On Truth Social, President Trump’s social media outlet, Trump posted a picture of himself in a crown saying “Long live the king.” Trump, however, will have a hard time subverting the Constitution. The key to consolidating power in authoritarian regimes is to use supermajorities to change the Constitution. President Trump's popularity is at historic lows, and power in our Constitution is more decentralized than in any other country. This podcast will discuss this, and will also consider what can be done to restore our constitutional order.

In 2016, Donald Trump said "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters" In 2025, Donald Trump illegally took billions of dollars of research grants away from Harvard University. I guess we can't say we weren't warned. This podcast explores how the power to control funding, which is called the power of the purse, belongs to Congress, not the President.

In this podcast, we interview Elizabeth Aniskevich, a litigator and a former federal employee at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Earlier this year, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau terminated all probationary employees. When this was stopped by the courts, the agency eliminated 1,400 of the 1,700 jobs at the agency. We will discuss what it was like to be at the agency when it was targeted by the Trump administration and how the employees are fighting back.

Can President Trump fire Jerome Powell, the Chair of the Federal Reserve Board? When bankers run central banks, economies are stable. When politicians run central banks, economies blow up. The Federal Reserve is an independent agency, and Jerome Powell can only be fired for cause. But the Supreme Court has made it clear that it doesn’t like independent agencies. What is likely to happen?

On July 8, the Supreme Court lifted a district court order which barred the Trump administration from eliminating thousands of jobs across the federal government. Though an important case, this isn’t the end of litigation over those firings. However, those seeking to oppose these RIFs (Reductions in Force) will now need to challenge them in a more piecemeal fashion, making such litigation more challenging and expensive.

First raised in the 1980s, the Unitary Executive Theory argues that the President should be allowed to fire the officials of all agencies, even if the positions are protected by Congress. President Trump’s administration has extended this theory beyond recognition to argue that agencies can refuse to spend money authorized by Congress, fire federal workers without following legal guidelines, and eliminate certain federal agencies completely. Dozens of cases are ongoing that will decide just how far the power of the Executive Branch can go.

In Trump v. Casa, the Supreme Court held that injunctions cannot be used to prohibit the Executive Branch from taking legal actions against persons or states not before the Court. In this case, that meant that persons in the 38 states that did not join the lawsuit wishing to claim U.S. citizenship based on their birth in the U.S. must bring their own legal case. This ban on universal injunctions will also affect dozens of other cases against the Trump administration.

The Supreme Court will be an important factor in determining how much of the Trump agenda will be implemented. But how does the Supreme Court decide difficult cases? There are many theories of constitutional interpretation, some of which are more disruptive to established case law than others. This episode will explore the many ways the Court will consider the unprecedented constitutional issues being presented by the actions of the Trump administration.