How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
Consider This from NPR
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4.1 • 5.3K Ratings
🗓️ 23 March 2025
⏱️ 23 minutes
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Summary
To reach that conclusion, the High Court grappled with this question: how much power a president should have?
And some legal scholars say the ruling draws on the unitary executive theory — which, in its most extreme interpretation, gives the president sole authority over the executive branch.
But did it pave the way for Trump's second term and the constitutional questions it's raised: From the dismantling of federal agencies established by Congress to the deportation migrants to third party countries without due process?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. And today we have something a little different for you. |
| 0:05.4 | It's the first episode of a new series we are calling Supreme Consequences, where we explore how recent rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court shape people's everyday lives. |
| 0:14.7 | As soon as he returned to office, President Trump began to remake the federal government swiftly, aggressively, in his image. |
| 0:23.5 | The president has been talking about his day one actions, and it's believed 200 orders will be |
| 0:28.3 | executed. |
| 0:29.3 | A requirement that federal workers return to full-time, in-person work immediately. |
| 0:35.9 | The administration plans to issue a new memo in the coming days directing agencies to prepare |
| 0:41.5 | for large-scale firing. |
| 0:44.5 | Trump has made it clear that one of the key goals of his second term is to shrink the size and |
| 0:50.3 | scope of the federal workforce and eliminate programs he doesn't like. |
| 0:54.4 | We're removing all of the unnecessary and competent and corrupt bureaucrats from the federal |
| 1:00.0 | workforce. |
| 1:00.8 | Tens of thousands of federal government employees have already been fired. |
| 1:05.1 | Thursday is when things started coming to a halt. |
| 1:07.5 | We started pausing meetings. |
| 1:09.3 | There was a palpable tension in the air. And we started |
| 1:13.3 | receiving emails from our new acting administrator. That is a federal employee who was fired in the early |
| 1:18.9 | days of Trump's second term. She's with the United States Department of Agriculture, |
| 1:23.6 | or USDA, and spoke to us on the condition of anonymity because she fears retribution in the workplace. |
| 1:29.9 | For the past couple of months, she was doing a fellowship program that had her working at the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID. |
| 1:37.8 | I logged on and I got an email, which was just a copy and paste template that they sent to probationary employees telling me that because of my, |
| 1:47.6 | quote, poor performance, I was determined unfit for the civil service, and that's why I was being terminated. |
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