A bizarre primetime address, an AG confirmation fight, a slush fund smackdown, SCOTUS before Congress, DOJ targets NYT. & teleprompter trading? Articles & media clips in one place, newest first.
Some weeks the news arrives one story at a time. This was not one of those weeks.
In seven days we saw:
a bizarre, troubling, primetime presidential address
a contentious confirmation hearing for the acting attorney general
a nominee for DNI (Jay Clayton) engaging in the apparently-now-mandatory job-interview act of election-denying and ritualized self-humiliation
a federal judge issuing a slush fund smackdown of the “settlement” the President reached with himself
insider trading allegations against a presidential teleprompter operator
two sitting Supreme Court justices testifying before Congress for the first time in seven years.
an embarrassed administration targeting the free press
I was fortunate to cover much of it, in print and on air. What follows is the week gathered in one place, newest first: the essays I published here, and a select handful of television segments, each with a short note on what it covers. Think of it as a map rather than a transcript. Every essay title links to the full piece.
Saturday · July 18 — Jacob Soboroff, Connect (MS Now)
Jacob Soboroff delivered an opening monologue Saturday morning that is worth your time on its own. Seriously. If you only watch one clip in this Week in Review, watch Jacob’s monologue. It’s phenomenal.
Chris Geidner of Law Dork and I then joined the conversation. Focal points: SCOTUS ethical lapses; influential boondoggles, gifts; and recusal rules. Let me reiterate: I don’t care whether you watch my portions of this segment. Watch Jacob’s opening monologue!
Friday night · July 17 — ABC News Live Prime, Alex Presha
Friday night on ABC News Live Prime, Alex Presha and I worked through the legal architecture beneath Thursday’s address: what the Elections Clause actually assigns to a president when it comes to federal elections (nothing!), and why the SAVE America Act would do anything but. My portion begins around the 13:34 mark.
Friday · July 17 — MS Now, “The Moment with Katy Tur”
Friday afternoon on MS Now with Katy Tur, a segment with Michael Feinberg and Hanna Rosin of the Atlantic, working through the distance between what the President described from the podium and what the Constitution permits.
Then, the super-smart Ron Insana, whom I’ve had the privilege of knowing for 30 years via my [much] better half, came on set, to discuss insider trading and the prediction markets. [Check out Ron’s “Message of the Markets” site here].
Our discussion went a little off-the-rails — in a good way — when I combined the words “fantasy” and “emoluments” in the same sentence. Fun laughs were had, but all in service of some substantive points. Katy, in particular, thrives in that liminal space. If laughter is your speed, especially in challenging times, the link below is the one for you.
The Framers did not let the person standing for reelection write the rules of the election.
A section-by-section reading of the address as a forward-looking predicate for contesting the 2026 results rather than a genuine claim about 2020, walking through the Elections Clause, the SAVE America Act, and the intelligence community’s own distinction between documented foreign influence and the absence of any finding that a single vote was altered.
July 17 · Elections are Epistemic Things — Professor J. Aaron Simmons’ “Philosophy in the Wild” essay.
Professor Simmons generously cited Who Decides Who Decides? in his characteristically thoughtful essay on his [recommended!] Philosophy in the Wild substack here.
Thursday night · July 16 — ABC News coverage of the presidential address
Thursday night I was privileged to be with ABC News colleagues for live breaking-news coverage as the President’s primetime address on election security. It’s not often that I reach for the word “strange” when I do legal analysis . . . but if the shoe fits . . .
An emergency declaration cannot relocate the authority the Constitution assigns.
Published the morning before the address, this piece asks whether a president may use emergency powers to assert control over federal elections, and answers it through Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, the 1952 steel-seizure case, and Justice Jackson’s three categories of executive power. The short version is that a claimed emergency does not move the Elections Clause.
Monday · July 13 — On the Line with Alicia Menendez (MS Now)
Monday on Alicia Menendez’s On the Line, the news broke while we were live. Fallon Gallagher, processed and reported on the ruling while reading it in real time. Judge Kathleen Williams’s ruling in Trump v. IRS, which powerfully denounced Trump’s I.R.S. suit as an improper exercise in self-dealing, and, which, for good measure, made referrals to state bar associations to consider the specter of ethical transgressions.
Part one:
Then, Alicia discussed the Trump administration taking the troubling step of issuing to subpoenas to multiple NY Times journalists with Michael Grynbaum and Peter Baker of the NYT, and the aforementioned Michael Feinberg. I didn’t speak in the segment — and the segment was all the better for it. Sometimes, and especially when surrounded by excellence, listening is the contribution.
The fund was the headline; the tax shield was the point.
On Judge Kathleen Williams’s fifty-six-page order voiding the settlement the President reached with his own Justice Department, and on why the tax-audit immunity that survived the ruling is the piece of the deal that always mattered most.
July 13 ABC News coverage of the DOJ Issuing Subpoenas to NYT Reporters
You may or may not know her name, but Katherine Faulders is one of the most thorough — and thoroughly impressive — journalists in the business. Monday morning, we joined Diane Macedo for the discussion described in the banner image. Video link here.
A word that can mean anything can be made to justify anything. Security is such a word.
On the Justice Department’s grand-jury subpoenas of four New York Times reporters over their Air Force One reporting, and on how the vague word at the center of it all, security, has become the government’s master key, from a dawn search of a Washington Post reporter’s home to the Comey seashell indictment.
July
It’s been quite a week. For democracy. And for the endeavor of this Substack. If you value this work, the best thing you can do is share it and subscribe. It is free, and always will be. Elevating the discourse — collectively — is the goal. I’m glad you’re here. I’m grateful you’re engaged. Here and everywhere. — James.
