Your Weekly Constitutional

Remember the parade last fall? The parade of high federal officials lining up to testify before Congress in the impeachment inquiry?

Now that the Senate has failed to remove Trump from office, it's payback time. Many of those officials are feeling Trump's wrath.

Former federal prosecutor and current D.C. lawyer Benjamin Vernia, whom Stewart previously interviewed about the Mueller Report, sat down with us again and explained all.

Please note: this interview was recorded in late 2019, before the Senate impeachment trial.

Sanford Levinson is a law professor from Texas who is very critical of our Constitution’s “structural flaws.” We interviewed him several years ago on this topic. Now, he’s teamed up with his wife, Cynthia, an author of children’s books, to explain his arguments to a younger audience.

Hey, you're never too young to start becoming a good citizen.

Donald Trump often claims that some folks have been trying to impeach him since the day he was sworn in. He's right.

Stewart speaks with one of those folks, Ron Fein, of Free Speech for People. Ron's organization has gone beyond calling for Trump's removal from office--it has actually drafted six different Articles of Impeachment.

No, not our current president. Another one, perhaps the greatest in our history: Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln was anti-slavery, but he didn’t believe that the Constitution gave him the power to ban slavery where it existed. And Lincoln believed in the rule of law. But, eventually, of course, things changed.

Daniel Stowell, the former Editor of the Lincoln Papers, was the 2019 McMurtry Lecturer at Lincoln Memorial University. Daniel tells Stewart about Lincoln’s ethical dilemma and how he resolved it.

The air is, once again, heavy with talk of impeachment. It’s happened three times before (if you count Richard Nixon’s resignation, which you should).

Stewart talks with his buddy Russell Riley from the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, where the talk is almost always about presidents, and, sometimes, about impeaching them.

Recently, Stewart attended a conference at Montpelier focused upon the essential role that Virginia has played in establishing and maintaining representative democracy in North America and the pivotal year of 1619.

Jon Alger, the President of James Madison University, also attended. The two of them discuss what they learned, and what they and many others are doing to extend Virginia's legacy.

“Domestic terrorism” has been in the news a lot lately. Many of the mass shootings we’ve recently experienced seem to have been motivated, at least in part, by white supremacist ideology, perhaps with the intent to provoke widespread terror. This has prompted at least one proposal in Congress to create a domestic terrorism statute mirroring laws already in place to fight international terrorism.

Doug McKechnie, our First Amendment Guy, discusses some of the constitutional issues such a statute would create, including not only concerns about free speech and association, but also about wiretaps and other forms of government surveillance.

And, anyway, are such laws even necessary? Aren’t there already statutes on the books that criminalize murder, assault, damage to property, and conspiracy? Is this a road we want to go down?

Donald Trump calls himself Tariff Man, and he certainly seems to enjoy waging his trade wars. Has he exceeded his constitutional authority? What, precisely, is a tariff, anyway? And who has the power to impose them?

Joel Trachtman of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University shares his expertise with Stewart, and, boy, does Joel know a lot about law, economics, and, well, tariffs.

Earlier this year, we told you about the push for Virginia to become the final necessary state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. That hasn't happened yet, but the battle continues.

We speak with Virginia's Deputy Solicitor General, Michelle Kallen, who guides us through the constitutional thicket.

Sophia Rosenfeld is a historian at the University of Pennsylvania. She's published an incisive and timely book about the fraught relationship between democratic governance and, well, the truth.

Turns out that when it comes to politics--SPOILER ALERT--not everything you hear is factual. And some people--SPOILER ALERT--believe falsehoods even after they've been debunked.


But aren't facts necessary to democratic debate and governance? How can we address these fundamental problems? Sophia has a few ideas. Join us!