assembled at home from kits bought online. Stern talks with Eric Tirschwell, executive director and chief litigation counsel of Everytown Law, the litigation arm of Everytown for Gun Safety. Stern and Tirschwell discuss the profound public safety implications of this case and the dramatic decrease in ghost gun-related crimes following the Biden administration’s introduction of the rule at the heart of the case. They also uncover the role of dark money in funding lawsuits aimed at eroding gun safety laws, and how it compares to the anti-abortion legal strategies of the Christian right.
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Chief Justice John Roberts has been labeled by some as the serious centrist at the court, and he seemed to embrace and internalize that. But the New York Times’ revelations about behind-the-scenes maneuvers favoring Trump in last term's insurrection cases shattered that illusion once and for all. The Chief’s stance in these cases surprised the Roberts-as-twinkly-eyed-institutionalist brigade, but did not, apparently, shock this week’s guest, Linda Greenhouse. Greenhouse was the New York Times Supreme Court correspondent for 30 years, and is the author of Justice on the Brink: A Requiem for the Supreme Court.
As we head into another pivotal Supreme Court term, Dahlia Lithwick and Greenhouse turn their expert SCOTUS watching lens on how the High Court got so leaky, why the Chief was so unprepared for the public backlash to his decision in the immunity case, and whether the Chief is so much Team Trump that we should worry about the election cases inevitably headed his way.
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Republicans from Ohio to Arkansas, from South Dakota to Florida and from Nebraska to Missouri have been throwing everything at trying to keep abortion ballot measures from actually reaching voters. In this week’s Amicus - a deep look at efforts to stifle and chill direct democracy in the states, post Dobbs. Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Jessica Valenti, the author of Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win, and Lauren Brenzel, the campaign director for Yes on 4 in Florida, about the playbook that’s being used to threaten ballot initiatives to protect abortion rights in states around the nation.
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The 2024 election is already underway, with some states already sending out ballots for mail-in voting. But as democrats are basking in the waning glow of their brat summer, the republican party spent the summer on a “protect the vote” tour, spearheaded by RNC co-chair and DJT daughter-in-law Lara Trump. It’s a pretty clever step — from “Stop the Steal” to “Protect the Vote” — and it’s just one of the lessons the MAGA party learned from the failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election. This week on Amicus: what’s changed in election law since 2020, and what it means for the vote in 2024. Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Ari Berman, Mother Jones' national voting rights correspondent and author of Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People―and the Fight to Resist It.
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In the last episode of our series The Law According to Trump, we try to figure out what it all means. In the months since SCOTUS gave Trump even more immunity than he asked for, the people prosecuting the former president are finding themselves in uncharted waters. How are they doing?
Slate’s Jurisprudence editor Jeremy Stahl talks with host Andrea Bernstein about how Jack Smith has tweaked the election interference cases, as well as how Trump’s legal approach has changed since the Supreme Court ruled for him in Trump v. U.S..
Listen to Andrea Bernstein on We Don’t Talk About Leonard, Trump Inc., and Will Be Wild. Andrea is also the author of American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power.
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Former President Donald J Trump keeps figuring out ways to escape criminal liability. The Supreme Court has thrown a wrench into the insurrection case and delayed sentencing in the campaign finance hush money case, while a Florida judge helped him slip out from under charges of recklessly mishandling classified documents… at least, for now.
But Trump has seen less success defending himself in civil courtrooms - including two judgments against him in defamation cases brought by writer E. Jean Carroll. Trump owes tens of millions of dollars.
On this episode of our series “The Law According to Trump,” is the civil court path to holding Trump to account in a way that actually sticks? Damon Hewitt, President and Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, speaks with host Andrea Bernstein about his case that uses the 150-year-old KKK Act to make Trump face consequences for his actions on January 6th.
This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock weekly bonus episodes of Amicus—you’ll also 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.
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