Grady Eades, Associate History Professor at Vol State, with his family.

This is a transcript of the conversation between myself, Brandi Fleck, Host of the Human Amplified podcast, and Grady Eades, a history professor who gives us a crash course in how the U.S. government is supposed to work and the oversights in its founding that are playing out in 2025.

If you’d rather listen than read, you can do that here, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

What does being human mean to you?

Brandi Fleck:

What does being human mean to you?

Grady Eades:

I'm so glad that you sent out the warmup on this. I've thought about this for days, uh.

[2:02] A good answer to this might be…as a historian, um, particularly someone who teaches the first half of American history, one of the first things I thought about this was the Declaration of Independence, where Thomas Jefferson kind of steals, borrows the ideas of John Locke, and basically says that we all have natural rights, that because we are alive, we have a right to life, liberty, and then Locke says property, Jefferson says, pursuit of happiness. But it's that idea that being human has this commonality that just because we're here, we have all, we have these rights and that seems important. But clearly when you look around at the way our own history and at the world, not everybody actually believes this.

[2:59] So what then makes us human? Well, Jefferson goes on in the declaration to say that people put up with a lot of things. Humans suffer constantly to put up with the things that keep them from enjoying their rights. I mean, it is that suffering that eventually causes them to overthrow government and establish a new one. And that's the thing that really struck me. I think that part of being human means that there's something that we're suffering with. It can be a government, it can be a relationship, it can be work. There's just something that we're not necessarily happy about, that we're not always talking about, that we're quietly dealing with. And so therefore, ultimately being human is not being happy about something, but also being human is that we have to help each other because everybody had something, some burden that they're carrying. And so there is a being human is a responsibility to each other to help carry that load, which is a very long winded way to get around to that.

Brandi Fleck:

Oh, I love that though. The community and the connection aspect of it. That's great.

Who Is Grady Eades

Brandi Fleck:

Today we're talking to Grady Eades based in Gallatin, Tennessee. He earned a master's in history and a master's in education from the University of Alabama. He joined the faculty of Volunteer State Community College in the fall of 2002 and has served in various roles in the following 20 plus years. Right now, Grady is an associate professor of history. He recently published his first book, For the Good of the Program, A History of Boxwell Reservation, the Boy Scout Camp in Wilson County. And his wife, Renee, is also a faculty member at Vol State, and the couple have one son together.

So today, we're going to talk about the Constitution, how the different branches of the government work, why they were set up the way they were, the risks of ignoring both the Constitution and the separation of powers, [5:27] and if Trump can actually have a third term in office, which I'm really curious about. So I feel like this is an important review of things many of us have forgotten since school. So Grady, I'm really grateful to have you on the show today and just welcome.

Grady Eades:

Well, thank you. I'm very happy to be here. I appreciate you bringing me on.

Brandi Fleck:

[5:50] Yeah. Well, so let's just, well, before we dive in, what else do you want our listeners and viewers to know about who you are?

Grady Eades:

Sure. So in addition to being an instructor of history at Volunteer State for 20-something years, I've also been involved with the Boy Scouts, Scouting America now, for a long, long time. And also I am a member of a Lutheran church in Hendersonville, just up the road from Gallatin. And I mentioned both of those because I think they are an important qualifier about sort of my worldview going into this, because both of those are about helping and providing assistance to communities and helping people grow to become better individuals. And I think that's an important part of all of this is knowing that no one is in this by themselves.

[6:40] No man is an island, I guess, is the great phrase there.

Our Responsibility as Citizens

Brandi Fleck:

We're already tying back into your answer of what it even means to be a human. So that's exciting. And yeah. So as members of society, I know you mentioned that we have a responsibility to share the load. What other responsibilities do we have to each other when it comes to paying attention to government and being involved in what's going on?

Grady Eades:

I think as far as our responsibilities, I guess we're talking about not just as people, but as citizens now. You know, what do we have a responsibility to do for each other and for government? Obviously, we need to be informed. I think everyone needs to follow the news. Sometimes that's very difficult because there is a deluge of information sometimes, and it is hard to stay on top of everything that is going on or to understand everything that's going on.

[7:33] But we need to be aware. I would also suggest that as a caveat to that, one of the other things that we need to do in following the news is try to go outside of our bubble. Social media is great in a lot of ways in that it feeds us all kinds of wonderful information, but that algorithm also traps us. It puts us in silos, and so we're not necessarily making an attempt to go outside of what we would normally see when we just trust the algorithm to give it to us. So be informed in the news, but go look at the other places. So if you're a liberal, go look at some conservative media. If you're a conservative, go look at liberal media to see what the other side is saying about similar issues, what they are amplifying. And in an attempt to try to understand each other, look at those different things and see if you can understand that different point of view.

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[8:24] I would say also in terms of responsibilities, follow the news, have a basic understanding of how government works. I think that's one of the things that we have really lost over the years. I don't feel like we get a great civics education anymore.

[8:39] I don't know if that's even required in high school anymore. I don't feel like it is. Just judging by the look on your face as we go back and forth.

Brandi Fleck:

Yeah, I don't think it is. I have two college-age sons, and they never talked about civics when they were in high school, so, yeah.

Grady Eades:

Well, I know that in Tennessee, at least, the first half of American history where we talk about the Constitution and then falling into the Civil War, all of that, the last time they do any of that is eighth grade. And so a lot of the issues that are very pertinent now are settled in a part where they're 13 or 14 years old and they haven't come back to it. So that's, I think, having a basic understanding of government is super important. And then finally, and this is almost a no-brainer given the sort of governmental system that we have, but you need to vote. And not just in the big ones. I mean, the presidential one is a big deal, obviously. But the local elections are where the rubber really hits the road for a lot of the things that are going on in our day-to-day lives. I was a political science minor in undergraduate. And one of the things that we talked about then was that, um.

[9:54] Presidential elections get a lot of voter turnout, 55 to 60 percent of everybody who can vote will vote in a presidential election. But the local elections, which are school board, which are local city government, etc., those things that have a direct effect on your day to day existence. Hover around 20 percent voter turnout, which means of all the people who can vote, only about 20 percent are voting. And that has a huge impact on the way, on the roads in your community, the kind of curriculum that's being taught in your local counties and your local county schools because of the school board, the kinds of books that show up in your library, whether or not those books can be banned from your library. Those local elections are so important. So yeah, so be informed, understand how government works and vote even in the local stuff.

How the U.S. Government Works: A Separation of Powers

Brandi Fleck:

[10:42] Wonderful. Those are all really good takeaways, guys. So I hope you're taking notes, but now if you're not taking notes, maybe pull out a notepad because I would love it if you could give us kind of a quick and dirty explanation of the function of each branch of the government and how they work.

Grady Eades:

I'll be happy to. Thank you. So I think most people are at least broadly aware that we have this document that sort of sets up our government. It's called the Constitution. It was written a long time ago, 1787.

[11:15] But the Constitution creates government the way you and I understand it in a very basic framework. It takes the powers of government and breaks them into three separate branches. So there is one branch that is supposed to be just for legislative, one branch that is for executive, and one branch that is for judicial. And I'll back up into those in just a second.

[11:35] But the key thing to understanding at this point is that those three branches are all supposed to be co-equal. In other words, one branch is not more important than the other. They are all on the same level, okay?

[11:47] And I think that's going to be very pertinent to the discussion that we have in just a minute. But they are all co-equal branches.

The Legislative Branch

So the legislative branch is the one that the founders, the framers, the people who wrote the Constitution, that's where they put all the power. They really believe that as that was supposed to be the voice of the people, the legislative branch, the branch that makes the laws, has all of the real power. If you ever sit down and read the Constitution, this is Article 1, and it will actually list all the powers of Congress. And this includes tariffs. This includes taxation. This includes the power to go to war. This includes the power to make money. All of those sorts of things are invested in the legislative branch. So all the real power is there because that is supposed to be what the people want.

Now, to keep the legislative branch sort of doing, making sure that it makes reasonable laws. It is divided into two parts. So legislative power is invested in Congress. And in Congress, there are two houses, what we call a bicameral legislature.

Role of the House of Representatives

One of those houses is the House of Representatives. And it is the bigger chamber. It is the one that has representatives based on population. So the more people your state has, the more representatives you get to the House of Representatives. So it is very raucous. It is supposed to be very argumentative because it is very democratic.

Role of the Senate

[13:13] It then has a filter, and that is the Senate. And the Senate is the other House. And for the Senate, every state gets two senators. It doesn't matter how big you are, how small you are, everybody gets two. Because of that, it is supposed to be more deliberative. It is supposed to move more slowly. It is supposed to think about the bigger questions.

So, laws, bills, I guess I should say, are supposed to originate in the House, very democratic. Then it goes to the Senate as sort of a filter, and they debate about it, and they may not agree because they are thinking about bigger interests than just the House is concerned. But that's the legislative. If they both agree, then that goes to the next step, and that means the bill goes to the second branch. And the second branch is the executive branch.

The Executive Branch

The executive branch is clearly getting a lot of news right now, but the executive branch is the president, it is the vice president, it is the cabinet, and then what has developed over the last 200 years, a bureaucracy to execute the laws as they are.

I think this is where we get into a little bit of the debate today. Congress makes the laws, passes the bills and sends them to the executive, and then the president signs them off. And if he signs it off, then it becomes law. If he doesn't sign them off, he can veto it and send it back to Congress.

This is what we call a check and balance.

The goal of the executive branch is to execute the laws. So theoretically, because all of the power is really vested in Congress, they create the bills, they create the laws, they create the rules. The president then once he signed off on it, he then makes sure those things happen.

[15:11] So he does not create law on his own. He doesn't make up things on his own. That power is invested in Congress. And so he then executes them. That is his job. If you look at Article 2 in the Constitution, you will see that the list of authority for the executive branch is considerably shorter.

[15:30] And the reason why it is considerably shorter is because he's just supposed to execute the law. Now, the president does have the additional power of should the nation go to war. He is commander in chief of the armed forces. But note that he does not declare war, that rests with Congress. He just executes the war once the war has been declared. A little weird, but yeah. Again, separation of power, trying to keep him from being a king and having too much authority.

The Judicial Branch

Then the third branch is Article III in the Constitution, and this is the judicial branch. And again, if you read the Constitution, the judicial branch, Article III is very small in that it does say that supreme judicial authority is vested in a Supreme Court of the United States, but then Congress has the power to build the rest of the court system beneath it. It creates district courts and appellate courts.

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[16:25] OK, and so Congress can decide how many U.S. Federal court districts there are and how many appellate courts there are and how many judges they're going to be within that system. OK, Congress can also expand a number of justices on the Supreme Court. So initially the judge justices were five. There were five justices. Now we're up to nine. So it can do that as well. It has never shrunk. The court is only expanded. But nevertheless, the point of the court is to judge the laws. And so that means that when Congress passes something and the president signs off on it and it goes into effect, if someone believes that they have been injured by this law, that it violates the constitution and the basic framework of the nation, then it goes to the court system and the court can say, this is not constitutional. It does not fit with what we have said the boundaries of the law are, and they can strike a law down. Congress, I'm sorry, the Supreme Court also has the ability to strike down parts of a law. So let me give you a really simple example there to show kind of how this works.

The Evolution of the Voting Rights Act

[17:33] In 1965, Congress passed what we know of as the Voting Rights Act. And the Voting Rights Act was granting the basic voting civil rights to African-Americans at the end of the civil rights movement. One of the things that the Voting Rights Act did was say, I believe this was Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, basically said that states had to have preclearance. If they're going to, here are Southern states, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, that have disfranchised their voting population for generations. Before you make any more changes, any changes to your voting laws within your state, you have to get preclearance from the Justice Department. In other words, the Justice Department wants to make sure that what you're doing is not secretly trying to disfranchise people. We want to make sure those people keep their right to vote under this law. So for decades, that was the way things worked. If any of these states that had been violators before tried to change voting laws, it had to go to the Justice Department first. And the Justice Department could say, no, this is not going to work.

[18:38] Under the Obama administration, Shelby County in Alabama sued. Uh this is uh shelby county versus holder 2013 uh this goes up to the supreme court and alabama basically says look you know it's been 50 years things have changed we're not the society that we still were um please overthrow the voting rights act because we want to make some voting law changes and the court says well we're not going to overthrow the entire voting rights act but we will nullify section five this is unconstitutional you don't have to go for preclearance anymore. So the Voting Rights Act technically is still law, but the part that required states to get preclearance from the Justice Department is now null and void. Why does all this matter? Why this long story? Well, because if you followed politics over the last 15 years, you've noticed that there have been a flood of voter ID laws that have happened in Southern states. And those voter ID laws happened after the 2013 Shelby County versus holder when they didn't have to have preclearance from the Justice Department anymore.

[19:41] Okay. That was a fire hose of information. It does. Do we need to back up?

Brandi Fleck:

It does make sense. And my wheels are turning around the voter laws. What has the impact of these changes been, I guess, practically in people's everyday lives?

Grady Eades:

Well, it certainly has made voting more complicated, right? Because you now have to have some sort of proof of citizenship. You have to be able to provide your voter registration or a birth certificate or something to show that you are a legitimate voter. And that's not necessarily all bad, per se. You want to make sure that there's not fraudulence, fraud going on in the elections. But as I think we have seen over and over again, there have been lots of studies that demonstrate that widespread voter fraud is not happening. Sure, there are isolated examples. You can't have tens of millions of people voting and not have some isolated examples of voter fraud. But systematic voter fraud is it's just not happening. So it's creating a burden for folks to make sure that they are registered in certain places at certain times and have and have proof for that in a way that shouldn't necessarily be shouldn't necessarily be happening.

Checks and Balances

Brandi Fleck:

[21:02] Okay. Okay. Well, and backing up to the checks and balances you mentioned, can you tell us a little bit more about why the separation of powers was set up the way it was? And I guess a little bit more on the checks and balances that are there.

Grady Eades:

Absolutely. So historically, the idea behind the separation of powers was based in two ideas. And then I'll move into the checks and balances part. First was the colonial experience. The colonies had a lot of obviously we all know that they had come up under a king but for most colonists the colonial governor was their experience with the king so most colonies had legislatures and they had a colonial governor and while they had some say so through those colonial legislatures the colonial government governor had a lot of power and they didn't feel like that was necessarily the way that things should be. Obviously, growing up and coming up under a monarchy and looking at Europe being mostly monarchs, they could see that there were certainly systems set up in the world that they grew up in where you could vest all of these powers, the power to make a law, the power to execute the law, the power to judge whether a law is right or not could all be vested in a single individual, a monarch.

[22:26] And they didn't want to do that. They felt like that just led to corruption and nothing good was going to come from that. The other reason why they have separation of powers that I think we really forget, and I think for Americans, particularly in the 21st century, is really hard to digest, is the separation of powers keeps the branches fighting with each other. That is deliberate. The goal of the separation of powers is not just to keep all the power from being concentrated in one person's hands. It is also to make sure that the branches are constantly fighting with each other so that one branch is not taking power from anybody else to become too powerful. The idea is if I am Congress and I am the legislative branch, I am going to jealously guard my authority and I'm not going to let you encroach upon that executive branch. Same for the executive, same for the judicial. So the end result is that making laws and making big changes to government [23:25] is often difficult and very slow.

And so in the 21st century, when we're connected to the internet and we have everything, we're carrying the access to the world's information in our pocket on a phone, we expect things to move much more quickly. And the system is deliberately designed to prevent that. It doesn't want to move more quickly. It wants deliberation. It wants discussion. It wants to make sure that the best laws are coming forward. It wants to make sure that power is not being absorbed or concentrated in one place. So the thing that we today sort of hate about the way government works is a deliberate design of the government to make it work that way so that we don't have big problems, again, in theory.

[24:09] Now, as far as the checks and balances are concerned, the checks and balances are to reinforce that philosophy. So each branch has some check on the others so that it can't completely do whatever it wants to do. And if you'll remind me, I'll try to make it up myself, there's one thing that the founders overlooked that kind of overrides a lot of these checks and balances, but I'll try to come back to that in just a second. So for instance, one of the checks and balances is, as we just mentioned, Congress can pass a bill and send it to the president, but the president can veto it. So that's a check. Congress can't just pass whatever it wants. The executive has to say, I'm okay with this. If the president does not say that he's okay with it and he vetoes that bill, it then gets sent back to Congress. Congress does have the ability to override a veto with what we call a two-thirds supermajority. They can get two-thirds of all of Congress to agree they can override a veto. As you can imagine, this is an extremely high bar and very rarely happens. In the first... Several decades of the United States, we did not have a bill overridden, a veto overridden until the Civil War. So it takes a long time.

[25:29] So along those same lines, the president has the ability to choose members of his cabinet. Obviously, he can choose the secretary of war, secretary of state, those people who are going to be the administrative leaders of his branch. But he doesn't get to just choose them. They have to be approved by the advice and consent of the Senate. There, again, is a check to make sure that reasonable people are getting these jobs, people who are theoretically qualified to do this work. And again, on top of all that, the Supreme Court has the ability to strike down laws. That also is a check. So if something gets passed in the heat of a moment, and this does happen in American history, where Congress passes something in the heat of a moment, the president signs something off in the heat of a moment, there's an emergency. Theoretically the court system is supposed to be the cooler heads that then say i get it but no.

[26:21] If the people still really believe that whatever it is that the court struck down is critical to the foundations of government we can make a constitutional amendment that congress passes and then goes out to the states so you can override the court striking something down if you make a constitutional amendment out of it. Believe it or not, and I think most Americans will probably scratch their heads over this one, this is how we have an income tax. During the Civil War, Congress passes an income tax to help finance the war, and we begin running with that. The Constitution does not explicitly say that you can tax income, and it gets struck down. The court says you can't do this. Yeah. In the early 20th century, we get the 16th Amendment that allows income to be taxed in the United States. So we over we fixed the Constitution and we overrode a judicial strike down by making it part of the Constitution.

Why the Founding Fathers Overlooked Political Parties

[27:31] So the founders clearly were very smart people. They thought a lot about how to keep a corrupt government from happening, about how to keep government in check, about how to tame a system that is potentially ripe with abuse. And I think they deserve a lot of credit for that. But they were just people. People make mistakes and they can't see the future. So the big thing that the founders didn't see that has, I think, become perhaps one of the largest mistakes that they made, they didn't believe in parties. There is nothing in the Constitution that acknowledges political parties. They didn't think that they would exist. In fact, if you go back and read the work of James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, they have a series of articles that they write in 1788 that are called The Federalist. The Federalist are newspaper articles written for New York to help New York, to convince New Yorkers to ratify the Constitution when it was up for debate. And so they go through all the different parts of the Constitution to argue why this is a better document than what we were using before.

[28:43] And Madison says in one of those, hey, parties are bad. Parties are factions because they are just focused on their own good as opposed to the good of the nation. And the founders really firmly believed in this idea of what they called Republicanism, little r Republicanism, not big r Republican party, little r Republicanism. And this is the idea that everyone should sacrifice for the good of the group. And if everybody sacrificed for the good of the group, for the common cause, then the best would come forward. And this is wonderfully patriotic, clearly coming out of the revolution. You can understand why they would believe such things.

[29:21] That you sacrifice of yourself. Washington was a great example of Republican values. He left his home. He left his farm to go lead the nation for years during the war and gave up everything. It's a wonderful story. We love that kind of Republican idea. But parties go against that. And so there's nothing in the Constitution that acknowledges parties or how they would work or any sort of limitations on them.

[29:45] Well, once the first government gets set up, very quickly, political parties form very naturally. And they form very naturally simply because I can believe what the good of the nation is and fight for that. And you can believe about what the good of the nation is. And we can both do that in good faith efforts. But that doesn't mean we agree on what that path forward is. So political parties begin to form. And once you get political parties, then you can bypass to some degree some of these boundaries that we've set up because a president that comes from the same party that controls Congress, they have agreements about what sorts of laws they would like to see. They can set agendas that help pass the kinds of things that they want passed. The president can put forward candidates for the different administrative offices that can potentially sail through confirmation in the Senate because his party is controlling those and they're all trying to get their particular agenda done. In this sense, were the founders wrong that the parties are ultimately trying to do what they want? No, they weren't.

[30:52] I think the founders were very right about what parties do, but in ignoring their existence or that they would show up, we've got a gaping hole that negates or at least minimizes some of these safeguards that have been put in place. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And again, that's a fire hose. So if you want to go back and try to clarify any of that, I'll be happy to.

Is Government Working Right in 2025?

Brandi Fleck:

Yeah. No, I think that makes a lot of sense. Um, and so my next question for you was going to be, is the government working the way it's supposed to, but now that you've also brought up this gaping hole, it's almost like, well, “yes, but.” I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts.

Grady Eades:

[31:34] I think your answer is, is right on the nose. Yes, but…

[31:40] It clearly, in most cases, is working the way it was designed to. In many cases, we're very deliberative about things. It's very hard to get big laws passed.

[31:53] But when you have one party that controls all the major branches of government, things can change very quickly, as I think we're seeing right now.

[32:03] So let me give you an example of kind of the two sides of this. So go back, let's go back 15 years and look at 2010 when President Obama was working with the Democrats in Congress to get the Affordable Care Act passed. So you had president of one party, president of that same party controls Congress, and they are able to get the Affordable Care Act passed. They don't control all the branches of Congress, but they control enough, right, that they can get this major piece of legislation done. But if you remember, there was a lot of fighting about getting that piece passed because the margins were very tight. And then ever since then, there has been a lot of fight about is this is this legal? Is this constitutional? Can we do this? In fact, Obama was successful in getting that passed in 2010. And then in the 2010 midterm elections, he got shellacked. As you recall, there was such blowback to passing this with his party controlling both houses of Congress that he lost control of Congress. in the midterm elections, and they had a hard time getting anything done after that. So you're seeing a similar kind of thing right now in that the Republican Party controls both, controls the executive branch, controls the legislative branch. And we don't like to say the Republican Party controls the Supreme Court, but there's a majority of conservative justices on the court.

[33:30] Which you can now see with everybody on the same page, Things are moving at an incredibly accelerated pace. And it is parties that have allowed that to happen because they have all agreed on what the agenda is and they are moving forward to make that happen very quickly. Now, my but to that is we'll see how the court works. Behaves with some of those things. Yes, there are a majority of conservative justices on the Supreme Court. I think there are something like 170 lawsuits right now pending against the Trump administration. And I don't know how the court is going to act with some of those. Is it going to fall in line with the rest? Is it going to continue to exert some judicial independence? It's hard to say right now. I don't know. That's what we're all sort of waiting with bated breath to see how that's going to happen.

Brandi Fleck:

Then my next question is, is the constitution being ignored? And is that even possible? Because I know that there have been a ton of executive orders that have come out since Trump has been put into office. And so what's happening?

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Grady Eades:

[34:42] Oh, yeah, I was, I'll sidebar here for just a second and say, I was out with scouts this weekend and I was talking with some of the boys around the campfire and they asked, oh, hey, you're a history person. Where do you think we're going to be in four years? And my response was, we have had so much happen in just the first two months of the Trump administration, more than I ever would have thought possible. I have no idea what four years is going to look like. So the question that you're asking is equally big in the sense that there are so many moving parts right now it is hard to wrap your brain around what all is going on um so is the constitution being ignored I guess that's where we want to start um.

[35:26] Yes and no. There are parts of the Constitution that are clearly being ignored. For instance, President Trump signed an executive order overturning birthright citizenship. Birthright citizenship, according to his executive order, is no longer legal in the United States of America. Well, he can't do that. Birthright citizenship is part of the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment was passed in 1868 after the Civil War, and it says unequivocally that all persons born in the United States are citizens. An executive order doesn't change that. That is part of the Constitution. Now, that means the executive order is running against the Constitution. That means the Constitution is being ignored there. They don't seem to be trying to enforce that yet. But so I don't, it's that yes, but if they try to enforce that, will the court say, no, what are you doing? In the places where we've seen this in the local courts and the district courts, the district courts have pretty unequivocally said, what are you doing? This is not, this is not possible, but it hasn't made it up to the Supreme Court yet. So it's a yes, but a lot of the executive orders are really testing the boundaries of the way separation of powers is supposed to work.

Unitary Executive Philosophy

[36:50] The theory right now as I understand it is that there's a conservative political theory called the unitary executive and the unitary executive philosophy basically says that the executive branch the president and the should have complete control over the executive branch everything that happens under the executive branch so they should have the ability to fire people they should be able to get rid of executive departments because they are the head of the executive branch. They should have that absolute unfettered authority.

The Constitution does not explicitly say that, but conversely, the Constitution does not explicitly say that we should have a USAID program. It doesn't say that we should have a USDA program. And so you get into this weird sort of gray zone of Congress has authorized this. Congress has said by law that these things should exist and has then handed that over to the executive to administer. Where then is the boundary between what is legally required by Congress and what is the power of the executive branch to administer those programs? And that's where we're getting into some weird things.

[38:05] Should the president be able to just abolish the Department of Education or one of these executive things. My understanding is no, because they have been legally authorized by Congress. If they're supposed to go away, Congress has to pass another law. That is my understanding of how that is being worked. Um... But the courts haven't clarified that yet. So again, a yes, but. We're seeing challenges to those things that I would not – we're seeing so many challenges. I would not have anticipated something like this in my wildest dreams, and yet here we are. Does that help answer your question as far as those issues?

A Constitutional Crisis In the Works

Brandi Fleck:

It does. And I'm curious about – so say – and I assume these are some of the court decisions that we're all anxiously awaiting. But say the court decides that the birthright citizenship ending is okay, or okay, fine, the law changes, I guess, or the Constitution can change?

Grady Eades:

That's actually a great question. So let me give you a historical example to elaborate the point that I'm about to make.

[39:20] In the period right after the Civil War Obviously slavery ended And there was a period of time called Reconstruction Right after the Civil War Where Congress did basically everything within its power For a few years To make sure that freedmen, ex-slaves Got the same rights and privileges as white Americans, 14th Amendment This is part of why you get the 14th Amendment and says that all people born within the United States are citizens to give citizenship to African Americans. So there'd be no question about that. The 14th Amendment goes on to say that all persons, not citizens, all persons who are within the boundaries of the United States get due process, again, trying to guarantee legal rights to ex-slaves. Hold on to that.

[40:11] Southern states still try to deny um freed slaves uh ex-slaves their right to vote so the congress then passes the 15th amendment which guarantees your right to vote regardless of race these things are very clear in the constitution if you're born here you're a citizen everyone here gets due process everyone gets the right to vote all males get the right to vote regardless of race and yet But we then get Supreme Court decisions in the latter part of the 19th century, in the 1800s, that say separate but equal is okay, segregation, which clearly seems to run against the 14th Amendment, which guarantees everyone equal protection, but it's okay because it's equal. And then you get disfranchisement laws across the South where we take away the right to vote through literacy tests, through poll taxes. But all of those things are legal because they're not technically taking away your right to vote because of race. They're doing it for these other reasons.

[41:13] So to come back to what you're saying.

[41:18] Can the court take away these privileges? Depending on how it interprets the law, it can create loopholes that then allow states to do all these things. We could go back theoretically to a place where the court says, well, this law is struck down or here's this loophole. This is the way that you should interpret that. They can't change the Constitution, but they can create legal loopholes about how the Constitution is interpreted and then plays out an actual law on the ground.

Brandi Fleck:

So that's a risk.

Grady Eades:

Yes. And it has happened.

Brandi Fleck:

But then say if the court comes and they say that it's not okay to end birthright citizenship, this executive order is not constitutional. But then say the Trump administration decides to ignore that decision, then what protections do we have, if any?

Grady Eades:

Well, then we have a full-on constitutional crisis. And I think that's what everybody is waiting to see. Okay. Because the Trump administration has been really good so far about sort of skirting outright ignoring the courts, right? They've said, well, we didn't know. We hadn't received the word yet or we don't have this information. And so there's been a lot of sort of ignoring, but it's not really ignoring. There hasn't been any sort of outright defiance. We're just not going to do this yet.

[42:44] And so that's the big question. If the court says we'll use the 14th Amendment or we can use some of the student examples with what they call the Alien and Enemies Act, where we've had these students who have been that young woman who was basically arrested right off the street the other last week and sent to an immigration clearing facility in Louisiana. Are these things legal? The Trump administration says, yes, we're doing this under the Enemy and Aliens Act. But the court could say, well, no, we're not at war with anyone. So you can't use this particular law in this case. Further, 14th Amendment says all people, whether they are citizens or not, get due process. You can't do this. So then what happens when the Trump administration says, well, we're not going to follow this. We're going to continue with what we're doing. And then we have a problem. I don't know what happens after that. We've never really faced that. The only time that I can think of that we've had a similar example is, and I don't think it's to quite the same degree, was back with Andrew Jackson.

[43:54] Andrew Jackson was seventh president of the United States. And one of the big moves of his administration was Indian removal, was removing Native Americans from their ancestral homelands out west. And there were lawsuits against moves by the federal government to remove them. And the Supreme Court sided with the Native Americans, the Cherokee in particular. The court decided with the Cherokee and that the federal government could not treat them the way that they were. And Jackson said, well, chief justice has made his decision, let him enforce it and just kept doing what he was going to do anyway. And the court has no power to stop that. It has no army, it has no ability. In theory, the court can send federal marshals to arrest and detain members of the administration who are violating the law. The caveat to that is that federal marshals work for the Justice Department, which is an administrative branch of the executive branch. It's an administrative office of the executive branch.

Brandi Fleck:

Whoa.

Grady Eades:

[45:02] So I don't know. This is a great question. That's what we're all waiting to see. Is that going to happen? And if it does, what results?

Brandi Fleck:

So are those marshals the only way that a decision could be enforced if the executive branch isn't listening? Are there other enforcement…

Grady Eades:

The only way I know of off the top of my head, because the Supreme Court has no other enforcement mechanism, we really rest on the idea that everyone is going to follow the rule of law. That's what our whole belief system is based on. And if you have an actor who decides that they don't want to do that anymore, the court doesn't really have any other enforcement powers. That's it.

[45:43] Okay. Now, I guess in theory, I'm sorry. No, no. I suppose in theory, if the court says X and the Trump administration says, no, we're not going to do that, you then have a political process where the Congress could then bring articles of impeachment and say, you have broken the law. You have violated the law. This is a political move now, and we are going to reprimand you for doing this. That is theoretically the next best option. But now we come back to our party's issue. And is the same party as the president going to allow that to happen? And I think history suggests...

The Possibility of a Third Trump Term

Brandi Fleck:

[46:29] Okay. All right. So all big things to think about. And it'll be really interesting to say the least to see how all of this unfolds

[46:39] and what we're going to do, depending on what way it unfolds. I mean, I guess history's in the making.

Grady Eades:

Absolutely.

Brandi Fleck:

And so in what I think is related, I have to ask this question, which I think a lot of people are curious about, is what are the odds that Trump will actually be able to have a third term? And how would that even come to pass?

Grady Eades:

Yeah, there's been a lot of chatter about this lately. And I think President Trump has muddied the waters himself. I think it was an interview last weekend where he was asked directly, hey, are you kidding about this? And he said, no, I'm not. People are talking about it. I am taking this seriously. We have other things to do, but I'm not joking. Right. Okay, so as I understand the 22nd Amendment, what the law says is that a person cannot be elected, and that's the qualifying term here, cannot be elected to the office of president more than twice. So can he run for a third term? Under that wording, no.

[47:51] Now, here are the two big caveats. The first is the current theory is that he could run as vice president for someone else. So he's not being elected as president. He would be elected as vice president. And then whoever that president was elected could step aside and say, I resign. And therefore, the vice president that becomes president. So he could get a third term that way. And this is very similar, if you recall, to something that Putin did in Russia several years ago, where he sort of changed the rules to allow himself to stop being president. And he became whatever the equivalent of that was and then rewrote the Constitution and came back. So that's a possibility. The other, which is a little sketchier, is what is the enforcement power for that? So if he chooses to run for a third term what is the mechanism to stop him from doing that and the constitutional amendment doesn't have a mechanism for that again it's one of those things where this is the rule of law so again let me backtrack just a second come back to the 14th amendment from 1868 in addition to all those things about equal protection under the law blah blah blah there's another section to that that says anyone who has engaged in insurrection cannot hold federal office.

[49:18] Obviously, the idea there was to keep the Confederates from being elected to vice president or president. If you took up arms against the United States, you should not be allowed to be president or vice president of the United States. That was the thinking there. Well, how do you then qualify January 6th? Is January 6th an insurrection? Was the president and his actions on that day, was he part of that insurrection? Did he foment that insurrection? And if you recall, in the 2024 election last year, there was a lawsuit that basically said he is violating the 14th Amendment as far as leading an insurrection. Therefore, he is disqualified from president.

[49:57] Well, what's the mechanism for that? Does a state get to decide that he's not qualified to do that? Does the Supreme Court have to say that he can't do that? Does Congress have to pass another law saying that that's not possible? What is the mechanism to keep him from doing that? And the 22nd Amendment is ultimately the same way. It says X, but if someone chooses to do it, what's the mechanism to stop them? And there is not a clear mechanism for that. Okay. So, yeah, I think choice A, running as vice president, is the more obvious and easier one. But choice B of just challenging the mechanism is potentially on the table.

Brandi Fleck:

So it's possible?

Grady Eades:

i want to say no but i have to acknowledge that yes there are ways that it could happen.

Contacting Your Representatives

Brandi Fleck:

Well i know that this has been a lot of information and i i really appreciate you coming and explaining all of this is there anything else that we haven't talked about that you feel is important to share?

Grady Eades:

[51:08] I do. So if... If your listeners are upset about the way things are going and they're not happy with, because we haven't talked about Doge, we haven't talked about a whole host of other things and whether or not they're legal. I mean, there's so much that has happened over the last two months.

[51:27] You have to contact your representatives. I mean, you have to. My understanding has always been that email and letters is not the way to go. Those just sort of get pushed off to the side. You have to call. You have to tell them that you are from their district and where you're from and make them aware they keep call logs to all of that. You have to step forward and say, I'm unhappy with how this is. Now, I suppose conversely, if you have listeners who are okay with all this, you can also call and say that you're pleased with things. But this is part of the way our system works, is that we have a voice, theoretically, to our representatives. That's what they're there for. And we have to let them know how we feel about how things are going.

Trusting someone else to step up and make those changes is not enough. You have to take some action yourself. That is part of what being a citizen.

[52:16] It is participating in the system of government. And that means more than just voting sometimes. Sometimes that does mean letting your representatives know that you're unhappy with how things are happening. The information should be pretty easy to find. There's lots of apps out there that will help you with that. There are obviously lots of web pages, so I would certainly encourage everyone to make that effort.

Brandi Fleck:

Okay. So now I have one more question for you. What happens if the representative is not listening to the popular voice, the collective popular voice?

Grady Eades:

[52:50] Well, that's the good news about representatives, right, is that representatives only have two-year terms because the founders did recognize that the popular will could often be very turbulent.

[53:05] So if they are not listening, you have a chance to vote that person out next year. That's the best part about representatives is they don't have to stay there for a very long period of time. You can overturn them very quickly. Um, presidents, obviously a little bit harder. Senators are a little bit harder, but that representative, you can flip the house pretty quickly if that's what you want to do.

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Brandi Fleck:

Well, I feel like that's a positive note. And so, yeah. So we'll end there. And where can listeners find you and your work?

Grady Eades:

Sure. So, um, I think I kind of had two strands of work. Um, so I'll do the least important one first, at least for our conversation, uh, the work that I do with the Scouts, I have a website called virtualboxwell.org where I talk about various history things related to the Scouts of the Middle Tennessee area.

[53:53] But as far as this work with history and some of the politics, Volunteer State Community College is where I work. We are actually working on a series of civics videos right now that we hope to have out within the next month, explaining a lot of the things that we've talked about today, hopefully in a less talking head format with some visuals. So I would ask, I don't know when this is going to air, but hopefully by May, May of this year, we will have several civics videos up.

So I would encourage people to go to the volstate.edu website and look for civics minutes or civics videos. And we should have a webpage up dedicated to looking into all of these sorts of things in a little video education format.

Brandi Fleck:

Wonderful. Okay. Well, guys, you know that all of this information is going to be in the show notes. So be sure to go look at those links, check out Grady's work. And this episode is going to air before your civics videos are out. But as soon as they're out, we'll get them linked up so that people can go look at those. So, guys, be sure to check back.

And Grady, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Grady Eades:

Well, thank you for having me, Brandi. I really appreciate it.