The Court Tester
KCRW's Left, Right & Center
KCRW
4.2 • 4.8K Ratings
🗓️ 30 May 2025
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Trump administration has faced over 200 lawsuits in its first four months. The legal challenges range from deportation orders to Trump’s direct attacks on Harvard University’s funding. The White House has called the judges overruling their policies a “threat to the will of the American people.” Could Trump be making an enemy of the judiciary branch to help create a stronger executive?
The battle between Trump and Harvard has put intellectual diversity on college campuses back in the spotlight. Some universities acknowledge that it is a real problem they’re working on. But what do those solutions look like?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, everybody. Welcome to left, right, and center. I'm David Green. Moa Lathie is here on the left. Sarah Isker is away this week, but we are happy to have Mike Dubke back on the right. He's a veteran GOP communications strategist and advisor. He was the White House Director of Communications under Donald Trump in 2017. I guess we didn't offend you too much last time, Mike B's. You're back. |
| 0:21.7 | I am back. |
| 0:22.7 | We got another chance, though. |
| 0:24.5 | Yeah, that's true. |
| 0:25.1 | We got another chance. |
| 0:25.9 | Exactly. |
| 0:26.5 | Well, Mo, you weren't here to embarrass me last time. |
| 0:28.8 | That might be the difference. |
| 0:30.4 | Mo wasn't here. |
| 0:31.3 | So this might be the end of the Mike Dupke run. |
| 0:33.8 | All right, let's get to it. So I want to start the show by talking about a phrase litigious society. |
| 0:38.9 | It's a phrase that a lot of people use to describe the United States, which is full of a lot of activity in the courts, people suing one another for various things. |
| 0:48.8 | I certainly think the term applies these days if we think about the early days of this presidency. So ABC News |
| 0:56.6 | counted 220 lawsuits filed against the Trump administration in his first 100 days. These were |
| 1:03.6 | challenges to the president's efforts to deport people, to shut down federal agencies, to shake down |
| 1:09.8 | universities, and the trend since then |
| 1:12.4 | just keeps going. We now see NPR suing over Trump's effort to cut public media funding. Harvard |
| 1:18.5 | University has sued over President Trump's attempt to ban foreign students at the Ivy League |
| 1:23.6 | school. And I just want to put a hypothesis on the table and talk it through with both of you. |
| 1:30.2 | I mean, I think that Trump almost invites these legal battles because over time, it really might erode trust in an independent judiciary and make it harder for judges to defend their |
| 1:46.3 | impartiality. I mean, you flood the zone with actions that you know are going to be challenged. |
| 1:51.9 | You attract one legal challenge after another. And the overall perception can become that judges |
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