In a Nov. 1, 2025 episode of Slate’s Amicus, host Dahlia Lithwick examines how lower federal courts are confronting key Trump administration moves—on due process and domestic deployments—and previews this week’s Supreme Court arguments over the president’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. According to Slate, the episode also features Rick Woldenberg, CEO of Learning Resources, a lead plaintiff in the tariff challenge.
The Amicus episode—published in Slate’s November 2025 feed—surveys a widening split between lower federal courts and the Supreme Court over the pace and scope of the Trump administration’s policies. The discussion traces active litigation over deportations and federal deployments, including National Guard use and actions involving ICE, themes the show has tracked in recent installments.
Amicus also engages with the critique advanced by J. Michael Luttig, a conservative former judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (appointed by President George H. W. Bush). Luttig has warned that the Supreme Court’s emergency rulings have enabled executive overreach; in August he told the Guardian, “The chief justice is presiding over the end of the rule of law in America,” arguing the Court has accommodated presidential lawlessness via the shadow docket. His broader concerns frame the episode’s look at how trial and appellate judges are responding to fast-moving disputes.
According to Slate, the episode includes an interview with Rick Woldenberg, CEO of Learning Resources, whose family-owned company is at the center of the Supreme Court case challenging the administration’s tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Reuters reports the justices will hear argument on Wednesday, Nov. 5, in Learning Resources v. Trump and related cases, after three lower courts concluded the tariffs exceeded statutory authority. The tariff regime—announced in April with a baseline 10% duty and higher rates for dozens of countries—has squeezed import-dependent small businesses, including toymakers and a wine distributor, now among the plaintiffs. Woldenberg has framed the litigation as a constitutional fight over executive power; as he told the New Yorker earlier this year, the question is “whether we are a monarchy.”
A companion Slate Plus bonus segment focuses on the mounting docket of disputes over the administration’s deployment of federal personnel and immigration enforcement—cases that, the hosts note, have prompted unusually muscular rulings from judges across the ideological spectrum.
Correction: The show engages with commentary by former Fourth Circuit judge J. Michael Luttig (not the Federal Circuit).
