Best-selling author Michael Lewis discusses his new book, Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service, with Jeffrey Rosen. As government programs face political headwinds, Lewis and his favorite writers examine the human stories of the heroic civil servants who make government work and why their contributions matter. 

This conversation was originally streamed live as part of the NCC’s America’s Town Hall series on March 26, 2025. 

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Trump has invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime authority, to summarily deport suspected members of a Venezuelan gang. He also invoked a Cold War-era statute to deport a student activist at Columbia University. In this episode, Adam Cox of New York University and Ilya Somin of George Mason University join to discuss the scope of the president’s deportation power and to evaluate whether the administration violated the due process or speech rights of the deportees. 

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Kate Huddleston, senior legal counsel of litigation at the Campaign Legal Center, and Michael McConnell, Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, join Jeffrey Rosen to debate whether the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has acted lawfully in firing federal workers and freezing federal spending. 

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Jonathan Rauch, author of Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy, and Julian Zelizer, author of In Defense of Partisanship, join Jeffrey Rosen for a wide-ranging discussion on their new books and the rise of partisanship in America. 

This conversation was originally streamed live as part of the NCC’s America’s Town Hall program series on March 3, 2025. 

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Jamelle Bouie and David French of The New York Times, Sarah Isgur of The Dispatch, and Melissa Murray of NYU School of Law join Jeffrey Rosen to discuss the relationship between the Roberts Court and the Trump administration. They discuss how the Supreme Court might resolve open legal questions—including impoundment and the unitary executive theory—and debate the Court’s role in maintaining the separation of powers.  

This conversation was originally recorded on February 22, 2025, as part of the NCC’s President’s Council Retreat in Miami, Florida. 

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President Trump’s far-reaching executive actions have given rise to a debate about whether the president is acting within the tradition of presidential power—or whether recent events represent a departure from the constitutional order and precedent. Melody Barnes of the University of Virginia Karsh Institute for Democracy, Charles Cooke of National Review, Joanne Freeman of Yale University, and Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute join Jeffrey Rosen to discuss the American tradition of presidential power and evaluate analogues to our constitutional moment from across U.S. history. 

This conversation was originally recorded on February 20, 2025, as part of the NCC’s President’s Council Retreat in Miami, Fla. 

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Jeffrey Rosen discusses the 14th Amendment with Sherrilyn Ifill, the head of the 14th Amendment Center for Law & Democracy at Howard Law School and the former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Pamela Brandwein, author of Rethinking the Judicial Settlement of Reconstruction, and Ilan Wurman, author of The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment. They discuss the historical events that gave rise to the 14th Amendment and debate its original meaning. This conversation was originally streamed live as part of the NCC’s America’s Town Hall program series on February 10, 2025, in partnership with the Federal Judicial Center. 

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Since January 20, 2025, President Trump has issued dozens of executive orders, several of which have attracted legal challenges. Steve Vladeck of Georgetown University Law Center and Gary Schmitt of the American Enterprise Institute join Jeffrey Rosen to parse the flurry of executive orders and preview the lawsuits they face.

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New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie and political scientist Melvin Rogers, author of The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought, explore the ways key African American intellectuals and artists—from David Walker, Frederick Douglass, and W.E.B. Du Bois to Billie Holiday and James Baldwin—reimagined U.S. democracy. Thomas Donnelly, chief scholar at the National Constitution Center, moderates. This conversation was originally streamed live as part of the NCC’s America’s Town Hall program series on Nov. 14, 2023. 

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Jeffrey Rosen interviews three contributors to the recently published compendium My Fellow Americans: Presidents and Their Inaugural Addresses, Michael Gerhardt, Kate Masur, and Ted Widmer. They reflect on President Trump’s second inaugural speech and discuss inaugural addresses throughout American history. This conversation was originally streamed live as part of the NCC’s America’s Town Hall program series on Jan. 21, 2025. 

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