Emily Bazelon

Or maybe 8-1.

I don't, Clarence Thomas, I couldn't tell.

But anyway, go ahead.

Sorry.

I do think that the immunity decision set the table.

It emboldened Trump.

He talks about it.

The Solicitor General's office cites it a lot in these kind of expansive ways in claiming more and more power for the president.

So I do think it's like...

underpinning part of what we're seeing.

And I also think you're right that they have, you know, thrown up a bunch of, like, really unlikely Hail Marys.

This case, which would totally undermine the independence of the Fed.

Then there's the challenge to birthright citizenship.

There it is, sitting there in the 14th Amendment, in the Constitution, and they're claiming, no, that's not the law.

Exactly.

I think generally, though, Aaron, I mean, I would agree with you that, you know, the conservatives who dominate the court right now had an expansive theory of executive power that allows for a lot of firing of agency leaders, right?

Board members of the Federal Trade Commission, et cetera, et cetera.

And I think

that that challenge to how our agencies have operated in this kind of quasi-independent way is going to succeed, and it's going to really shift power toward the president.

And in a sense, and I feel like I've learned this from writing back and forth with David about it, this is like a longstanding conservative principle, and it would be surprising for the conservative justices to walk away from it.