00:00We've got the power to regulate federal buildings, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17, Article 4, Section 3, Clause 2.
00:08That is us. If the president can bulldoze the East Wing of the White House, he can bulldoze the West
00:13Wing of the White House.
00:13He could burn the whole thing down like the British did in the War of 1812.
00:17It's not his house. That's our house. That belongs to the people of the United States.
00:22And Congress governs it.
00:24Just about Congress, because I'm already reading some really disturbing language in some of these articles about Congress reestablishing its
00:34role as a co-equal branch or reasserting its role as a check against the president.
00:41OK, all of that is completely disoriented if you think of it from a constitutional perspective.
00:47OK, and a lot of my colleagues, even on the Democratic side, will get up and then indulge in that
00:53fifth grade fallacy of co-equal branches of government.
00:57OK, first of all, co-equal is not even a word. All right. That's like extremely unique or something like
01:04that.
01:04But the reason that James Madison called the legislative branch the primary and paramount branch of government is because we
01:13are the lawmaking branch of government.
01:15We make the laws. Right. So the Constitution starts off with the beautiful preamble.
01:22I'm ashamed to say that when I was a constitutional law professor, I skipped right over the preamble like I
01:29think a lot of the professors do, because you can't sue anybody under the preamble.
01:34You know, so. But it is the mission statement for the Constitution.
01:37We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility,
01:45provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure to ourselves and our posterity.
01:50The blessings of liberty do hereby ordain and establish the Constitution of these United States.
01:56And then the very first sentence after the preamble is the first sentence of Article One.
02:02All of that popular sovereign power to establish the country and to ordain a Constitution flowed into this sentence.
02:10All legislative power is vested in a Congress of the United States of America.
02:17OK. And then page after page after page of all of the powers of Congress, we've got the power to
02:22declare war, not Donald Trump and J.D. Vance and their signal chat group.
02:29Right. We've got the power to appropriate money.
02:34If you're a president and you don't like what we're doing, well, veto it and we'll try to override.
02:38But if you sign it and it's the law, it's the law.
02:41And Appropriations Act has all the force of any other law.
02:45You can't impound it. You can't redirect it. You can't steal it.
02:49You can't rechannel it.
02:50If we say you spend money for USAID or the Department of Education or the Department of State, you spend
02:57that money.
02:57That is not optional. OK.
03:00And we've got the power to regulate federal buildings.
03:04Article One, Section Eight, Clause 17.
03:07Article Four, Section Three, Clause Two.
03:08That is us.
03:09If the president can bulldoze the East Wing of the White House, he can bulldoze the West Wing of the
03:14White House.
03:14He could burn the whole thing down like the British did in the War of 1812.
03:18It's not his house.
03:19That's our house.
03:20That belongs to the people of the United States.
03:23And Congress governs it.
03:24So, you know, and then you get all the way through all that and you get Article One, Section Eight,
03:28Clause 18,
03:29and all other powers necessary and proper to the execution of the foregoing powers.
03:33Then you get to Article Two.
03:35What's the president's job?
03:36Sometimes people say, well, commander-in-chief.
03:39Right.
03:39But not of the country, not of the government, not even in the armed forces.
03:43Commander-in-chief, if you're a textualist of the army and the navy and the militias in times of actual
03:50service.
03:52What is the real job of the president?
03:54Very simple.
03:54To take care that the laws are faithfully executed.
03:58Yeah.
03:59To take care.
04:00All we say to Donald Trump is do your job.
04:02Do your job.
04:03Execute.
04:03He did seem to have a problem with faithfully executed.
04:07Yes.
04:08He's been faithlessly executing.
04:10Or like I said the last time around, the job of the president is to faithfully execute the laws,
04:16not to execute the vice president.
04:20But, look, so the point I'm making is we're not, our job is not to check the president.
04:28Our job is to make the laws for the people.
04:31The president's job is to enforce the laws that we've decided upon.
04:35And we're going to set that relationship right.
04:38Okay.
04:39And the phrase checks and balances, by the way, I've only seen in the Federalist Papers relating
04:47to the relationship between the House and the Senate, right?
04:51It's not between the legislative and the executive.
04:54We know what the proper relationship is there.
04:58So what's the role of oversight?
04:59Well, the Supreme Court has been very clear about it in elucidating the role of oversight
05:05in upholding very broad, muscular oversight powers of Congress.
05:10What's the role of oversight?
05:12The Supreme Court has said we can't legislate and write laws unless we have the information
05:17we need about what's taking place in the government, in the economy, in the society.
05:23And so, of course, we have the right to get the information that we need.
05:27And that's why we have investigative powers and we have the subpoena power.
05:32And that's why oversight exists.
05:34And we're going to get all the information that we need in order to restore the rule of
05:39law in American constitutional democracy.
05:41Fantastic.
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05:53We'll see you next time.
