Hi, and welcome to Amicus Slate Supreme Court podcast. I'm Dahlia Lithwick, and I cover the courts for Slate.

Just a few weeks into the era of President-elect Donald Trump, and already there is a lot of bruising around the edges of the United States Constitution.

The past few weeks have brought talks of Muslim registries, jail time for flag burners,

restrictions on voting, and the sweet mystery of the emoluments clause.

That's the part of the Constitution you've never heard of that prohibits elected officials

from making a profit from foreign leaders.

We're recording today's episode on Tuesday, and we're doing everything we can to get it to

you by Wednesday before the constitutional warning sirens start to wail again about something

else. Now, a little later on in the show, we'll hear from former acting solicitor general

Neil Cartial about that idea of creating a national registry for Muslims here in the U.S.

But first, we take you to Capitol Hill, where this week we heard from Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley that he plans to hold confirmation hearings for Jeff Sessions before Trump is inaugurated in January.

Sessions is Trump's pick for the Attorney General

and a current member of the very same body that will now judge whether he is fit for the job

of the nation's highest law enforcement officer. Joining us now is Senator Chris Coons,

the junior senator from Delaware and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Welcome to

Amicus Senator Coons.

Thank you. It's great to be on with you. I appreciate the chance. So I think the first thing

I want to ask about is something we've talked about a lot on this show in the past few weeks, which is the sort of

slow erosion of constitutional norms and ideas and values in the Trump era or in the early Trump era. And I'm speaking to you only a few hours after President

elect Trump tweeted that flag burners should just be stripped of their citizenship and they should be jailed.

And you and I know that the Supreme Court has already said that that's absolutely unconstitutional on both fronts. Both we protect flag burning as protected speech and also we don't strip folks of their citizenship. So I'm wondering, Senator, if you could talk a little bit about how worried one wants to be about these errant tweets when they go to cherished constitutional

values? Well, I think if President Trump wants to be an effective leader for our country,

...