Hello, everyone, I'm Kimberly Adams.

Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us.

And today, we're going to talk about what's happening in the courts, kind of at all levels.

Over the past year, the Trump administration has done a lot in the courts and also fought a lot in the courts with lots of legal challenges to many of the administration policies they've been trying to roll out. But how well are these challenges actually working and how is the Trump administration using the justice system to fight back. Plus, a big

question for all of us here at Marketplace, what does this mean for the economy? And so here,

to make us smart about this is someone who is very tuned in to what's happening in the courts.

Kyle Cheney, who's a legal affairs reporter at Politico. Welcome back to the show, Kyle.

Good to be with you, Kimberly. Thanks for having me.

Last time you were on Make Me Smart, we were talking about the January 6th investigations,

because you were deep into all those cases.

And what January 6 actually meant for our democracy and the economy?

We had a five-year anniversary of the attack on the

Capitol last week. What has it been like for you, kind of looking back on your own coverage of

these cases and where we ended up? I mean, it's a great question. It's one I've grappled with a lot,

because, you know, it's a very different story arc if Donald Trump is, you know, is not president today versus now that he

is, what the meaning of that day and the sort of arc of history and the arc of, you know,

presidential history and Washington history, because, you know, what we'd be covering now if

Donald Trump lost

the 2024 election is sort of the aftermath, accountability phase of what happened on January 6th.

The criminal cases would be playing out in courts.

But instead, what we have is Donald Trump's return to power and his attempt to use that power

to turn back on the people who pursued him.

...