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What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law

The Spending Clause

What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law

Roman Mars

Government

4.74.2K Ratings

🗓️ 29 June 2017

⏱️ 14 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In an executive order, Trump threatened to withhold federal money from any place acting as a “sanctuary city.” Supreme Court rulings over the 20th century have ruled in different ways on how federal money can be used to influence the behavior of local governments. When it comes to the Spending Clause, how coercive is too coercive?

Transcript

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0:00.0

Let's start with a little fact about beer.

0:02.8

That will be important later, I swear.

0:04.7

This is constitutional law professor and my neighbor, Elizabeth Joe.

0:08.6

At the center of one of the key constitutional law cases

0:11.4

about the so-called spending clause actually

0:13.8

originates out of something sort of banal it's about South Dakota's desire to

0:17.2

sell what's called 3-2 beer to 19 year olds. If you like me have never heard

0:22.0

of 3-2-0 it's beer with 3.2% alcohol, it makes sense, which is more alcohol than near beer, but less than the usual 5 to 8% of regular beer.

0:31.5

The reason why 3-2 beer is significant in the U.S. is because it was the highest

0:36.8

alcohol percentage that beer was allowed to have at the end of prohibition in 1933.

0:42.1

Before prohibition ended, Congress changed a federal law called the Volstead Act to allow the selling of what's called 3-2 beer.

0:51.0

It's a low-alcohol beer.

0:52.0

So Prohibition ended, and so it kind of became

0:54.8

irrelevant to have the separate category, but a lot of states continue to

0:58.0

recognize this distinction. So what does 3-2 beer have to do with the spending

1:02.2

clause, the ACA, Sanctuary Cities, and Trump?

1:06.8

We're about to find out together. This is what Trump can teach us about Khan Law, an ongoing series of indefinite length

1:19.8

where we take the actions and tweets of the chief executive of the United States and channel

1:24.2

that into learning our Constitution like we never have before.

1:29.7

I'm your fellow student and host Roman Mars.

1:35.8

We are spending time with the spending clause, right after this.

1:39.6

So in January of this year on January 25th,

...

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