There's this sort of awful echo of this reintroduction of a corrupt gift-giving culture into the American presidency that is really, really worrying for national security and for trade.

He was sitting there reading this book, and he was disciplined by the university.

He used extremely poor judgment by insisting and openly reading the book related to

historically and racially abhorrent subject in the presence of your black coworkers.

Hi, and welcome to Amicus, Slate's podcast about the U.S. Supreme Court.

I'm Dahlia Lithwick. I cover the courts for Slate.

This week, we're going to focus on something.

It seems that only one person in America knew about before November.

That's the Constitution's emoluments clause.

Luckily, the person who knew about it before November is here to explain to us what it is.

Later on in the show, we're going to bring you some highlights of a fascinating discussion about free speech on college campuses

that the Jefferson Center for Free Expression held at the University of Virginia earlier this fall.

But first, the emoluments clause.

And joining us to help understand what it is is Zephyr Teachout. She's an associate professor at the Fordham School of Law. And she is the author of Corruption in America, a book that actually discusses strange arcane things like the Amoluments Clause. Zephyr ran for a congressional seat in New York's 19th district in the

November election. And last week, she joined a whole bunch of anti-corruption activists to deliver

petitions to Trump Tower, asking him to divest or put his assets into a blind trust. So Zephyr, welcome to Amicus.

Oh, well, I'm thrilled to be on. And I just want to actually clarify something because

there's a lot of terms floating around. Trump has to divest. If he doesn't divest, he's violating

the Constitution. So there's a separate sort of a second step, which is after

divesting, it should be put into a blind trust. But if you're asking yourself, you know,

if you're walking along saying, is he violating the Constitution or not, the simple question is,

has he liquidated his assets? If he hasn't, he's violating the Constitution.

...