Legal Madlibs

The latest Main Justice podcast with Mary McCord and me

A jam-packed episode this week.

First up, the United States war with Iran, raising grave concerns about a war with no consistent and clearly-stated goal, no end date, and no articulated exit strategy. To help explain the legal issues, domestically and internationally — where congressional powers lie and the limits of executive authority — we have a returning special guest, the brilliant Tess Bridgeman. Podcast listeners will recall Tess as a truly indispensable international law expert and the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Just Security.

Tess stakes out the scope of the 1973 War Powers Resolution, and why Congress is meant to be the body that decides if, and when, the US commits to armed conflict with another nation state. This is a must-listen discussion to understand the legal framework and the open factual issues identified by Tess. (The podcast “show notes” has a link to a terrific piece Tess and her colleagues at Just Security wrote on this subject over the weekend.)

Then, Mary and I focus on important immigration updates, as more judges chastise the government for “over and over and over and .. again” violating court orders, as well as our discussing ICE’s search for and detention of a Columbia University student based on reportedly false pretenses.

Next up, we turn to the decision in the case involving a Washington Post journalist’s electronic devices that were seized pursuant to a controversial court-authorized search warrant and whether DOJ could now search the devices (spoiler alert: no!) The court decision exhibits an extraordinary distrust of DOJ to undertake this task, and so the court is going to not just oversee the search, but conduct the search itself.

Plus we discuss a breaking story: the Trump administration’s decision on Monday this week to stand down on defending Trump’s 4 executive orders against 4 law firms— only to do a remarkable about-face the very next day.

And I conclude the episode with a quick shout out about my new book, Liar’s Kingdom: How to Stop Trump’s Deceit and Save America. It is set to be released May 19 and you can pre-order it now in the links here: linktr.ee/liarskingdom (the first two links are to independent bookstores, which will have signed copies). Pre-orders are used to gauge demand, so if you are interested in the book, I would appreciate the pre-order support. To learn what the book is about, you can go to my discussions earlier this week with Sarah Longwell at The Bulwark, and then with Adam Klasfeld, both are available on my Substack Behind the Headlines.

Thanks to everyone for staying engaged. Now more than ever.

Andrew