I'm Marissa Wong, intern at Lawfare, with an episode from the Lawfare

for February 15, 2006.

In the past year, President Trump has wielded an extraordinary level of executive authority

in many facets of his presidency, including the administration's sweeping detention and deportation

policies, the attempts to dismantle certain independent agencies by firing over 200,000 federal workers, the strikes on Iran and in the Caribbean

ocean that were carried out without congressional approval, and much, much more. Central to this

expansion of the executive's reach is the theory of the unitary executive. For today's

archive, I chose an episode from February 12, 2025, in which Jack Goldsmith

joined Alan Rosenstein to discuss the Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. United States,

its implications beyond presidential immunity issues, the maximalist theory of the unitary executive, and more.

It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Alan Rosenstein, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota and senior editor at Lawfare, joined by Jack Goldsmith, the learned hand professor at Harvard Law School and co-founder of lawfare.

If the clean constitutional empowerment question comes up about whether the president can

decline to comply with the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 because he has enforcement discretion.

And based on the so-called history of this practice, I think that will lose.

I spoke with Jack about his recent Lawfare article discussing last year's Supreme Court decision in Trump v.

United States and its implications for executive power. We talked about how the ruling extends

beyond presidential immunity, the broader shift toward a maximalist theory of executive authority

and what this means for the future of American democracy. All right, Jack, let's start with the Trump versus United States opinion.

So just briefly describe what that case was about for those of us who have blissfully forgotten.

And then say why you think the most important aspect is not actually the immunity holding,

but rather what the opinion says more broadly about exclusive presidential power.

Yes.

...