Jonah, I'm having dental work done.

I was going to ask what the hell's going on.

Welcome to the dispatch podcast, and we have excluded Steve Hayes this week.

So we have Jonah Goldberg and David French, and there is a reason for that that will become clear in a few moments.

Guys, I thought we could do a check-in on our three branches of government this week, following up on a project that we

did about two years ago now. We were team conservative at the National Constitution Centers

restoring the guardrails of democracy. And we wrote our suggestions for what we could do to improve the guardrails of democracy.

But of course, in order to know how the guardrails are doing, I think we got to do a check-in.

So, David, I'm going to start with you.

Just, you know, go around the horn, if you will, for the branches.

Tell us how you think they're doing.

Well, I've only got good things to say about one branch right now.

I'm particularly interested in that branch, the judicial branch, really this week,

because as we talked about on advisory opinions, there was a moment this week where there seemed to be some judicial jiu-jitsu in a positive sense.

In other words, that the Supreme Court very shrewdly rendered a decision that preserved the constitutional structure, that preserved due process, that preserved the opportunity

to challenge acts of the executive branch, while at the same time, somehow the executive

ranch cheered all of that. We had this very strange phenomenon where there was nine justices

of the Supreme Court who very clearly said that detainees who are or individuals

who are going to be deported under the Alien Enemies Act to get an opportunity to challenge that

in habeas, not only have an opportunity to challenge their deport, you know, the decision to deport them

in court, they also will have an opportunity to challenge the

applicability of the Aliens' Enemones Act itself. But because they vacated a TRO, five justices

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