Can the courts act as a check on the Trump administration’s power? 

Though this question is not new, it has taken on an urgency as the case of a Maryland man accidentally deported to a prison in El Salvador has highlighted the White House’s increasingly combative stance towards the judiciary. 

This week Trump’s team appeared to flout a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court that said the government must “facilitate” Kilmer Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. Days later, a federal court judge threatened to hold the government in contempt for “doing nothing.”

“This country was built on checks and balances,” says Joan Biskupic, chief Supreme Court analyst for CNN and author of several book about our judicial system, including Nine Black Robes. “If we don’t have checks on what a very powerful executive branch is doing right now,” she warns, “we don’t have the same democracy we had.” 

Biskupic joins Diane to talk about what might come next in the legal showdown over the administration’s recent deportations and what it means for the legitimacy of the courts. 

President Trump announced yesterday he is delaying the reciprocal tariffs he had imposed on dozens of countries for 90 days. But, he said, he is ratcheting up pressure on China, which he has accused of ripping off the United States for decades. 

This came a week after “Liberation Day,” when Trump declared a national emergency to pave the way for the most sweeping trade duties since 1910. This move had sent global markets into a tailspin and unleashed a flood of concern from the business community. 

Though Trump’s announcement caused an initial recovery on Wall Street, Jeff Stein warns that it might not last. 

Stein is the White House economics reporter at The Washington Post.  He warns, “We could still very well still be flirting with a recession, we could be flirting with permanent damage to our relationship with our allies, to our credibility to get things done on the world stage.”

Stein joins Diane to explain what all this chaos means for global trade, the U.S. economy and what could happen next. 

Johnson & Johnson was founded in the late 1800s and grew into one of the most trusted brands in America for its baby powder, Tylenol, Band-Aids, then cutting edge pharmaceuticals. Today, the company is worth more than $380 billion.

But behind the success, says investigative journalist Gardiner Harris, lies a wake of deceitful and dangerous corporate practices that have threatened the lives of millions.

“These guys are incredibly intimidating,” he says of the company. “And when they don’t succeed in buying you off, which is what they have done over the decades for  doctors, journalists and lawyers, they sue.”

Harris is a former pharmaceutical reporter for The New York Times. He has spent decades looking into the long history of lies, cover-ups and malfeasance of Johnson & Johnson. He joins Diane to talk about his new book, No More Tears. 

The pressure campaigns of the Trump administration are beginning to bear fruit. 

Last week saw two major institutions acquiesce to the president’s demands after actions taken by the White House threatened to undermine their budgets, workforce and, in some cases, ability to perform core business. 

The first was Paul Weiss, a major law firm that some accuse of trading pro bono work on behalf of Trump causes to maintain business ties to federal agencies. The second was Columbia University, which agreed to terms laid out by the government in exchange for the restoration of funding that had been slashed earlier this month. 

Hailed as victories by Donald Trump, Isaac Stanley-Becker, staff writer at The Atlantic, says these are just two of the highest profile examples of the ways the president has learned to wield fear as a political tool.

While Donald Trump has always used scare tactics in his exercise of power, Stanley-Becker explains, what we are seeing now is different from his first term, marked by name-calling and social media bullying. 

“What I think is especially significant,” says Stanley-Becker, “is the use of government assets and government resources -- and denying those as a bargaining chip to bring these institutions to heel.”

Stanley-Becker joins Diane to talk about his recent piece for The Atlantic, “The United States of Fear.” 

Nearly 7 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s disease. By 2050, this number is projected to rise to nearly 13 million. 

For years, research into the disease remained underfunded -- and patients who received a diagnosis had few options when it came to treatment. But in recent years, that has begun to change. 

“There are exciting developments in the research field at each stage of our lives that affect the strength of our brain and the ability of the brain to resist brain challenges,” says George Vradenburg.

Vradenburg is chairman of the non-profit UsAgainstAlzheimer's, which he co-founded in 2010 with his late wife, Trish. He joins Diane for a conversation about his hopes and fears for Alzheimer’s research, and how the Trump administration could change those. 

Donald Trump’s love-hate relationship with the news media was on full display throughout his first term. He screamed “fake news” at negative coverage and labeled journalists the “enemy of the people.” But lately, he has taken his campaign beyond the court of public opinion, filing lawsuits against ABC, CBS, The Des Moines Register, and the Pulitzer Board.

David Enrich is the business investigations editor for the New York Times. He says Trump’s legal actions are part of a broader conservative movement to undermine First Amendment protections for the press. 

The effort is being led, he says, by politicians, billionaires and corporations – and may soon make its way to the Supreme Court. He joins Diane tells the story in new book, Murder the Truth.

In the weeks preceding President Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night, the administration was busy – taking an axe to federal agencies, imposing tariffs on neighboring countries, and reversing course on U.S. support for Ukraine. But we heard little about these issues from the president in this speech. 

What the president did do was tick off a list of accomplishments, including money saved through contracts cancelled and fraud exposed – many of these examples exaggerated or simply untrue. 

Norman Ornstein is a political scientist and co-author of several books on our politics, including the 2012 New York Times bestseller It’s Even Worse Than It Looks. He says that many Trump voters couldn’t see the ways that government impacted their lives. But, he adds, “If Trump succeeds as he’s already doing in disrupting so many of these areas, Americans are going to be jolted.”

Norman Ornstein joins Diane on today’s episode of On My Mind to offer his take on what he sees coming and the Democrats’ response. 

On February 7, billionaire Elon Musk posted a message on his social media platform X: “CFPB RIP,” along with a tombstone emoji.

In the days that followed, the workings of the government’s financial industry watchdog created in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis essentially ground to a halt. 

More than a hundred and fifty employees were let go, with more layoffs expected. Donald Trump has explicitly said he wants to get rid of the agency. And when you try to access the CFPB’s website, you get an error message. 

So, can the Trump administration actually kill the CFPB? Mallory SoRelle says no. 

SoRelle is an assistant professor of public policy at Duke University and author of “Democracy Declined: The Failed Politics of Consumer Financial Protection.” She explains that only Congress can shutter the agency. But, she adds, the actions the Trump administration have taken so far are “fundamentally shifting the playing field in favor of the financial industry and away from consumer protection.”

SoRelle joins Diane on this week’s episode of On My Mind to talk about the history of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and what would happen if it went away. 

First it hit poultry farms, forcing farmers to cull millions of hens.  Egg prices jumped, and some grocery stores began to ration the number of cartons per customer. 

Next infections spread to dairy cows, stoking fears of a wider outbreak. 

Now, avian influenza has been detected in domesticated cats, and humans, with about seventy confirmed cases in in the U.S. 

Lena Sun is a staff writer for the Washington Post who covers public health and infectious disease. She’s been tracking the spread of bird flu over the last few years and says the experts she talks to are worried. “If the country doesn’t do more to get a handle on how the virus is spreading,” she says, “it will be harder and harder to figure out ways to contain it.”

Lena Sun joins Diane on this week’s episode of On My Mind. 

Earlier this month Donald Trump stood next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and announced that the United States would take over Gaza. The Palestinians who live there, he explained, would be sent to Jordan and Egypt. He went on to describe a vision of the war-torn land being transformed into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” 

Since then, Trump has stood by his comments about the U.S. taking ownership of Gaza, much to the shock of leaders around the world, and even those in his own party. 

This comes at a time when the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel is at risk of falling apart.

Aaron David Miller is a former State Department Middle East analyst and negotiator and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He says Trump’s proposal doesn’t need to be implemented to have an effect. “The idea alone has already undermined the Israel-Hamas agreement.”

Miller joins Diane on this week’s episode of On My Mind.