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.  

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In this urgent extra episode of Amicus,  host Dahlia Lithwick and Slate's senior writer Mark Joseph Stern discuss the unfolding constitutional crisis triggered by the Trump administration's defiance of a court order to halt flights carrying Venezuelan migrants to be delivered to El Salvador’s so-called Terrorism Confinement Center - a vast foreign prison  that could  be described as a labor camp.  Lithwick and Stern explore the timeline of events that unfolded in Federal Court Judge James Boasberg’s court this week, and on planes bound for El Salvador. Next, they try to parse the legal arguments put forth by the Justice Department, claiming apparently boundless power for President Trump to render anyone he deems a gang member. Finally, they discuss why the Trump administration has chosen this particular constitutional hill to die on, and how far Chief Justice John Roberts might be prepared to go along with it. 

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Donald Trump continued his almost uninterrupted losing streak in the courts. Across the country we saw federal judges openly criticizing his Administration officials and their lawyers for overreach, bullying and misrepresentations about not only their cases, but about norms and values. But Trump has both judges and law firms in his crosshairs. On this week’s show, former US Attorney Preet Bharara joins Dahlia Lithwick to discuss the role of lawyers and law firms and legal norms in a crisis of lawlessness, and the extent to which court victories alone can save democracy. 

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Elon Musk’s moves at DOGE have been legally dubious from the start. And the more we learn, the more questions we have about this not-an-agency helmed by Musk –– who is apparently both in charge, and also not in charge. That’s why we wanted to talk with Kate Shaw, University of Pennsylvania law professor and co-host of the Strict Scrutiny podcast, about the very real constitutional issues raised by DOGE and Musk and his minions. Shaw spoke with Dahlia Lithwick about what is and isn’t legal about DOGE, and the impossible bind that creates for government lawyers tasked with defending his devastation of the government. 

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On Wednesday morning the Supreme Court dealt a blow to the Trump administration's effort to withhold $2 billion promised for foreign aid work. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discuss the Court’s decision to reject the Trump administration's request to halt a lower court's order, by a five to four vote, compelling the State Department to resume payments. While Chief Justice John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett sided with the court's liberal justices, Justice Samuel Alito offered a “stunned” dissent, reacting to the Court’s surprising rebuke to the Trump administration with few facts but plenty of fury. 

This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock weekly bonus episodes of Amicus—you’ll also 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.

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This past week has seen firings at the Pentagon, an Executive Order targeting a private law firm, the installation of a podcaster and January 6 denialist as #2 at the FBI, and an incident in which an audience member at an Idaho townhall was wrestled to the ground and led away in zip ties by private security that answer to no lawful police entity. Is this what happens when the lawyers, police officers, military officials and other law enforcement organizations who are meant to keep us all safe, are sidelined or conscripted into lawless behavior? 

On this week’s episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick speaks to Asha Rangappa, a former FBI special agent, editor at Just Security and author of the substack The Freedom Academy with Asha Rangappa. Asha explains what happens when people who are hellbent on using the law to break the law achieve positions of power, and whether the safeguards still in place can hold.

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President Donald J Trump’s administration has been invoking a conservative legal theory as justification for his claim to possess king-like presidential powers. This new supercharged version of the “unitary executive theory” may just be extreme enough to stick in the craw of some conservative judges, but will it find a warm welcome when it inevitably lands at the Supreme Court, and should we brace for the overturning of 90 years of precedent in the form of Humphrey’s Executor? Dahlia Lithwick’s guest this week is Deepak Gupta, former senior counsel at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and founding principal of Gupta Wessler LLP, who is now fighting for his former colleagues' jobs in court. Gupta is also representing Gwynne A Wilcox, the Chair of the National Labor Relations Board who was fired via late night email in a case that is likely headed to SCOTUS. 

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On Monday, President Trump’s personal lawyer and Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered prosecutors to drop federal corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Adams had been courting President Trump for weeks, including with a pre-inauguration visit to Mar A Lago, but the shape of the deal struck between the accused Mayor and the incoming administration came into clear view with a flurry of Department of Justice resignations on Thursday. On this week’s episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick speaks to Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney, and host and executive producer of the podcast Talking Feds. Harry explains why the so-called “Thursday Night Massacre” is not the kind of scandal even this administration can shrug off while yelling something about the “deep state” and “weaponization”.

Next, Dahlia turns to the chaotic, destructive and dangerous “spontaneous disassembly” of much of the federal government currently taking place at the hands of Elon Musk with guest Sam Bagenstos, former general counsel of the United States Department of Health and Human Services until December 2024, also former general counsel for the Office of Management and Budget from January 2021 until June 2022. Now a professor at the University of Michigan, Sam explains what happens when the federal government stops working, and why persistently asking whether or not we’re in a constitutional crisis is simply the wrong question. 

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DOGE is running wild in the District of Columbia. Chaos reigns supreme. Trump 2.0 has been frightening and it’s all been happening so fast. But there are lots of people fighting back, as they try to slow the damage. And the courts are exactly where the pushback has been most fierce. One of the teams of people leading the charge includes former Judge Nancy Gertner, one of the many legal professionals suing the Trump administration. Judge Gertner's case is about the list of rank and file FBI agents threatened with retribution and the public disclosure of their names, because they did their jobs and prosecuted January 6th cases. Gertner is involved with a slew of cases from the State Democracy Defenders Fund. She talks with host Dahlia Lithwick about the many wins against the administration in court this past week, and whether they matter. Next, Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern joins Dahlia to update us on the DOGE litigation and the Birthright Citizenship cases.

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If you’re punch-drunk and disoriented this week, come on in. Donald J Trump’s second administration is materializing at frightening speed and recklessness and it is hard (and stressful) to keep up with it all. Kim Lane Scheppele, the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International affairs at Princeton University, explains that the speed and viciousness of the legal orders in Trump 2.0 are evidence that America switched over to the fast track for autocracy on January 20th, 2025. An expert in the law of autocracy, Scheppele has seen firsthand what happened to constitutional courts and the democratic norms that governed them in Russia and Hungary and she joins Dahlia Lithwick on Amicus this week to explain how Trump’s executive orders on everything from government funding to transgender people in the military reveal a familiar global playbook that has chillingly familiar endpoints. 

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