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When President Trump fired a Federal Trade Commission commissioner in 2025, it sparked a legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court — and ended up re-shaping the American government. In Trump v. Slaughter, the Court's conservative majority struck down nearly a century of precedent protecting independent agency heads from at-will presidential removal, handing the executive branch sweeping new authority over agencies Congress had designed to be nonpartisan.
On this season premiere episode of Democracy Decoded, host Simone Leeper explores what this ruling means for the separation of powers and the rule of law. Joined by NYU law professor Melissa Murray, retired federal judge Michael Luttig, and Campaign Legal Center's Brent Ferguson, Leeper examines how an increasingly emboldened executive, a passive Congress, and a compliant Supreme Court are eroding the constitutional safeguards that protect American democracy — and what citizens can do to push back before it's too late.
Episode Highlights:
2:01 — Why is the rule of law the foundation of democracy that rarely gets the headlines it deserves?
5:06 — Which traumas were the Framers responding to when they designed the Constitution?
6:05 — How fragile was the early American government before the Constitution was written?
10:53 — What is impoundment, how did Nixon weaponize it, and why is Trump bringing it back?
12:10 — What is the "shadow docket" and how has the Supreme Court been using it to side with Trump?
13:40 — What would Judge Luttig say to his old friend Chief Justice John Roberts if given the chance?
15:41 — Why does Judge Luttig say Trump v. United States destroyed a critical part of the structural Constitution?
19:03 — Has the Constitution itself failed — or have the people responsible for upholding it?
21:30 — What does the Trump v. Slaughter ruling actually mean for independent federal agencies?
23:10- — Why are the FEC and EAC uniquely vulnerable — and what is Campaign Legal Center doing to protect them?
25:52 — What did a 1952 Supreme Court justice foresee about executives who move too fast — and who was he really warning about?
31:13 — Who ultimately holds the power in American democracy, and what are they being called to do?
Host and Guests:
Simone Leeper litigates a wide range of redistricting-related cases at Campaign Legal Center, challenging gerrymanders and advocating for election systems that guarantee all voters an equal opportunity to influence our democracy. Prior to arriving at CLC, Simone was a law clerk in the office of Senator Ed Markey and at the Library of Congress, Office of General Counsel. She received her J.D. cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center in 2019 and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Columbia University in 2016.
Melissa Murray is the Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, where she teaches constitutional law, family law, and reproductive rights and justice. She is a co-author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Trump Indictments: The Historic Charging Documents with Commentary, and The U.S. Constitution: A Comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern Reader. Her other writing has appeared in a range of legal and lay publications, including the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Nation. Before joining the NYU Law faculty, Murray was the Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, where she received the law school’s Rutter Award for Teaching Distinction, the Association of American Law Schools’ Derrick A. Bell Award, and, from March 2016 to June 2017, served as interim dean of the law school. Murray serves as a legal analyst for MSNOW and is a co-host of Strict Scrutiny, a Crooked Media podcast about the Supreme Court. A graduate of the University of Virginia and Yale Law School, Murray clerked for Sonia Sotomayor, then a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Stefan Underhill of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut. She is a member of the American Law Institute and the New York bar.
Judge Michael Luttig served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for 15 years, from 1991 to 2006. He was Counselor and Special Advisor to The Coca-Cola Company and the Board of Directors of the Coca-Cola Company from January 2021 to January 2025. Prior to that, Judge Luttig was Counselor and Senior Advisor to The Boeing Company CEO and The Boeing Company Board of Directors from January 2019 to January 2020 and Executive Vice President and General Counsel of The Boeing Company from 2006 to 2020.
Before he was appointed to the Federal Bench by President George H.W. Bush in 1991, he served as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel and Counselor to the Attorney General of the United States at the U.S. Department of Justice 1990-1991. He was Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice from 1989-1990. He was Assistant Counsel to the President at The White House from 1981 to 1982 under President Ronald Reagan. From 1982 to 1983, he was a law clerk to then-Judge Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. From 1983 to 1985, he served as a law clerk and then Special Assistant to the Chief Justice of the United States, Warren E. Burger.
Judge Luttig was formerly Co-Chair of the American Bar Association Task Force for American Democracy, a Member of the Board of Trustees of the National Constitution Center, a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Thomas Jefferson/Monticello Foundation, and a Distinguished Fellow of the Karsh Institute of Democracy and the Karsh Center for Law and Democracy.
Brent Ferguson has worked on protecting and improving our democracy for most of his career. At Campaign Legal Center, he has led litigation teams challenging federal government overreach and seeking to invalidate state and federal laws that unlawfully purge voters, limit voter registration activity and otherwise prevent Americans from exercising their constitutionally protected rights. He has authored academic articles on election law and other constitutional issues in the Washington Law Review, the Cornell Journal of Law & Public Policy, the Emory Law Journal Online and elsewhere.
Before coming to CLC, Brent was senior counsel at the National Redistricting Foundation, where he helped develop strategy for federal and state redistricting litigation. For four years, he served as counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, focusing on campaign finance reform and working on a broad range of other democracy issues. He was also an assistant district attorney in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, where he litigated appeals of public corruption convictions. He clerked for Judge Michael Chagares of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and Judge Jeffrey Miller of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.
Brent graduated from Columbia Law School (J.D. 2010), where he served on the administrative board of the Columbia Law Review. He graduated with honors in political science from the University of Southern California (B.A. 2006). Brent is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia and New York. He joined CLC in 2023.
Links:
Taking Action Against Presidential Abuses of Power
How Will Our Democracy Last Another 250 Years?
Independent Agencies Must Remain Independent
What the Latest SCOTUS Rulings Mean for Our Democracy and the Rule of Law
Trump is dismantling democracy at 'unprecedented' speed, global report finds
About CLC:
Democracy Decoded is a production of Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan legal organization dedicated to solving the wide range of challenges facing American democracy. We fight for every American’s freedom to vote and participate meaningfully in the democratic process, particularly Americans who have faced political barriers because of race, ethnicity or economic status. Learn more about us.
Democracy Decoded is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.
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