Power Line

Our long-running intramural argument on this podcast over the Ukraine War has become just like the Ukraine War itself—lots of casualties on both sides, but very little movement from week to week. But is Trump actually on the cusp of a breakout? There's one thing Trump did this week that is surely causing Putin to wipe the smile off his face, and no one seems to have figured it out. It's all part of Trump's Great Reset. There is more unanimity amongst the 3WHH bartenders about Gaza, and once again Trump's seemingly outrageous or whimsical ideas of making Gaza into Atlantic City doesn't just move the Overton Window in the Middle East—it remodels the whole structure. Forget the two-state solution.Finally, we have a moment of silence for the passing of the inventor of the McRib and chicken nuggets. John Yoo is going into 40 days of mourning.

With Lucretia hosting both the episode and the bar this week (with three different whiskies just for herself), we manage to keep John Yoo from excessive gloating about the Eagles win in the Super Bowl by distracting him with his favorite subject—executive power, about which he seldom thinks there can be excessive use. But maybe we found some limits this time?The intensifying pace of President Trump's exertions of executive power look to be the most serious attempt to contain spending, reorganize the executive branch, and discipline Congress since Nixon in 1973, and we know how that ended. We also give three cheers and host a glass in celebration of Vice President Vance's throwdown at the Munich Security Conference. And it will probably come as no surprise that we even talk about the Constitution, and manage the rare feat of discussing the EOA without mentioning a Certain Statute that we are not allowed to mention in John's presence.

We're only 19 days into Trump's term, but it seems like 19 months have passed already since January 20. When Alexander Hamilton wrote of "energy in the executive," he had no idea that a real estate tycoon would become the greatest example of this understanding of the presidency. This week's episode reviews five of Trump's biggest fights that are interrelated in ways that could rebalance out constitutional order in ways conservatives have hoped beyond hope for decades might be possible. Trump's challenge to birthright citizenship is forcing a long overdue debate on the issue along with a challenge to district judges issuing nationwide injunctions; his freezing of spending revives the issue of presidential power to impound funds Congress has appropriated; and his firing of civil servants and termed appointees to federal boards and commissions will force a reconsideration of the old Humphrey's Executor case that a wide spectrum of scholar believe was wrongly decided.Along the way we get in some pop culture refer

This wide-ranging, round-robin format episode begins with celebrating the end of "Dry January" (which we, um, didn't much observe), mockery of Bernie Sanders' obsession with "onesies," a brief account of a Steve roadtrip to Villanova University, and a declaration of war against the Commentary podcast. (It's serious: it involves McRibs.) After we clear away this opening frivolity, we get down to serious business. Lucretia is in high dudgeon about the Catholic bishops behaving just the way they did in the 1980s—like lapdogs for the left—which generated reflections on theology, federal grant restrictions, J.D. Vance's dialectical skill, and some reasons for optimism for the future of both the Catholic Church and the world as a whole.John casts his spotlight on what we saw in the contentious confirmation hearings for Kash Patel, RFK, Jr, and Tulsi Gabbard. There was rare agreement and sharp disagreement (our usual mode) about aspects of these appointments. Exit bumper music from our pal, the historian Steve Tootl

The 3WHH bartenders raise their glasses high for the first 100 hours of Trump II, which bid to replace FDR's famous "Hundred Days" for breathtaking executive action. You'd think that this is Trump's first term, and metaphysically, Steve argues, it is. In just the way we've come to expect of Trump in all things, he may have turned the usual presidential cycle on its head. Even John, champion of executive power, is impressed. And one more miracle: he actually gets rare praise from Lucretia for his Newsweek article concluding than Biden's pardons were much worse than Trump's blanket pardons or all the J6 protesters. From there we get to the main event, a three-part discussion of a single issue—in this case free speech and how to understand the First Amendment correctly. Steve argues back to first principles, in which the freedom of conscience and thus free expression was grounded in reason, that is, free speech was essential to deliberation about right and wrong, and how we should be governed. By nearly impercep

Nothing "jejune" about this edition, except perhaps for the first-ever use of "jejune" in a podcast, but it is the perfect term to describe Joe Biden's "farewell address," which, aside from its jejune content, is a most welcome sound, since he will be gone in about another 48 hours, never to be heard from again one hopes.This week we take up three topics—one from each of the bartenders: Behold, President Biden amended the Constitution on Friday—all by himself! Aside from the obvious absurdity and low comedy of it, what does it tell us about the state of leftist presumption? Special counsel Jack Smith released his magnum opus, which seems more of a parvum opus if not an opusculum (ask your nearest Latin geek), Finally, Biden's farewell address—and presidential farewell addresses in general—was our third topic (summary: it was absolutely Biden's opusculum). Once again we have custom proprietary exit bumper music from our pal Steve Tootle and his indie band Cosigner. 

With this episode the Three Whisky Happy Hour emigrates into its very own identity on Ricochet and Steve's new group Substack, "Political Questions," but not to worry—the old Power Line Show will live on in its old format as an interview show. The 3WHH, meanwhile, is rebooting with some new formats. We'll be doing some show with a single-subject format; on some we'll do a round robin of hot topics and reflections on currtent news items, and we'll even have some guests from time to time, as well as emergency shows when somethingbig happens—or we get a new single malt in whose virtues we just have to share.And having completed our emigration to a new logo and format, it seemed only logical that we'd take up as our primary focus this week the issue of immigration, with an attempt at an orderly procession through the key aspects of the matter: How much is too much? Should we have an immigration pause? What's up with the H1-B visa controversy anyway? How should skills-based immigration be done, and should we move

Since so many of our fellow conservative podcasts are taking the holidays off, we decided to do another special mid-week edition to observe the new year, and gear up for some changes. Last year's end of year show featured some low-probability but plausible predictions for 2024 (inspired by the late Wall Street guru Byron Weins' annual practice, which was often right), and unlike other shows that never track prediction accuracy (like the McLaughlin Group, which had a terrible record once someone checked), we decided to do a scorecard. Steve was 0 for 6; John was 5 for 8 (depending on how you score partial credit); Lucretia didn't make any new year's predictions, but pointed out that ALL of her mid-year predictions came true, especially J.D. Vance for running mate.We offered a few new low-probabilty predictions for 2025, but you'll have to listen to get them. Steve offers one of his as a teaser: some time in 2025 an elite or major university (could be a state flagship) will fire their president and senior admin

Our final podcast of 2024 looks back on the top story and bottom story of the year, and you won't be surprised to see some symmetries in our answers.But then we move on to the main event—a question from a listener (initials RW) about whether the 14th Amendment, rightly understood, actually permits the federal government to outlaw private discimination. We go several rounds (but not really enough rounds) about aspects of this issue before realizing after we finished that we didn't reach a verdict. Perhaps we'll return to it in our first episode of 2025. The title for this week's episode is taken from Steve's nomination for the slogan of the year, which comes from a Twitter person who responded to the UN demanding that Americans give up meat to fight climate change with the phrase: "they can osculate my fundamental orifice!" You'll just have to listen to the end to get the translation. Announcement: We'll be back on January 1 with another special holiday midweek episode that will introduce some format changes,

We were going to take up the transcendent matters appropriate for the climax of Advent, but the headlines won't let us! The dam started breaking this week about Joe Biden's unfitness for office, which, as the Wall Street Journal reported, began during the 2020 campaign. Just who has been president for the last four years? And aside from the perfidy of the complacent and compliant (to Democrats) news media, should there be a serious congressional investigation into what is clearly one of the greatest coverups in American history. Biden's senior staff and cabinet should have to answer uncomfortable questions about this, and perhaps face charges for decisions and actions they may not have had legal authority to make.We also review the drama of the last 72 hours over the Continuing Resolution to avoid a "government shutdown," with Steve arguing the outcome was a minor victory for conservatives, but needs to be followed up with more serious steps in the new Congress.From there, we note the important of Fani Willis

This special mid-week holiday edition of the 3WHH makes up for the lost ground over the weekend, when schedules prevented the bar from opening at any of the usual meet-up times. Steve, this week's host, and Lucretia grill John Yoo about his latest article, "Globalization's Challenge to American Constitutionalism," published at the sparkling new website of the Civitas Institute, where Steve also appears for the first time today on a separate subject, "The Future of Conservatism in America."While Steve and Lucretia completely agree with John about the insidious threat of "internationalism" to our constitutional soverignty, they detect some tergiversations on John's part that seem to offer—or so they say—too many concessions to progressive jurisprudence. From there discussion turns to the drone epidemic, with Steve offering two complementary theories about what is going on (neither of which involve foreign actors, stealth sky ships, or aliens), and Lucretia offers her drama review for Broadway's newest stage sen

So your three bartenders weren't able to assemble even virtually this week for our usual format—John is away on a clandestine mission stalking the elusive McRib, while Steve and Lucretia are also largely indisposed.But fear not! We decided that in lieu of our usual snappy brickbats, we'd share with our insatiable fans the talks we gave a couple weeks back at the University of Florence about the American election. It was great fun and the student questions were great, but we're just offering here our introductory remarks.This a short episode—barely over 20 minutes. But never fear: we plan to be back with our usual format mid week, probably Wednesday or Thursday.

The Three Whisky Happy Hour gang is finally all back in the U.S. after weeks of galavanting overseas, and boy is there a lot to catch up on. Among our topics this week are the signs and wonders that the Age of Trump is fully established; the Biden pardons; the farcical Penny trial; whether World War III is indeed under way, and the attempted coup in Korea, about which our resident Korea expert (and resident Korean!) John Yoo has lots of thoughts.Along the way some fresh new insults are thrown around, with John leveling the ultimate low blow against Steve—calling him a Hegelian! Thems is fightin' words!

Two-thirds of the 3WHH crew were back home in the states for Thanksgiving, while Steve is still galavanting around coastal Italy, defiling the reputation of this podcast by drinking Negronis at happy hour—a tergiversation that this week's host, John Yoo, does not let pass without censure.In any case, by the miracle of Zoom we managed to assemble for a holiday weekend special edition, where Steve and Lucretia push back on the emerging narrative that Trump's election victory was so narrow that it doesn't deserve to be considered a landslide. On surface statistics, perhaps this has some merit, but even if this is conceded it should at least be considered an earthquake. Steve and Lucretia make the case, noting that, among other things, gthe media treated Bill Clinton's 43% of the vote in 1992 as a "mandate" for sweeping change, and that Trump's popular vote total is close to Ronald Reagan's in 1980, which was universally considered a landslide. The equally important question is whether this election portends a ge

This week's special episode comes from Tuscany, where the Three Whisky Happy Hour gang put aside their whisky glasses and took up tasting chinati at Castello de Cacchiano between academic conferences in Milan and Florence. So for this week only, we become the Three Chianti Happy hour, though we had many more than three! We had to record this episode in two installments, as breakfast interrupted our first segment, and then returning only after a long day in the countryside sampling yet more chianti. We aren't taking our mind of what is going on back in the states with the Trump transition, however, and begin with an extended discussion of the proposal to use the recess appointments clause of the Constitution so that Trump can get around Senate opposition or delay for his senior cabinet level appointments. Then we briefly dig a grave for the International Criminal Court following its outrageous arrest warrent for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.And finaly we have a discussion and aide memoire of sorts from our

This is going to be unlike any previous edition of the Three Whisky Happy Hour, because it was literally recorded during happy hour at the annual meeting of the Federalist Society in Washington, in a corner of the mass reception hall where John Yoo and I invited all comers to swing by to offer a few comments. This completely unstructured (but therefore highly authentic!) conversation included Ilya Shaprio and Rafael Mangual of the Manhattan Institute, the esteemed Roger Pilon, emeritus of the Cato Institute, our old pal Hadley Arkes, prominent appellate attorney Eric Jaffa, and Utah lawyer (and loyal 3WHH listener) Jacob Minas. And it goes pretty much how you might expect a wandering happy hour conversation to go.I had hoped that we'd have John Yoo outnumbered and outgunned on the natural law question, but several of our guests didn't do their part! But we also did some election talk, so there is something for everyone.

The Power Line single-malt whisky bar is still trying to process Donald Trump's decisive victory in the election, and this episode reflecting on the scene offers up a few fresh (we hope) takeaways from the result that we haven't yet seen elsewhere in the media, and then we turn our attention to some key priorities for the second Trump Administation starting in January. In such a target-rich environment, what should Trump aim at first on Day One in January: our ideologically corrupt universities, the Justice Department, ending the war in Ukraine and Gaza? And what should Congress do with the slim GOP majorities? Steve has some ideas for new committees, as well as a budget test.Also, does it seem like Trump is president already (since no one believes Biden is really president any longer)? We notice that several foreign governments are rushing to get on Trump's good side before January, which seems prudent.

For our many regular listeners who were not able to join us last night for our live taping of this special mid-week episode that included Scott Johnson and (very late) John Hinderaker (hence the "Five Whisky Happy Hour"), much of what we talked about has been overtaken by subsequent vote counts and other results. But we did have a number of questions and issues that should still be of interest even after the dust settles today, such as why the polls were wrong again, what's wrong with the exit polls, why the legacy media looks increasingly mediocre as well as biased, why the big winner of this election cycle—and an important harbinger for the future—is Joe Rogan. On the Power Line main site for this episode over-eager listeners will be able to listen to a bonus "overtime" recording where we brought in a number of listeners to comment widely on a number of things, some of them beyond just the election.

In our last episode before the election, the 3WHH bartenders pour a stiff one in honor of the end of recycling, since were back to pure garbage now, though Biden getting in his last chomps of a baby was a special bonus to end the week.We spend most of this episode reflecting on the final week of the campaign, arguing about what kind of vote fraud may or may not take place, and offering our final predictions for both the election result and the aftermath. You think it's over Tuesday! Think again. As the great Bluto Blutarsky asked so poignantly, Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?

So it was Hitler week for Democrats, who are still fuming over being cooked by Donald Trump in a McDonald's deep fryer, and covering up their indigestion with an E.coli outbreak. Behind the public polls catching up with the terrible body language of Democrats and the news media lies a growing recognition that Kamala's brat summer has gone splat as election day approaches. The 3WHH team covers this, a few of the Senate races, the underrated scandal of suppressed science about gender bending medicine that appeared in the (checks notes) New York Times! What next—a confession that DEI is a counter-productive waste of time and resources? Oh, wait—that was last week.