Trump and the law: A justice reporter talks about the busiest beat in news

Episode transcript

 Gail Chaddock: In a blizzard of executive orders, President Trump is amply delivering on a campaign pledge to “turn Washington upside down.” These moves include a spending freeze, firings and mass buyouts of federal workers, dismantling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the U.S. Agency for International Development, both established by Congress, and [adding] a Department of Government Efficiency, which was not.

As we record this podcast, 14 court orders have been issued to pause these initiatives and at least 70 lawsuits are pending. By the time you hear this podcast, those numbers will likely be higher.

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Chaddock: This is “Why We Wrote This.” I’m this week’s guest host, Gail Chaddock. We’re talking with Henry Gass, who, as the Monitor’s judicial correspondent, is in the thick of it.

Henry, thank you for joining us today.

Henry Gass: My pleasure.

Chaddock: The last time you joined us for a podcast, we were talking about what it’s like to cover the deluge of big decisions at the end of a Supreme Court term. What’s it like to cover this story?

Gass: It’s different in that, you know, the end of a Supreme Court term is very busy. They tend to not deliver their biggest opinions until sort of the final days in late June. But you do sort of have a sense of what’s coming, so you can prepare to a degree.

Covering [the events of] the last few weeks, there are a lot more unknowns. It’s a bit more chaotic. You’re sort of just trying to keep an eye on the big picture and sort of how our government is changing, or trying to be changed, and what that could mean, for good and for bad.

Chaddock: In your most recent story, you raised what seems to me the essential question: If judges say stop, will the president comply? If the answer is no, critics say we have a constitutional crisis. And as you point out, the president has pushed the limits of executive power in his first administration, as with the travel ban. Do you see this as a precedent or a guide to what’s going to happen in his second term?

Gass: I do, not least because I think more or less every president in recent history has tried to push the limits of their executive power in different ways. Presidential power has been expanding over the decades. And you know, President Trump, just in the last few weeks, has been sort of trying to expand it in new ways and in some unprecedented ways. And that’s one of the big stories of our time right now.

Chaddock: Could you talk a little bit more about that travel ban? Because it is an interesting precedent. It was quickly dubbed, by critics, “the Muslim ban.”

Gass: So what happened then is on, I think, his very first day in office in 2017, the president issued this executive order restricting certain foreign nationals from entering the U.S. And, yes, it was blocked by lower federal courts pretty quickly. The administration then had to revise the order effectively, sort of rewrite it, and try again. And, you know, I think it was blocked a few more times in lower courts, and eventually there was sort of this third iteration of the travel ban. Made it to the Supreme Court, and the court did ultimately uphold it.

I think what’s interesting about the second Trump administration is that they just seem a lot more prepared to execute these executive orders and these policy goals that they have, while also continuing their policy agenda to remake Washington.

Chaddock: Now, he has said recently, “I always abide by the courts.” That sounds unambiguous, but for the ending. He went on to say, referring to the federal judge who blocked an initiative: “What he’s done is he’s slowed down the momentum, and it gives crooked people more time to cover up the books.” Close quote. As a journalist, how do you parse that statement?

Gass: I think probably the first thing you have to do as a journalist is make clear that that is just a statement that doesn’t guarantee anything really. But yeah, that second part about giving crooked people time to cover up the books, that to me looks like a continuation of the argument made by Trump himself, by his supporters, by Republicans, that these career officials in federal agencies had been resisting Trump in his first administration, and have been exercising these quite broad and significant powers in an unaccountable, untransparent way, that he doesn’t like and that a lot of Americans don’t like either.

Chaddock: What do you make of it?

Gass: I don’t have polling data in front of me, but I don’t think there’s really any disagreement that the federal government is inefficient at least, and wasteful as well. I think where there is disagreement is how exactly the Trump administration is going about tackling that. They’ve done things that are unprecedented, that may be unconstitutional. And we sort of have to wait and see how the courts view that.

Chaddock: Vice President JD Vance had a statement. It’s interesting how often these essential statements are in social media, not in any kind of formal setting. He said, (1): “If a judge tries to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal.” And (2): “If a judge tried to command the attorney general how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal.” But how is looking for fraud and abuse any different from those examples? How do you cover that question for your readers?

Gass: Nothing in that statement is untrue. He makes the important caveat that judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power. And that raises the question that I think is going to be asked over and over again: What is a legitimate use of the executive’s power? Some people are arguing that the Trump administration is using the executive’s power in illegitimate ways and possibly unconstitutional ways. Ultimately our constitutional structure gives judges the power to decide if an executive’s actions are legitimate or not. That’s their role in our system of checks and balances. We’ll see what they do moving forward.

Chaddock: Should the president say “No,” what power do the courts have to enforce their decisions?

Gass: The simple answer to that is: not much. Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers that, you know, the courts, they don’t have armies, they don’t have a police force. They rely primarily on the executive branch to enforce their orders. They rely on political goodwill, public support to enforce those orders. It’s sort of very intangible, reputational almost, strength through which their orders are enforced. Um, if the president says no, then yeah, there’s not a whole lot the courts can do, besides hope that the president saying no is politically unpopular, and unpopular with the public to the extent that the president backs down.

Chaddock: You know, it’s interesting to see how many references are in current newspaper articles to newspaper articles written back in 1788, which is to say the Federalists trying to defend the Constitution in New York newspapers. I wanted to read you an excerpt from one of them I stumbled on this morning. Madison. New York. February 1st, 1788: “It will not be denied that power is of an encroaching nature, and that it ought to be effectively restrained from passing the limits assigned to it.” I admire you for taking on explaining to today’s readers the Federalist Papers which may have dropped out of most high school curriculums. What’s important to understand about the concept of “separation of powers”?

Gass: The founders of the United States were rebelling against a monarchy. And they wrote the Constitution with a very explicit goal in mind of forming a government where power is not concentrated in one person, where it’s separated throughout the government, and permits different branches of government to check and balance each other. That gives the people power in that government through directly elected representatives and through the president who they also elect via the electoral college. And the question for our times now, I think, is: Is that power becoming more concentrated in the presidency, for example, or is it becoming too concentrated in these federal agencies and bureaucracies that the public doesn’t vote for and doesn’t elect?

Chaddock: And of course the word that comes up the most in the Federalist Papers is liberty. Liberty, liberty, liberty. You know, it’s easy to forget that if the king is good. But if it’s a really bad king, you can see the value of it. Now, in addition to the president, Congress, and the judiciary, there’s a new actor in this story, the Department of Government Efficiency, which a month ago didn’t exist. Unelected, unvetted, unaccountable to Congress or the public, headed by Elon Musk, releasing searing examples of waste, fraud, and abuse, practically on a daily basis at this point. But how transparent is Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency? And is it legal?

Gass: I do think it’s legal. President Trump created the department effectively by renaming the U. S. Digital Service, which was an office within the executive office of the president that President Obama created. President Trump gave it a new mission and duty. I would say it’s not that transparent. I believe it has a website now, but when I was writing stories last week, I couldn’t find a website for the department, which I think would be a pretty basic level of transparency, like a website that tells you who works there, what they’re doing, how to get in touch with them. We know that Elon Musk has this status as a temporary government employee, which, I think, it’s often given to contractors who are hired by a department or agency for specific projects or tasks.

Of course, if you’re on X, the social media site that Elon Musk owns, he’s tweeting all the time on there about sort of what they’re doing and what’s going on. We’ve seen him hold press conferences and talk most days about what’s happening. And that’s a form of transparency. But, at the end of the day that is just talk. Real transparency would be sort of official government documents that, you know, have to be submitted to Congress, for example, for oversight, or some kind of mechanism for journalists and reporters to get sort of documents and communications from within a government agency.

Chaddock: Henry, I’m looking at some morning headlines. “Trump dares the courts to stop him. JD Vance’s tweet is no crisis. Is there a constitutional crisis?” “Trump’s actions have created a constitutional crisis, scholars say.” What’s interesting, going over your recent work, is that that’s not a phrase you use, “constitutional crisis.” Why is that?

Gass: I just think that’s a very loaded phrase. And, you know, a constitutional crisis is not something where there is sort of a clear, singular definition. It’s fairly subjective. It’s not something that I think the media should invoke too, too quickly. I found other ways, like “expansive use of executive power” and things like that, that are a bit less loaded.

Chaddock: Good. It is a Monitor difference, I think, that you don’t run around with your hair on fire.

Gass: Yeah.

Chaddock: It’s nice to know that if there actually is a constitutional crisis, the word will not have been completely devalued by the time you have to use it. So, we greatly appreciate that. I want to just ask you one more thing on the way out the door. Where I sit, this is the story of a lifetime. Are you enjoying it? Are you enjoying writing about it?

Gass: Um, yeah. I mean, I guess when I, when I have a minute to sort of breathe in and reflect on everything that’s going on, I mean, yeah, maybe, maybe it is enjoyable, um, sort of in the heat of everything. I’m not sure I would use that word.

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Chaddock: Thank you for that as well. And thanks to our listeners. You can find more, including our show notes with a link to the stories we discussed in this podcast, at CSMonitor.com/WhyWeWroteThis. This episode was hosted by me, Gail Chaddock. Edited and produced by Clay Collins and Jingnan Peng and Mackenzie Farkus. Our sound engineer is Alyssa Britton, with original music by Noel Flatt. Produced by The Christian Science Monitor, copyright 2025.