S8 Ep914: Richard Epstein analyzes the Trump administration's efforts to bypass state-run elections by banning voting machines. He characterizes these moves as unilateral abuses that threaten the constitutional separation of powers. (3/16)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 23 May 2026
⏱️ 15 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batchel, and I welcome my good colleague of many years, decades. |
| 0:20.6 | Professor Richard Epstein teaches law at NYU and the University of Chicago. He is at the Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin. And I ask his attention because I need the backstory of the legality of revelations that are emerging from the Trump administration about various ways |
| 0:40.0 | to push the limits, even break the limits of presidential authority. The most recent is right in |
| 0:45.3 | front of us in these last hours. Reuters reporting, Washington. U.S. President Donald Trump's |
| 0:51.2 | election security czar last year 2025 sought to ban voting machines |
| 0:57.7 | used in more than half of U.S. states by asking whether the Commerce Department could declare |
| 1:02.7 | their components national security risks. Royters goes on to say, White House advisor Kurt Olson, a lawyer Trump, has tasked with proving widely debunked election rigging conspiracy theories, |
| 1:17.5 | pushed the plan to target Dominion voting systems machines. The idea emerged, the sources to Reuters said, |
| 1:25.1 | as Olson and other officials brainstormed about how the federal |
| 1:29.7 | government could take control over elections from the U.S. states. I stop there. Richard, we are |
| 1:37.3 | speaking to other instances these last days where the Trump administration has pushed the limits, |
| 1:42.9 | even broken the limits of presidential |
| 1:44.5 | authority, legally or culturally. |
| 1:47.4 | However, this one leads right now because my understanding is the state, the individual |
| 1:53.3 | state runs the election, not the federal government. |
| 1:56.5 | This very much looks like the federal government is looking to not only intervene, but to break |
| 2:02.5 | the ability of the state to maintain its election, integrity in 2026. Am I over-reading? |
| 2:08.9 | Good day to you, Professor. |
| 2:10.6 | No, I don't think you're over-reading. You may be under-reading. A couple of things to note. |
| 2:15.5 | One is, if you think there's something wrong with the machines, |
| 2:18.5 | what you could do is to go to the various states and explain to them why it is they might want |
| 2:22.7 | to switch to other kinds of commitment. There's no way whatsoever that you could claim |
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