Ryan Goodman: The Trump Administration and the Rule of Law

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2025

⏱️ 80 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What have we learned from the first two weeks of the Trump administration’s approach to executive actions? Ryan Goodman is a professor of law at New York University, former special counsel in the Department of Defense, and co-editor of NYU Law’s Just Security blog. According to Goodman, behind the Trump administration’s Executive Orders and actions is a claim of executive authority “different in character than anything that’s preceded it.” On issues such as birthright citizenship, TikTok, and immigration, the Trump administration has claimed the right to override Congressional statutes, while Congress, so far at least, has been hesitant to assert its own constitutional powers. Goodman shares his perspective on what has transpired at the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the military, and explains what to look for in the weeks and months ahead in regard to tests of resilience of these institutions and, more broadly, the separation of powers in our constitutional government.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Bill Crystal.
0:14.8	Welcome back to conversations.
0:16.1	I'm very pleased to be joined again by my friend Ryan Goodman, distinguished professor of law at first at Harvard,
0:23.0	and then at now at NYU, New York University, served in the government in 2015-16,
0:29.2	a special counsel to the general counsel for the Department of Defense,
0:33.0	which I think gives him a little more real world or at least real government knowledge. And some of us,
0:38.5	I will criticize your fellow law professors, but some of his fellow law professors. And also
0:42.9	a go unnamed. Yeah, named, right. Also an interest in national security, which I share.
0:48.2	And he's founding co-editor of the online forum, Just Security, which is really a must go-to place for day-to-day coverage
0:58.6	of what's happening, particularly on the national security side, I would say, of the current
1:03.9	efforts to reorganize the federal government, but broader than national security narrowly understood.
1:11.0	So, Ryan, thanks.
1:12.8	We've done two of these conversations during the Biden administration when the question was,
1:17.7	would Donald Trump be prosecuted and convicted of various crimes he was charged with?
1:24.2	Now he's president, and we can discuss what he's doing as president.
1:27.8	So, Ryan, thanks for joining me. I appreciate it thank you that's great to be with you so
1:32.2	i mean we're two weeks in it's a little over two weeks in uh one day over two weeks in it's jett
1:37.7	it's february fourth i mean let's help people help me understand the bigger picture of all
1:44.0	the different things that have been
1:45.2	going on for sort of administratively, legally, executive orders, planned reorganizations,
1:54.9	firings. Put it in context. What's the forest here in which all these trees are living? What's the
2:02.6	bigger? What's the biggest, what's the key thing we should understand about what's going on?
	...

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