Trump v. Slaughter (and Trump v. Cook)

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• 0:00Speaker 00

  We will hear argument this morning in case 25332, Trump versus Slaughter.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Hey, everyone. This is Leon from Prologue Projects. On this week's episode of Five to Four, Peter, Rhiannon and Michael are talking about Trump v. Slaughter, a case from the most recent term about whether the president has the authority to fire the heads of independent agencies. Last year, the Trump administration fired Rebecca Slaughter, a member of the five-person Federal Trade Commission, who'd been appointed by Trump during his first term and then reappointed by Biden. Then, in March of 2025, Trump fired Slaughter without offering any reason beyond that her service was, quote, "inconsistent with the administration's priorities." However, the legislation that created the Federal Trade Commission back in 1914 purposely curtails the president's ability to remove a commissioner, stating that it can only be

• 0:53Speaker 01

  done due to, quote, "inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office." Slaughter sued for her job, arguing that her firing was unlawful. And in a win for the unitary executive theory and a loss for basic logic, the Supreme Court ruled six to three in Trump's favor, allowing him to fire Slaughter and giving him new authority over nearly two dozen government agencies. This is Five to Four, a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks.

• 1:25Peter Shamshiri?

  Welcome to Five to Four, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have butchered our Constitution, like Motown legend Martha Reeves butchering our national anthem. I'm Peter. I'm here with Michael.

• 1:36Michael Liroff?

  Hi, everybody.

• 1:37Peter Shamshiri?

  And Rhiannon.

• 1:38Speaker 04

  Hi. Oh, no. Oh, no.

• 1:41Peter Shamshiri?

  This is...

• 1:42Speaker 04

  Is the reaction.

• 1:43Peter Shamshiri?

  This has got to be the funniest thing that's happened in the last week or so. There's a new women's baseball league, right?

• 1:49Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:49Peter Shamshiri?

  And their inaugural game, they had Martha Reeves, Motown singer, who's now, like, to be fair, 85 years old, sing the anthem. And she did the worst job I've ever heard anyone do.

• 2:05Speaker 04

  What about Fergie?

• 2:07Michael Liroff?

  Worse than Fergie.

• 2:13Peter Shamshiri?

  It was worse than Fergie. I think it was worse than Roseanne. Roseanne had like a cheekiness to it, you know?

• 2:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's Roseanne.

• 2:21Peter Shamshiri?

  It was a play on our understanding of what the national anthem is.

• 2:32Speaker 04

  It was a bit.

• 2:32Peter Shamshiri?

  It's classic comedy. This was a woman who was a professional singer, and it was, I mean, it was unbearable to listen to.

• 2:43Michael Liroff?

  Everyone's so hyped.

• 2:46Speaker 05

  Oh, say, can you see?

• 2:49Speaker 04

  Oh, no.

• 2:50Speaker 05

  But our earthly life was so proudly we hail at the twilight's last gleaming.

• 3:02Speaker 04

  How did she even start in that key?

• 3:04Speaker 05

  Whose broad stripes and bright

• 3:06Peter Shamshiri?

  It's like sounds I've never heard before.

• 3:08Speaker 05

  Through the perilous fight, oh, the rapture's sweet

• 3:15Speaker 04

  She sounds like a kid.

• 3:17Peter Shamshiri?

  Or a cat.

• 3:18Michael Liroff?

  The crowd shots.

• 3:19Speaker 05

  To the streaming, and the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Oh, say, does this star sing, oh, the land of the free and the home of the brave.

• 4:03Speaker 04

  Wow. There's no melody. There's no beat. There's no anything.

• 4:07Michael Liroff?

  The audio is excellent, but the video is just priceless. The people struggling not to laugh or just outright laughing in the stands. The umpire, the umpire giving the most ridiculous salute you've ever seen with like this, trying to hold a straight face while this is going on.

• 4:28Peter Shamshiri?

  I forgot that they missed the timing on "Still There."

• 4:32Peter Shamshiri?

  They had the backup singers say the flag was still there, and then there's like this pause, and then she belts the "Still There."

• 4:39Speaker 04

  Oh, God.

• 4:43Peter Shamshiri?

  That was good.

• 4:44Michael Liroff?

  That was really good.

• 4:45Peter Shamshiri?

  You're nailing it. The whole operation, it's so, it's all so funny that that was the kickoff of like a women's league.

• 4:54Speaker 04

  And I feel bad for everybody involved. I feel bad for her. I feel bad for the backup singers. I feel bad for the audience players there. The league, the women's league of baseball.

• 5:03Peter Shamshiri?

  It almost, I almost feel like a men's rights guy was in charge of this, and he was like...

• 5:14Speaker 04

  Let's take this shit.

• 5:16Peter Shamshiri?

  He was like, I have an idea. Let's get Martha Reeves.

• 5:19Speaker 04

  Let's take this fucking league.

• 5:22Peter Shamshiri?

  Take them down. Take them down.

• 5:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:25Peter Shamshiri?

  Oh, God. All right. This week's case, Trump v. Slaughter. This is another case from the end of this last term about whether Donald Trump can fire the heads of independent agencies, even if the law says he cannot. For nearly 100 years now, the Supreme Court has held that the president cannot freely fire the heads of independent agencies, which is a problem for Donald Trump because he wants to fire everyone and replace them with his lackeys.

• 5:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:57Peter Shamshiri?

  But the Supreme Court, in a six to three decision, said, "Mr. Trump, sir, we salute you, and you can fire whoever you want, with one exception," which we'll get to later.

• 6:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. The head of the Fed, maybe that's a little bit different. Is there a legal reason why? Not sure. But anyways, yeah, this case is hashtag actually not just about firing and hiring decisions, like in the federal government, but hashtag actually, this case is about the power of the president to do whatever the fuck he wants and, you know, rule over the federal government like a little god. So, like Peter said, some people got fired. We were all there for that. They were employed at federal administrative agencies. But before we get into who got fired and how that went down, there's an important distinction for these cases that's relevant here legally between administrative agencies, different kinds of administrative agencies.

• 6:51Speaker 04

  There are executive agencies, like the ones that we think about, that are like the cabinet agencies, the president's cabinet, the Department of State, the Department of the Interior, et cetera. But there are also independent agencies. In this case, at issue is the Federal Trade Commission. That's one independent agency. But there are others, the SEC, the NLRB, the CFPB, for example. And independent agencies are those agencies that are created by Congress with some safeguards, some structural independence, to make them more insulated from politics. Yes, they are a part of the executive branch, but they have some structural protection.

• 7:34Speaker 04

  For example, some of them, you know, the statute creating the agency says that the president cannot fire the heads of the agency without cause. There needs to be a good reason, a little bit of due process, right? Or maybe instead of a single agency head, Congress says, you know, this agency is actually going to be led by a bipartisan commission, for example. So, moving into the facts of this case, the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, is one such agency. The law that created the FTC says it will be run by five commissioners, each of whom serves for seven years. And if the president is going to fire any of them before the seven-year term is up,

• 8:16Speaker 04

  it can only be for, quote, "inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office." You see here Congress putting in a little bit of structural independence, right? It can't just be by whim of the president that he takes out one of these commissioners or multiple of these commissioners. It has to be for a reason. They were inefficient. They were neglecting their duty, or they were doing malfeasance. So, in January 2025, Trump fired the two Democratic appointees on the FTC, Alvaro Badoya and Rebecca Slaughter. And Trump didn't say a reason why they were fired. He didn't say one of those reasons that is required under the statute.

• 8:57Speaker 04

  Instead, he said that their, quote, "continued service on the FTC was inconsistent with the administration's priorities," and that they were removed pursuant to his authority under the Constitution. So, he's not saying a reason that's in the law that's required. He's just saying, "The Constitution lets me do this for whatever fucking reason I want." So Rebecca Slaughter sued, and that's how this case gets bounced around. Lower courts stayed the administration's decision, then it's put back in place, and we get all the way to the Supreme Court. Now, in another case that was decided the same day, these both came down on the same day, this one called Cook, we're going to talk about it more in a little bit, but Lisa

• 9:40Speaker 04

  Cook was a Biden appointee to the Fed, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, and she was fired by Trump without cause. Now, the Fed, the statute creating the Fed, also says that if the president is going to remove any of these people on the Federal Reserve Board, then it has to be for cause. Trump doesn't give a reason that falls within that statutory justification. And then Lisa Cook turned around and also sued Trump. Now, the Supreme Court handles this Cook case a little bit differently, but we're going to get into the Slaughter case, the FTC one.

• 10:16Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah. So, like Reeve said, you have these independent agencies, right? These agencies that are a little more insulated from executive control. Back in the 1930s, FDR was wailing and dealing. He was making moves.

• 10:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:31Peter Shamshiri?

  And he tried to fire an FTC commissioner. The law said he couldn't do that, at least not without, you know, good reason, due process, right? But he said, "Well, that's unconstitutional. This is an executive agency. I'm the head of the executive branch. I should be able to fire anyone at the agency for whatever reason I want. It's mine." But the Supreme Court, in a 1935 case, Humphrey's executor, said, "No. The agency is not entirely within the president's control. It's created by Congress. It has a legislative function. It has some judicial function. It doesn't entirely belong to the executive branch."

• 11:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:06Peter Shamshiri?

  Conservatives have never liked this opinion. They believe in a strong executive branch. You may have heard of the unitary executive theory, the idea that the president has unfettered authority within the executive branch. They think that he should be able to fire whoever he wants, right? And finally, in this case, they say, you know what? We're overturning Humphrey's executor, right? Trump wants to fire these folks. We've got to let him. The reasoning they use is just very broad constitutional shit. They basically say, the vesting clause of the Constitution says that the executive power shall vest in the president.

• 11:44Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 11:45Peter Shamshiri?

  And then you also have the take care clause, which says the president must take care that the laws are faithfully executed.

• 11:51Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 11:52Peter Shamshiri?

  And they say, together, this means that the president can fire whoever he wants. And in fact, Congress can't even put light restrictions on his ability to do so.

• 12:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, two plus two equals 1,000 trillion.

• 12:05Peter Shamshiri?

  And so this is generally just sort of a separation of powers thing. They're right, they're like, this is the executive branch. President's the head of the executive branch. The Constitution says that he, that the power of the branch vests in him. Now, I will be honest and say that none of this has ever made sense to me.

• 12:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, they've been making this argument for a while.

• 12:21Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah, yeah. The way that these agencies are created is that Congress passes a law creating them, right? Delineates what they do and then put some restrictions on what the president might do, right? Like, fire them without cause. So, think about the absurdities that this creates. Congress could pass a law tomorrow just abolishing the FTC, right? Stripping all of that power away from the executive branch entirely. But according to the court, it can't put a little bit of restriction on the president's personnel management, right? That doesn't sound like a coherent constitutional structure to me. I mean, there's a really weird thing here where they're like,

• 13:05Peter Shamshiri?

  the executive power vests with the executive branch, but Congress didn't give him this power. So it's not executive power. I just don't get it. I just don't get it. His power flows from whatever Congress gave him in the law. So if they don't give him a power, then it's not executive power. I, I can't believe how much this doesn't make sense to me. And I've spent the last 48 hours reading like law review pieces. And every one of them that believed in this was stupid. I can't get my arms around it. It just doesn't make sense to me.

• 13:35Speaker 04

  No, totally. And like, the executive, like, what does that mean? The executive branch? Like, the president's role is to execute the laws that are passed by Congress. So Congress creates the structure. Congress passes the laws. Congress decides what the laws say. And then the president executes that. That, that is the power given to the president.

• 13:56Peter Shamshiri?

  Michael, do you want to talk about the take care clause here? That was a funny observation.

• 13:59Michael Liroff?

  Yeah, it's crazy because like, a, a big part of this argument for the unitary executive is the take care clause. And they say, well, the president has to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. And so he has this, like, duty, right? And this is their argument for why he has to be able to fire someone in case they're not like faithfully executing the laws.

• 14:20Peter Shamshiri?

  Right.

• 14:20Michael Liroff?

  But also, also requiring cause to fire them. That's a law. That's part of the law.

• 14:28Speaker 04

  He's got to faithfully execute that.

• 14:30Michael Liroff?

  That's also a law. He has to take care to see executed. Like, I don't, it, it doesn't hang together coherently, like, even on like a surface level. It makes no sense.

• 14:40Speaker 04

  No, not at all. And also faithfully executing the law. If somebody fails to faithfully execute the law, that would be cause for firing them. That's, that's in the statute. Malfeasance, neglecting your duty, then that's a reason to fire them.

• 14:55Peter Shamshiri?

  And you just initiate the process of removing them.

• 14:58Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 14:58Peter Shamshiri?

  Which, which by the way, is like, not that cumbersome.

• 15:00Speaker 04

  With a reason.

• 15:02Peter Shamshiri?

  Like, alright. One of my favorite parts of the decision is that they start quoting, like, for some reason, John Roberts is like, he's like getting into all this constitutional history and shit. And you're just sort of like, but, but, you're just like, the whole time, you're like, hold up though. Can we, can we circle back?

• 15:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:20Peter Shamshiri?

  He, he starts quoting some old records of the Constitutional Convention. And they're talking about the concern that giving the executive too much power would recreate the monarchy, right? Obviously, a huge concern at the time of the founding, right? Now, it feels a little bit quaint, but at the time, they were like, we don't want a king, right? And we don't want to accidentally create a king. And he quotes James Wilson, one of the founding fathers, one of the first associates of the Supreme Court. He quotes James Wilson saying that unity in the executive was a way to protect against monarchy because only a single person could bring the, quote, vigor and activity necessary to protect the separation of powers.

• 16:01Peter Shamshiri?

  So, like, I'm not, I'm not the world's greatest logician, you know? But like, we're, we're talking about giving one guy more power? So that he can protect the separation of power? I'm sorry.

• 16:15Michael Liroff?

  More, more legislative and judicial power.

• 16:17Peter Shamshiri?

  Right.

• 16:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:18Peter Shamshiri?

  If we give this guy all the power, he can protect the separation of powers.

• 16:22Speaker 04

  But also, the federal government at this time is like 10 people. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's not.

• 16:27Peter Shamshiri?

  Also, though, but this is an extremely misleading edit of James Wilson. Should sort of go without saying, he wasn't talking about the separation of powers. He was just sort of talking about executive power generally. Like, he was someone who was like, we need a, a strong, active executive. Vigor and activity, right? We need someone who's.

• 16:42Speaker 04

  The power vests in the executive.

• 16:44Peter Shamshiri?

  Little bit of a go-getter. That's the classic sort of, you know, Hamiltonian pro-executive argument, very common at the time. But he didn't say this absurd thing where he's like, we need a strong executive to protect the separation of powers. That's something that Roberts, like, sort of Frankensteins together. It's pretty dishonest stuff. The court wants to make this sound like it's just deeply grounded in the Constitution. But really, it's all rooted in this like abstract shit about separation of powers, executive power vests in the executive, right? Executive agencies aren't even directly mentioned in the Constitution, right? They're mentioned indirectly a couple of times. So there, there's no structure or rules that they're required to have constitutionally.

• 17:29Peter Shamshiri?

  The most relevant part of the Constitution says that the president, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and councils, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, which shall be established by law.

• 17:46Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 17:47Peter Shamshiri?

  So, the president can't unilaterally appoint agency heads. That's in the Constitution.

• 17:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:52Peter Shamshiri?

  He's reliant on Congress passing a law. That's in the Constitution, right? They have to approve the nomination. That's in the Constitution. Nothing is said about removal. The whole premise of the majority is this idea that this is exclusively an executive power.

• 18:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:07Peter Shamshiri?

  But the only time the Constitution even touches on it, it's very clearly a shared power between the president and Congress, right? There's, there's just a little bit of, like, Congress does this, the president does that. It's not, it, it's very, it's, I don't know. I, you're, you're just reading this and you're like, what the fuck are you talking about? What the fuck are you talking about, right? There's also, we're going to talk about this a little bit more. There was a debate in 1789 called the Decision of 1789. After the Constitution is ratified, and they talk about it. He's like, here's what was happening in this debate about whether the president can remove the heads of departments, right? And it's sort of like, I was talking to you guys about this.

• 18:48Peter Shamshiri?

  I was like, it seems to me that the fact that there was a month-long debate about this makes it pretty clear that it's not in the Constitution.

• 18:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:58Michael Liroff?

  Right.

• 18:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:59Peter Shamshiri?

  If it was in the Constitution. If it was clear in the Constitution that the president had this removal power, then I don't think they would have been debating it for a month, huh? Right? I mean, that, that feels pretty cut and dry to me. And I don't know, I just, I don't want to keep hammering the same point. I just find the majority's position nonsensical. The agencies are created by Congress. Congress can write a law outlining the entire scope of the agency, what it does and does not do. It can eliminate the agency entirely. But for some reason, it can't put some restrictions on the removal of a commissioner in charge of the agency. It just does not click.

• 19:32Speaker 04

  Makes no sense.

• 19:32Peter Shamshiri?

  All of the majority's arguments are grounded in abstract bullshit about separation of powers rather than common sense, let alone anything actually written in the Constitution, right?

• 19:44Michael Liroff?

  Yeah, and like, on top of that, the, you know, this whole thing sort of elides a major issue, which is, would Congress have delegated all this authority to a non-independent agency, right? Like, there is some reason to believe, there is some evidence that actually Congress delegates less power to the non-independent agencies, that when the president can remove someone at will, Congress is a little more circumspect about what they delegate to, to the president, right? So, would they even create an FTC?

• 20:18Peter Shamshiri?

  Right.

• 20:18Michael Liroff?

  Without an independent agency head or commissioner?

• 20:20Peter Shamshiri?

  Would the FTC look like it does now?

• 20:22Michael Liroff?

  The main thing is, this is, these laws, the organizing statutes for these agencies represent a bargain essentially struck between the legislative branch and the executive branch.

• 20:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:34Michael Liroff?

  About the sharing of power. And it's not obvious that Congress would have accepted the bargain. With non-independent agency heads or without commissions or whatever.

• 20:47Peter Shamshiri?

  The creation of the FTC and the scope of the FTC

• 20:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:50Peter Shamshiri?

  might have been contingent upon the fact that it's independent, right? If you take away the independence, maybe the law doesn't get passed. This is something the court deals with all the time called severability, right? Can you sever a portion of the law? Strike down a portion of the law without destroying the law in full? You can make the argument here that this is not a severable provision, right? That this is essential to the law.

• 21:11Speaker 04

  It's part and parcel of

• 21:13Peter Shamshiri?

  Yes.

• 21:13Speaker 04

  the creation of these agencies with the authority that they are delegated.

• 21:17Michael Liroff?

  And I think, and I'll talk about this more when we talk about Gorsuch's concurrence. I think what you see here is that there's a certain level of cowardice, I think, from the conservatives here where like, you know, making an agency head at will instead of for cause removal is something that's not going to register on anybody's radar. Might, your eyes might be glazing over just listening to us discuss it. Getting rid of the FTC entirely, on the other hand,

• 21:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:46Michael Liroff?

  is something that, that might fluoresce for the, uh, for the general public. You know what I mean? Might, might pop.

• 21:53Peter Shamshiri?

  We're bringing back fluoresce, folks.

• 21:54Speaker 04

  It might be a flip on the radar.

• 21:55Peter Shamshiri?

  We're bringing back fluoresce.

• 21:57Speaker 04

  Hashtag fluorescing.

• 21:58Peter Shamshiri?

  And at the end of the day, this is all just like a normative thing for conservatives, right? They're not actually interpreting the Constitution. They normatively believe that the president needs more power, that the executive branch should be run by a, by a strong figure, right? Just like the strongest, coolest 80-year-old man.

• 22:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:16Peter Shamshiri?

  And that's what they're enacting here, right? Their, their vision of the government rather than like the actual interpretation of the Constitution. And if this all sounds very abstract, and it is sort of abstract, what are the practical implications here?

• 22:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:28Peter Shamshiri?

  The obvious one is that Donald Trump can fire his political opponents, which is what he's been doing, right? He can fire commissioner members until agency boards represent his interests. And he can fire commissioner members until agency boards don't have a quorum. A lot of these independent agencies, they require a quorum of like board members or commissioners to function. And Trump can just bring them below quorum by firing them without cause, right?

• 22:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:55Peter Shamshiri?

  Hobbling their ability to even function. So Congress passes a law creating these agencies, requiring the president to run them, which is part of his constitutional duties, right? To take care of the laws. And now the president can functionally poof them out of existence, right? Does that feel, does that feel like it makes sense? Does that feel like it makes sense?

• 23:15Speaker 04

  Does that feel like taking care?

• 23:17Michael Liroff?

  And again, the rationale for why he has to have this power is that he has to take care that the laws are faithfully executed.

• 23:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:23Michael Liroff?

  And under that rationale, he can effectively

• 23:25Peter Shamshiri?

  It is funny that they use that as a justification. The, the man who is least interested in following the law in the world.

• 23:31Speaker 04

  Right, right. Yeah.

• 23:33Peter Shamshiri?

  And by the way, there's a, there's an unaddressed issue here. This is all about the heads of agencies, the people in leadership, the, the commissioners, et cetera. But there are lower officials at agencies. The reasoning would imply that he can fire all of them. He could, he could wipe an agency out, right? So

• 23:52Speaker 04

  Wipe out the civil service.

• 23:54Peter Shamshiri?

  Right, can he? Certainly the reasoning would imply that he can. It's part of the executive branch. They're just as much a part of the executive branch as the leadership, right?

• 24:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:03Peter Shamshiri?

  So, yeah. Can he just single-handedly doge them out of existence, right? Can he just wipe out entire agencies? It, it seems like they're saying he can, but they don't talk about it because you don't want to say that. You don't, you don't want to bring that up, right?

• 24:18Speaker 04

  That's going to fluoresce as well.

• 24:19Peter Shamshiri?

  That will also fluoresce.

• 24:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:21Michael Liroff?

  It's catching on. It's catching on.

• 24:22Peter Shamshiri?

  Everyone's saying fluoresce.

• 24:27Michael Liroff?

  So I mentioned earlier Gorsuch has a concurrence. You know, I want to start by saying, when we did the Trump v. Barbara, the citizenship, birthright citizenship case, we talked about Gorsuch's annoying tick of rhetorical questions, posing rhetorical questions in his opinions.

• 24:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:46Michael Liroff?

  I want to say in this 16-page opinion, he poses 11 rhetorical questions. I counted.

• 24:51Speaker 04

  Come off it, bro.

• 24:52Michael Liroff?

  Obnoxious, obnoxious.

• 24:54Speaker 04

  Come off it, bro.

• 24:55Peter Shamshiri?

  You're not a fucking law professor, dude. Just, just

• 24:57Speaker 04

  Shut the hell up.

• 24:59Peter Shamshiri?

  Just say what you want to say.

• 25:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:01Michael Liroff?

  Yes, it's so, so frustrating. But the opinion, the heart of it, is dedicated to the idea that by making these agency heads at will employment instead of, you know, for cause removal, that too much power is being vested in the president all at once and that this is really dangerous. Which is

• 25:21Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 25:21Michael Liroff?

  an insane thing to do, say, like when you signed on to the opinion. It's like a guy drilling a hole in a boat while looking you in the eye and being like, this boat's not safe. It's got lots of holes in it.

• 25:33Peter Shamshiri?

  But you know what he's, you know what he's saying? What he's advocating for is not that the president has been given too much power. It's that the agencies have too much power within them. So you don't solve the problem by

• 25:46Michael Liroff?

  For sure.

• 25:46Peter Shamshiri?

  taking the president, president's power away. You take, you solve the problem by reducing the scope of the agencies. We, these agencies are too big. They're, you know, the administrative state is too large. You have to, you have to kill them. Otherwise, we've created a monster.

• 26:00Speaker 04

  Right. Well, and it's like, and meanwhile, create a king then, you know? Like, it doesn't make sense.

• 26:05Peter Shamshiri?

  Until then, though, we accidentally created a king, FYI.

• 26:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:10Michael Liroff?

  That is literally, that is the, that is the opinion. It's insane. There's a portion where he's like, now, after this, like if a company runs afoul of the president, like even if, you know, the, the topic that they're disagreeing on is like one where the company has the better of the argument or whatever, can they really withstand like OSHA finding that their work practices are bad? Or if, you know, the FTC saying there's unfair trade practices? Or the SEC looking into it, right? Like all of a sudden, the entire federal government could come down on one company because they pissed off the president, right?

• 26:46Peter Shamshiri?

  Right.

• 26:46Michael Liroff?

  And it's like, yeah, it's like, yes.

• 26:48Speaker 04

  Amazing foresight, yeah.

• 26:49Michael Liroff?

  That is, that is a good point, Neil.

• 26:51Peter Shamshiri?

  There are other controls, there are other controls that you can implement to prevent that, none of which he's interested in.

• 26:58Michael Liroff?

  No, no, absolutely not.

• 27:00Peter Shamshiri?

  I like skipped forward in his concurrence and was just sort of reading a paragraph in it. And I thought it was a dissent for a second. I was like, did I misunderstand where Gorsuch was here?

• 27:09Michael Liroff?

  Yes.

• 27:09Peter Shamshiri?

  Because like, it seems like he's saying this is a nightmare. But no, he's, he's, I guess he's saying this is a nightmare, but, but who cares?

• 27:18Michael Liroff?

  And he even, he even talks about how hard a nightmare it is to fix. He's like, there's a real one-way ratchet here. Congress can pass these by the, by a majority, but they have to have a veto-proof majority to get rid of them. Because why would the president give up any of his own power? He's like, so I guess it falls to us, you know, to, to fix this mess.

• 27:36Peter Shamshiri?

  This is crazy, but I guess we're the most powerful people in the country, is that?

• 27:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:40Michael Liroff?

  Crazy, crazy. It's crazy.

• 27:44Michael Liroff?

  This opinion, it's, it is truly a masterwork in like obnoxious, like crazy psychology. The other thing I wanted to say that was driving me nuts reading this was like, he also spends a fair bit of time sort of casting doubt on the idea that agencies are actually protected against political influence. And, you know, he sort of paints this picture of like, well, they're not really elected. They're appointed by the president and they're confirmed by the Senate. And they're not really picked for their expertise. They're picked because of like, you know, their political leanings and all that. And he's like, so can we really trust them? And here's a fucking rhetorical question for you, Neil. You know who else is picked by the president, confirmed by the Senate?

• 28:30Michael Liroff?

  And guess what is not picked for their expertise, but for their political leanings? You asshole, you. And you know what else is not very democratically, you know, legitimate? Striking down a fucking law because you don't like the policies that it represents. Like, fuck off. Fuck you, dude. Oh, I hated this opinion so much.

• 28:53Peter Shamshiri?

  I like how we're slowly making you the Gorsuch guy too, and you barely noticed. And it's already too late.

• 29:02Speaker 04

  No, the conservatives in this one are wacky, wacky doodle, doodle. Okay, this brings us to the Sotomayor dissent. This is long, she writes 50 pages. She's picking apart every single point.

• 29:12Peter Shamshiri?

  I heavily implied that you didn't have to read it all, Ray. I heavily implied that we could just breeze through this, but I feel like you read it all anyway.

• 29:18Speaker 04

  Did I say that I did?

• 29:21Peter Shamshiri?

  I'm just looking at your, I'm just looking at your notes and it looks like you read it all.

• 29:24Speaker 04

  I read a lot. So she picks apart, you know, every single point here that the majority so, so, so absurdly and disingenuously makes. She says, what the fuck are we doing? You are doing away with like 100 years of precedent since Humphrey's executor, that, that case where the Supreme Court decided that the FTC and even mentioned the Fed, these are independent agencies, these have some structural protections. The president cannot remove these agency heads at will. And we have relied on that precedent for just about almost 100 years. The Constitution, she says, does not require every executive officer to be removable at will. The Constitution doesn't say anything about that.

• 30:07Speaker 04

  That's not what the executive power is that's conferred by the Constitution in Article 2. What are you guys even talking about? You know, she says what we've been saying. This is way too much power being concentrated in the president. Are you guys fucking psycho? This is in clear contravention of congressional action intent when they create these agencies, when they build in this independence. And she says, like, this decision transforms the president's duty to execute laws into like a power to dominate officials that Congress purposely made independent. And she kind of, you know, Ends, she's threading throughout like, this is going to cause chaos.

• 30:51Speaker 04

  Like, the practical implications here are massive. And, you know, we are going to talk about the other case about the Fed, about Lisa Cook and how that holding is different. And Sotomayor kind of reams them for that, too. Like, this is so inconsistent. Y'all are being like, this is on its face just intellectually, legally, analytically inconsistent. You are coming to an opposite, you're coming to an opposite result.

• 31:16Peter Shamshiri?

  If I can touch on one thing, there's a little bit of debate between the majority and dissent about how important this is. She's like, this is a huge deal. And the majority is like, what are you talking about? We're just like removing this like really thin, already weak procedural process. And then like, right after this case came down, Trump was like on Truth Social, like, they have made me a king. They have rewarded, they have rewarded me. They have given me what I asked for.

• 31:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:40Peter Shamshiri?

  Like, doing like the all caps. He did a whole Truth Social post that ended with, thank you for your attention to this matter about this case.

• 31:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, maybe last thing to talk about from this dissent. Peter, you mentioned the debate of 1789. Sotomayor, you know, does take up this ridiculous debate, which I'm not, I'm not like criticizing her for taking up necessarily because the majority is using it as justification, right? And, and she's having to like respond to the majority. But there's a back and forth happening about the decision of 1789. That is so ridiculous throughout this case in the majority and in the dissent because of what they are fighting about, which is quotes from opium-riddled, addled, old white slave-owning men.

• 32:30Peter Shamshiri?

  150 years before they cured syphilis.

• 32:32Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so, Peter, you laid it out, but this is the first Congress, literally like the first session of the US House of Representatives in 1789. The, the Constitution has just been ratified and they're having a month-long debate about whether Article II grants the president power to like remove officers of the federal government like at will. And the majority, obviously, in this case, John Roberts is saying, at the end of that debate, at the end of that long month, Congress decided that the president has unrestricted removal authority through Article II. Sotomayor is like, no, you fucking idiot. The historical figures that you are quoting actually don't even say that. The debate that was had was about whether it's the president's

• 33:17Speaker 04

  decision alone to, to remove somebody or whether the president needs to include the Senate in removal decisions. And everyone says, yeah, okay, it's the president's decision. But the, the debate of 1789 doesn't mean like, Congress can't enact some removal protections, you know? President still makes the decision. It just has to be for a reason.

• 33:39Peter Shamshiri?

  Right.

• 33:40Speaker 04

  So.

• 33:41Peter Shamshiri?

  To be clear, like, what the, like, the distinction there is, there's a difference between at-will removal and like, removal with some process. And she's like, this, the, the decision of 1789 didn't have anything to do with that. It was just about like removal power broadly, right?

• 33:58Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 33:59Peter Shamshiri?

  And again, just like, like we said, like, who gives a shit? This is.

• 34:02Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 34:03Peter Shamshiri?

  Like, it, maybe you're like, well, yeah, where did the first Congress land on this? But again, the, the fact that this debate happened is just like, it's, it shows that the majority is wrong. It, it really does.

• 34:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. And they're citing, the majority quotes figures, it's not even like from the debate, like on the House floor. It's these guys, these fucking guys, after the debate, the decision of 1789, like reflecting back on it. Roberts quotes Chief Justice Marshall, the first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. And he said that the decision of 1789 was, quote, "a full expression of the sense of the legislature."

• 34:44Peter Shamshiri?

  Oh, the sense of the legislature.

• 34:45Speaker 04

  The sense of the legislature. It's just like, what are, what are you talking about? Why are we, why is this in the Supreme Court? Like, why is this in a Supreme Court case?

• 34:55Peter Shamshiri?

  This is what they do with history, where they're just doing this like cherry-picked bullshit. Like, if you didn't know anything about this, if you're not a historian of this era or whatever, all you're getting, really from both sides, is just like a bunch of like out-of-context quotes and developments, right? And you're like.

• 35:12Speaker 04

  From like a diary or like a letter that they wrote or like a treatise.

• 35:16Peter Shamshiri?

  And this is the problem with originalism. You can't like yank clean narratives out of these historical situations, right? This was like a debate about what to do. They obviously didn't resolve it in like a very clear way that favors the majority. Otherwise, that would have been the law for the rest of American history. But, I mean, it's, yeah, you're just listening to these schmucks cherry-pick quotes. It's so, it's so annoying. And, and not even quotes, like the James Wilson quote I was talking about. It's like, it's like segmented. So like, part of the sentence is a quote and then a part is John Roberts. And you're like, wait, what's?

• 35:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. Is that what he actually said? Exactly.

• 35:55Peter Shamshiri?

  This editorializing.

• 35:57Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly. And it's just, you know, it's not even like, so it's, you're, you're looking at these schmucks quoting schmucks who aren't even talking like really specifically about anything. They're like, they're like waxing philosophical about like, we're creating a country. We're creating a country.

• 36:16Peter Shamshiri?

  They're like, well, it's not have kings, but he must be strong. And John Roberts is like, yeah, so that means a for-cause removal is unconstitutional. It's like, I don't, I think you're getting a little too specific there, John.

• 36:29Speaker 04

  That's ridiculous.

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• 43:00Peter Shamshiri?

  So all of this is annoying and stupid on its own, but it's even more offensive that it drops at the same time as Trump v. Cook.

• 43:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:11Peter Shamshiri?

  Which is the same exact issue, except instead of the FTC, it's the head of the Federal Reserve.

• 43:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:20Peter Shamshiri?

  Now, the Federal Reserve is different. That's where the money be, right?

• 43:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:26Peter Shamshiri?

  So...

• 43:27Speaker 04

  That's my understanding.

• 43:28Peter Shamshiri?

  It's not just that we're not just dicking around with some bullshit-ass agency like the FTC, the NLRB, right? That's all liberal bullshit. The Federal Reserve, that's important, right? Those guys control monetary policy.

• 43:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:46Peter Shamshiri?

  Monetary policy directly influences the markets. That is where the billionaires that you vacation with get their money, right? So this is all very important to the Supreme Court, and in that case, they actually come out the other way.

• 44:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:06Peter Shamshiri?

  All of a sudden, Donald Trump can't fire the head of the Federal Reserve willy-nilly. He needs good reasons. He needs process.

• 44:15Speaker 04

  All of a sudden, at-will employment is flourishing for me.

• 44:19Michael Liroff?

  That's right.

• 44:22Peter Shamshiri?

  So now you might ask yourself, what happened to exclusive executive power? I thought power, I thought executive power vested exclusively with the president. What happened to the take-care clause?

• 44:34Speaker 04

  Yeah. This is what the Constitution says.

• 44:36Peter Shamshiri?

  The Constitution said all that. No, no.

• 44:40Michael Liroff?

  Wrong, bitch.

• 44:41Peter Shamshiri?

  No idiot. Listen up, all right? What Robert says is, look, there's a long tradition of central bank independence, tracing back to the progenitors of the Federal Reserve, the First and Second Bank of the United States. They were independent. And so there's a history and tradition of independence, right? And that, I guess, overrules the Constitution if it...

• 45:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:11Peter Shamshiri?

  Now, you might ask yourself, but well, wasn't there a history of independence for the FTC, which was created in like 1915 or something?

• 45:20Michael Liroff?

  Right.

• 45:21Peter Shamshiri?

  You're so fucking stupid. You're so fucking dumb. That's completely different. That's only 112 years. I mean, don't embarrass yourself. 110 years, right? I mean, well, actually, I just made that date up, so I don't know if it's...

• 45:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:38Peter Shamshiri?

  I don't know why I'm trying to do math.

• 45:40Speaker 04

  You don't have to do the math.

• 45:44Peter Shamshiri?

  There are dissents from Thomas and Barrett in the Cook case where they're like, what are we doing? We just came out the other way.

• 45:53Speaker 04

  Thomas says this decision is wrong. This is inaccurate. Like, you're coming out wrong.

• 45:58Michael Liroff?

  And he cites Slaughter, right?

• 46:00Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah.

• 46:01Michael Liroff?

  He's just like, how are you... Remember this case we just came down with like three days ago?

• 46:04Peter Shamshiri?

  It's, so I guess the rule is that the Constitution absolutely mandates that the president have total control over executive agencies unless there's a long history and tradition of independence, but not always.

• 46:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:23Peter Shamshiri?

  Only sometimes. You know, what's funny is, so last year, this like, the Fed issue preliminarily came to the court in Trump v. Wilcox, and the court was sort of tinkering with a different reasoning. They were like, well, the Fed is quasi-private, which means it's sort of not like other agencies.

• 46:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:44Peter Shamshiri?

  And I guess they got dissuaded. Maybe they listened to our episode. They're like, they're cooking us on this. Let's go in a different direction.

• 46:50Speaker 04

  Let's just say it's different.

• 46:51Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah. Let's, why are we trying to explain ourselves? That's embarrassing, right? When you explain yourself, you open yourself to humiliation, right? This is like, it's like, I don't know, I will criticize professional athletes, right? All the time. You won't ever see me try to take a shot, right? After, you know, I'm not gonna like try to dunk or something. That would embarrass myself.

• 47:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm eating shrimp Alfredo on my couch. I'm screaming at him.

• 47:17Peter Shamshiri?

  You don't want to risk embarrassment. You just want to talk your shit, right? That's what they're doing. So, so even the conservatives that like fundamentally agree with them on all of this are just like, what's happening? What's happening here? The libs who like join the majority in Cook are like, by the way, this doesn't make sense.

• 47:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:37Peter Shamshiri?

  Like, we're joining you, but this doesn't really make sense.

• 47:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:40Peter Shamshiri?

  And so they've sort of created this bespoke exception for the Fed. It's not entirely clear what this exception entails, other than like a history of independence means that maybe you are independent and the Constitution stuff doesn't matter, but a lot of agencies that are historically independent...

• 47:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:59Peter Shamshiri?

  Are no longer independent now. So it just, again, it's, this is what happens when shame is removed from the process, right?

• 48:09Michael Liroff?

  Right.

• 48:10Peter Shamshiri?

  This is, this is the kind of stuff where you're like, who's gonna stop us, right?

• 48:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 48:14Michael Liroff?

  And I also, I do think there's like a degree of, like, we were saying the markets, right? The Fed has impact on the markets, but the markets also respond to like perceptions of the Fed, right? And like, this is unlike with like the FTC or whatever. If you make the Fed Board of Governors able to be fired at will by Donald Trump, the markets will immediately react to that, right? Like, before he even fires anyone, the markets will react to that very poorly. And so this is one where like even this little baby step that they're willing to take with every other agency has some immediate real-world impacts that they're aware of, for sure.

• 48:56Michael Liroff?

  And they're looking at their 401Ks, they're looking at their Roth IRAs, and they're like...

• 49:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. It's the real-world impacts that matter to them, right? Like, transforming the federal government in this way has immediate real-world impacts that are just not a blip. They don't give a shit about it. This one, they do, and so they just come out differently. Like, it's like so transparently just their preference and like what they care about in a policy sense, in a political sense, that is driving their holdings.

• 49:26Michael Liroff?

  Yeah. I do, I do want to say, as the Thomas guy, some notes from the Thomas dissent in Cook that I enjoyed. One, he really misrepresents the history and the majority's argument a number of times, but I think my favorite was he's, he's talking about like how Roberts is situating the Federal Reserve as like the next step after the First and Second Banks of America, right? And he's like, Thomas is like, you fucking fool. The people who designed the Fed thought that shit was so primitive. You find quotes of them saying like, America's system was, was like from the time of the Code of Hammurabi and shit. But there was like an 80-year period between the Second Bank and the establishment of the Fed.

• 50:11Michael Liroff?

  Like, what they're talking about...

• 50:12Peter Shamshiri?

  Right.

• 50:13Michael Liroff?

  Is the period where there's no central bank at all. And they're like, this is primitive shit. And he also, he does, he's like, and you know, you know who had a central bank? Do you know who, who they really liked, who's, you know, the Federal Reserve was based on? The Nazis. The Nazis had a federal bank, the Reichsbank. And, oh, this guy who really liked the Federal Reserve, he called it perfect. He said the Nazi bank was perfect. Just think about that, John Roberts. Are you a Nazi?

• 50:44Peter Shamshiri?

  He loves to do that.

• 50:46Michael Liroff?

  I like that. I like that a lot. Thank you, Thomas.

• 50:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:48Michael Liroff?

  For bringing that in.

• 50:49Speaker 04

  He's okay with Harlan Crow having all that Nazi shit, right? Like, that doesn't make Harlan Crow a Nazi or respect Nazis.

• 50:54Peter Shamshiri?

  I mean, he's okay with, like, literal Nazis in the Republican Party.

• 50:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:57Peter Shamshiri?

  It's very funny that there's like this, they still do Nazi as a smear sometimes. And you're like,

• 51:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:02Peter Shamshiri?

  I think we're bad, like,

• 51:04Speaker 04

  It's their woke thing.

• 51:05Peter Shamshiri?

  Maybe like 10 years ago, you could have done this, right?

• 51:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:08Peter Shamshiri?

  10 years ago, you could be like, sort of sounds like Nazis. But now it's like,

• 51:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:13Peter Shamshiri?

  Bro, the,

• 51:14Speaker 04

  You have no street cred calling out fascism.

• 51:17Peter Shamshiri?

  Literal Nazis are in, like, open Nazis are in your party now. You can't be, you can't be talking like this.

• 51:22Speaker 04

  All right. I want to get to yapping about unitary executive theory. But just as we're recording this, just seeing a report come down that Trump is taking another swing at removing Lisa Cook, governor of the Fed, on the Board of Governors of the Fed, the case that we just talked about, where the court said, no, you can't remove her without cause. Looks like he's trying again. He sent a letter to Lisa Cook outlining some allegations that she fraudulently completed some mortgage documents or financial statements in years past. And, you know, essentially like this is giving her notice, right? This is like explaining the cause and giving her an opportunity to respond.

• 52:05Speaker 04

  So Trump and the administration are saying that this brings Lisa Cook's eventual firing, or this attempt at firing, within the law, within the holding of the Cook case that we just talked about. Of course, her lawyers are saying, whatever, absolutely not. This is pretext, again, for firing her without cause. This is not valid cause for removing Cook from the Board of Governors of the Fed. So, yeah, I mean, this shit's ongoing. We'll see what happens. But at any rate, let's talk about how all of this is actually about unitary executive theory. We've talked about it a lot on the podcast, but I think a deep dive is a little bit warranted here because,

• 52:48Speaker 04

  like we said up top, this case, both of these cases, like, they're not just about hiring and firing, or like, the president's personnel decision-making authority, but actually really about massive, massive power being consolidated in the executive in the Trump administration here. The Trump administration brought this argument to the Supreme Court, brought the argument that the Constitution vests this power in the president to fire at will, because it's part of the Trump administration's platform. It's part of Project 2025. It's part of the plan for remaking the federal government. Like, that is why Trump fired them and didn't give cause

• 53:30Speaker 04

  so that they could argue this position legally, right? So doctrinally, what is being held here in this case, in slaughter at least, is not just about, like, firing decisions in the federal government. Like, actually, like maximalist approaches to the unitary executive theory applies to presidential power across the board in terms of like a huge range of decisions that can be made by the president. Think of impoundment decisions, right? The way the president spends money that is allotted to the executive from Congress for certain reasons. Think about the independence of the DOJ. The president ordering, for example, that the Justice Department, like, maybe investigate political rivals. Think about, like, like I mentioned before,

• 54:14Speaker 04

  the existence of the civil service itself, you know? So unitary executive theory means that, like, within executive power is the right to control all subordinates in the executive branch. And it defines even independent agencies as subordinate to the executive. And control of those subordinates doesn't mean, like, just who's fired and hired, but also like what they do, regardless of congressional intent to create an independent agency or to protect them from pure politics because they don't have purely political function, you know? Russell Vaught, you know, we were just talking about Nazis, Nazis in and around this administration, MAGA fools. Russell Vaught, who was head of the Office of Management and Budget

• 54:56Speaker 04

  for a time for Trump, said, quote, "What we're trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them." Vaught, of course, now runs the Center for Renewing America. I don't recommend looking at that website because it will mentally assault you.

• 55:12Peter Shamshiri?

  He's the Project 2025 architect, right?

• 55:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Another, another Project 2025 guy, the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, says, quote, "The notion of independent federal agencies or federal employees who don't answer to the president violates the very foundation of our democratic republic. We need to," he says, "dismantle this rogue administrative state." So just know, you know, it's not just like, the president should be able to fire, you know, somebody he disagrees with that's within the executive branch. This is about taking control and vesting a major, major authority, power over the entire federal government in one person, right? And so overturning Humphrey's executor

• 55:58Speaker 04

  is a huge, huge aspect of, like, legally justifying this move, this transformation in presidential power. It's in total direct contradiction to, like, the basic concepts of checks and balances that have been understood for generations. And, and it really should be seen as, like, this case should be seen as, you know, the judiciary endorsing these political goals of the Trump administration. Like, they're bringing in the judiciary to enact this unitary executive theory.

• 56:31Peter Shamshiri?

  One last thought here, which is like, originalist understandings of executive power don't make any sense. And their attempts to do originalism here are just ridiculous. Like, and it's really originalism in microcosm to some degree. Because

• 56:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:44Peter Shamshiri?

  when you look at the scope of federal and executive power relative to the founding, it's so different. And the functions of it are so different. The dynamics between the branches are so different that trying to, like, pull strict rules out of the founding era never actually works. All you end up doing is taking these, like, really abstract, vague narratives and pulling them out of the founding era and then trying to, like, mash them together with, like, specific mashinations of government.

• 57:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:15Peter Shamshiri?

  And pretend that, like, you've created something coherent. And so like, you know, you think about the executive branch now, it has things like immigration powers that it didn't have. It has law enforcement powers that it barely had at the time of founding and like, nothing like the scope that it has now. You know, the FTC and all of these agencies would be completely unrecognizable to, to the founders, right? The founders were like, well, who's in charge of money? And who's in charge of ships? It was like fucking Game of Thrones. You know what I mean? They were like, who's the master of coin? And now you have, like, HUD, right?

• 57:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:51Peter Shamshiri?

  Now you have the FTC. Now you have the Fed, like, these sprawling agencies that the founders would have nothing to say about. Just trying to, like, trying to pretend that you can just pull rules out of that era and apply them to the modern day. It's embarrassing stuff. It's embarrassing stuff. Don't let the Federalist Society kid in your class tell you that this makes sense. It does not.

• 58:15Speaker 04

  They're playing with Play-Doh.

• 58:17Michael Liroff?

  They might be eating the Play-Doh in some cases.

• 58:19Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah.

• 58:22Peter Shamshiri?

  Little bite for me?

• 58:25Speaker 04

  Green tastes better.

• 58:26Peter Shamshiri?

  Unitary executive theory, little bite for me? Little bite for me?

• 58:33Peter Shamshiri?

  All right.

• 58:38Peter Shamshiri?

  Next week, NRC, the FEC, another one from this term about campaign finance. You might have heard that there are still some campaign finance restrictions remaining. We'll see about that, folks. We'll see about that. Follow us on social media at 54pod. Subscribe to our Patreon, patreon.com/54pod, all spelled out, for access to premium and ad-free episodes, special events, our Slack, all sorts of shit. See you next week.

• 59:04Speaker 04

  Bye.

• 59:05Michael Liroff?

  Bye-bye. Five to Four is presented by Prolog Projects. This episode was produced by Alison Rogers. Leon Nefok provides editorial support. Our website was designed by Peter Murphy. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at Chips NY. And our theme song is by Spatial Relations.