University of Toronto visiting law professor and economist Neil H. Buchanan discusses Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s decision to avert a government shutdown by supporting a controversial continuing resolution (CR), despite backlash from Democrats and anti-Trump groups who saw it as a capitulation. Professor Buchanan argues that while Schumer is not typically a progressive hero, he made the right decision to prevent lasting harm, as a shutdown would have handed excessive power to Trump and Musk. Professor Buchanan calls upon Democrats to stop infighting so that they can effectively resist the rise of authoritarianism.

Cornell University law professor Michael C. Dorf argues that if President Trump were to pardon himself, that action itself would not cause a constitutional crisis, but other actions Trump has already taken have already placed us far along a road to a constitutional crisis. Dorf defines a constitutional crisis in terms of three types first articulated by Sanford Levinson and Jack Balkin in a 2009 law review article, and Dorf proposes a fourth type characterized by defiance of unwritten norms that are not themselves legal obligations but that undergird the constitutional system as a whole.