And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that.

Well, sure.

I mean, essentially it is the president, the head of the executive branch, attempting to use the tools of law enforcement to remove a sitting member of Congress that is a member of the opposition party um from from from her seat by force and from the country entirely from the from the politics of the country entirely um so it's you know it's and he's he for the most part this is what he does he opens investigations against them so far there hasn't been anything that's really stuck or even really like a lot of charges filed against actual members of congress uh like at the beginning of last year there were a lot of pointed questions directed at like Chuck Schumer and a few others from the executive branch that never actually turned into an investigation.

Then there have been investigations that haven't turned into charges filed.

I would be surprised if this one doesn't turn into charges filed from the way that they're going about it.

And because of the immigration angle, immigration really is This has been the problem from the beginning.

There's a lot of constraints on a lot of parts of the executive branch, in some ways too many.

This is like, we want to kick her out of the country, right? Again, a sitting member of Congress, they want to go right out, like they're raiding her house, they're searching for documents or whatever the hell excuse they've made up, right? This is a level of confrontation beyond what you would expect from a functional competitive autocracy.

And so how are you thinking about the Supreme Court's willingness to play ball as you think ambitiously in the absence of constitutional amendments?

Yeah.

So in this issue, we didn't have a court reform essay specifically.

Nick Grossman's essay does call for a simple one-time expansion simply to get beyond the current crisis.

In my essay, I mentioned that, yes, essentially the Supreme Court has to allow it.

That's got to be reckoned with probably before anything else.

And it could be a one-time expansion.

And so my question is, Adam, how sure are you that this is a matter that needs reform rather than that this is a matter that needs the Republicans to lose some elections, which, you know, will ultimately correct the problem in its own way? I

... what do you mean by that?

Yeah.

So I, I, e- a few years ago, I wrote something on this, and the basic idea is that state governments are better than local governments, and that a lot of our problems in our country actually come down to local governments.

This idea seems a little strange to be saying in 2026, frankly, when the, the biggest problem is actually the federal government.

But- I still think there's something to that.

At the time, I was pretty pessimistic about the federal government playing much of a part in any shift there.

Now, again, things, things have changed so much that I think it's necessary.

So what does that, what does that mean?

Right

... one could say what's gonna come out of, you know, Congress or the presidency or the trifecta.

I think that we could change our Constitution like we certainly should.

One, one of the essays is about trying to fix just the amendment process itself, for example, and it argues that if you can't do it through the existing amendment process, you should explore other avenues.

And that again, Congress can be a tool of legitimizing what you do.

So you could have a convention that comes up with a new amendment process specifically, and that sends that to Congress to approve.

You have a referendum as well to, to ratify, just to give it legitimacy.

But the sweet spot here is getting someone who reads as centrist, but who is willing to make the kind of changes that need to happen in order to secure and safeguard our democracy, right?

Yeah.

Um, and, you know, I think the idea of freedom from want is a good one.

Um, and the basic idea is just you're not actually free.

Like there's...

They're actually caring about effective freedom.

Um, and fr- from the beginning, I will say, this is something that I think people don't realize.

Um, from the beginning, liberals have cared about both sort of rights in terms of just the formal, like defending those, but also the kind of society that's produced.

Right