let's start with catherine who is an expert on presidential powers catherine president trump has been quite busy in his first two weeks in office now things that he says to the news are things that he says on twitter that does not have a legal effect but by contrast when he communicates through what are called executive orders that does have legal effect or at least it can and one big recent example of this is the executive order that president has indeed been very busy signing a number of orders orders that touch on everything from building a wall to putting a temporary freeze on regulations in our country to instituting the travel ban we just mentioned to freezing federal hiring so what is an executive order exactly lease asked our government it's divided into three branches as we know there's the legislative branch that makes law there's the judicial branch that interprets the law when deciding cases and then there's the executive branch that enforces and executes the law and thirty at the very top of that executive branch is the president he sits atop a pretty massive executive branch it has hundreds of federal agencies in it it has more than two million federal employees within it and about four thousand of those are political appointees so it's an executive order is a communication tool it's a signed document that the president can use to communicate his wishes to those that work underneath him within the executive branch it's a communication tool to ask officers or to demand that officers do something or stop doing something at a target that's what an executive order is and they're not new they've been issued throughout our country's history all the way back to president george washington we saw orders being issued most of them are directed internally at internal government affairs or at government officials and they don't have direct impact on acts journal actors on private individuals a good example of that when president clinton entered office president clinton signed an order that put into place various ethics standards to govern his political appointees and president trumpery a very similar at vic's order that also put into place ethics standards to govern his executive officers so these kinds of orders orders that govern and speak to executive officials and their actions they're really commonplace and for the most part they're not terribly controversial but much more much more controversial are those orders that do have an impact on private individuals lives orders whose impact spills over into the private sphere one particularly controversial example a good example of such an order are memos that were issued during the obama administration in the immigration arena memos that tried to protect undocumented parents and children from deportation another example of something more on the controversial side is the travel ban that  just you just mentioned and so another piece of your question we thought was not just what executive orders are but what gives the president the power to issue these orders that can have such significant impact on people's lives with just the stroke of a pen the answer i guess not that surprisingly as it often is in the law is it depends sometimes it's the constitution that gives the president that power and sometimes it's congress v statutory delegations of power where congress hands away power to the president but regardless our president in our country is not a kid right he doesn't have a magic make it happen one instead all of his executive orders if they're to have a legal effect they have to be grounded in some sort of legal authority flowing from the constitution or flowing from statutes and if they are based in a legitimate source of legal authority then they're legally binding they can have the same legal effect statutes so are you saying that the president can in effect change the law simply by signing a piece of paper yeah yeah in effect even though i just told you the legislative branch branch that makes law the president can make a law too when he's been given the power to do that when congress has handed him that power or when the constitution vests that type of power in the president to make it a little bit more concrete maybe i c mention briefly three concrete examples of orders that president trump has signed and show you how they all have different facts and the reason they have different effects is because of the legal authority that many of them are based on so the three that i think would be good examples first the order that directs the building of a wall second an order that tells agencies that for every new regulation they want to come in the door and be put on the books they need to take two existing regulations off the books and then the third contra an example of a temporary travel ban so let's talk briefly about the first president's order directing the building of a border wall so does president trump to seek out the unilateral power to just with the stroke of a pen commit our country to building a wall along entire border between the united states and mexico which spans nearly two thousand miles no he really doesn't and why not why doesn't he have that power because building a wall along the whole border would cost a whole lot of money estimates show somewhere between eight billion and twenty five billion dollars and under our constitution the president does not control the purse strings who does congress controls the purse strings so years ago congress did pass a statute that authorized the building of some barriers along small portions of the border but if the president wants to build a wall along the entire border then the president's going to need money and will need money from congress president trump and in his advisors they certainly know this so as a result if you read the order then you'll see that what it actually directs it simply directs government officials to try their best to identify funding to find money and to develop budget requests from congress for money so in the end this particular order it's legal impact is fairly limited in terms of the wall but it certainly has significant communicative value communicating to his officers telling them to start taking steps and also significant political effect because it sends a strong signal to his supporters that he is following up on a key campaign promise contrast that with the president tr out one in order this is an order that says to federal agencies agencies that regulate everything from the environment from the air we're all breathing right now to the safety of workplaces  if you want to make a new regulation then you need to take two existing regulations off the books so this order this water will have significant effect on federal executive agencies why because the heads of those agencies they work for the president they can be fired by the president so they listen to the president but does the order itself actually undo regulations that protect me and protect you and that imposes obligations on all of us and impose obligations on businesses no the executive order itself doesn't undo regulations and it can't undo the regulations rather under a law taking away regulations taking them off the books that has to be done by the agencies and it has to be done through a really lengthy encumber some process one that we call notice and comment rule making sounds fancy but really all it is a process that says  everyone has an opportunity to submit comments to participate and then the agency has to justify its decision based on the statute based on regulatory scheme based on scientific data based on studies and based on public comments so in the end the two to out one in order to doesn't have a huge amount of immediately go impact sure it has political value communicative value it tells his officers to start the process of undoing regulations but the order itself doesn't undo regulations because the president doesn't have the power to do that the law puts that power elsewhere now contrast that example with the third the travel ban the travel ban which bans travelers coming from seven predominantly muslim countries it obviously had immediate impact significant impacts many would say severe impact on families on children people across the globe it resulted in detention of individuals at airports across our country so in that order it indeed did much more than simply issue directions it actually altered right president trump believes that both the constitution and various statutes give him the power to take that action in the name of national security others believe that the president exceeded his powers and acted in violation of the constitution so not surprisingly given this dispute lawsuits have already emerged across our country including one actually that was just filed here in seattle on monday by the state of washington state of washington took the lead quick to file and we will see how that unfolds a hearing is taking place on friday also earlier this week many of you probably saw in the news the acting attorney general sally yates the head of the department of justice of the time she was fired by president trump fired because she said that she would not defend the order in court so given all the controversy the legal controversy around this order i expect that with time these legal issues though work their way up to the u s supreme court much as president obama's actions in the immigration arena are work themselves up to the u s supreme court last year the issues of presidential power here they're just there that big so hopefully comparing and contrast those three examples helps to show you that not all executive orders are created equal in terms of their impact some mainly service communication tools are political tools others have real legal impact on the ground that you see immediately and said the reason for that it's not random or haphazard but rather it turns on the wording in the scope of the order and even more importantly on the legal authority that the president's hanging his hat on when he signs that order with the stroke of a pen  know when it comes to whether the president has the legal authority to do things sometimes the president disagrees with some other party or person in the government and a lawsuit will arise out of that and you mention that washington has filed a lawsuit along those lines to for example the travel ban but i can say that it's safe to say that judge corset just like other federal judges they don't just do with the president says to do just because the president told them so or just because the president appointed them  that's not how courts work i remember watching a debate with my with my kids this fall presidential debate where trump at the time said that if you were elected versus wade involving abortion would be overturned automatically and i remember explaining to my kids that that's not how it works presidents don't get to over rules supreme court precedents interpret in the constitution only supreme court justices get to do that and when they do that when they interpret the constitution federal judges decide cases based on their interpretation of the law not the whims of the presidential winds not their own personal policy preferences instead they have to act based on the rule of law and i think really important here to keep in mind is that our constitution does something i think quite brilliant it insulates our federal judges it gives them protection from politics it gives them lifetime tenure so job protection and sel protections and giving them those protections it enables them to act as an independent check on political actors they can act as an independent check without fearing that removal that being fired that fear is hanging over their head they don't have that fear hanging over their head the same way that sally stead when she stepped forward on monday and said i will not defend this order and it resulted in her firing great so to be clear th although a president and here president nominates people to the courts those judges and justices are then protected from the president at that point but of course that's not true of many of the other the president's other appointments including appointments of people to run a number of very important agencies the state department the department of homeland security the entire environmental protection agency those appointees generally serve at the pleasure of the president which means that he has the power to fire them if he disagrees with something they are doing now one of the most controversial of president trumps recent appointments has been that of jeff sessions to run the department of justice trevor as an expert on criminal law what does the department of justice do and can you explain why this particular appointment has been so controversial so let me start with a brief description of the department of justice has about sixty subdivisions including the drug enforcement agency the d a the f b i the u s attorney's office and the civil rights division now the second question is a bit more complicated speaking specifically about the controversy around senator sessions a point or nomination it might be helpful to start by talking about support for senator sessions he is a long time senator from alabama and served in that capacity for several decades who ran unopposed in alabama in two thousand and fourteen is a long track record of public service he used to be the u s attorney for the southern district  alabama and returning to the controversial elements of his nomination a lot of people have question is ability to relate to minority populations his his policies his stances with respect to minority populations what am i talking about specifically if we go all the way back to senator sessions tenure as u s attorney for the southern district of alabama  that prosecution has sort of dog senator sessions career for several decades i just want to be a few details about that prosecution one of the civil rights workers one of the three had been working for decades to register african american voters in alabama three of them were accused of voter fraud mail fraud they were twenty nine counts to the indictment they went to trial many of the counts were thrown out by the judge at trial other manere went to the jury and all three were acquitted senator sessions says that he was if he was to go back if we could turn back the clock that he would again prosecute each of these individuals and that's been very concerning to to his critics let's fast forward to the contemporary context why is senator sessions controversial candidate today what has he done as senator to to give people pause well for one of us senator sessions has advocated for a limited aiding police misconduct investigations by the department of justice senator sessions is call these investigations disrespectful he's called them offensive and he says we're the worst sensually with these investigations by the department of justice specifically the civil rights division undermining confidence in in our police officers i think president trump sort of shares a general sentiment he's essentially describes critiques of police these reform efforts at the federal and local levels as being  part of a war on police so again that that's concerning there's an open question as to whether these pattern and practice investigations investigations of police misconduct on the local level will continue  content decrees that stem from these pattern and practice investigations it's going to be a little bit more difficult but i think he or his supporters suspects for one thing many of these investigations resulted in consent decree administration secured i think nineteen agreements at the local level with local governments with respect to criminal justice reform the local police departments fourteen of these nineteen agreements  i think we can have confidence that for some people who support the consent to greece for support these federal efforts at local criminal justice reform we can have confidence that these agreements will remain in place however for cities like  baltimore other cities around the country in which the investigations are open in which the consent decrees have not yet been signed i think it's very likely that the tentative agreements that have been forged will be terminated and i think it's also very likely that we will not from this point forward under a trumpet ministration under jeff sessions tenure at the d o j see additional investigations of local police departments that have been found to  violating local residents civil rights in a systematic fashion i want to put one more issue on the table one more issue with respect to presidential power under a trump and ministration under jeff sessions d o made a number of remarkable statements about marijuana among other things he said well back in his in his hearings back in the one nine hundred eighty s use a point in his nominated excuse me to be a federal judge by ronald  reagan there were a number of witnesses who talked about racially charged statements he had made when he was operating in the southern district of alabama but i think one of more interesting comments he was alleged to have made is that he was ok with the k found out they smoked marijuana and that's that's testimony on the record in senator sessions hearing now he denies having made that statement but he has made some curious statements about marijuana he said in a  very aggressive about prosecuting marijuana production distribution in decriminalization states and i think that's important as there will be a clash between the federal government and i think high profile producers and distributors in decriminalization states let me sort of add a few points to that this is not going to be an easy task for the federal government or why is that a couple things one it's important to note that the federal government  does not have the ability to direct statement local police right they cannot issue directives commands to state local police why is that important other about one point two million law enforcement agents across the country only eighty thousand of them are operating at the federal level that means in order for the federal government to broadly and for something like the federal marijuana prohibition it needs the cooperation of state and local police that often comes in on the back end after a local police have made arrests for marijuana production distribution trafficking and prosecutes the deal if you will prosecute on the back end you know our local police are doing a lot of that work so in the event that to make that point i want to make the point that local governments still matter they matter quite a bit in criminal enforcement in federal criminal enforcement and if local governments matter that means local democracies matter that means every person who participates in local governance matters because you eventually dictate exactly what your police or are going to be able to do the extent to which they can participate in these enforcement initiatives at the federal level and i think that's that's important and i had one last point the idea of public safety the concept of public safety and public security is increasingly politically contested right for spring several decades we sort of assume that there was solidarity with respect to public security public public safety that's no longer the case we look at immigrant sanctuary if you look at marijuana decriminalization local governments local populations are increasingly rising up and offering their own sense of what public safety means and is as well as the means to public safety and so i think we should also take that to heart as we consider our prospects prospects for the next forty years thank you so one thing i just wanted to underscore it sounds like what you're saying is that even when we have a strong federal government state and local governments still really matter absolutely matter they matter because the federal government again cannot control state local police they matter because police outnumber federal law needs federal law enforcement agents by a ratio of about ten to one all of all of those elements you so another place to receive this interplay between the federal government and state or local governments is in the is with respect to what are called sanctuary cities so and how is your our image expert in immigration law can you explain what is a sanctuary city and in seattle a sanctuary city i can try thank you so there is no legally settled definition of what constitutes a sanctuary city but the phrase has been used to refer to cities that take a very wide range of actions to protect immigrants that include declining to spend local resources assisting with immigration enforcement offering city services without respect to immigration status refusing to detain immigrants for immigration officials prevent protecting confidential records preventing local officials from asking about or investigating immigration status and even providing access to legal counsel for immigrants facing deportation so seattle is taking several of these steps and considers itself or at least seems to consider itself a sanctuary city as of now and president trump already has taken some steps to crack down on sanctuary cities so can you help us understand what can president  do to crack down on sanctuary cities and how can he do it sure so first it's important to point out that local jurisdictions have no legal obligation to assist with civil immigration enforcement which is a responsibility of the federal government  local governments so a local decision to offer resources to federal immigration enforcement is completely voluntary and in some sense it is actually lending local resources to what's really a federal government responsibility so now cooperation with the federal government in this case could be critiqued on policy grounds but it's rarely a clear violation of federal law in fact the opposite has proven to be true in terms of legal violations many jails that have detained people and held them on the request of immigration authorities have been held liable for violating those people's constitutional rights nevertheless of course we saw in one of last week's executive orders the president threatening to cut funding for so called sanctuary cities  however the president's move to try to force local communities to carry out the work of federal immigration authorities is likely to violate principles again of local control which say that the federal government cannot order cities around  directly also the threat to cut off the funding stands on pretty shaky legal ground the same supreme court decisions that we saw on state and local power that red states relied to block democratic initiatives will be relied on now by sanctuary cities and states to try to block the trumpet ministrations so ironically it's those decisions that might prove helpful now if the trumpet ministration tries to withdraw money from cities for refusing to affirmatively help federal immigration authorities that withdrawal of funds under current case law will have to be pretty limited in scope and even then it might be unconstitutional so as long as cities avoid affirmative interference with federal immigration enforcement activities the national government will probably be quite limited in the amount of punishment it can dole out one other limitation of course will be the financial one so catherine's already mentioned the cost of the wall and the difficulties of actually carrying that out because of the finances if president trump wanted to follow through with the sanctuary cities and other immigration related orders he signed last wednesday it would require one hundred fifty thousand prison beds to house immigrant detainees and that's nearly five times as many as are currently available now and the mess estimated cost alone for that would be about eight billion dollars so does all of this mean that individuals who are in the country illegally can't be deported as long as they're in  seattle no definitely not so first it's important to understand that the simple fact of being undocumented under the immigration law means you're subject to being placed in deportation proceedings and that many seattle residents are already actively facing deportation proceedings just about a mile away from here in the immigration court here in seattle so the question is for those of those folks in seattle who have not yet come to the attention of immigration authorities even living in the city like seattle protections for immigrants may not be sufficient from them to to stop from being in deportation proceeding or shot from ending up in deportation proceedings the trumpet ministration has very clear deportation goals that were laid out in one of last week's executive orders  the priority for deportation is part of the quote unquote criminals but the executive order defines this category so broadly that at least in my opinion pretty much all of the eleven million or so undocumented people in the u s are now a priority for deportation so in a sense there are no priorities because everyone is now a priority so the question then becomes how will undocumented people end up facing deportation i see the executive orders of this past week as a signal to immigration officers on the ground that pretty much any tactics they want to pursue are now fair game and so this new executive order saying that every doctor undocumented person is a priority for deportation means that we're likely to see a broadening of immigration enforcement practices some of which had already been limited things that city officials can do to stop ice officers from going to people's homes or to their workplaces but again despite or maybe because of that state and local governments will continue to be incredibly important if they wish to be a line of defense for immigrants we already see this happening so san francisco already filed a lawsuit perhaps reactively suing the trumpet ministration for its threats against sanctuary cities los angeles we saw taking a different tack yesterday and again all of this is happening in real time with the city council announcing that it's going to be decriminalizing street vending knowing that the misdemeanors that immigrants street vendors get charged with can make them vulnerable to deportation so they're taking decriminalizing tack and locally here just this week the seattle city council passed a welcoming city resolution which among other things calls for the development of a strategy to create and fund a legal defense fund for those seattle ites who do end up facing deportation so these innovative legal and policy strategies will be more important than ever thank you so we're starting to see a theme here which is that the president has an enormous amount of power but it's not limitless and this becomes clear when we look to the role that state and local governments play and it also becomes clear when we look to the role that congress and washington washington d c plays as katherine explained for the president to act he often needs congress to go along with him now this brings us to sally going on with obamacare what's happening is that the republican majority in congress is having a very very difficult time agreeing on a replacement for the affordable care act and the reasons are both political and practical so the republicans in congress and the trump administration have said that they will not pull the rug out from under the twenty million people who gained coverage in the past three years and they promised to maintain the pre existing condition protections and they've promised to reduce health care costs that are borne by individuals and by families and these are all really popular promises they are also extremely tough t square with a commitment to reducing federal regulation reducing federal spending and turning to a more free market approach because the a c s already a very conservative very free market oriented approach so it would probably be easier to meet these promises by moving towards a more of a single payer medicare type system or towards actually like more regulation and more subsidies so that said there are proposals out there and there are two prominent ones from representative paul ryan who's the speaker of the house and from tom price who is the proposed nominee for secretary of human services so these two proposals and similar ones that are out there would have impacts throughout the health care system including employer provided insurance and also medicare but i'll just talk for a couple proposals would repeal the requirement that people have insurance and they would repeal the requirement that big businesses provide it secondly they would fundamentally change medicaid so they would cut back on or entirely eliminate the medicaid expansion for working age low income people and they would convert the entire program to either a block grant or a per capita cap and for look for a little less federal funding and in return states will get flexibility but what they would get flexibility to do realistically is to eliminate the entitlement to medicaid or cut back on who's covered or time limits were cut back on coverage i mean this is a really important deal it's a very big deal there are about seventy five million people who are covered by medicaid right now and that includes some of our most vulnerable citizens it includes low income people over age sixty five and low income people with disabilities so that's really something to watch for what happens with the medicaid program third these proposals would change the subsidies so right now if you purchase insurance on the marketplaces if you don't get it through an employer you might be able to get premium subsidies and under the sliding scale and their income base and they maxed out at about four hundred percent of the poverty level so for an individual who makes fifty thousand dollars they are not eligible for any premium subsidies about eighty percent of those who do buy on the marketplaces do get premium subsidies so how these proposals would change that is to make them age based and flat so a fifty year old who makes three hundred thousand dollars a year will get the same and substitute instead what are known as health savings accounts so in general how that would work is the federal government would make say a one time payment of like a thousand dollars to your savings account and then you could add to it with pretax dollars and make it bigger and the idea is that people would have higher out of pocket costs but they could turn to these savings accounts to help meet them in the savings accounts or tax favored consideration for some people so instead of an individual requirement to have insurance the idea is you would face the threat that if you had a gap in coverage if you didn't have continuous coverage then you could be charged more based on your health status or have other consequences to your coverage and to help people who were rated based on preexisting health status these plans would encourage states to set up high risk pools and would have states had these high risk pools were generally quite small and i read that in the whole country there were two hundred thousand people on them and they were expensive and they tended to have weightless to get into them plans cover what are known as the ten essential health benefits it requires coverage preventative care without co pay and without co insurance and it requires that the plans have a backstop for how much money you have to pay any year out of pocket for in network coverage and a variety of other patient protections so instead replace the proposals would probably require just the basic catastrophic coverage would just defer to whatever the states wanted to require so related to that placement proposals would allow wider age band and so what that means in practice is that people in their twent purchasing insurance across state lines because the idea is some states with lightly regulate so you could buy a low coverage catastrophic very high deductible plan from a state that allowed t to be much less expensive than a state that required robust coverages and financial protections so these are just a few of the key issues to watch for as the replacement debate unfolds in congress so overall my sense is these proposals would reduce federal spending and they would reduce federal regulation they would shift costs and responsibilities on to the states and on individuals and families and compared to the a cia the repeal proposals would tend to be better for those who are really good at paperwork and better for those who are healthier and also better for those w these repeal and propose and replace proposals that you're talking about these all require congress to act yes everything i mention congress would have to act as the repeal and replace and it's generally quite difficult to get legislation through congress i mean very very difficult and this is true even if the same party controls the congress and the presidency so this leaves the question what if congress doesn't act what can president prompt do on his own so a tr  that could certainly be some regulatory work that would take time but the administration's management type strategies and their litigation choices in some key pending lawsuits really could threaten enough chaos and financial risk that insurers could leave some markets and this is a this has a pretty quick timeframe because the insurers have to submit their proposals for what they're going to offer in two thousand and eighteen they have to submit those in like april and may so so that's a risk and recall there is no public option on these marketplaces these are all private plans and insurers do not have to participate so that's a real risk in that it would be related to just the administration's choices so health care is likely to change in some way but it's not at all clear at this point how it's going to change so what can people do to possibly influence how it changes in the thinking about that and one way that health reform is a little bit different than some other policy areas is that i think personal stories shared with lawmakers really do have a big impact so lawmakers at the state and federal level frequently refer to specific communications from their constituents about the importance of having health coverage about their needs for health care conditions or whatnot and about the difficulties in paying for it so  that is one way to engage in addition to there's a lot of groups working on various aspects of health reform and if they align with your views that would be good to tap into but personal stories of lawmakers can be very big and i so we're starting to see certain areas where public participation really can matter at the state and local level through political pressure particularly when placed on members of congress and of course through support of politicians and of interest groups who are trying to rely on these same tools but there's another area that catherine and others have brought up and that's the role that litigation plays in all this in other words the role that the courts play in checking what the rest of the government is doing and bob you're an expert in natural resources law and environmental law and there are always a lot of lawsuits in that area now good for the lawyers now you've personally worked on both sides of any of these disputes you work for the department of interior which is the department of the federal government that's responsible for managing federal lands and natural resources and you've also worked on behalf of groups for example indian tribes and n g o s that have sued department of the interior so can you help us understand how does this all tend to play out in the courts when somebody sues the federal government over an environmental issue what are they seeking to accomplish well thank you  antiquities act and the other one is the outer continental shelf leasing act and they both have provisions that are very much geared towards conservation of our public lands and one third of our lands within the united states are federal public lands and have  waters preserved that are associated with those lands and so congress has the primary role in deciding how those land should be used but as others have mentioned it's very difficult for congress to make up its mind on every specific action that ought to be taken and so the first step should i'll talk about is the antiquities act that was passed in one thousand no six largely to deal with the problem of pot hunters in the southwest of the united states going into native american burial grounds and destroying structures with artifacts off of federal lands and the antiquities act was passed to allow the president in his own discretion to set aside federal lands that have that contain objects or of historic scientific or cultural values and it's up to the president to decide what those lands are and what the values are that need to be protected and nearly every president since one thousand no six has exercised his authority under the antiquities act to protect federal lands for various purposes and what these proclamations that reserve our withdraw these federal lands to do is they take away the ability of individuals like you  also allow the president to withdraw the lands from operation of vehicles or other destructive activities that might harm the resources on those lands and so president obama was very active  in establishing or increasing the size of about thirty national monuments throughout the united states and they vary in size from about a thousand acres in our own san juan islands at seventy five different sites that were set aside lighthouses and  things of that nature that are important to our history in the pacific northwest and important to the whole country on the other hand his his last minute meant that was established was the bears years national monument in utah it's one point three million acres in each one of these cases the the advocacy for the establishment the monument came from local interest groups whether there are historical societies and conservation oriented groups in the sand winds or in the case of the bears years in utah it was indian tribes that are concerned about protecting sacred sites and environmental groups that want to protect areas from exploitation under the mineral leasing act in terms of uranium mining gold and other valuable resources that are found on those lands and so when president obama issued this these proclamations establishing are increasing these antiquities act monuments he exercised authority delegated to him by congress so he's clearly got the power to do this but it's one way if they're already or at least that's what we all think because no president has ever abolished a monument established by a prior president and i can  thirty eight attorney general's opinion on this point but there's nothing else in terms of the law so it makes a fantastic exam question for any one of us as to whether the president could abolish the monument or not but the fact is that presidents have complained about their predecessors use of the antiquities act but then when they've gotten into that chair in the white house they've said well you know maybe i would like to create a few monuments myself and both republicans and democrats and in that to that vein maybe i won't try to revoke these monuments if the lawyers tell me it's very complicated and will end up in litigation so the monuments tend to stay unless congress steps in and changes the boundaries or in a few cases has abolished the national monuments total of about eleven over years but that's congress's power and there's no doubt that congress has the authority to do that and so what we see especially with a very serious monument in utah is an outcry certain to be a huge amount of litigation and so you'll see the native american rights fund which represents indian tribes or its justice the n r d c jump in to support the theory that the m we don't know what the justice department will do the new attorney general could say well we think the president has the authority to disestablish the monument and that will leave the n g o s to represent the point of view on behalf of their constituents that that that statute is a one way statute does not allow a new president to revoke a prior presidents action setting aside these public lands for conservation purposes that only congress can do it and so i mean there will be a huge fight over this if president decides to revoke these monuments there are bills that have already been introduced for congress to do it will see how it plays out part of me says well you know if somebody's got to president trump and said well you know you take this position you're undermining your power you want to give up power something tells me maybe not to what end but we'll see what happens and so that will be an issue to to really watch  very closely and it will play out and be litigated unless congress steps in the other statute that has been used by president obama and hadn't really been used by anyone except president eisenhower before in president nixon and the outer continental shelf leasing act which is the statute that allows the federal government to lease offshore areas for oil and gas production and it's a very complicated statute but there's an obscure section it's called section twelve a that gives the president the authority to withdraw areas from oil and gas leasing and it doesn't say for how long and some presidents or some of the earlier uses by president eisenhower did it for only seven or eight years and then it expired president obama issued five different withdrawals under ox that with dr permanently the area from oil and gas drilling nobody knows again whether or not the president has the authority to undo that withdraw many think that it's like the antiquities act it's one way authority him or up in alaska offshore there is certain to be litigation and you know i haven't i'm not giving away any secrets to let you know that there are many people who are strategizing about what the appropriate vehicle will be for a lawsuit t challenge any withdrawal and you deal with all of the technicalities of important technicalities like who has standing to challenge these withdrawals and things of that nature but again it will be a very important  set of litigation and and it's interesting because these catherine was talking about you know how the president takes actions and a lot some of these withdrawals took place in simple presidential memoranda that say under section twelve  i hereby withdraw describes a vast area and others he issues a form of he issued a formal executive order that withdraws an area and then sets out other management directives for the agencies to take within the area limit bottom trawling for example or other environmental activities that might be destructive of fish and wildlife and marine mammal habitat and so you know again it's the president has a lot of authority can one president retract what another prior president has done we don't know and they'll be a lot of litigation about it there's no supreme court precedent on point no federal district court precedent points so you know it's open field running for the lawyers north western north dakota to illinois it's about a thousand miles long and there's very little opportunity for federal control over this pipeline it's not like natural gas pipelines that are subject to  the authority of the federal energy regulatory commission if the company is careful like that because the access pipeline folks where they can route this pipeline on private or state land and pretty much avoid any federal oversight and so ninety seven percent of that pipeline is on private one under state land and not subject to federal authority but when they cross a river they've got to get permission from the corps of engineers and there's two statutes that deal with that they've gotten permission under under administration last december there was a directive issued that said you know we should really carefully look at all of the effects of issuing this easement because it was triggered by the protests that were out there that you've all heard about and so the army corps of engineers announced a process for for an environmental impact statement which will take a year year and a half to do before they can take action on this easement and president obama promised to undo it and so he issued a presidential memorandum that did nothing it says gee look go look at what obama people did and see if there's any way that we can expedite this but make sure you comply with all existing laws which include the environmental laws that require this review and so if they're going to undo this now they're already in court over there the other other related issues again this will be hotbed of litigation you'll have property rights groups jumping in on one side or the other environmental groups in the tribe they're jumping in as well then you know you'll have this drama play out in the executive branch of the courts and of course congress can always step in as well so thank you in this discussion of courts brings us back to what we talked about at the beginning of the program which is to say that the constitution is designed to give judges protections against what the other branches are doing so when this all gets played out in the courts it's not clear how it's going to come out so what we'd like to do now is just take a few minutes out of it's near the end of the program for questions from the audience and i will actually step over here and have a testy come and moderate this discussion