Democracy's Chief Executive – Details, episodes & analysis

Brendan Duke, senior director for economic policy at American Progress, explains to Peter the likely burdens on middle-income and lower-income families if Congress were to enact the near-term and longer-term/fundamental tax reform programs recommended by Project 2025. (As a bonus, he even explains tariffs!)

NYU law professor and labor and employment law expert Cynthia Estlund explores the conflicting impulses evident in Project 2025’s chapteron labor policy—the one chapter that cites the Book of Genesis. For example, it wants to shift the focus away from DEI except for accommodating religious employers and employees; to introduce more flexibility into labor-management relations, except when it comes to worker decisions to unionize; and to cut back on temporary visas for legal non-citizen seasonal workers in agriculture and other sectors, unless that would actually be a bad idea. (The report offers both possibilities!)

On this special "Connect the Dots" episode, co-hosts Peter Shane and Dale Russakoff discuss how Season 2 episodes on "Disqualifying an Insurrectionist President," "The Electoral Count Act and the Rule of Law," and "The Electoral College" affected their reactions to the Supreme Court argument on the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court to exclude Donald Trump from a primary ballot.

All Democracy's Chief Executive Behind the Vote episodes.

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In a bonus episode, Peter and Dale explore with two constitutional scholars whether the Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3 Disqualification Clause bars Donald J. Trump from again serving as president. Gerard Magliocca, whose 2020 academic research helped to spark interest in the question, and Garrett Epps, author of Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post-Civil War America, discuss whether the Disqualification Clause covers presidents, whether Donald Trump’s documented actions amount to “insurrection,” and whether Congress needs to enact enabling legislation before the Disqualification Clause becomes operative. They survey the Supreme Court’s options in reviewing the Colorado Supreme Court decision barring Trump from a presidential primary ballot in that state–and the legal and political implications of the different possibilities.

This last regular episode of the season asks whether American democracy is well-served by the institution of the presidency in its current form. Is there an irreconcilable tension between the president as the nation’s foremost mobilizer of party politics and the president as a faithful, steady, law-bound manager of government? Are there aspects of our system for choosing presidents that expand the prospects for effective democracy, or does the system actually increase the risk of democratic failure? Do popular frustrations with our constitutional separation of powers help lay the groundwork for authoritarianism?

Peter and Dale explore these fundamental issues with Yale political scientist Stephen Skowronek, one of the nation’s foremost presidential scholars, and Bertrall Ross, the Justice Thurgood Marshall Distinguished Professor of Law and director of the Karsh Center for Law and Democracy at the University of Virginia.

The story of January 6, 2021 is, of course, a story of particular individuals who showed up to storm the Capitol or to incite them to do so. But the attack on the Capitol also seems to be part of two larger, overlapping stories.

One is a story about what has happened in recent decades in the evolution of one of our two major political parties. The other is a story about how political violence has been a tool to thwart inclusive democracy in the United States—a history of violence extending to before the Civil War.

Peter and Dale discuss these larger frames with three of the nation’s leading scholars, historians Peniel E. Joseph and Kate Masur, and sociologist and political scientist Theda Skocpol.

This special super-sized episode explores, first, the process of certifying a new president-elect on the sixth day of January as that process is supposed to unfold and, second, the implications of prosecuting a former president for allegedly conspiring to disrupt that process. In the first part, Peter gets a briefing on the Electoral Count Act and its reform from Protect Democracy counsel, Genevieve Nadeau. He and Dale then explore decision making around the Trump indictment with former U.S. Attorney General and current Belmont University law school dean Alberto Gonzalez and former career prosecutor and Justice Department official Mary McCord, now Executive Director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at the Georgetown University Law Center.

What is it like to be the chief lawyer for a major party’s presidential candidate in a national campaign? NYU law professor Bob Bauer, general counsel to Obama for America, the president’s campaign organization, in 2008 and 2012, and Ben Ginsberg, national counsel to the 2000 and 2004 Bush-Cheney presidential campaigns, as well as Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012, explore with Peter and Dale the roles and challenges of presidential campaign lawyering. They also discuss their roles in co-chairing the Obama Presidential Commission on Election Administration, as well as their co-founding of the Election Official Legal Defense Network.

The U.S. has an unfortunate history of officials in power often trying to make it more difficult for voters to vote. Recent years have also witnessed a sharp escalation in intimidation and threats targeting the poll workers and administrative officials responsible for assuring a complete and accurate ballot count. Peter and Dale talk to two voting rights experts–former Justice Department official and current law professor Gilda R. Daniels and Brennan Center vice president for democracy Wendy R. Weiser about their greatest worries going into the 2024 elections–and where they see progress.

Americans overwhelmingly believe that big-money donors get to play too big a role and ordinary people too little in electoral politics. Is there hope for reform?

How did the Supreme Court undo Congress’s efforts? Peter and Dale explore the history of attempts at federal campaign finance reform and the role of the Federal Election Commission with former Senator Russ Feingold, co-author of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act (and current president of the American Constitution Society) and FEC member and former chair Ellen L. Weintraub.