As President Trump tests the traditional boundaries of presidential power, Pelley spoke with Georgetown’s legal science in Legal Science and the Constitutional Expert Stephen Vladeck about what is legally, which is unseen.
Scott Pelley: How would you describe this moment in American history?
Stephen Vladeck: I think we’re at the crossroads. We are at the political crossroads because there is only such a wide gap between the two sides. And I think we are on the constitutional intersection because we simply did not see such lasting efforts of the president that arrogates not only executive power, but also more suggests that even courts do not have a lot of role in checking. So, you know, I don’t think we saw anything like that, for sure in our lives, probably not from rebuilding in the civil war.
Scott Pelley: Can the president disassemble or kill the agency created by Congress?
Stephen Vladeck: The short answer is no. The longer answer is about 16 different law issues that have been baked in that process. But not. Congress is also part of the story. Congress creates agencies like USAID. Congress creates departments of the Cabinet Department of Education. The President can get those departments leading. The President may become a policy priorities for those departments. But structuring them, funding, that has always been a congress prerogative. And if Congress says, “Hey, Mr. President, you have to spend X on foreign help, in USAID, it was never an opinion, that was never any convincing argument, that the president cannot say no.
Scott Pelley: The presidential trump card asked for a journalist if he needs an act of the Congress to move away with USAID. And he said, quote, “I don’t think so, not when it comes to a fraud. If he is a scam, these people are crazy,” said the president. “If it’s a frauder, you wouldn’t have an act of congress and I’m not sure you would like to do it anyway.”
Stephen Vladeck: We have mechanisms in place to use the fraud. EXECUTIVE Each Federal Agency has a general inspector whose principle is the job to seek to fraud, waste and abuse. What did President Trump done the first week in office? He fired the entire field of inspector of the general, including the ones he appointed.
Scott Pelley: Help me understand 101 here, Stephen. Why can’t president just shoot thousands of people in USAID, for example?
Stephen Vladeck: So, you know, USAID is an agency created by Congress. He has a bunch of position, and everything was created by Congress. And so, when the Congress creates positions in the Government Agency, especially Scott, if the positions of the civil service, there is a point after a trial period in which most of these government officials are protected for any reason.
This was really important reform in the late 19th century. Century America after the assassination of the President Garfield. And the idea behind these reforms was that you had a civil service, then the executive would not be led by sponsorship. Then you would have peoples who were in the government not because they loved the current president and wanted to do their competition, but because they were their government’s job, do you know, help you lead the railroads, whether it was That environmental protection. I mean, you call him.
Over the Government spectrum, historical understanding was Congress, the creation of unpartisian, non-higher positions, because so secure that the government has credibility.
Scott Pelley: What are you, as a constitutional schedule, asking the following?
I think the two big things I have taken care of and watched what happens when these cases come to the Supreme Court and Scott, and not yes, President Trump loses some of these cases, because they will lose some of these cases. Did we just see the executive authority in accordance? Do we see that the executive could return to the drawing board and try to perform some of the same policy goals through various legal tract? We saw this from President Biden with student loans. We saw this during the first Adutian administration with a travel ban. Or we see the type of defiance that is more and more voice on the right? That’s the first thing I’m looking for.
And, Scott, the other thing is Congress. I mean, you know, we saw the Senate efficient overturn and confirming all the president of Amendments nominated, even those I think in any other congress would not confirm. Will that form continue? Is it, you know, Congress will continue to continue to collect in Scott, not just what we could think like bad policies, but in the arrogations of its power? Or will the congress actually try to use their power, its strength over a purse, its power to raise the boundary of debt as Kudge, as a lever to try to actually be reduced. They are two pressure points for me. What happens in the Supreme Court, and whether anything to cross the Congress from its current indolence.
Scott Pelley: If the president is not in line with the decision of the Supreme Court, where would it leave us?
Stephen Vladeck: would leave us on a completely unlimited territory. You know, a lot of people like to repeat Andrew Jackson quotation about John Marshall, let’s let the law see how he tries to spend it. It’s actually apocryphal. Andrew Jackson did not actually refuse a judgment in Worcester compared to Georgia.
You know, the only example we have is President Lincoln refusing to adhere to Habeas Corpus writing that the main judicial Taney betrayed at the beginning of the Civil War. And the story of Abraham Lincoln was the order of single justice, not a full court. We never had the president of the Supreme Court in the face and says, “I’m not following this decision.”
Scott Pelley: Inappropriate territory?
Stephen Vladeck: Unrecorded Territory. You know, I don’t like the term “constitutional crisis” because I’m not sure what it is. But that would certainly be one.
And, I think that the question would be whether our political system would, even in the world in which the separation of the parties is dominated by the separation of authority, will adhere to the full accumulation of power, executive, legislature, in one person, because if it So, I’m not sure how much we could call democracy at that moment.
The video above produced Brit McCand Betchher and edited Scott Rosann.
2025-02-17 00:01:00
