← Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts
Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts
The Rule of Law Took A Very Dark Turn This Week
01:19:33
From rendition flights to El Salvador, to USAID workers left stranded in dangerous places, the courts are tackling Trump’s wildest lawless acts, but meeting with denial and defiance.
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- [00:00]
Dahlia Lithwick
I can say to my new Samsung.
- [00:02]
Quinta Jurecic
Galaxy S25 Ultra hey, find a keto.
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Dahlia Lithwick
Friendly restaurant nearby and text it to Beth and Steve. And it does without me lifting a finger so I can get in more squats anywhere I can.
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Quinta Jurecic
1, 2, 3 will that be cash or credit?
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Dahlia Lithwick
Credit.
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Quinta Jurecic
4 Galaxy S25 Ultra the AI companion that does the heavy lifting. So you can do you get yours@samsung.com compatible with select apps. Requires Google Gemini account results may vary based on input. Check responses for accuracy.
- [00:31]
Dahlia Lithwick
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Quinta Jurecic
And they'll sell it to the highest bidder. Are you protected?
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Mimi Marziani
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Dahlia Lithwick
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Quinta Jurecic
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Dahlia Lithwick
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Mimi Marziani
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- [01:06]
Dahlia Lithwick
Hi, I'm Dahlia Lithwick. Welcome back to Amicus. This is Slate's podcast about the courts and the law and the Supreme Court.
- [01:13]
Mimi Marziani
Obviously, the Trump administration is pushing the envelope and doing, in my view, a very dangerous dance with the judiciary.
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Dahlia Lithwick
I think at a certain point you have to start looking at what do.
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Mimi Marziani
You do when you have a rogue judge?
- [01:27]
Quinta Jurecic
Why is a judge trying to protect terrorists who have invaded our country over American citizens? There are at least two factions. One of them wants to go full speed ahead in defying the courts, and there's another that's frantically trying to backpedal.
- [01:48]
Dahlia Lithwick
This week we've been trying to wrap our heads around a cascading series of constitutional choke points wherein judges explicitly ordered the Trump administration to stop doing a thing, and it just declines. This has been probably most vividly illuminated in the refusal to stop three planes that were ordered to turn around midair as they carried a group of Venezuelan migrants to a prison camp in El Salvador last weekend. That case has been top of mind for anybody still asking whether we can actually use the words constitutional crisis yet. But of course, there are several such cases, including one demanding that USAID be reconstructed and another reversing the ban on trans service members. It seems that each time a district court judge says no to Donald Trump and Stephen Miller, that judge subjects him or herself to a campaign for impeachment and threats of personal violence. Now, later on in the show, we're going to talk to one of the lawyers representing USAID workers who won a big preliminary injunction against Elon musk in doge this week to dig into the nuts and bolts of that litigation. But first we wanted to zoom out, because it really does feel like we are all trapped in an escape room in which some people think that if we can just choose the right moment to hit the red button and name something a constitutional crisis, we will somehow end it. Meanwhile, a whole lot of legal thinkers are telling us that whatever you choose to call this thing, it's not about a single case or a single court order or a single failure of checks and balances. It's something else. This week we wanted to try to broaden the frame to think about what is happening and why with Quinta Jurecig. She's a fellow in Governance studies at the Brookings Institution and a senior editor at Lawfare. She previously served as Lawfare's managing editor and as an editorial writer for the Washington Post. Quinta's most recent piece in the Atlantic is called the Ultimate Trump Story, and it's a meditation on what happens when Donald Trump, as he did this week, just opts to ignore explicit court orders. Quinta, welcome to the show.
- [04:00]
Quinta Jurecic
Thank you for having me.
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Dahlia Lithwick
Mark and I popped up with a special episode on Tuesday to try to parse what is going on with this really consequential flouting of a judicial order to turn those planes around. But for anybody who didn't catch the sort of TikTok of what happened last weekend, can we start with a quick review of the events and the dragnet that led to almost 300 Venezuelan migrants being rounded up, no hearings, flown to a labor camp that we pay for in El Salvador? And what signals that the decision to, I guess, just ignore a judicial order in that case to you?
- [04:46]
Quinta Jurecic
The timeline here is confusing, and I think that that confusion is in one sense part of the crisis that we're in, in that the administration is taking advantage of chaos and sort of trying to move, then the courts can respond. I think it's also an indication of how poorly planned, to be completely honest, this whole thing is. So roughly what appears to have happened here, as far as I can tell, is that the administration had plans to unveil an executive order that would declare that Trump was using the Alien Enemies act to declare the Venezuelan gang Trende Aragua to be an invading force into the United States, and that he was going to use that authority to remove Venezuelan migrants, or not just migrants, but any Venezuelan who had been deemed to be a member of Trend Aragua and was not a US Citizen or legal permanent resident. So Green card holder without the normal process that immigration law allows. That seems to have been signed sometime on Friday, I believe, March 14th. It. It didn't become public until the afternoon of Saturday, March 15. In the interim, the ACLU filed a lawsuit essentially saying, hey, we think that there's going to be an executive order and they're going to try to remove our clients. A group of five Venezuelan men being held in immigration detention and asked for a temporary restraining order to block this from happening. In the course of the court hearing on this issue, those five plaintiffs remained in the United States, but it appears that planes took off from the US Traveling to Central America, full of hundreds of other Venezuelans who had been identified by the administration for some reason as members of Trende Aragua. Such that by the time that the judge, Chief Judge James Boasberg of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled, certifying a class of all Venezuelan migrants who might potentially be subject to removal under this order and barring the administration from removing them from the country, those planes were already in international airspace over Central America. They landed, discharged these individuals and handed them over to Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele, who appears to now be holding them in a really horrific prison that has been constructed over the last few years. So there are a lot of issues here just to focus specifically on the sort of contempt of court aspect first or potential contempt of court. When Judge Boasberg ruled from the bench during the hearing, he specifically said turn the planes around if you have to, or something along those lines. The Justice Department, in subsequent filings and hearings, is making the somewhat cute argument that there was a distinction between the ruling that Boseberg made from the bench, the oral ruling which specifically said turn the planes around, and a written ruling that came out about 45 minutes later that did say you cannot use this authority to remove these individuals, but didn't specifically say turn the planes around. And they're making a pretty tough to justify argument that that is a meaningful distinction between those two orders. And those 45 minutes are crucial for the plan to continue their journey away from the United States. So they're pointing to that. And then they're also making an, again, very odd argument that being in international waters is somehow a magic switch and at that point the judge has no authority over them and therefore that they were perfectly justified in continuing to travel even if the order somehow applied. I think it's fair to say that Judge Boasberg has not been particularly amused by e of these arguments. And over the course of the Last week, what we've seen is this sort of back and forth where Boasberg tries to get more information from the Justice Department about what exactly happened here when the planes left, when they landed, in order to determine, you know, did the did the DOJ violate a court order? And the Justice Department is now refusing to provide that information. Initially, they indicated that they didn't want to hand it over, sort of gesturing at the state secrets privilege, which is really not particularly relevant here. Boasberg then essentially said, look, if you want to invoke state secrets, you have to actually invoke state secrets. I think it's noteworthy here that Judge Boasberg, as he noted during a hearing, just came off a run as the presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. So this is not someone to whom you know, state secrets or the Department has kind of tossed around the idea that there might be classified information here. This is someone who dealt with those issues regularly. He is very, very much someone who is familiar with this kind of issue set and is not going to be cowed by sort of waving your hands around and saying national security. So we're currently sort of in this posture of waiting and seeing on Friday. So, listeners, by the time you hear this, Boasberg has convened another hearing, this one on, I believe it's whether to turn that temporary restraining order into a preliminary injunction, so something a little bit more permanent. But there is still going to be this kind of parallel track of the judge trying to figure out if DOJ disobeyed a court order and if so, what to do with it. And all of that is before we get to the question of the actual substance of the administration's use of this law in the first place, which is a whole different kettle of fish.
- [10:47]
Dahlia Lithwick
And Mark Joseph Stern and I will be talking about whatever it is that happens at that Friday hearing for Slate plus listeners. So maybe we' have more clarity, maybe we won't. It does feel like this game of chicken quinta, where it's like more and more overt defiance and a judge who is signaling, I think, as openly as he can, that he's running out of patience. So there is this I keep thinking of it as the sort of Zeno's paradox of constitutional crises, where we keep inching closer and closer to it before we get to the defiance piece of this. I do want to talk about one piece of the merits here, because I think it's actually a rhetorical trick that's really quite troubling. As you said, there's been no finding of facts about who these migrants are and why they were rounded up and what they're accused of. And I think more pointedly, we've heard variously from the administration that every single person on every one of those planes is a dangerous gang member. Then we've heard that even if they're not dangerous gang members and haven't been arrested for anything, they could someday maybe be arrested for a thing. So it's like a pre crime kind of gig. Then we're hearing that some of them haven't committed, you know, crimes, but we just know they're dangerous. And then you're getting this really creepy line that says, well, the innocent ones are going to get due process from El Salvador, who will make findings and release them. And then, of course, at the end of the day, we have Steve Bannon saying, who cares if a few innocent gardeners were swept up in the dragnet? Maybe some people got caught up in it. Who knows? But you don't get the bulk of them out. They try to do their best. I think they got everybody was a bad guy, but guess what? If there's some innocent gardeners in there, hey, tough break for a swell guy. Even before we get to the sort of merits, this feels to me like it is sort of the very definition of what it is to dehumanize, to not even try to be consistent about coordinating the story you're telling about who these people are and why you sent them away.
- [12:59]
Quinta Jurecic
It's really horrific. I hadn't seen the information that you just mentioned about, you know, we'll give them some kind of process in El Salvador. I want to come back to that in a second. But as you say, I mean, all the information that we have learned about the individuals who were on these flights and who are now being imprisoned in El Salvador, there is absolutely no indication that the administration had any evidence that any of them were members of Trende Aragua. The particular people whose stories have kind of been starting to be reported in news reports are just average people. There's one person who I saw this morning was a professional soccer player in Venezuela, fled to the United States because he attended some marches against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and has tattoos. I think one, it said that he got it because it looked like the logo of Real Madrid, which is his favorite soccer team. The administration has decided that having tattoos is somehow an indication of gang membership. I don't think there's any indication that Trend actually uses that to determine membership. The other tattoos that I've, you know, seen are things like, I love you mom, you know, so certainly not a basis on which to again remove someone from the United States to a Salvadorian prison. But it's really horrific the way that these people are being talked about. Deeply, deeply disturbing. I've kind of hoped at least that, you know, some of the reporting about their families and loved ones, trying to figure out what happened to them and get them out might help kind of somewhat pierce this veil and, and communicate to people that, you know, these are not, you know, vicious monsters or something like that. These are regular people. And also, even if they had been members of a gang, they should still be afforded due process. The idea that you can just sort of yank someone with absolutely no process at all is horrific. And this gets to the, the point about, you know, oh, maybe we'll give them some kind of process in El Salvador. One of the issues that I have been really disturbed by that I think has not gotten press attention, perhaps reasonably so, given that, you know, we're all justifiably focused on the means of removal and the possible contempt is on what authority are these people being held in El Salvador? There has been a lot of comments from US Officials. I believe Marco Rubio Bukele certainly has said this, that they are being held by El Salvador on behalf of the US Government and that the US Government is paying Bukele to hold these people. On what authority? Usually if you remove someone from a country and put them in, you know, some kind of prison in another country, we would call that illegal rendition. And even, you know, in, in the course of the war on terror when, you know, we, we've had instances where people were held by foreign governments on behalf of the United States. The case that comes to mind for me is a case called Doe v. Mad, which actually involved an American citizen who had allegedly fought for isis, who was imprisoned in Iraq by the Iraqi government on behalf of the US we know about that because he filed a habeas claim in US Court and there was a question about what authority the US Was holding him under. At least there the government could point to the authorization for the use of military force after 9, 11. I think, you know, arguably that was a stretch, but there was a domestic legal authorization. It is totally unclear to me what authority the administration is pointing to here. Is it somehow the Alien Enemies act still? Is it? You know, they're just sort of waving Article 2 around and claiming that there's some kind of justification there. What is the status under international law of these people? You know, if this is a, if it's a War with Chengjia Aragua. Are they then prisoners of war? I mean, does this raise questions under international humanitarian law? Like, there are so many issues here. And I think that the justifiable and very real concern over the authority under which they were removed shouldn't distract us from the question that these people are being imprisoned with absolutely no, you know, publicly stated legal rationale and also being forced to labor as far as Bukele has said. So the whole thing is deeply, deeply disturbing.
- [17:17]
Dahlia Lithwick
Quinta, you've made a couple of points that I want to think about that I hadn't really fully processed. At the most sort of visceral level, there is this feeling, and we've seen it in other cases where folks are deported to third party countries where they have no connection, that there is this kind of vibe that says that there's the United States and everywhere else and everywhere else is the same place. For purposes of this administration, it doesn't matter where the third party places, because as long as they're someplace else, you know, we have discharged whatever international obligations we have. And it shows you, I think, how sort of myopic and in some sense self, regarding this whole theory of, you know, as long as they're not here, it's not our problem. We have no obligation to anyone. I think the other thing that you're saying, and this is really important, we caught ourselves saying deportation in the earlier show this week. These aren't deportations.
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Quinta Jurecic
Right. There's a process through which you go.
- [18:20]
Dahlia Lithwick
Right, we deport people. You know, we understand what the process is. Military rendition sounds awfully close to what this is, or just disappearing people or, you know, and it. And the last thing that I just want you to reflect on is it's fascinating you mentioned in, you know, your opening answer that one of the things that is being claimed over and over again is that every facet of this is a state secret. You know, every facet of the air travel who was scooped up. And yet, let's just say again that there is video recording, head shaved, people being manhandled in white garb. Marco Rubio is tweeting about this state secret. And so I think part of the question here is, as you say on so many of these issues, it falls into this kind of vaporous netherland between super classified top secret and what we can see with our own eyes. And the administration is happy to brag about.
- [19:23]
Quinta Jurecic
I think that's right. There's a real divergence between the way that the administration has talked about this publicly and the way that They've talked about it in court and you see that tension in moments where Judge Boasberg has kind of said, you know, what do you mean this is a state secret. I believe there was an order where he essentially said, you know, you're suggesting that you might want to invoke state secrets, which you haven't actually done, by the way, presumably because you know that it would be difficult to do that because all this information is in the public. But, you know, here's a tweet from the Secretary of State announcing that this is happening. And I think you see that tension as well in the real difference in rhetoric between the administration in, you know, anonymous quotes to reporters saying, I think there was one quote to the Washington Post that was something along the lines of like, you know, we have the balls to take this all the way in terms of defying the courts. And then when the administration actually shows up in court, what it says is, oh, Judge Boasberg, you know, actually we think that the order didn't apply because of this. That and the other reason, you know, there's a real divergence between the kind of macho out of court posturing and the in court deference, which is obstructive, obviously. But they're not going in and saying, you've made your order now it's your, you know, try to enforce it. They're going in and making a lot of very hair splitting arguments. When you get to the point of saying, you know, you didn't use the magic words that you used in your bench order in the written order. So somehow there's like that you are slicing it very fine right there. But I also think that it's telling that, you know, the Justice Department lawyers are going and trying to make that argument rather than just kind of breaking the door down and saying, you know, article two, I do what I want. I don't think it's good. But I do think that that distinction has been really noticeable.
- [21:25]
Dahlia Lithwick
More in a moment with Quinta Jurassic.
- [21:31]
Mimi Marziani
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- [22:07]
Dahlia Lithwick
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- [24:39]
Quinta Jurecic
It's magical.
- [24:41]
Dahlia Lithwick
Who knew? It's like flipping a switch between the Alien Enemies act, which we talk a lot about on this show, right? 18th century statute says you gotta be at war. Like doesn't feel like it really applies. And then this argument that kind of leeches into the court, which is. But anyway, there's this broad Article 2 power that we can't quite name and isn't exactly a thing that subsumes even the statute. I would love for you to just walk us through. Does the second the Article 2 power, you know, boundless executive authority, no need to answer to a court. Does that just swallow the whole conversation about the Alien Enemies act, which Judge Boasberg thought he was at a hearing to do?
- [25:29]
Quinta Jurecic
I confess I am not totally sure. And I think that some of that is, you know, that I haven't studied this as closely as I might have. But frankly, I think that more of it is that the Justice Department is intentionally being slippery here. My sense, from what they have written in the filings and what they've said during hearings, is that the place where they've ended up is we were relying on the Alien Enemies act to put these people on the plane and take them out of US Territory. At which point a magical, you know, something happens. The plane transforms. We're over international waters. We have now removed. You can't see that I'm doing air quotes. We've now removed these individuals under the Alien Enemies act, and ta da, now we're relying on the Article 2 Foreign Affairs Power because the plane is over international waters. This is a very weird argument. I don't. I mean, have you ever heard anything like this? It's completely bizarre. And Boasberg also seemed pretty befuddled by it.
- [26:44]
Dahlia Lithwick
Yes, I am putting my shaking head in air quotes because, no, it's crazy. And I think, listen, we are identifying a theme. We've now answered several questions with the this, it's neither fish nor foul. They claim that it's one until it's the other. This is clearly, I think, a litigation posture. Your friend and mine, Ben Whittis, did a really funny piece about how you litigate these cases. And I think part of it is, you know, say one thing until it's the other thing. Say the other thing until it's the one thing. And when, you know, the rubber hits the road, say that you're just following orders. Right. But there's this other component, and this is really the big question I wanted to bring you in to answer, which is, I think your Atlantic piece that you filed as this was happening in real time ends with this question that is, do you think the administration deliberately engineered this to be the constitutional crisis, or did they just sort of like slide into one on, like a slip and slide, and now they're just gonna have to, because they feel like they have broad powers, you know, under, under these sort of foreign affairs and national security claims or was this the plan all along?
- [27:56]
Quinta Jurecic
I don't know. I can make some educated guesses for you. I think it is certainly the case that the administration is attempting to present it as if this was the brilliant plan all along. And I think that there has been a bunch of reporting that, with greater and lesser degrees of credulity, puts those assertions forward. At the same time, I think there is also a lot of indication that there are multiple factions within the White House and perhaps the Justice Department on this, and there are at least two factions. One of them wants to go full speed ahead in defying the courts, and there's another that's frantically trying to backpedal. And what I mean by this is I don't have the article in front of me, but Axios ran an article, I think, on on Sunday after this first happened that had a title like some something along the lines of, you know, the administration's plan to defy the courts or something like that. And it included a lot of, you know, super macho aggress quotes from anonymous officials about how they were going after the courts and they wanted this fight and they were going to win. And then about an hour later, it was updated. The headline was significantly softened, I think, a change from defy to ignore. And there were a bunch of quotes added from, again, anonymous administration officials, where the sort of quotes about defiance were now paired with other quotes from officials saying, actually we didn't defy a court order, and that was never our intention. So clearly the administration is of at least two minds here. My guess, and this is, this is a guess just from sort of reading the information in front of me. And a lot of this I am relying on the ACLU's presentation of its own understanding of the sequence of events here, particularly the fact that it seems like this executive order was signed, held secretly for at least a day, and then released. One possibility might be the administration had planned to unveil the order at the same time as basically the planes touched down in El Salvador to essentially short circuit the ability of anyone to actually bring a case against it, at least in the case of those 200 or so people who had been removed under that order. That would have avoided a confrontation with the courts because there wouldn't have been a court challenge to begin with. What happened instead is that somehow the ACLU found out about this, filed the case in advance. That put the administration suddenly on this ticking clock that they hadn't anticipated, and somebody made the call, you know, we're going to have these planes take off despite the fact that this hearing is happening. I should also say one thing I left out of my original comments. The planes took off from the United States in the middle of a gap in the hearing that Judge Boasberg had called for so that the Justice Department could come back and give him more information about whether planes were leaving and what the status was. So one possibility is that the administration was kind of scrambling. One faction said, you know, send the planes, go, go, go. And now they've ended up in this situation where perhaps the White House is refusing to allow them to back down. But they have a really unfavorable fact pattern. The legal authority here is not strong. I mean, if you, if you were going to say, imagine your sort of evil genius plan to defy the courts under a second Trump administration, I would say something like, you know, pick a statute where the president has really strong authority, where it's unambiguous on a very specific issue of national security, and kind of push it that way. But this is, they sort of picked a statute out of their back pocket. It really does not apply here. It involves an invasion, a declared war. Tren Aragua obviously is not a government. There's no invasion. The facts are just bad, bad. And they, they've ended up with a judge who is not going to look kindly upon these kinds of shenanigans, is very experienced, really knows his way around, you know, this, the sorts of classified information and secrecy that they're trying to kind of throw up as smoke is someone who is well regarded on both sides of the aisle. And now because of their kind of yelling and waving their arms around, we have now gotten a statement from Chief Justice John Roberts essentially saying, I think very politely, knock it off. And so I think to the extent that there was a question about how a Supreme Court might rule on these issues on the merits, they're certainly eating away at that likelihood and really clearly have not made Roberts happy. And so the whole thing, I don't want to understate how extremely dangerous this is and like the fact that we're even talking about this is very, very, very bad. But it seem me to be an outcome that has been, we're here more because of chaos and an effort to kind of seize the day rather than because of any well laid plan.
- [33:10]
Dahlia Lithwick
I think that I am slowly learning that when I pose questions that frame things as sloppy or dangerous, the answer is inevitably yes, slash. And, and that this is both like reckless and sloppy and also really perilous. I do think we've come to the Part of the conversation that I' been dreading, which is we have to talk about the judges, because you just flicked at that quinta. And it seems to me that that's where this feels like it's taken a real turn. Many people have called for his impeachment, the impeachment of this judge. I don't know who the judge is.
- [33:47]
Quinta Jurecic
And this judge, Judge Boasberg, is a Democrat activist.
- [33:51]
Mimi Marziani
He's radical left.
- [33:52]
Dahlia Lithwick
We have very bad judges.
- [33:54]
Quinta Jurecic
67% of all of the injunctions in this century have come against which President Donald J. Trump.
- [34:01]
Dahlia Lithwick
These are judges that shouldn't be allowed. I think they, I think at a certain point, you have to start looking.
- [34:06]
Mimi Marziani
At what do you do when you.
- [34:07]
Dahlia Lithwick
Have a rogue judge.
- [34:08]
Quinta Jurecic
Let me say that again. 60% of the injunctions, bipartisan activists in the judicial branch have come against President Donald Trump. And 92% of those have been from Democrat appointed judges. They're meddling in foreign affairs. They're meddling in our government. And the question should be, why is a judge trying to protect terrorists who have invaded our country over American citizens? This is a clear concerted effort by leftists who don't like this president and are trying to impose or slow down his agenda.
- [34:43]
Dahlia Lithwick
Those were choice cuts from President Donald Trump, White House Press Secretary Caroline Lee Levitt, and Attorney General Pam Bondi. And yes, earlier this week, Trump called for the impeachment of Judge Boasberg. Some clown in the GOP filed articles of impeachment against him. On Tuesday, John Roberts issued a statement saying, that's not how it's done, as one does. Elon Musk also called for Judge Boasberg to be impeached. And by Wednesday, we learned that Musk had made the maximum allowable donation to the campaigns of seven Republican members of Congress who support impeachment. Impeachment. But I also want to say, and I think this goes to your earlier point about the kind of parallel tracks of the type of behavior that happens on Fox News on the one hand, and what DOJ lawyers will actually attest to in court, that I'm starting to wonder if these parallel tracks are actually beginning to merge. This is what Trump's Justice Department put in a filing in Judge Boseberg's court on Wednesday. Quote, what began as a dispute between litigants over the President's authority to protect the national security and manage the foreign relations of the United States pursuant to both a longstanding congressional authorization and the President's core constitutional authorities has devolved into a picayune dispute over the micromanagement of immaterial fact finding, end quote. The document went on, quote, continuing to beat a dead horse solely for the sake of prying from the government legally immaterial facts and wholly within a sphere of core functions of the executive branch is both purposeless and frustrating to the consideration of the actual legal issues at stake in the case. This is not how government lawyers talk to judges ever, Period. This is just not done. The fact that it's being done in the name of Pam Bondi, also sometimes under the signature of Pam Bondi, makes it extra chilling. And I can't help but think, think that if you are going after federal judges with this level of contempt and this level of dismissiveness, you are not in fact, any longer playing the game that you say one thing on Fox News and something else in court. This feels like a real escalation to me. And that escalation comes against the backdrop of more and more reports of actual threats to actual judges.
- [37:06]
Quinta Jurecic
Yeah, that's very fair. And I think that this sort of convergence between the outside and inside rhetoric happened, I think, after the first two hearings in this case where there was more of a kind of typical DOJ language before Judge Boasberg. And now that we've moved into this question of are you actually in contempt here, that there has been more aggression in the written filings, the language that's being used about judges is deeply, deeply concerning. We know that there has been a real scaling up of threats against judges in recent months, months, weeks. It cannot be helping that, as you say, there's sort of a political feedback loop where Elon Musk is sort of trying to create an incentive for Republican members of Congress to call for these impeachments. I think it's worth just saying the idea that any of these judges will actually be removed from their posts, I think is pretty far fetched at this point, because you would need 67. Senators Musk seems to think you only need 60. I'm not sure why that's the vaunted math genius at work, but you would need 67. But, you know, just putting someone's face out there and kind of making them a target is really, really concerning. We know from the January six abortive prosecution of Trump that Judge Chutkan who was overseeing that, was seen, you know, traveling with kind of a cabal of marshals around her to protect her. So I think that clearly the administration is trying to intimidate judges. I have to wonder whether that will work. One way to read that comment from Roberts was, you know, on the surface, very milquetoast, but underneath it, you could read it as him kind of saying, like, hey, you know, I got your back. Essentially, like you, you can be sure that when this goes up to the Supreme Court, you know, we're not going to throw you under the bus. The question, of course, is whether judges feel that gives them enough protection in the moment to rule in the way that they would want to rule. I don't think we've had any indication that any judge has been dissuaded along those lines. But it is, it is certainly very, very troubling and is, is something to keep a close eye on, especially because as far as I understand it, I mean, the, the marshals are the Judiciary Security Service, but are ultimately under the control of the Justice Department and are, you know, funded through congressional appropriations, although that also may not matter anymore. So I, I have, you know, can we be certain that the executive will continue to fund the marshal's protection, their protection of judges, and that they'll continue to provide that protection? That's kind of an additional complication.
- [39:57]
Dahlia Lithwick
Yeah, I mean, I think that's why it's so extra worrisome when you hear Pam Bondi herself going after a judge. You know, at the end of the day, the marshal serves service answers to Pam Bondi. I think I want to ask you my other big kind of. We focused on this as a constitutional crisis this week in the media because it's, it's sort of easy to explain. Not easy, clearly, not easy to explain. But it's, it's, it's a tight little bundle of judicial orders and refusals. But, you know, we've seen orders from Judge, Judge Chuang on usaid. We're gonna have more in a minute on that with Mimi Marziani. But we're seeing, you know, an order in New Jersey on Mahmoud Khalil. We are seeing an order striking down the ban on trans service members. We've already got two court orders demanding that folks be rehired. Who were all those probationary workers. And, and yet New York Times is reporting most of them were just plopped onto administrative leave immediately. And so I think constitutional crisis is too small in some sense. And so I wonder how we can talk about the dismantling of not just the federal government, not just of norms of sort of how we behave in court, norms of statutory interpretation and constitutional thinking. But just in every single case, what we are seeing is a commitment to do, yes, there's an order, and I'm just going to shapeshift my way out from under it and hide the ball. And I don't know if the language of constitutional crisis that we keep deploying is a useful category anymore, because whatever is happening is not a constitutional failure. It's a much deeper failure of the rule of law and the agreements we have made to hold up democracy.
- [42:02]
Quinta Jurecic
So, two points. So first, on the question of compliance with court orders, I think you're right. We've seen a lot of instances where the administration, again, tried to get kind of cute with whether or not it was complying. We saw, you know, in a lot of the early litigation over the OMB freeze on funding, there would be these interactions where a judge would order the administration to keep dispersing funding, and the administration would say, oh, yes, sure. And then it would turned out that the money still hadn't flowed and the administration would say, ah, aha. That's because we, we didn't distribute it under a different authority that you didn't enjoin us for. At the same time, we have also seen instances of compliance, too. Right. I don't, I don't want to lose sight of that. It seems like there are some cases in which the administration is really pushing the limits and some cases in which they're agreeing to do what courts say that they have to do. So, you know, they did rehire all of those probationary employees. There are cases where the administration has been ordered to move trans female prisoners back to women's prisons, and they have done it. So it's kind of, I think it's a complicated to get a full picture of it because it looks different in different cases. That said, as you say, you know, the fact that we're even having to say, like, well, they kind of complied in this case and they complied here, but maybe not here is itself just a huge, I mean, would have been completely unthinkable even a year ago, even during the first Trump administration. And so there is certainly a, again, I don't know if crisis is the right word, but an environment of real disdain for the judiciary on behalf of the executive. I think that one other way that constitutional crisis may not be helpful or could be helpful if we kind of reframe it, is that we have this idea that defying the courts is kind of the red line for moving us into crisis. I think we just heard Chuck Schumer saying that there have been a bunch of people who have made that comment on all sides of the aisle. I think there's, you know, you can look at public opinion polling about, you know, like, would you approve if Trump did X and people really say that they don't want him to defy a court. There's sort of an ingrained sense that, like, that's not something that you do, and once you do that, that's bad. And I think that that's worth untangling in two ways. One is that it's not necessarily a red line, as it can be a really complicated picture that is de disturbing, but is sort of a frog boiling situation. And the other is that there's another branch of government here, that's Congress, Article 1. And the actions that the Trump administration has taken toward Congress have been just as disturbing, if not more so, than its attitude toward the judiciary. I mean, we came right out of the gate, and one of the very first things that the administration did was, was impound a huge chunk billions, trillions of dollars in federal funding that had been appropriated by Congress. You know, that is the congressional power of the purse. That is the power that Congress has as a coordinate branch of government. And so the executive has really been riding roughshod over congressional power in a way that I think should be understood as a crisis as well. But in part because Congress itself has kind of let this happen and sort of rolled over and showed its belly. It doesn't read as a crisis. And I think there's a deeper cultural point here about sort of cultural reverence for the courts in a way that we don't have for Congress as an institution. But I do think it's connected with Congress sort of not standing up for itself institutionally. And only when you kind of zoom out and understand this as the executive sort of of not only pushing the limits of its authority and trying to kind of subsume the judiciary, but also subsuming the legislature, do you get a full picture of the real danger that we're in.
- [46:11]
Dahlia Lithwick
That's such an interesting point, because it is, in fact, true that you can be trained to not fight for congressional prerogatives. I mean, not only have we trained Congress not to fight for its own prerogatives, but the public doesn't even expect Congress to fight for its own prerogatives. And by the same token, I think maybe what you're doing is explaining why it is that Donald Trump and all his proxies are on television threatening judges, because you can train the American public to say, oh, maybe it's not a red line when you flout a court order. I guess I want to land on this final question for you, which is you've made this point, and I think it's correct, which is now is not a great time to like pop popcorn and watch the courts save us like that. Clearly, you know, for all the reasons we've talked about, is not adequate. What is your kind of charge to people who are processing a huge tsunami of information and trying to figure out what it all means and also really trying to figure out their own role? And I think I'm talking to you so many times on this show. We talk to lawyers about now's a good time to think about how you want to spend the next four years. But non lawyers too. What is your sort of charge in terms of. Of how to, in the face of a supine Congress and a really quite threatened court, what is the role of the public, as you say?
- [47:45]
Quinta Jurecic
I think it's a mistake to rely too much on courts. And in a way, a lot of the sort of flurry of litigation that we're seeing and the public frustration with the courts moving slowly is, I think, a reflection of how, how energy that should be channeled through Congress is being sort of shunted into the courts because the Republican majority in Congress won't do anything. And so in that respect, the courts are not the right tool, but they're the tool that people who are sort of opposing these abuses of power have. So then, as you say, the question is, okay, what are the other tools? I do think that there are have been a growing amount of protests. Erika Chenoweth, who studies protest and sort of dissent movements, had a article out recently saying that actually there have been more protests over the course of this administration, growing more quickly than there were in the first Trump administration. I think people may not be sort of experiencing that because we didn't get kind of a bang right out of the gate with the Women's March this time around. But the protests are real. They're happening. You see them in front of Tesla dealerships, for example. That movement is really interesting and is pushing on something that I think we haven't seen before, because we've never had someone who had this kind of financial vulnerability in a role of such importance in government. But they're sort of identifying a lever they can pull in terms of putting pressure on Elon Musk's wealth by protesting in front of Tesla. There are also all of these town halls with, you know, people, constituents confronting their Republican members of Congress. People are putting together town halls with, you know, the empty chair for the member of Congress who isn't there. I do think that Congress is not doing anything now but that doesn't mean that it's not going to do anything in the future. And so there is significance in terms of, you know, people's ability to reach out to their elected representatives and make clear, you know, these are not things that they support. As Trump's popularity has fallen over the last two months, I think we've started to see kind of, you know, whispers of Republicans pushing back more than they did initially. And so I do think that, you know, it's. It's important to keep that in mind. Mind. I also think that sort of visible dissent in those waves, you know, protests, things like that matters because it helps indicate to people that they are not alone in being disturbed by this. And what I mean is that I think Trump is very good at presenting himself. And the political press is really apt to swallow this kind of presentation of Trump as this kind of, you know, man on the horse who rides in and takes control of everything and is kind of the voice of the people. And there's no, you know, if you dissent, that's just a you thing. And that's not the case. He won an incredibly narrow margin in a very favorable year for anti incumbents. His approval is falling. And I think that there is a real value in showing people that they're not alone and being disturbed by this and also puncturing that idea that there's sort of a permanent vibe shift in favor of Trump that has a real value and a real significance. I also think, you know, standing up helps show to other people that doing so is possible. It's easier to voice your dissent when you see that other people are doing so. And then I will say, you know, this is a really much smaller scale personal thing, but I do think just, you know, thinking about what you can do in your immediate surroundings, in your immediate community. I live in D.C. so I don't have a representative to call. But one thing that I've been trying to sort of make sure that I'm doing is making sure that I'm, you know, taking care of the people around me. You know, I think, like most people who live in D.C. i know a lot of people who have lost their jobs or are about to lose their jobs or lost their health insurance because their spouse lost their job. And so, you know, trying to make sure that I'm, you know, there for people and providing help for them in the form of community. That's my, my particular instance. Other people have other ways that they might want to engage. But I do think that it would be a real mistake for people to kind of look at what's happening and turn inward and try to shield themselves. Obviously we can't, you know, engage in staring straight at the horrors all of the time. But that, you know, reaching out to each other and sort of trying to maintain that community can be a real help here.
- [52:33]
Dahlia Lithwick
Quinta, I love that. I feel like the T shirt writes itself and it's some version of Trump. Colon. It's not a you thing. Like, it's really not a you thing. It's a him thing. Quinta Jurecic is a fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, a senior editor at Lawfare, previously served as Lawfare's managing editor and as an editorial writer for the Washington Post. The inspiration for this conversation was her really terrific recent piece in the Atlantic, the Ultimate Trump Story. Quinta, it's always a treat to talk to you. I always learn something. But also I think that you have just been an indispensable voice for, like, steady persistence in the current crisis. And I'm just really grateful for you. Thank you for joining.
- [53:23]
Quinta Jurecic
That's very kind. Thanks for having me.
- [53:26]
Dahlia Lithwick
Let's pause to hear from some of our sponsors, and when we come back, I'll be talking to one of the lawyers behind a big win against Elon Musk and Doge this week, Mimi Marziani, who represents USAID workers and contractors.
- [53:45]
Quinta Jurecic
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- [54:49]
Mimi Marziani
It.
- [54:49]
Dahlia Lithwick
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- [57:09]
Mimi Marziani
Thank you. Thank you. Yes, it was very exciting. Exciting.
- [57:11]
Dahlia Lithwick
And I wonder if, if you can just start by telling us how you came to take this case on.
- [57:17]
Mimi Marziani
So my practice has been in the intersection of law and policy and politics for over 15 years. I started my firm a couple years ago after I stepped down from my previous position leading the Texas Civil Rights Project. And I'm really proud that we have worked closely with state democracy defenders on a number of different projects, projects including most significantly, this new lawsuit. So, you know, even though what is happening obviously is unprecedented, I mean, kind of writ large across the government, and then in this case in particular, in many ways, these sorts of issues are the types that I have confronted many times in my personal career.
- [57:59]
Dahlia Lithwick
And I wonder if you can just describe briefly who your clients are. We've talked about the dismantling of USAID several Times on this show. And your clients are employees and they're contractors, one is in a high risk area in Central America, can't pay cell phone, Internet, or electricity bills that keep security cameras up and running. So they're going to lose radio and phone contact with regional security offices at risk of being cut off in the dark in a dangerous place. Like, the harms being suffered by your clients are really tangible and think quite catastrophic.
- [58:38]
Mimi Marziani
Yeah, yeah. So a couple things about our clients. First, they have all appeared in the case as J does. And of course, for lawyers listening to the podcast, that is unusual. Usually when you sue someone, you need to identify yourself. We have been able to proceed in the case without identifying them publicly because, of course, Elon Musk and other members have. DOGE have gone out of their way to vilify usaid, to, you know, call members of that community criminals to say, you know, really poisonous things about the work that they've done. And because of that, these plaintiffs are scared. And the judges found, for good reason that they could be subject to harassment or even physical security threats if their identity entity was disclosed. And so you start with that, and then on top of it, the fact that, yes, as the judge recently agreed with us, because of actions taken by Elon Musk and his DOGE team, our plaintiffs have been cut off very suddenly from email from other systems within USAID in addition to the employment decisions that have affected them in all different ways. But I will say, having spent many hours on the phone with these individuals, it puts a very much a human face on what it means to dismantle a federal agency and to do so in many ways. Over the course of one random weekend in February. I remember talking to one of the plaintiffs who was, you know, one day woke up and did not have access, access to email. They had no idea whether they were still employed, what was going to happen. They're overseas, not just by themselves, but with their family. And as a mom myself, I mean, I really felt for the sort of chaos that that would throw one's life into.
- [60:42]
Dahlia Lithwick
Yeah, you make such a good point about the ways in which, you know, both Elon Musk and the administration talk about USAID workers as though they're a bun of, you know, criminal conspirators and not even real people. And then you just keep hearing stories of people who suddenly have no access to a credit card, who can't get on a plane, who have sick or pregnant family members, who can't get home. I mean, I think part of the point of this litigation was to put a face on all that.
- [61:14]
Mimi Marziani
You know, it's. It's really interesting that you frame it like that because I certainly recognize the. What I'm gonna call the narrative advantage, because there. There has been, and I would argue a very poisonous and untrue narrative that has been constructed around USAID in particular, in these recent weeks. And I do think that the way we have brought this litigation and the stories we've told because of it counteract that narrative. At the same time, our primary reason for doing that was a litigation strategy. We knew that, that some of these early cases that have come out against the Trump administration, against, you know, kind of dramatic efforts to disrupt the operations of the federal government, some of those have not been successful because courts, at least in my view, have been uncomfortable making broad rulings based on press reports, and they have been hungry for the more traditional type of evidence. That honestly, has been hard to collect because things are happening so quickly. But we knew that, and that is one of the reasons we have gone to such great lengths to submit. I mean, we have submitted declarations from almost all of our plaintiffs. Their personal stories have shown up in the complaints and in our other filings. We also spent an extraordinary amount of time honestly reaching out to individuals across the federal government, current and recently former employees from other agencies, so that we could help the court understand with firsthand testimony, exactly how Elon Musk and Doge have been operating.
- [62:56]
Dahlia Lithwick
And Beami, it strikes me as singularly important for purposes of this conversation that unlike the constitutional crisis, I put that in quotation Mark's case concerning flying detainees to an El Salvadoran work camp without duplicating process. Your case doesn't actually concern like a shaking out a long dormant alien Enemies act or, you know, plenary claims that the President has boundless article to power when it comes to national security. I mean, this is just straight up Con Law 101, right? About how federal agencies and their personnel operate. And I wonder if you just kind of sketch for us the arguments you made in court.
- [63:40]
Mimi Marziani
Court, absolutely. And I'm going to date myself, I'm sure, by what I'm about to say. So everybody, you know, prepare for it. But I keep joking that this is my schoolhouse rot case. The arguments at the end of the day are really simple. Number one, the appointments Clause of the Constitution requires anybody exercising significant authority on behalf of the President to be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. And this is not some newfangled idea or something that's been dormant for a long time. This has Been a very. I mean, one, the language of the Constitution could not be clearer. But also this understanding of the Appointments Clause has been clear through the debates of the Constitutional Convention, the early writings of the Framers, and throughout early and contemporary Supreme Court case law. And so you have that on the one hand, and then you have on the other hand. We have gone to great lengths to compile an evidentiary record. But quite frankly and thankfully, as the judge recognized in our case, anybody with Internet connection knows that Musk has indeed been exercising significant authority. I mean, there's really not much to argue about on the facts. And so that's kind of our first legal argument. The second is there are at least two separation of powers problems that are present here, also, both simple. One, there is an inherent separations of powers problem when the Senate is bypassed and somebody is just, you know, as. As was the case here, tapped with the magic wand by the President to do the President's bidding. In addition, the actions that Doge and Musk have undertaken, number one, Exhibit A being the effective dismantling of USAID id, are just the type of thing that the executive branch cannot do without congressional authority. And that, again, as you said, I mean, that's the Youngstown case that every law student reads in their first year of law school.
- [65:41]
Dahlia Lithwick
And this case is also interesting because this is one of the first Doge cases where Elon Musk is named as a defendant.
- [65:48]
Mimi Marziani
I do believe we were the first case. There have been a couple more now that have. That actually named Elon. Now, we named him in his official capacity, but that has been a point of argument back and forth with the government. At one point, it seemed to us that they weren't even clear that they did represent Elon Musk. And we pointed out, of course, that we sued him in his official capacity, whatever exactly. That might be, on behalf of the federal government, and therefore doj, in fact, represents him. But, yes, I do believe that we were the first case to actually name Mr. Musk.
- [66:27]
Dahlia Lithwick
And it matters. We've done a couple of shows on. You're dating yourself. I'm gonna put myself in another century. But, like, we keep calling it Schrodinger's Doge, right? Where he's both in charge and he's not in charge, and, like, he's in the box and he's out of the box. So I think it's really, like, important that in this opinion, we actually get a judge saying, here are. Or the like, many, many, many times that he said he was in charge and he said we're putting it through the wood chipper, and Trump said he was in charge. And in some sense, it creates a record going forward. Like you said, we're not relying on, like newspapers. We are relying on now. We've got judicial findings of fact. And I think that really does matter because it nails down a question. And I know the judge in court was like, dude, who's in charge? And we had Justice Department lawyers just sort of shrugging, I guess I should note. Mimi, we're taping this on Thursday. We're waiting to hear if the administration's going to appeal this case to the Fourth Circuit. We're waiting to see if the judge is going to honor a new motion for clarification of the terms of his order, which I think was actually a pretty clear order. So I wonder, this is the nut of the thing that's making me crazy is can you lay out what the judge has ordered the administration to do, effective, like, right now, pending, you know, whatever's going to come, and then more urgently, how are we even going to know if and when they comply?
- [68:02]
Mimi Marziani
Yes. So let me take that last part first. The judge said that within seven days of the PI being effective. And so it was. This ruling came out on March 18th. It was effective as of early morning on March 19th when we posted our bond. The judge has given the defendant seven days to file a written confirmation that they turned back on systems access. So that was kind of the affirmative thing that they have to do. This goes to record remedying some of the harms that we talked about earlier. People stranded in foreign countries and not having the ability to have their safety button activated, much less their email or reimbursement or all of those types of systems. So those have to be turned on within seven days. In addition, the judge gave the defendants 14 days to come back to the court and tell the court that they would be able to to put USAID back in their Ronald Reagan building if we get a favorable ruling at the end of the case. Because one of the things that the judge found in particular was that the decision over that kind of fateful weekend when Musk gloated that he fed USAID into the wood chipper, one of the big decisions was to shut down the headquarters. And so the judge wanted to make sure that that could be undone if we are successful. Now, the judge has ordered other things, too. Most notably, the judge has prohibited Doge and Musk from taking a number of future actions in relation to usaid, things like terminating or placing people on leave, shutting down Offices shutting down information in digital systems. You know, in other words, the types of things they've been doing that are rendering the agency an operable. Here's where it gets exciting, I guess is one word for it. Hours after the court issued the PI on March 18, Doge member Jeremy Lewin was purportedly given a new role by being delegated the authority of the Deputy Administrator for Policy and Programming and the COO for us. So we believe that this is contrary to. I agree with you, Dalia. The very clear language that, you know, no member of DOGE can be making these sorts of decisions. But the government has filed a motion to clarify because they, of course, want Mr. Lewin to be able to, you know, have the authority. Authority. And, you know, note the very careful wording. He's not even actually being appointed to anything himself, but they want him to be able to exercise the authority of being able to make important decisions against USAID and the plaintiffs. We filed a letter with the court on March 20. There's going to be briefing on this motion to clarify. That's going to come out in these coming days. But we also note that the government's filing request raises yet more factual discrepancies. We've argued about this in the case about essentially when and under what circumstances and what authority people have been delegated. And you noted that during the oral argument, the judge went back and forth with the government quite a bit about this, wanting to understand kind of exactly when people that the government are claiming are wearing a USAID made mantle, when they were wearing that mantle, who gave it to them, and exactly the scope of their authority. And to be honest, the government has really struggled to provide especially written documentation to answer the judge's questions. And we actually think that the most recent filing raises more questions than it answers.
- [72:03]
Dahlia Lithwick
And this is Dalia hopping in to say that after we taped with Mimi, Judge Twang answered some of these questions by dismissing that motion to clarify these injunction. The judge denied the government's attempt to keep DOGE member Jeremy Lewin inside USAID through some magical bestowing of authority. He also warned the government not to try the same move with other DOGE team members. Okay, back to the interview. This leads me to what I think is my last sort of like, big swing question for you, which is, you know, the judge signed off on the preliminary injunction Tuesday with the words, quote, violations of this preliminary injunction shall subject defendants and all other persons bound by this order to all applicable penalties, including contempt of court, end quote. We talk to Quinta Jurassic about you Know, different showdowns where judges are sort of saying, and we've watched this case for this, too. Like, I'm really going to level sanctions if you keep doing these things and sort of playing fast and loose and like, appointing. Appointing new people or like, reinstating people and then putting them on leave. But I'm just really interested in this question, and I'm asking you as a litigator, now right there on the line, are we, like, still inside the lines? Here's the judge. He's issued an order. Are Elon Musk and Doge bound to follow it? Or are they just gonna keep loosey gooseying their way into sort of constructing new fake Doges and new fake USA IDs?
- [73:41]
Mimi Marziani
I can't tell the future. And I'm going to quote my, you know, a phrase my mom uses. They are obviously pushing the envelope. Obviously pushing the envelope. I guess there's a couple vantage points. My vantage point from a lawyer and, you know, at least one of the reasons we were brought into this case is because my law partners and I litigate in Texas. We have a long track record, with some notable success, suing the state of Texas, which also has been very aggressive in pushing the bounds of its own authority as a government actor. And so I do think that it is incredibly important as a litigator to be aggressive in response. And that's why, for instance, when we saw this motion to clarify that we are prepared to litigate that, that we are prepared to jump all over the factual discretion discrepancies that are raised, and that we are not going to rest on our laurels having gotten one win out of this court, because I don't personally believe that we should assume that the battle is won. And so I'm going to certainly do everything in my power to make sure the judge's order is effectuated and that our clients get the relief that they deserve. One of note is that obviously the Trump administration is pushing the envelope and doing, in my view, a very dangerous dance with the judiciary. There is a role, however, for all of us. You know, it's not just a bystander role. I mean, of course, you know, I would encourage lawyers to think very seriously about our own obligation to uphold the rule of law. And I think what individual lawyers do, it's gonna look different for everybody. But I also think that there's a really important public role. And at the end of the day, you know, I do believe, unfortunately, that if the Trump administration thinks that it can defy court orders in the dead of night, and there's no political consequence, then they would probably do that. However, the public can ensure that there are political consequences to disregarding the rule of law. And that's workwith, frankly, every single person comes in right now to make sure that, you know, honestly, whether you agree, whether you think USAID should be an agency or not, I would actually urge people to put that aside and instead focus on the fact that we have constitution, we have laws, and that there are certain processes and procedures that have to be followed and that we have to all commit to following those together, including Donald Trump, Elon Musk and everybody on down.
- [76:34]
Dahlia Lithwick
I love that, Mimi. It so chimes with what I find myself saying to people who are like, I'm just going to wait for the judiciary to rescue us, but they don't have an army. And my answer is we're the army. We are in fact going to have to be the thing that and I don't say that in a sense of inciting violence, but I say it in the sense of if we can't be a part of making sure that judicial orders are not disregarded, then it is in fact true that it will remain the weakest branch. Mimi Marziani's firm, Marziani, Stevens & Gonzalez, represents the plaintiff's 26 federal contractors and employees. They do so alongside state democracy defenders in this, I think, really important, important suit against Musk and Doge and the administration really, I think, on the front lines defending not just usaid, but government agencies. Mimi, thank you very, very much both for your work and for your time today.
- [77:37]
Mimi Marziani
Anytime. Thanks so much.
- [77:42]
Dahlia Lithwick
That is all for this episode. Thank you so much for listening in. Thank you so much for your letters and your questions and your comments. You can keep in touch@amicuslate.com or you can find us@facebook.com Amicus Podcast. On this week's bonus episode of Amicus Plus, Mark Joseph Stern and I will be chewing over what went down in Judge Boasberg's courtroom Friday afternoon and the hot new trend among some big law firms currying favor from Trump with the offer of millions of dollars worth worth of pro bono work for Trump. You can subscribe to Slate plus directly from the Amicus show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or you can visit slate.com amicusplus to get access wherever you listen. That episode is available for you to listen to right now. We'll see you there. Sarah Burningham is Amicus's senior producer. Our producer is Patrick Fort. Hillary Fry is Slate's editor in chief Susan Matthews is executive editor and Ben Richmond is our senior director of operations. We'll be back with another episode of Amicus next week.
- [79:03]
Quinta Jurecic
I'm Leon Neyfak and I'm the host of Slow Burn. Watercolor Watergate. Before I started working on this show, everything I knew about Watergate came from the movie all the President's Men. Do you remember how it ends? Woodward and Bernstein are sitting at their typewriters, clacking away. And then there's this rapid montage of newspaper stories about campaign aides and White House officials getting convicted of crimes, about audio tapes coming out that prove Nixon's involvement in the COVID up. The last story we see is Nixon resigns. It takes a little over a minute in a movie. In real life, it took about two years.
- [79:38]
Dahlia Lithwick
Five men were arrested early Saturday while trying to install eavesdropping equipment known as the Watergate Incident.
- [79:44]
Quinta Jurecic
What was it like to experience those two years in real time? What were people thinking and feeling as the break in at Democratic Party headquarters went from a weird little caper to a constitutional crisis that brought down the President? The downfall of Richard Nixon was stranger, wilder, and more exciting than you can imagine. Over the course of eight episodes, this show is going to capture what it was like to live through the greatest political scandal of the 20th century. With today's headlines once again full of corruption, collusion, and dirty tricks, it's time for another look at the gate that started it all. Subscribe to Slow Burn now, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [80:22]
Mimi Marziani
Hi, I'm Josh Levine.
- [80:24]
Quinta Jurecic
My podcast, the Queen tells the story of Linda Taylor.
- [80:28]
Mimi Marziani
She was a con artist, a kidnapper.
- [80:31]
Quinta Jurecic
And maybe even a murderer.
- [80:33]
Mimi Marziani
She was also given the title the Welfare Queen and her story was used by Ronald Reagan to justify slashing aid to the poor. Now it's time to hear her real story.
- [80:44]
Quinta Jurecic
Over the course of four episodes, you'll.
- [80:47]
Mimi Marziani
Find out what was done to Linda Taylor, what she did to others, and what what was done in her name.
- [80:52]
Quinta Jurecic
The great lesson of this for me is that people will come to their own conclusions based on what their prejudices are. Subscribe to the Queen on Apple Podcasts.
- [81:02]
Mimi Marziani
Or wherever you're listening right now.