A Conversation With Corey Brettschneider

Corey Brettschneider is a Professor at Brown University, where he teaches constitutional law and politics. Professor Brettschneider sits down with Greta Long ’28 and Shiv Parihar ’28 to discuss the threat of authoritarianism and the powers of the American presidency. 

This interview transcript has been edited for length and clarity. 

Greta Long: So I can start us off. Thank you so much for your talk at the Ath today. That was really awesome — to hear about the ways that we can be motivated as students and as people of this country in order to help prevent tyrannical presidencies. I want to start us off with: how do you believe that the way the presidency was set up puts the office on a path to abuse?

Corey Brettschneider: I would say not an inevitable path, but that I’m with Patrick Henry to some degree. And I’ll just remind listeners, for those people who were not at the talk, what he said. Patrick Henry, the revolutionary hero, is famous for the saying, “Give me liberty, or give me death.” What I’m interested in is his opposition to the ratification of the Constitution.

The reason Henry gives for opposing ratification is that he thinks there’s one huge flaw in it: the danger and power of the U.S. presidency. I think his point is, look, if George Washington is the president of the United States— a person of virtue — you don’t have to worry. But what if you have a bad person in power? What if you have a criminal president? His idea is that a criminal president will use supposedly benign powers, like the pardon power, to pardon co-conspirators. And as he or she starts to commit crimes, that person will realize, “Wow, these checks don’t work.” So what’s going to stop the president? The court? Well, what if the court is sympathetic to the president and is put there by that president? What about impeachment? What if the president’s own party is in Congress?

Impeachment might not work, by the way, as you need two-thirds in the Senate to convict. And so he uses this phrase: “Who will stop this force?” And then at another point he says that this person [the president] won’t hesitate to crown himself a monarch. In other words, the position is so powerful that if you get a bad or even criminal president, they’ll collapse it. Henry’s saying it’s inevitable. He said, “Don’t ratify it [the Constitution].” And I think that’s wrong.

Now, why? One thing is that you can have decent people in power. But even if you have a president who threatens democracy — something approximating what Henry is saying — we’ve had citizens who have pushed back in the past, reclaiming the democratic Constitution. And that’s the check that’s worked before. So even though there’s a danger that Henry might be right, we have ways of responding.

Shiv Parihar: So on that note, you cast the body politic as the ultimate check on presidential power — not the Supreme Court, which, as you point out, has been complicit in past abuses of power. So why do you make this choice, and how do you see this dynamic being relevant today?

Corey Brettschneider: Well, I think part of it is just the history. When you look at cases, the Supreme Court has often been not just part of the problem, but a big part.

Take the Sedition Act. Samuel Chase lobbies for the Sedition Act. He sits on the trial — Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase. He sits on the trial of Thomas Cooper, essentially for criticizing Adams. He actually says—ensures—as Supreme Court Justice sitting on the trial, that Cooper can’t even raise issues of free speech. So the idea that you’re going to get the Supreme Court acting as it would in a case like the Sedition Act— just striking it down and indicating the right to free speech in the civics kind of way — there’s no way that’s going to happen.

Take the second crisis I talked about: Dred Scott. That’s partly the result of Buchanan lobbying the court secretly to decide Dred Scott in the most evil way possible, which they do — denying Black Americans any rights under the Constitution. But it’s also the Supreme Court that does it. So the court, at these worst moments, far from saving us in the way judicial review is supposed to operate — the court as a check on a dangerous president — has been part of the problem.

Now, how about in cases where the court did seem to do something great? One of the most famous examples is U.S. v. Nixon, saying that Nixon has to hand over tapes showing his crimes, essentially. And that is a unanimous decision, 8–0 (Rehnquist recuses himself). And it’s often cited for the idea that the president is not above the law. But when you really look at that, especially in the current moment, the way Kavanaugh described it at one point is: you know, it’s really a case about a president having to answer a criminal subpoena. You can narrow it so much that it leaves room for the idea that a president really is above the law.

Unfortunately, that’s what the court has done in [United States v. Trump], in my opinion. They put a president above the law. It’s not that they reversed U.S. v. Nixon, but they did it [United States v. Trump] consistent with it by narrowing it [United States v. Nixon]. And, you know, I think the court might push back against some of the abuses going on now — like in birthright citizenship — but there will be a lot of other instances in which it upholds and enables Trump’s assault on democracy.

Shiv Parihar: Do you think his willingness to go along with the Sedition Acts was part of why Samuel Chase was impeached a few years later?

Corey Brettschneider: Oh, yeah, definitely. He’s so partisan, so extreme. And there are more specific things that he does too — manipulating grand juries.

That impeachment was a pushback against him, and I think an important one. He’s not removed, but he’s impeached, and it limits some of the partisanship Chase had shown. But it doesn’t end the role of courts in enabling authoritarian abuses of power — you know, Dred Scott forces that exhibit…

Greta Long: Would you like to see Congress being more willing to use the impeachment power on the courts? 

Corey Brettschneider: I do think the impeachment of Samuel Chase was probably justifiable. I think it was, actually. But there’s a danger in that too. And you’re seeing that right now: when Trump doesn’t like a decision, he sort of threatens impeachment. If it becomes a mechanism for just undermining judges, that will stop the president and have the opposite effect of what we’re talking about…I’d be a little leery of that.

Greta Long: So, speaking about recent events, can you talk a little bit about the development of presidential authority in recent years?

Corey Brettschneider: I think there isn’t a clear development, but after Nixon I think there was an important moment of pushback against presidential power. We have a series of laws that were an attempt at the kind of recovery I’m talking about. One is the Ethics in Government Act. It created an independent counsel who has the ability to pursue criminal investigations of the president’s close advisors — and even the president — without being fired for political reasons. You have to show cause. In fact, that office wrote a memo saying that a sitting president could be indicted.

So what happened to it? Even though there were reforms like that — or I’ll mention another one, the National Emergencies Act, which gave two houses of Congress the ability, by majority vote, to stop a presidential emergency; or the War Powers Act, which tried to restore Congress’s war-making power — after Nixon, there was this sort of attempted recovery in the 1970s. The independent counsel, for instance, lasted until the Clinton era. 

But the recovery really failed, because almost all these reforms were eventually wiped away. And the independent counsel, for instance—when Ken Starr went after Bill Clinton, Clinton went from being a supporter of it to opposing it.

The Emergencies Act, under a complicated case, the Congress decides it needs to change it. Instead of a majority in both houses, you needed two-thirds of each to undo an emergency. Or you needed a majority with the president to agree — but if the president disagrees, you needed an override vote.

So the development has been jagged. We see abuses of power — Nixon’s presidency’s gotten too strong — and then we see a reaction. But that reaction is undermined. So part of what I’m trying to do is say, look: we’ve had these fits and starts of trying to recover from an unchecked president. We just haven’t completed that by any means. We need to continue that work. People like Daniel Ellsberg, who I interviewed for the book [The Oath and The Office], were champions of this kind of reform. We can use their example in the way we use these other examples to inspire us.

Greta Long: Awesome. And then how should the office’s constitutional character influence voters’ decisions? What should they be looking out for — whether it be green or red flags?

Corey Brettschneider: Well, I think a president who, as Trump said around 2016, says, “I have an Article II. I can do anything I want” — that’s the red flag. That’s the ultimate red flag. Somebody who tries to claim authoritarian, absolute power under our Constitution—we should know that’s not what [Article II of the Constitution] means.

In fact, with The Oath and The Office [the podcast]— as I mentioned during the lecture, and I’ll say to anyone listening—I’ve decided this question is so important that every week, with comedian John Fugelsang, I make it palatable and funny but also deeply analytic and honest. It started as a discussion of my book by the same name, but now the podcast takes your “green flag/red flag” framework and looks every week at what’s happening.

Why call it The Oath and the Office? Because far from giving a president unlimited power, when you actually look at Article II of the Constitution, which creates the presidency, it also limits [the presidency]. It requires the president, in the first few seconds in office, to pledge to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.” They actually have to say those words. That symbolizes the idea that the president will be constrained by the law.

So a good green flag is the idea of recognizing constraints. The red flag is thinking the power is unlimited.

Shiv Parihar: I’m a big fan of President Lincoln — he’s even my phone case. But I know lots of critics would point to Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus and his prosecution of suspected Confederate sympathizers in the North as being a historic abuse of power. What’s your response to that, and why doesn’t Lincoln fit into your “crisis president” model?

Corey Brettschneider: Well, he’s sort of an in-between recovery…but he certainly isn’t a full recovery president. But he’s not a crisis president either.

I’m sympathetic to Frederick Douglass, as you know. The way he sees the issue is pivotal to the development of American democracy. Douglass’s view, as I understand it, is: look, in any normal instance this would never be justified. But really the fate of America is at stake. In order to not just save the Union but re-craft America with a new founding based on equality, it might be necessary to suspend the illegitimate old Constitution — an authoritarian Constitution, a white supremacist Constitution — in order to rebirth it.

For him, Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus on its own isn’t justified unless it’s in service of this new Constitution. That’s what I argue in the book: he really does convince Lincoln that the moral purpose of the war has to be the ending of slavery. 

It wasn’t at the beginning. So I don’t think there’s a lot of justification for what Lincoln was doing until he sees it as a crusade to really re-found America. When he gives that amazing address at Gettysburg, what he’s really saying is, “This is an American tragedy.” The suspension of habeas is part of it—arguably that’s illegal under the 18th-century Constitution. But he’s also re-founding a Constitution that, for the first time, honors the promise of the Declaration: a government of, by, and for the people. And that isn’t the 18th-century Constitution—that’s the one being born between the partnership of Douglass and Lincoln, instead. It was an unprecedented time in which America faced the crisis of whether it would become a legitimate democracy. It had not been a democracy before. 

The suspension, if it’s justified, is justified only in that [moment]. It’s a one-time founding moment, not one that I think can be repeated. So when Lincoln is cited by Nixon, for instance, it’s dangerous. It can be abused by any president who just wants to do their own bidding. But [Lincoln] was in a sui generis moment in American history.

Shiv Parihar: Could you maybe elaborate a bit more? Because, for instance, President Wilson would have said he was on a crusade to reshape the Union for progressivism and “make the world safe for democracy.” President Trump might say he’s on a crusade to do whatever he’s trying to do. Where do you draw the line?

Corey Brettschneider: Once you set that precedent, possibly some of the things he’s trying to do could be excused. But I think there were two things that defined [Lincoln’s moment].

One is that the courts were not really able to function. America was in the midst of a horrible, bloody war. There wasn’t a government in the stable sense. That isn’t true in the other instances. The stability of the country wasn’t threatened. 

The second thing is that America, before that moment, wasn’t a legitimate democracy. It had elements of one, it would grow into one — the right to dissent, elections — but when you deny rights to a significant portion of the population, that’s less than democracy.

So it was a kind of refounding of America. Its uniqueness, I think, is what might justify [those actions]. Now, there are different ways to see it. I don’t want to say it was justified necessarily. Maybe it was an unjustified necessity in the moment of a bloody foundation. Killing people in war — was that justified? It’s hard to think of it that way. It was a tragedy. So I see the suspension of habeas as a tragic moment in the founding of democracy.

Shiv Parihar: If I can slightly push one more question in there: when it comes to America being redefined in the 1860s as a democracy, do you think the lack of women’s right to vote for another 60 years set that even later?

Corey Brettschneider: Yeah, I think that’s a good argument. I mean, Douglass — I don’t think of him as convincing Lincoln and then America instantly becomes a democracy. But the principles, at least, are embedded. One of the amazing things about Douglass is that he’s a champion of universal rights, regardless of race and gender.

Now, he doesn’t succeed in 1868, and in the Grant presidency, in getting full realization. But the reason I think it still makes sense to see America as at least moving toward democracy is: part of [Douglass’s] point about voting rights is that it isn’t just a moral principle. Part of what’s undermining American democracy is the mass murder of Black Americans.

And so some Black women, allies of Douglass, made the decision to put voting rights of Black men before voting rights of women. At least it was a way to get some protection from mass violence. So this isn’t just some abstract claim that America wasn’t a democracy, it isn’t just the denial of rights. It’s also about the mass slaughter of Black Americans trying to live their lives.

The voting rights struggle is pivotal — not just because of the Fifteenth Amendment, but because of its second section, which enabled the Enforcement Acts and the prosecution of more than a thousand white terrorists throughout the United States. That was an indication of the right to exist in a way America had never indicated before.

Greta Long: If we switch gears a little bit and talk more about citizens’ roles in adhering to the Constitution and holding presidential power accountable — in terms of civic education, what should we be teaching or emphasizing that we’re currently not? Or at least what should be promoted more?

Corey Brettschneider: We should be talking about the Constitution — and a lot of people don’t know the basics. (Yes, there are three branches of government). But there’s a way of doing civic education that I’m opposed to, and that’s the way that underemphasizes the fragility of our democracy and the importance of citizens. Sometimes you hear, “There are three branches, checks and balances, one checks the other.” To some extent that’s the view in the Federalist Papers.

But I think we have to be more honest about what the Anti-Federalists like Patrick Henry identified: often they don’t work. There’s a continual danger in American democracy of authoritarian threats by the presidency itself.

So this kind of civic education should tell the story of how the checks failed — but how citizens didn’t fail. It’s a sort of undoing of what I call a naïve understanding of checks and balances, and a turn toward recognizing the honest role that democracy has to play in the system.

Greta Long: Are there any specific books on history or politics that you think are especially key for students to be looking into as they prepare themselves for this duty?

Corey Brettschneider: Well, obviously the main book I’m going to recommend is called The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It. I think it’s a unique book that recasts American history in a different way. There just isn’t another book like it — one that retells American history not as a story of steady progress, but of threat and recovery, and that points to the role of citizens in carving out the philosophy of American democracy and constitutionalism.

So rather than listing a bunch of other books that do a similar thing — because that just doesn’t exist — I’d suggest looking directly at the citizens themselves. Read Frederick Douglass. Read William Monroe Trotter. Read about Ellsberg — and I’ve been disappointed to learn how little people know about him in this generation.

So that’s what I’d say: my book isn’t just a book to be read, but one that points the way through the footnotes to original sources. I’ll also mention some of my colleagues who’ve done a great job of expanding the American canon of political theory and constitutional law. Not just Douglass, but figures like David Walker. One book I’ll highlight is by my colleague Melvin Rogers…

Shiv Parihar: He visited the Salvatori last semester.

Greta Long: He did.

Corey Brettschneider: Oh. So you know his book The Darkened Light of Faith. And you know, I learned a lot from that book about how to read these figures. And I think Melvin would say too: read these sources for yourself.

Of course there are a lot of other books. I’m just promoting my colleagues now. But I just went to an amazing conference on the work of my colleague Gordon Wood and his book The Creation of the American Republic. It’s so important for understanding our history — but read it as a counter to what I’m saying. He really celebrates Adams, celebrating people who I think we should regard as a risk. Rather than just trusting me, see how the debate exists about American history.

Shiv Parihar: You mentioned Gordon Wood’s sort of hagiography of Adams. And David McCullough’s biography of John Adams is one of the most popular biographies.

Corey Brettschneider: Yes. Wood is more subtle, because he does talk about Adams as a monarchist, even though he’s ultimately sympathetic.

Greta Long: And there was the HBO miniseries. So Adams got a lot of traction in pop culture, though maybe less than Hamilton. What’s been your reaction to that?

Corey Brettschneider: You see yourself sort of holding back a tide here. There’s also another book called Making the Presidency by [Lindsay Chervinsky], the head of Mount Vernon. That’s new.

I’d say she’s honest about Adams’s flaws, but ultimately it’s a defense. If you want to listen to another podcast, you can listen to us debate about Adams on a great podcast called Strict Scrutiny. One of the problems, I think, is hiding the extent of the Sedition Act. Or maybe “hiding” isn’t the right word — people just weren’t aware. They thought the [number of] prosecutions [was] in the twenties. It turns out there were 126.

It’s also about what you emphasize. For me, the right to dissent — to criticize the president — is as important as voting. A lot of those figures didn’t quite see the importance of free speech in that sense.

Now, the miniseries starred Paul Giamatti. I was doing another podcast with Preet Bharara, live at the New-York Historical Society in front of about 350 people. He said something very nice about Paul Giamatti. I reminded him that Paul Giamatti also plays [a character] in Billions. But that’s part of it: when you have an actor that great, he makes people enamored. I obviously see Adams in a different way.

Shiv Parihar: Similarly, there’s been kind of a renaissance — particularly on the new right — of Nixon “apology.” Greta was at the Nixon Library last week.

Greta Long: I was. I went to the Nixon Library. It was very interesting. I just went for fun — for the museum.

Shiv Parihar: I went there a couple months ago. So what’s your response to the new tide of Nixon defense in parts of the public?

Corey Brettschneider: Part of what I’m trying to argue is that the unfortunate revival of Nixon is possible because the pardon wiped away so many of the investigations that were going on.

Watergate was such a small part of his — as I call it — criminal presidency. For instance, I’ll give one story, because you heard it [earlier]. Listeners can just Google it.

Nixon was so focused on Ellsberg — who he called the “main ball.” He said, for instance, “We need our own Ellsberg.” Many of his crimes centered around Ellsberg. Some are well known: the HBO show The Plumbers, for example, centered on the break-in at Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, for instance.

But here’s another one. Nixon believed that, in addition to the Pentagon Papers (which didn’t implicate Nixon, since they ended with Johnson), Ellsberg had a second set of papers. Nixon mistakenly thought they were being kept in a safe at the Brookings Institution. Nixon thought those papers showed he had negotiated illegally with the Viet Cong, to postpone the war so that they’d get a better deal with him than with Johnson. That would make him look good. Obviously, he didn’t want that to come out.

So he thought the Brookings safe had it. He says this on tape. He’s telling Henry Kissinger about it. Kissinger says, “Well, Mr. President, if they have that, we should go through the legal process and the courts. They shouldn’t have that material. We can get it from them.” And Nixon says, “No, Henry. I want it done” — and this is a quote — “on a thievery basis. On a thievery basis.” The President of the United States.

It’s because he believed, mistakenly citing Lincoln, that he could commit crimes, given that America was in a civil war with student protesters. This isn’t hypothetical. You can hear him say that.

What kind of criminality was going on? Well, we know about other instances: an attempt to incapacitate or even kill Daniel Ellsberg on the Capitol steps; the possible ordering of the “hard hat riot” in New York against protesters. The Plumbers unit was really formed to shut down dissent. Watergate is just such a small piece of that. And the pardon wiped it all away.

Why don’t we know all these stories? Because in an attempt to move the country forward — maybe a good faith attempt, maybe out of sympathy for Nixon and his family — Ford enacted the pardon. The real heroes of the moment would have been the grand jurors, who voted in a straw poll to indict Nixon, and who, after he resigned, tried to make good on that. Vladimir Pregel, the foreman, tried to make good on that promise. But the pardon wiped it all away.

So I think that’s what made the Nixon revival possible: people just don’t know the extent of his crimes. If they did, I think they’d be much less sympathetic. Now, there might be a small number who think, “Maybe it was right that a president can commit crimes with impunity.” I think that’s the minority. And people who hold that view — I find that very frightening, of course.

Shiv Parihar: So do you think the constitutional crisis that you identify right now essentially began with the Watergate pardon?

Corey Brettschneider: Yes. That’s a good way to put it. I think it cleared the way to the immunity decision, because we never really saw the danger of a president above the law. If we’d had a trial for Nixon — normal legal processes carried out — it would have seemed more like a check on the most dangerous office, not only in the country but in the world. But the pardon cut off that possibility.

There were so many investigations, as I talk about in the book, ongoing. Nick Ackerman and Philip Lacovara—both living prosecutors who were involved in all of this. You know, it gave me a lot of information and documents that I was able to find, some of it through FOIA requests.

Groups like Lawfare have exposed it. There was a lot of crime. And the fact that the American people never really saw it makes things like the immunity decision possible. I just think the Supreme Court has made a lawless decision. It’s not grounded in the text. It’s not grounded in principle. And they have unwittingly enabled a criminal president exactly the way Patrick Henry warned.

Greta Long: Claremont McKenna College recently updated its mission to include preparing students for responsible leadership. What are some key ways you think the school itself can prepare students to create informed citizens and voters who will challenge authoritarian leadership?

Corey Brettschneider: Great question. And, you know, maybe there are people out there who would answer by thinking, “Oh, I’m at CMC. I don’t want to call out the leadership. I’ll just be nice to my hosts.” I’m just not that kind of person.

So I’ll be direct. There are universities that are going along with Trump’s demand to hand over control of the university — to give up on things like academic freedom — in the mistaken idea that you can negotiate with this wannabe authoritarian. Columbia University in particular has been among the worst offenders there. But then there are models on the other side — universities that have been robust in saying, look: the university is defined by academic freedom. If we give up on that because we want to negotiate, we’re not really a university anymore.

One of the best leaders has been the constitutional lawyer and president of Princeton University, Chris Eisgruber. I’d urge leaders at all universities and colleges, including CMC, to read Eisgruber’s statements in The Atlantic. Increasingly, Harvard is joining him.

The pushback has to be direct and robust. We’ve seen law firms cave — firms like Skadden, which have given up on the law, becoming essentially dictate-enforcement firms rather than law firms. And we’ve seen others really stand up for the rule of law and their integrity. So it’s really clear: you cannot allow this administration to use the threat of illegally revoking federal funds, citing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, in a misguided effort to destroy academic freedom.

Shiv Parihar: So on that note, when we chatted earlier, I brought up how in 1868, when Andrew Johnson was impeached, one of the impeachment managers — Benjamin Butler — later wrote that he wished the impeachment had been more specific to Johnson’s actions undermining Reconstruction. You write about this in your book, citing Blackstone’s Commentaries and English common law to argue that “high crimes and misdemeanors” can be much broader than most Americans think. Could you elaborate?

Corey Brettschneider: In the book, The Oath and the Office — and on the podcast — we focus a lot on impeachment. There’s a fundamental misunderstanding, and I get why. It’s a kind of linguistic misunderstanding of what impeachment is supposed to be for. It comes from the idea that an impeachable offense is a, quote, “high crime or misdemeanor.” You can see why people would think it means you need an actual crime, and that the trial is just to lay it out. The impeachment process involves a majority vote in the House, and then a trial in the Senate with two-thirds needed to convict. Using that language, it’s natural to think it’s a trial for criminal violation.

The Johnson trial was very legalistic. They focused almost entirely on his supposed violation of the Tenure of Office Act — firing the Secretary of War. I think that was an attempt to make it look like a legal proceeding. The same limits [showed up] in Trump’s first impeachment on the quid pro quo—likewise, very legalistic. But here’s the thing: there is no part of criminal law called “high crimes and misdemeanors.” That’s not a thing. It’s meant, instead, to stand for the idea of demeaning the office or abusing power.

That’s true in British impeachment too — it’s not of the king, but of the king’s advisers. Going forward, if there’s another impeachment (obviously not with this House, but if Democrats regain control), I’d hope they go broad: think about abuse of power, not just violations of the law.

Shiv Parihar: You mentioned Harry Truman — a moderate, but still a southerner, with a fondness for slurs—who’d been deeply embedded in the machines of southern politics. Yet he ended up bringing civil rights out of the political wilderness that it’d been in for a half century. A very unlikely candidate to do so. Where are some other unlikely places you think we might look today for help in protecting our democracy?

Corey Brettschneider: The Truman example — I’m so glad you brought that up. In the book I talk about the crisis of Wilson. He wasn’t the first white supremacist president, but he was the first white nationalist president. The civil rights movement had a long march, waiting for a president to truly champion them.

I argue, controversially, that FDR was that figure. But Truman — chosen to replace Wallace on FDR’s ticket in order to reassure racist southern Democrats; family members said he used the N-word—he was an unlikely hero in this moment. And yet the NAACP goes to him with stories of soldiers returning home from the war, beaten nearly to death. And he does open, he does change into the most unlikely of heroes.

So what does that show? For one thing, the question of whether or not you’re going to be a “recovery president” isn’t necessarily just a rationalistic one. You want a president who is open to empathy. Obama was criticized for talking about empathy as a value and in choosing Supreme Court justices. But I think that the Truman example shows that part of what you want in a president isn’t just somebody with a concern for protecting democracy and the Constitution, but that they have a certain kind of disposition. I don’t know that we could have spotted it in advance, but he shows how important that quality is.

Shiv and Greta: Thank you so much. Thank you.

Shiv Parihar: It was nice to meet you.

Corey Brettschneider: And can I plug my podcast?

Greta Long: Yes, of course.

Corey Brettschneider: The Oath and the Office. Please listen every week if you’re interested in these issues. It’s a podcast with me and, as he puts it, a deeply unqualified comedian, John Fugelsang. We talk about constitutional law, history, and the crisis of democracy each week. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts.

Greta Long: Awesome.

Shiv and Greta: Thank you so much.