Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts · Slate Podcasts

The Federal Judiciary Is Trapped

November 1, 2025·1 hr 3 min·5 clips

Former judge J. Michael Luttig reveals how Donald Trump has seized unchecked power never before seen in American history.

Dahlia Lithwick opens by noting that the volume of constitutional violations, injunctions, and executive overreach in recent weeks has been so dense that even a daily podcast could not track it all, and introduces Judge J. Michael Luttig, who served on the Fourth Circuit from 1991 to 2006 and became publicly known in January 2021 when he advised Vice President Pence that he had no constitutional authority to refuse to certify the 2020 election results. Luttig's Atlantic piece, President for Life, argues that in his first ten months of his second term, Trump has seized near-absolute unchecked power. Luttig walks through his reasoning: no previous president in American history, he says, has done or said even a single one of the things Trump has done, and Trump has done hundreds of such things. He argues that Trump's consolidation of power across the executive branch, his defiance of court orders, his attacks on the independence of the federal judiciary, and his statements about a third term are not isolated incidents but parts of a coherent strategy. Luttig does not believe Trump has yet technically seized everything, but argues that the direction of travel is unmistakable and that waiting for explicit action is the wrong frame. He expresses particular alarm at the Supreme Court's behavior, contrasting the lower courts, which he says are trying admirably to honor their oaths, with the Supreme Court, which he says is doing anything but. He calls on all Americans with standing to stand up, arguing that if everyone assumes someone else will do it, no one will. The second segment features Rick Waldenberg, CEO of Learning Resources, a family-owned educational toy company, who describes the impact of the Liberation Day tariffs on his business and explains why he filed suit against the administration. His case, which argues the tariffs exceed statutory authority, was heading to the Supreme Court within days of the recording.

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