Background Briefing: May 11, 2025
Manhandling Congresswomen and Arresting a Mayor Makes it Clear We Already Have an Authoritarian Government
We begin with the thuggery of a masked American Gestapo unleashed on the Mayor of Newark and three members of Congress at an ICE detention facility in New Jersey on Friday which apparently happened on the orders of Trump’s former lawyer and delusional ideologue Alina Habba who Trump has made the Acting US Attorney in New Jersey. We discuss the extent to which we already have an authoritarian government while recognizing that the slide into authoritarianism is reversible but that no one has ever defeated autocracy from the sidelines. Joining us is Lucan Way, a Distinguished Professor of Democracy in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His books include Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War and Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism, co-authored with Steven Levistky. We discuss his article at The New York Times, “How Will We Know When We Have Lost Our Democracy?”
As Stephen Miller Talks of Suspending Habeas Corpus, Justices Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson Warn it is Time to Stand Up
Then with the co-President Stephen Miller talking about suspending habeas corpus taking us back before 1215 and the Magna Carta, we examine the warnings from Supreme Court Justices Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson and speak with James Zirin, a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York and the host of the critically acclaimed television talk show, Conversations with Jim Zirin, which airs on PBS. He is the author of Supremely Partisan: How Raw Politics Tips the Scales in the United States Supreme Court and Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Donald Trump in 3500 Lawsuits. He is a contributing editor at The Washington Monthly and regular contributor to The Hill where his latest article is “Trump’s legal strategy: If you can’t win in court, threaten the judge.”
The Law is Being Put to the Test by a Lawless President Who Has Been Given Immunity by a Supreme Court Captured by Right Wing Billionaires
Then finally, as the law is put to the test by a lawless president who has been given blanket immunity by a Supreme Court busy implementing the extreme right wing agenda of the billionaire class, we speak with Leah Litman, a professor of law at the University of Michigan and a former Supreme Court clerk. She is the co-host of the Strict Scrutiny podcast and has received the Ruth Bader Ginsburg award for her “scholarly excellence” from the American Constitution Society. Her new book, just out, is Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes.