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Welcome to Advisory Opinions. This is David French with Sarah Isger. And if you are a lawyer

and aspiring lawyer interested in particular in particular and religious liberty, this is the podcast for you. And it is also the

a special treat because we have someone here from the White House in our dispatch studios in Washington DC, our opulent dispatch studios in Washington DC.

And Sarah, why don't you introduce our special guest?

Oh yes, and the chandelier is just getting in the way the crystal candleabras just kidding. So very excited today to introduce Jenny Bradley Lickter.

I have known Jenny since our law school days in cold cold Cambridge because as you all know, we only know people who went to Harvard Law School here unfortunately.

Just kidding. We do know some other people. Jenny and I bonded over so many things in Cambridge, but things that are relevant today are that Jenny makes the best cookies.

She has great clothes for me to borrow. We're very similar sizes, which is always important as you know when making female friends.

And she is brilliantly smart and talented and dedicated and gave me a copy of letters to a young Catholic, which I treasure as a non Catholic to explain some of Jenny's world.

And it was a great little cultural exchange that we had in Cambridge. Jenny is now. Well now she's Jenny Bradley Lickter, as I said, which so that's a whole change for me.

She's been married for seven and a half years has two kids. Let's not pretend like this is recent, but you know adjusting to your friend's new married names is always hard.

She is a deputy assistant to the president. She is the deputy director of the domestic policy council before that she was working at the Department of Justice in the office of legal policy.

And Jenny, I have something that you probably don't know, which is I wrote my law school note on these issues.

I did not know that. Welcome to the pod. Great. Can't wait to hear about it.

Well, let's let's dive into it. And I said, you know, if you're a lawyer, if you're a law student, and we actually have a lot of law student listeners, so glad to have that.

And also if you're really focused and interested in religious liberty and what the Trump administration is doing to protect religious liberty, this is your podcast.

And so I want to set the stage legally. We've been, you know, this is a new podcast and we've been getting some really good feedback from people and some of the non lawyers and the audience has said, you know, love listening to you guys, but you and Sarah dive into the legal weeds really fast.

And so maybe setting things up could be helpful. So let me, let me just basically set this up.

What we're going to be talking about are regulatory changes that the Trump administration is proposing. And before your eyes glaze over at the very word regulatory.

This stuff is important. And here's why what gets all of the attention in the battle over religious liberty are court decisions and statutes acts passed by Congress.

But court decisions, they certainly decide the issues in front of the court in front of the in regarding the litigants themselves and statutes certainly establish legal rules and principles, but the way in which the federal government operates through its executive agencies often almost always requires regulatory guidance, very specific instructions that in act and execute the principles articulated in court decisions and statutes.

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