Podbit · The Bulwark Podcast
The Slaughter ruling gives the president full control over independent agency heads — but simultaneously shrinks what those agencies can actually do. The next Democratic president can sweep out Trump's appointees on day one. The tradeoff: the post-Watergate regulatory architecture is mostly gone.
Where this was said
At 13:50 · chapter starts 6:30
The TPS ruling draws out one of the episode's sharpest analytical tensions: French and Miller agree the Trump administration is being 'unspeakably cruel' and 'blatantly racist,' but the law they're exploiting was built to enable exactly this. [1] — David French "The TPS statute is congressional malpractice — it handed the executive branch unlimited discretion to revoke status and then explicitly bar…" 09:03 The statute grants enormous executive discretion to revoke TPS status and then explicitly bars courts from reviewing that decision — what French calls congressional malpractice at 11 on a 10-point scale. The legal path challengers tried — reviewing the process rather than the decision itself — was always an uphill argument. The racial animus question gets more complicated: the Supreme Court noted the administration has cancelled every TPS designation that came up for review regardless of nationality, which the majority used to argue neutral application. French then surfaces a striking inconsistency: in the Hawaii gun law case, the Court refused to credit a facially neutral 1865 Louisiana law because its real purpose was targeting Black citizens. But in the TPS case, it credited neutral application despite explicit racist statements. The asymmetry invites a Calvin-Ball charge — that constitutional principles bend to outcome preferences.
The TPS statute is congressional malpractice — it handed the executive branch unlimited discretion to revoke status and then explicitly barred courts from reviewing that decision. The cruelty of the Trump administration's actions is undeniable, but the law they're exploiting was written to enable exactly this.
The TPS statute explicitly bars judicial review of revocation decisions, which David French called 'congressional malpractice — an 11 on a scale of 1 to 10.'
Trump claimed the Slaughter ruling was 'the greatest increase in presidential power in 100 years,' overruling 90 years of precedent on independent agency heads.
Fei-Fei Li went back to Stanford from Google in 2018 specifically to build a multi-stakeholder governance framework for AI. Her argument: market forces are not societal norms. Just as biology uses IRBs and cars have safety laws, AI needs layered oversight from educators, governments, and the public — not just a few industry titans.
Andrew Santino's personal MCU of political villains is collapsing. He and Bobby speculated that a circulating photo of Mitch McConnell with a Chinese official was AI-generated compositing two separate images.
Mass surveillance is here to stay. The real battle isn't stopping cameras — it's ensuring judges and laws keep that data out of family court and civil disputes, admitting it only for violent crimes and national security. The surveillance economy currently yields more upside than downside, but only if we build the legal guardrails now.
When people cite Scandinavia as proof socialism works, Galloway says they've got it backwards. Northern Europe runs highly competitive free-market economies with more competition in many sectors than the US — they just make sure taxes are actually paid and redistributed. Billionaires and universal healthcare can coexist.
Two percent adjustments to income tax and stamp duty tweaks are deck-chair rearrangements. The UK's competitiveness hinges on four structural levers: currency valuation, energy costs, regulatory burden, and tax rates. Devalue the pound, build 56 nuclear plants, slash red tape, introduce a flat tax — and the country transforms.
Lisbon had one of Europe's worst heroin crises. Then Portugal legalised drugs and redirected all enforcement money into rehabilitation and housing. Crime collapsed. Addiction fell. Then politics moved the money elsewhere, and the problem started creeping back. Chesterton's Fence: you forget why you were spending that money.
Congress passed the Boland Amendment 411 to 0, explicitly banning CIA and Defense Department funds for the Contras. Reagan signed it — then immediately moved the operation deeper underground, essentially responding to a bipartisan prohibition by going more illegal.
The CIA planted mines in Nicaraguan commercial harbors, wrote the Contras' press releases taking credit, and promptly blew up ships from four allied nations. The Wall Street Journal broke the story, Congress erupted, and the Boland Amendments multiplied.
Oliver North was a decorated Marine and devout Catholic with zero covert operations experience. He ran the entire shadow war against Congress — planes, airstrips, arms shipments, shell companies — learning on the job. And by every operational measure, he crushed it.
We use essential and analytics cookies to run Vuci. To understand how the site is used: Privacy Policy.
Install Vuci on your phone
Add it to your home screen for a faster, app-like experience.
Install Vuci on your phone
Tap the Share button, then “Add to Home Screen”.
A new version is available
Reload to get the latest Vuci.