How can Congress check the president?

Civics 101

NHPR

Society & Culture, Government, History

4.6 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Checks and balances are at the absolute core of our governmental workings. The framers designed a system that was directly opposed to one person or one group of people having all the power, and we see that through the myriad ways Congress can check the president. So what are those checks? How have they waned over the last few decades? And finally, why would Congress opt to use (or not use) them? Joining us today is Eric Schickler, professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley and author of Investigating the President: Congressional Checks on Presidential Power. Referenced in this episode: Our Starter Kit series. Our episode on impeachment from 2019. CLICK HERE: Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more! To see Civics 101 in book form, check out A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro. Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast, Outside/In - we think you'll love it! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, just a quick and exciting note before today's episode. We have a new Civics 101
0:06.3	tote bag thank you gift. It's my favorite one yet because it defines the separation of powers
0:11.7	in big, bold letters. For a one-time $60 donation or $5 a month, you too can share this
0:18.7	definition with anyone you meet in the world who you think
0:21.4	might need to know it.
0:22.7	Click the link in the show notes to take a look at it or go to our website, civics
0:26.6	101podcast.org.
0:28.7	And thank you so much for listening.
0:30.5	Keep doing it.
0:32.1	You're listening to Civics 101.
0:33.5	I'm Nick Kepidiche.
0:34.4	I'm Hannah McCarthy.
0:35.5	And just as a quick aside, we had a team meeting this week at Civics 101, and we asked,
0:41.1	what do we do?
0:44.1	You know?
0:45.9	I do know.
0:46.9	I was there.
0:47.8	Our listeners were not, so you might want to elaborate.
0:50.7	So our show explains the basics of how our democracy works. That's our tagline. But sometimes things don't work the way they have before.
1:00.1	That executive order he signed that ended the practice purported to end the practice enshrined in the Constitution of birthright citizenship.
1:09.1	The president's proposal to halt all federal grant and loan disbursement,
1:12.8	a move federal judges are blocking, was illegal and an assault on the Constitution.
	...

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