THE POWER TO PARDON UP TO SCOTUS | Ginsburg Optimistic We Can Return To The Way We Were | WaPo Has A New Podcast You’ll Love
July 24, 2017
TODAY IN HISTORY
|On this day in 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON had to turn over subpoenaed White House tape recordings to the Watergate special prosecutor.
PARDON ME?
|Sunday, PRESIDENT TRUMP’S personal lawyer, JAY SEKULOW, said it would be up to the Supreme Court to rule on whether presidents can pardon themselves. The suggestion follows a report last week that the president had discussed pardoning members of his family as special prosecutor ROBERT MUELLER ramps up his investigation into the Trump campaign’s dealings with Russia. Sekulow repeated over and over on ABC’s “This Week” that pardons have not been discussed and are presently not on the table. Kevin Robillard with POLITICO reports.
THE POWER TO PARDON 101
|Andrew Rudalevige with The Washington Post tells us all we need to know regarding the president’s power to pardon himself, or anyone else. His first point is, unsurprisingly, that presidential pardon power is exceptionally broad.
SIX MONTHS AND COUNTING
|Margaret Hartmann with New York Magazine lists out the president’s accomplishments from his first six months in office. Take a wild guess what — or should I say “who” — tops the list of DONALD TRUMP’S big wins while in office… Yep. It’s none other than JUSTICE NEIL M. GORSUCH.
THE WAY WE WERE
|On Saturday at an evening showing of The Originalist, JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG said that she is optimistic about the future of our country. “My hope is in my lifetime we will get back to the way it was,” she said. Brent Kendall with The Wall Street Journal reports on the justice’s appearance noting, “The justice made no mention of the president Saturday night, though current events clearly hung over the discussion.”
PODCAST DU JOUR
|The Washington Post just launched its first episode of “Constitutional,” a podcast that explores the origins of the Constitution and the figures who shaped it to become what it is today. The podcast is hosted by LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM who had previously hosted The Post’s “Presidential” podcast. Historian ERICA DUNBAR, National Archivist DAVID FERRIERO, the Library of Congress’s JULIE MILLER and JEFFREY ROSEN with the National Constitution Center all make appearances on the first pod.
OTHER NEWS
U.S. Supreme Court Ruling Leads to Offensive Trademark Requests
Reuters“A small group of companies and individuals are looking to register racially charged words and symbols for their products, including the N-word and a swastika, based on a U.S. Supreme Court decision on trademarks last month.”
Five Face Sentencing Monday for Supreme Court Disruption
The Washington Post“Five protesters who disrupted a session of the U.S. Supreme Court by shouting their disapproval of its rulings on campaign finance law face sentencing Monday morning after losing a bid to overturn a 1949 law restricting public protest at the court.”