Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts21 Feb

Trump’s Tariffs Overturned

The Supreme Court struck down Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on Friday, ruling 6–3 that they vastly exceed anything federal law allows a President to do. It was a massive loss for a signature component of Trump’s economic agenda, and a coalition of liberals and conservatives on the court agreed that the statute invoked to impose these tariffs was never intended to be wielded in this fashion. The 6 disagreed emphatically as to the reasoning. The dissenters were Big Mad. On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern unpack the rationale behind the decision, and the implications for those seeking a remedy. And they ask what to make of this massive loss from a court that has yet to truly tell this President “no.”

Then, the press clause of the First Amendment, a once-cherished constitutional right, has fallen victim to neglect and sabotage in recent years, taking a back seat to the more vaunted love affair with individual “free speech.” But, as recent developments—including the arrest of journalist Don Lemon and the heavy-handed interview-spiking “guidance” of late night host Stephen Colbert—illustrate, the freedom of the press is no slam-dunk when it comes to saving democracy in Trump’s America. Dahlia speaks with First Amendment scholars Sonja West (University of Georgia) and RonNell Andersen Jones (University of Utah) about the health of the press clause and the themes in their book, The Future of Press Freedom: Democracy, Law, and the News in Changing Times. They trace the ways in which the framers viewed press freedom as a core, structural “bulwark of liberty,” and why the Supreme Court has increasingly treated it as a neglected companion to free speech rights; leaving weakened and fragile protections for news gathering. The conversation contrasts Trump’s first-term rhetorical delegitimization of the media with a second-term shift toward tangible actions: access restrictions, funding cuts, agency leverage, and selective regulatory pressure.

Want more Amicus? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes with exclusive legal analysis. Plus, you’ll 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.

Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate.com/podcastfaqs for easy instructions. Members subscribed via Apple Podcasts get automatic access—no setup required.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(481)

Becoming Justice Gorsuch | 2. The Stolen Seat

With Amicus on a brief summer break, we’re bringing you the second installment of Slow Burn’s latest season, Becoming Justice Gorsuch.When Justice Antonin Scalia died in February of 2016, the Supreme ...

22 Aug 47min

Becoming Justice Gorsuch | 1. Man With a Plan

Our friends over at the Slate podcast Slow Burn are good at taking events that we think are settled history, then unlocking a new understanding of those stories through interviews, archives, and fresh...

15 Aug 39min

By the People | Now It’s Your Turn

In the final episode—for now—of our series on reclaiming constitutional power for every American, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern urge you to consider the many ways you can make constitutional m...

8 Aug 54min

By The People | Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Long before the Supreme Court handed down the landmark Obergefell ruling on equal marriage in 2015, activists were canvassing door-to-door, courting any lawmaker who would listen, and losing at the lo...

1 Aug 45min

By the People | For the Children

In 1867, an 8-year-old girl named Elizabeth Turner became the epicenter of a legal battle that would help define what freedom really meant after the Civil War. Days after Maryland abolished slavery, h...

25 Jul 40min

By the People | Who Owns the Constitution?

For the better part of two centuries of U.S. history, the American people understood that they—and not the Supreme Court—were the final arbiters of the Constitution. But in recent decades, nine unelec...

18 Jul 41min

The Term the Court Stopped Pretending

The Supreme Court just wrapped one of its most consequential terms in decades—and Amicus brought together three heavyweight legal experts to break down the damage. Their conversation centers on the bi...

11 Jul 1h

Bad History Will Kill America

The Supreme Court just wrapped the term with a blitz of extremely consequential decisions, and the smoke hasn’t cleared yet. (In fact, it’s looming like a dark storm cloud over our Fourth of July and ...

4 Jul 57min