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The New Constitutional (dis)Order

Slate News

Slate Podcasts

News Commentary, Politics, News

4.56K Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2025

⏱️ 60 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Donald Trump becomes president again on Monday, and as Joe Biden leaves the White House, we’re on the brink of a massive change in how the law is interpreted. Pam Bondi’s confirmation hearing was one of a host of clues this week that we are in for a wild legal and constitutional ride. On this episode of Amicus, host Dahlia Lithwick is joined by constitutional scholar Professor Pamela Karlan to pick through what we learned this week about what the law is and what it is about to become –– from Jack Smith’s report, to the new (presumptive) Attorney General of the United States’ apparent ignorance of birthright citizenship and therefore the 14th amendment. 



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Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:33.2

Hi and welcome back to Amicus. I'm Dahlia Lithwick and this is Slate's podcast about the courts and the law and the Supreme Court.

0:42.6

We are about two days out from Donald Trump's inauguration as 47th president of the United States of America.

0:50.5

And whether your mind right now is on TikTok or on how many push-ups Pete Hegsef can do,

0:57.1

or whether it's on the owner's box that is going to contain Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg

1:02.2

and Jeff Bezos at the inauguration, or whether it's on a ceasefire in the Middle East

1:07.6

or the devastation from fires in Southern California,

1:12.1

the world as we understand it, is changing in fundamental ways. And the law, as we have understood it, is also

1:18.1

changing in fundamental ways. We are on the brink of mass immigration reform, perhaps mass

1:24.3

deportations, perhaps the use of the military for domestic policing, mass

1:28.9

pardons for violent insurrectionists, and all this amid the end of fact-checking online and,

1:35.7

therefore, of fact-checking everywhere. On Friday morning, to prove that everything is always in

1:41.6

motion, the Supreme Court, in a unanimous per curiam opinion,

1:46.3

upheld the TikTok ban that, at least theoretically, goes into effect on Sunday, although President

1:52.5

Joe Biden reportedly will not enforce it, and President-elect Donald Trump says he's going to

1:58.4

fix it, whatever that means. Also on Friday morning, President Biden

2:03.4

declared that he considers the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution to be, quote,

...

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