The Rule of Law Took A Very Dark Turn This Week

Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts

Slate Podcasts

News Commentary, Politics, Government, News

4.6 • 3.1K Ratings

🗓️ 22 March 2025

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you’re overwhelmed by the sheer volume of lawless acts, constitutional crises (we count five), and huge Trump administration losses in court this week - honestly, same. But if anyone can render this swirling storm of lawsuits and orders and injunctions legible, and put them in terms that can help make sense of this moment, it’s Dahlia Lithwick. On this week’s show, Dahlia is first joined by Quinta Jurecic, a fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and a senior editor at Lawfare, to discuss the deeply worrying shift in the Trump regime’s posture toward judges and the rule of law, that’s been playing out inside and outside the courts this week. Next, Dahlia speaks with a lawyer who secured a big win against Elon Musk and DOGE this week in one of the USAID cases. Mimi Marziani explains the litigation strategy, and its limits. Want more Amicus? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes with exclusive legal analysis. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Amicus show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is brought to you by The Economist. The world is complex, but understanding it doesn't have to be.
0:06.4	The Economist connects the dots across politics, business, science and culture, keeping you informed and prepared for what's to come.
0:13.1	When decisions in Beijing shift markets in New York, or a populist wave ripples to your doorstep,
0:18.2	the Economist explains the what and the why before your morning
0:21.5	coffee's brewed. They make complicated issues clear so you can navigate with confidence.
0:26.7	Search the economist and make sense of the world around you.
0:35.3	Hi, I'm Dahlia Lithwick. Welcome back to Amicus.
0:38.5	This is Slate's podcast about the courts and the law and the Supreme Court.
0:42.6	Obviously, the Trump administration is pushing the envelope and doing, in my view, a very dangerous dance with the judiciary.
0:52.0	I think at a certain point, you have to start looking at what do you do when you have a rogue judge?
0:56.5	Why is a judge trying to protect terrorists who have invaded our country over American citizens?
1:02.9	There are at least two factions. One of them wants to go full speed ahead and defying the courts,
1:07.1	and there's another that's frantically trying to backpedal.
1:23.0	This week, we've been trying to wrap our heads around a cascading series of constitutional choke points, wherein judges explicitly ordered the Trump administration to stop doing a thing,
1:29.3	and it just declines. This has been probably most vividly illuminated in the refusal to stop
1:36.1	three planes that were ordered to turn around mid-air as they carried a group of Venezuelan
1:41.6	migrants to a prison camp in El Salvador last weekend. That case
1:46.3	has been top of mind for anybody still asking whether we can actually use the words
1:50.9	constitutional crisis yet. But of course, there are several such cases, including one demanding
1:56.8	that USAID be reconstructed and another reversing the ban on trans service members.
2:03.1	It seems that each time a district court judge says no to Donald Trump and Stephen Miller,
2:08.3	that judge subjects him or herself to a campaign for impeachment and threats of personal violence.
	...

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