Is That Even Constitutional?

Higher education has become a necessity for social and economic mobility in our society. This is particularly important for minority groups seeking to access the mainstream of American society. In 2023, however, the Supreme Court held in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that student admission policies at public universities that benefit minorities violate the Equal Protection Clause and can...

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly 47,000 people died of gun-related injuries in the United States in 2023. Despite this litany of violence, gun control in the United States has become far more difficult. In 2008, the Supreme Court drastically reinterpreted the Second Amendment in District of Columbia v. Heller . Since then, the Court has enthusiastically exp...

In Citizens United v. FEC , the Supreme Court took individual free speech rights and added an ahistorical addition - giving these rights to corporations. The idea that such a fundamental right should be extended to corporations is nonsensical. Speech is not a property right and there is no reasonable argument that corporate speech is a reflection of the speech of its shareholder. Congress, however...

In 1965, the Supreme Court held in Griswold v. Connecticut that the Constitution protected the right of families to use contraception. In 1973, the Court in Roe v. Wade extended this right to decisions to terminate a pregnancy. When Roe was overturned fifty years later in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization , this not only affected abortion rights but threatened access to contraceptives a...

There is a deep irony that the U.S., long a leader in the promotion of democracy, offers no national representation for residents of its own capital. No other country in the world deprives the citizens of their capital of the right to vote. Denying the vote in Washington, D.C. only exacerbates the long-standing history of disenfranchising of black voters. It's time for this injustice to be re...

Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life, making the Supreme Court one of the least democratic institutions in the world. Even worse, the Court now plays a political role unforeseen by the Founding Fathers. No other country has this problem. America is alone among modern constitutional democracies in allowing their high-court justices to serve without terms or age limits. Legislation has been...

The American people are frustrated with the American election system. As a result, the United States ranks 138 out of 172 nations in voter turnout. One of the biggest reasons that working adults don’t vote is that they are too busy. Standing in long lines before morning commutes, leaving during workday to travel to assigned polling stations, or putting off family duties to reach the polls after wo...

Gerrymandering is widely regarded as a distortion of the democratic process. Gerrymandering refers to any deliberate manipulation of electoral boundaries to favor one political party or group. These methods can dramatically skew election outcomes despite little change in overall voter preference. The Supreme Court has declined to review political gerrymandering by states. Congress, however, has th...

Democracies around the world only require a simple majority (above 50%) to pass legislation. The filibuster, which requires approval by 60% of the Senate, makes that chamber the most anti-democratic in the world. If Senators supporting a filibuster are from low population states, they could represent as few as twenty percent of Americans.  So, in our democracy, the vast majority of Americans can d...

For the upcoming 2026 mid-term elections, serious congressional candidates need to consider a change of approach. Rather than struggling to resolve divisive ideological issues, candidates need to pick common governing themes that are not only broadly popular but also immune to attack. PROJECT 2026 describes ten legislative proposals that all congressional candidates should agree to.

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...

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...

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 t...

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 cha...

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 e...

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...

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 b...

On June 22, 2025,  President Trump initiated the most significant U.S. military strike on Iranian soil since 1979, hitting nuclear sites in support of Israeli military operations.  Democrats protested that this attack was unconstitutional as it was done without authorization by Congress. Does the Constitution provide the President the unilateral authority to initiate military operations? 

DEI is many things to many people. So, when President Trump issued Executive Orders targeting the practice, it's implementation was chaotic, unpredictable, and ripe for legal challenge. This podcast explores the history of DEI and the Trump administrations multi-pronged attack on it.  

Today we are talking about the Venezuelan immigrants that the President sent to prison in El Salvador in early March. The court order that was supposted tp stop them didn't. So today we will be discussing what happened there, a little bit about what checks and balances mean, and whether we are in a constitutional crisis.

Sadena asks Ken: what powers does the Constitution give to the President  and where do executive orders fall within it? What happens if someone does not follow an executive order?