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I have always wanted to do that.

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to creating conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It is Wednesday, April 9th.

And I'm Russ Mitchell, anchor and managing editor at WKYC Channel three, and I'm the moderator for today's forum, which is the City Club's Samuel Friedlander Memorial forum on Free Speech.

There are a few others with as much experience there coming out of the Supreme Court, Department of Justice and Homeland Security as our guest today.

Not a few others, I should say.

Pete Williams, he served as an NBC News correspondent in Washington, D.C. for 29 years, where he earned three Emmys for his work.

Last year, Pete was named the inaugural journalist in residence at John Carroll University.

He was a colleague and friend of the late Tim RUSSERT, longtime host, of course, of Meet the Press and The Namesake of John Carroll University's RUSSERT Department of Communication.

Before joining NBC News, Pete was an aide in the U.S. Senate and House.

In 1986, he joined the staff of then Congressman Dick Cheney as press secretary and legislative assistant.

In 1989, when Cheney became secretary of defense, Pete was confirmed by the Senate as assistant Secretary of Defense for public Affairs.

Today, we plan to dig deep into the current climate of journalism, the most pressing issues facing the Supreme Court and more when a reminder live stream audience.

If you have a question for Pete, you can text that to 3305415794.

And the City club staff will try to work it into the Q&A portion of the program, which will begin around 1230.

Members and friends of the City Club of Cleveland.

Please join me in welcoming honorary Clevelander Pete Williams as Pete, it is great to see you again.

Welcome back to.

Great to see you.

Russ Of course, as you all know, you all know him very well.

He is he's an exception in journalism.

He's a gentleman.

He's he's well regarded as bright, talented, and one of the nicest people in the entire world, not just in the journalism community.

So it's always great to be with you.

Secondly, I bring you greetings from native Clevelander Kelly O'Donnell, NBC News, White House Press.

Yes.

Who she actually grew up just a few blocks from John Carroll University.

So she sends her regards to to you all as well and says to say hello to all her friends at home.

That is fantastic.

And you're doing okay.

You're going to be all right for the next hour.

She should say something about this.

Russ hit me.

I would like to tell you that it was something heroic, that I was trying out to be a blue streak at John Carroll.

The fact is, I did it at the gym.

And so I can just tell you that exercise is hazardous to your health.

Well, we're glad you make it in town.

You made it in town, so to be here.

All right.

Let's get right to it.

Don't ask you, first of all, about a couple of cases that have come up this week, actually in the last few months.

First, yesterday, a federal court ruled that the Trump administration was unconstitutional in barring the Associated Press from covering the White House.

And I believe this came from the fact that the AP would not call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.

Also, a few months ago, the White House correspondents Association was basically, you know, neutered the moot because the White House is now deciding who can cover the White House.

So that's an issue as well.

Question for you there.

What do you think about these two things going on and how did we get there so fast?

We got there so fast because of an election and an inauguration on January 20th.

The interesting thing about the ruling yesterday saying that the White House cannot ban AP from White House events was written by a Trump appointed judge.

And what he said is it's it's black letter law.

It's well-established.

You don't have to let any reporters into the White House, he said.

But if you allow some in, you can't make a distinction among them based on their viewpoints or their expression, because that's a that's a that's a black letter law, a violation of the First Amendment.

You cannot the government remember the First Amendment, The whole Constitution is a check on the government.

So the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment is a check on government authority.

And what the judge said is that when the government cannot once you let people in, you can't make distinctions at the door.

I'm sorry, you can't come in because of your your viewpoint.

That's a violation of the First Amendment.

And what what the AP said is, you know, we're going to follow sort of international customs in other countries.

Don't call it the Gulf of America or or Lake Ohio.

So we're not going to do that either.

And that means the AP can now be in what are called the pools.

When the president goes anywhere, it leaves the White House.

There's a small number of reporters representing each kind of news media that can go with him.

They can now be part of that.

When there are Rose Garden events or Oval Office events, they can now do that.

So I think it's very the judge had sort of telegraphed to the administration he hadn't made the decision, but a couple of weeks ago he sort of said, you know, the law is really not on your side here.

Administration.

But then he finally made the decision, and I don't think it was any great surprise.

Let me ask you about this.

This came from a federal judge.

Do you expect the White House to take this further, as it has many cases?

Well, so far there are about 200 lawsuits in federal court right now challenging the various Trump executive orders.

There haven't been 200 executive orders.

I don't know what the count of executive orders is, but different parties are suing in different places and in the lower courts.

These are very preliminary stages.

These are you know, you go to the court and you say, hey, I want to challenge this policy, but right now block the administration from enforcing it.

Give us a what they call in the law a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction so that you can basically blow time out while we figure out the policy and whether it's legal or constitutional.

And if you look at the record of the Trump administration, they're losing about two thirds of those cases and winning about a third of them.

Some of them have actually come up to the Supreme Court.

Want to ask you about some Supreme Court cases that are in play right now that I know you've looked a lot into the last few weeks.

Let me go back to that White House correspondent association thing we talked about.

The White House is now deciding who can cover the White House.

Have we ever seen anything like that before?

No.

I mean, in the past, the White House has you know, you get up a pass to come into the White House.

It's actually issued by the Secret Service so that you can you don't have to go through and the, you know, the body scan every time you want to go into the White House.

If you were if we were all just going to visit the White House, there would be quite the procedure.

You'd have to check in with the guards and everything else.

If you get a White House Secret Service, what they call a hard pass, then you can just scan it, put your bag down on the X-ray machine, breathes in and then go, you're in the White House.

So there have been some things in the past about who gets you know, does the reporter from TASS, the former Soviet news agency, get a press pass when when social media started coming along?

And, you know, Internet news service has started coming along.

You know, they had to decide, will just Huffington Post get a little.

What's a reporter?

It's sort of an interesting question these days.

Does somebody who just sits in his jammies and has a blog, is he a reporter, a journalist?

Does he get a press pass?

That's been where the distinctions have been made, not based on the viewpoints of, you know, we don't like you and you're not calling it the Gulf of America.

Mm hmm.

Of course, Kelly O'Donnell was once the president of the White House, of course, just last year.

Yes.

Let's talk about the Supreme Court.

And I know that you have talked about this a lot.

This term.

In this term in particular, the president is challenging his powers as we've never seen before, certainly in our lifetime.

And a recent case this week involved that dispute over the administration's use of the 1788 law, the Alien Enemies Act.

Right.

You deported Venezuelan nationals accused of being members of a violent gang.

On Monday, the Supreme Court in large part backed the administration on this.

You talked about balls and strikes and how it's going in lower courts when it comes to the Supreme Court.

What how is the administration's batting average these days?

So I would say what the Supreme Court did was next to nothing.

Nothing would have been to just take a pass on the administration's appeal and leave the lower court rulings, which said, you can't do this for now till we figure out whether you have the authority to use the Alien Enemies Act or not.

The lower courts had put a hold on it.

This was a very dramatic thing if you followed it.

This is Judge Boasberg from the US District Court in Washington, who had almost daily battles with the administration lawyers, trying to figure out exactly what happened here, trying to nail down the timeline, for example.

It appears that the administration began to sort of rev up the engines on the planes, taking these Venezuelans to the El Salvador prison before the president had even signed the executive order invoking the Alien Enemies Act.

He was trying to figure out and then he issued an oral ruling, you know, from the bench, even though he was actually not on the bench, he was on vacation somewhere, I think.

But he said no more planes can take off.

And so he was trying to find out from the administration, well, did any other planes take off?

Did the planes in the air come back?

And the the government lawyers kept saying, I don't know.

And the judge wasn't very happy about that.

And anyway, he he basically said, you can't do this for now.

Stop.

The administration went to the D.C. Court of Appeals, which said, yup, you have to stop.

And then they went to the Supreme Court.

So the easiest thing for the Supreme Court would have been to just say, we're not going to take the case.

We're going to let the lower court's ruling.

I'm going to get legally nerdy here for just a moment, because ordinarily a temporary restraining order, which any judge can issue without having a hearing, you know, just on the application of one party, ex-parte, as they say in the law.

Normally those are not appealable.

And because they're they're time limited, they usually last up to 14 days and you'd normally can't appeal those.

This was an appeal of a TRO.

And what the Supreme Court said is normally you can't do this, but we're going to we're going to pretend that this is a preliminary injunction.

So we'll take the appeal.

All right.

So that's that's my first point.

The Supreme Court could have just done nothing and just let let's say and said, sorry, we can't we can't hear a tiara.

We can't you can't appeal.

That was never mind.

What the court did is, as I say, next to nothing in this sense, it didn't decide at all about whether the use of the Alien Enemies Act in this case is appropriate.

And pardon me if I could show my ad libs here.

Let me just quote from the alien enemies Act.

As you said, enacted in 1798.

It applies only quote When there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation.

Okay.

That part clearly doesn't apply to Venezuela.

Remember, the administration had said these were members of a very violent gang or any invasion or predatory inclu incursion perpetrated by any foreign nation.

And that's what the administration is hanging its hat on.

And so an important legal question here is, well, is this an incursion?

Is this this gang in any way acting at the behest of the Venezuelan government?

So that's sort of the core of the legal issue about whether the president legitimately invoked this law.

And remember, it's only been invoked three times, always in wartime, the war of 1812, which Rusk covered when he was at CBS.

World War One and World War two.

So it's only actually been invoked in wartime.

So what the Supreme Court said is two things.

First, they said, you know what, the Venezuelans who brought this lawsuit went to the wrong court.

They went to the D.C. court and they filed a lawsuit under I'm sorry, more legal nerd ism, the Administrative Procedures Act.

And they said, you can't do that.

You have to file a claim under the ancient writ of habeas corpus.

And you have to do that in the nearest courthouse to where you're being held.

So they said you went to the wrong place.

You got to file.

You can't file a systematic thing.

Remember, the administration is doing this as groups of people all together.

And they said, no, I'm sorry.

The detainees have to duke this out one by one.

Each individual case, habeas cases in federal court and in in Texas, which is where they're being held.

But and on that, the court divided 5 to 4.

I'm sorry, I'm giving you long answers, but I know you're you're older and tired of waiting 12 hours to cover it up.

But the the court said, you know, it was 5 to 4 on that issue.

They were unanimous.

However, in saying, look, you actually have to give these people a chance to file their habeas petitions and say, you got the wrong guy and you can't do this.

You can't send me to El Salvador, and you have to give them a real chance.

You can't give them a ticket once they're on the plane and say good luck.

You have to actually do this.

So we'll see whether they actually do this.

One other thing I would say what the dissenters here said, and this was the three Democratic appointees joined by Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee.

So 5 to 4.

What the dissenters said is, you know what?

Habeas isn't the right tool here.

You use having this when you say I am wrongly being held, I am wrongly being detained.

They're not fighting their detention.

They're fighting the government's efforts to deport them and send them to El Salvador.

So they said to the majority, You got this all wrong.

The lower court, the judge in the lower court, James Boasberg in the federal court.

Yeah.

President Trump in that initial ruling called the judge a radical left lunatic.

Yeah.

Former roommate of Brett Kavanaugh.

That's how radical lefty.

Well, that is really, truly in law school.

Chief Justice John Roberts and issued a statement in the firing back in what the president had said.

How extraordinary was that for the chief justice of the United States?

Yeah, And what remember what the Trump what the president also said is that he ought to be impeached.

And what the chief justice said without referring to President Trump by name, he just said again, I'll quote from my adlibs.

He says, For over for more than two centuries, it's been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.

The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.

And I think one of the things that's a little surprising about what the Supreme Court did in this case is and this is a point that the dissenters made, is, you know what what the Supreme Court did is wipe out everything Judge Boasberg has done.

And, you know, the what the dissent said is, if you look at the bad faith, the administration's lawyers have demonstrated in this case consistently sort of stiffing Judge Boasberg on his questions.

It's a little ripe to basically give the government a good deal of what it wants after their performance in the in the lower courts.

That's the dissenters view.

You touched on this, but again, going back to this batting average in the Supreme Court, it's only been a couple of months now.

But is the administration doing better in the Supreme Court that's doing in the lower courts at this point?

Well, it's had, you know, a couple of victories in the Supreme Court.

Again, these are very minor initial things.

And I think it's important as we go along that nobody has yet decided whether the administration rightly invoked the Alien Enemies Act.

That is still to be determined in the lower courts.

And, you know, that's now going to have to be fought out in this habeas process.

Just this morning, the ACLU filed, in essence, a class action habeas action in Massachusetts, trying to get this back for all detainees.

All these Venezuelans are being held so that they don't have to do it one by one.

But the the government, the Supreme Court said, again, you went to the wrong court on the issue of canceling contracts for schools.

These were $65 million worth of contracts that were going to go to public schools to help deal with teacher shortages.

The lower courts had said to the president, you can't do that.

And what the Supreme Court said is, well, maybe he can, maybe you can.

But you came to the district court, you should have gone to the Florida court of Federal Claims.

So go ahead and enforce that.

And then the administration of the Supreme Court and I believe this was a unanimous decision just yesterday said that the judge's order that put a hold on the OPM order terminating 16,000 federal employees.

They lifted the stay on that.

They said you can go ahead and enforce that because the people who were suing to get this thing stopped in California don't have the proper legal standing to go to court.

They were they were associations.

They were not individuals.

And the federal courts in recent years have been very stingy about what they call standing.

Who gets to come in and sue.

You have to have you have to have some particular injury that's attributed to some government action and that can be cured by a victory in New York.

So it has to be particular to you.

In other words, you can't say I'm a taxpayer and I don't like that we're giving aid to Ukraine.

You can't do that.

There's no such thing as general taxpayer standing.

So that's how they resolve their case.

So we're still waiting for two other cases that are pending before the Supreme Court.

One, is this a sort of companion issue to birthright citizenship?

The Supreme the the Trump administration is not asking the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of birthright citizenship itself.

What they're saying to the Supreme Court is the lower courts here have put a nationwide injunction on birthright citizenship.

And we think these nationwide injunctions are a bad deal, that when courts get sued by ICE, when the world press, Mitchell goes into court, that the court should give relief only to Rus and not say, you know, you win and we're going to ban the thing nationwide.

So that's what they're asking the Supreme Court to to decide.

And they haven't done anything with that.

And then the very current thing that's still pending and I was just checking on the court's website before I came up here to see if they've done anything on it yet.

And they haven't.

This is this question about whether the government has to figure out how to get Mr. Garcia out of the prison in El Salvador.

Who was the administration now says admits they they shouldn't have sent him there.

They called it an administrative error and the lower courts judge a. Yeah, Massachusetts said get him out of there.

And the Trump administration went to the Supreme Court and said, hey, the courts have no business meddling in foreign policy.

Judges can't tell us what to do when it comes to a foreign country.

And that's what they're asking the Supreme Court to decide.

So those two are now pending before the court of.

We talked about earlier, you and I spoke last week on the concept of these two constitutional concepts, freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

Yeah.

And you point out, these are two of your two four things are nuanced.

What did you mean by that?

And do we need more protection under when it comes to the umbrella of freedom of the press?

Well, yes, as the answer to the last part.

The first part is this.

If you look at James Madison's draft of the First Amendment, it's quite clear that he treated freedom of expression and freedom of the press as two different things.

And if you look at the text of the First Amendment that that that persists.

And I'll read you the First Amendment with the punctuation, you always carry the Constitution in your pocket whenever I'm at John Carroll.

There you go.

That they're pretty fast and loose with the Constitution.

All right.

So I'm going to read you the amendment with with the punctuation.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, comma, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof semicolon or abridging the freedom of speech, comma or of the press, comma, or of the right of the people peacefully to assemble comma and to petition the government for redress of grievances.

So it's pretty clear from the text of the First Amendment that the founders thought freedom of expression, free speech and free press were two different things.

If you look though, at the history of Supreme Court rulings, whenever there are free press issues, the Supreme Court has never recognized freedom of the press as something unique to be protected.

They lump free expression and free speech together as one kind of globule thing.

So what are the practical results of that?

Well, I'll give you one quick example.

If Russ Mitchell comes across some information that's not public and broadcast it and the government comes to him and says, Hey, we want to know who your source is, Russia's most likely going to say, you know what?

I don't reveal my sources.

I rely on the First Amendment and I'm not going to reveal my sources.

Now, this issue of whether reporters like Russ can refuse to testify before grand juries or out their sources actually came to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court completely fumbled the ball.

These are cases involving some reporters who had done stories about the Black Panthers.

And the cops wanted to say, well, who are they?

We want to know.

And then there was another reporter from The New York Times had done a story about people using marijuana, which was in those days, you know, really scary.

So the Supreme Court said, you know, you you, you you can't there is no such thing as a reporter shield.

Now, some states have said reporters have what they call a qualified privilege, meaning there's a balancing test here that if somebody, for example, sues Russ and wants to know the information, then the test is, well, is this information essential to your lawsuit?

And have you exhausted all other possible sources of information?

If the answer to those two questions is yes, then you can be required to cough up your sources.

And if you say, well, I'm still not going to, you can be found in contempt of court and you can be thrown into the slammer until you come around and decide to reveal your sources.

So that's just one example of how the Supreme Court's failure to recognize or of the press in the First Amendment is having its own unique force in constitutional law, has left the press at a disadvantage.

What can be done about this?

What can be done to give the press more of its power back these days?

Well, Congress has considered enacting a federal shield law several times.

I'm just guessing in the current political climate, that's not going to happen.

Some states have shield laws.

So if you get sued in state court, as a matter of fact, most states have some kind of shield law.

So if you get sued in state court, well, let me put it this way.

Hope you will get sued in state court and not federal court.

But you know what?

What should happen is that the the the Supreme Court should start to treat the press as a separate entity.

But again, I don't think that's high on the current court's agenda.

We're going to go to audience questions, Internet questions in about 3 minutes now.

But let me ask you about perspective for journalists.

It seems to be more important than ever for journalists to give perspective on the day's news.

Sometimes that can come off as biased, but not giving it is incomplete.

As someone who's been very successful in this space and covered some very controversial things.

How does a journalist do that and remain impartial, at least coming across as is not come across as partial?

So I guess I would say that they have to be a little careful here because you don't want to venture into opinion.

If by perspective you mean putting facts out there that help people understand what happened.

Yes.

You know, a lot of newspapers will do columns like this and label it news analysis.

And The New York Times notably does this a lot.

Peter Baker, there there sort of star White House guy, writes a lot of pieces like this.

What would an example be?

So when the president.

Well, and the president, let's just say when the president invokes the Alien Enemies Act, somebody could write a perspective piece or a news analysis piece that looks at the history of the use of it.

And maybe you would call law professors and you would have some who say, hey, this is a perfectly appropriate use of it.

Or others would say, this is completely inappropriate.

We have to be at war or indicate what such questions are that the courts are going to look at to help people understand what's happening there.

I think that's completely legitimate.

You know, in my 29 years of covering the Supreme Court, I always hoped that you could never tell when I did a story who I hoped would win the case.

And I had the advantage in the sense of that beat, which is built in to have two sides, you know, always, And I would hope my experience would always be I'd read the the briefs of the people appealing and I'd say, wow, that's great.

They ought to win.

And then I'd read the other side and say, Oh, actually that's pretty strong, too.

And I mean, there's a reason cases come to the Supreme Court.

It's because they're hard, so they don't get the easy cases usually.

And so but I would I would always hope that people watching my stories couldn't tell, you know, whether I was putting a thumb on one side or the other.

I think that's inappropriate.

I don't like to see reporters who cover beats go on television and opine, give their opinions about what's happening.

I don't know.

Maybe that's one of the reasons why the credibility of the press now is down, hovering near negative territory where Congress is.

Right.

That could be I mean, I just don't you know, we don't need to do that.

There are plenty of people who get paid for a living to give opinions, and they're called columnists and commentators.

And I don't think day to day journalists should be doing that.

HAYDEN The one minute we have before we go to the audience, do you miss it at all?

Do you miss the daily grind at all?

Well, you know, I still follow the court sort of hour by hour.

I can't help it.

I tell you, the the the Supreme Court, toward the end of my time there, got to be with the 6 to 3 super conservative majority.

It took the fun out of covering the court because you always knew how everything was going to come out.

There was seldom any doubt about it.

And that took some of the drama out of it.

And then I'll just have to be serious for a moment and tell you that I just thought I could not sit in front of the camera and do live coverage of another school shooting.

I just couldn't do it.

I just got so tired of that.

Sure.

Certainly understand that it is now 1230.

We're about to begin the audience Q&A for a live stream audience.

Once again, I'm Russ Mitchell, anchor and managing editor at WKYC TV and moderator of today's forum.

We are joined today by Pete Williams, former correspondent at NBC News, who was not with me in the war of 1812.

We welcome questions from everyone, city club members, guests, as well as those joining via our live stream at City Club dot org.

If you would like to text a question for Pete, please text it to 3305415794 and City club staff will try to work it into the program.

You missed the part words as and be gentle and be gentle.

Exactly.

And be gentle.

Let's start right over here.

Great.

Good afternoon.

My question for you is, it seems like the Supreme Court is unwilling to take a stand and and avoid confronting the Trump administration, that they may have to do something that will cause them to then Trump not to follow the directions.

And then we have a constitutional crisis.

What is your opinion about that?

Well, first, I think your analysis is exactly right, although I don't know what a constitutional crisis is.

I'm never quite sure what that means.

Many people have different opinions.

I think it's fair to say, look, they're going to have to answer these questions at some point.

There's no doubt that the question about the use of the Alien Enemies Act or some of these other issues are going to come back to the Supreme Court on the merits themselves.

There's just no escaping that because because the lower courts are going to decide these cases, the whoever loses is going to appeal and it's going to come back.

So, yes, in the short term, they are really trying to keep their powder dry.

And we just say one other thing.

I think the president feels emboldened by a picture, this scene.

Remember when the president addressed a joint session of Congress right after he was inaugurated and as he was leaving the chamber, he was shaking hands with people.

And when he got to John Roberts, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, he sort of clapped him on the arm and shook his hand and said, thank you, thank you.

I won't forget it.

What was he talking about?

My guess is he was talking about the Supreme Court ruling last term that said the president is immune from prosecution for certain acts that relate to his official acts and in office.

The thing about that decision is that it not only gave presidents immunity from criminal prosecutions for certain things, but it went further than that.

It also said there are certain things where Congress cannot interfere with the president.

And I think the president feels emboldened by that.

And I'm it's not just my guess.

The first case that went to court that was litigated by one of the Trump lawyers, the first case that they cited was that Trump decision.

So I think that that I think that's on their minds as well.

Yes, sir.

My question is on what's been called the unitary executive, which is a first.

The first time I remember hearing that term was when George W Bush was president.

And supposedly Vice President Cheney was a big proponent of that.

And everything that Trump has been doing has been called the part of expanding this notion of the unitary executive.

Could you explain that if possible?

And also, do you have any insights as to what ex Vice President Cheney now thinks of the unitary executive?

Thank you.

So where does it come from?

Pull out your pocket Constitution's Article two, which is the executive branch part of the Constitution, says in the very first sentence, the executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States.

So the proponents of the unitary executive theory say the president is the executive branch.

Whatever he wants, he gets.

And that means if he wants to fire the heads of independent agencies that exercise any kind of executive responsibility, only he has the power to do that now.

And the Supreme Court has said, yeah, if it's a single person running the agency.

Yes.

So, for example, the Supreme Court upheld Mr. Trump's firing of of Hampton Dellinger, who was head of the Office of Special Counsel, not the Robert Mueller Jack Smith office.

This is an office that handled appeals involving federal employees.

And the Supreme Court said, yep, he's an executive branch kind of person.

He runs a single agency.

You can fire him.

However, the Supreme Court has also said you can't fire people that are agencies that are run by boards like the National Labor Relations Board or the Consumer Protection Board.

You can't fire those people.

That is a very much in court right now.

The Supreme Court said once before, you can't do that.

FDR tried to do it.

Now we're going to see if the Supreme Court says you can do it this time.

But that's that's the unitary executive theory in a nutshell.

And I really think that the Trump decision from last term gave a lot of extra legs to that theory.

And his fellow question was, what do you think the former Vice President Cheney, thinks about that at this point?

Well, I've not talked to him about it, but I will say this.

I would I will summarize my answer with two words.

Liz Cheney.

There you go.

Yes, Good afternoon.

I support I support the media relations department at Case Western Reserve University.

And myself and my colleagues are finding it very hard in this new climate when it comes to messaging.

We have experts who don't want to share their research in in fear that there's going to be retaliation.

We can't talk about die.

We can't talk about vaccinations, measles, fluoride in our water.

What advice would you give myself and my colleagues in trying to be a resource for journalists but finding it very difficult to do so?

Well, I mean, that's very disheartening to hear.

I guess the answer is, you know, when I was a reporter, the reason I would call up universities, you know, law schools and so forth, is to get expert opinion, to get expert advice and opinion.

You know, when when when there were all these cases about January six detainee detainees, you know, storming the Capitol.

There were a lot of people who said, well, we should invoke the Insurrection Act.

And so I was trying to find who among the nation's legal scholars knows what the heck an insurrection is.

And it turns out there is isn't a good answer.

The courts have never answered the question of what an insurrection is.

But that's what you know, if as communities debate the issue of Florida, you know whether to put Florida fluoride in the water, they would come to your folks to say, you know, what are the pluses minuses here?

When the secretary of Health and Human Services says it's bad and cites research from other countries, you know, help us with that.

I would I would think that's perfectly appropriate to answer those questions without advocating one way or the other.

And unfortunately, I guess that's the narrow the narrow tightrope you have to walk.

Hi.

Question, please.

There is a question at the end here for me.

I'm going to use your word.

I think President Trump has been emboldened by the pardon.

The pardon also sellers in competition with the Constitution and the Supreme Court, because in the end, he has no fear.

Those with him have no fear.

The ones with the fear are all of us, just like the young lady was talking, because there's no recourse for his actions, for anyone's actions.

In the end, if he's just going to pardon everybody.

So it makes you wonder what good are the courts going to be able to do?

In the end, anybody that should go against him that goes does go to jail.

It's just like January 6th.

He didn't pardon a few.

He pardoned the group.

So I'm hoping you can give me a little perspective on that, because it really that pardon I feel should be taken away at some point.

It trumps everything.

Well, if the pardon is to be taken away, the only way to do it would be by amending the Constitution, because the Constitution clearly gives the president absolute unreviewable pardon authority.

So as a matter of fact, the only way to prevent a presidential pardon is for the person who gets it not to accept it.

The courts have also said that, you know, if the president pardons Rush, Rush might say, well, thanks a lot, but that sort of implies I did something wrong and I'd rather not have it.

Thanks very much.

If you if you decline to accept it, the pardon is invalid.

But that's the only way to invalidate a presidential pardon.

And then there's this really interesting question of whether a president can pardon himself, could preemptively pardon himself.

And nobody really knows the answer to that question.

I guess the pardon scholars who have looked at it have said probably not on the analysis, on the analogy that no person should be the judge and jury of his own case.

And then, of course, you know, there is always and I realize in this case it did work twice before.

If you're an advocate.

But there is the power of impeachment.

So, you know, there is there's no president who's just absolutely beyond any kind of sanction.

If if Congress decided they could and now no president has ever been removed by impeachment.

As you know, the House voted to impeach Richard Nixon, Richard Nixon, but he'd resigned before the Senate had the trial, and they declined to impeach President Clinton.

So the only people ever removed by impeachment have been federal judges, the federal district court judges.

And usually it's for things like, you know, being drunk on the bench and that kind of stuff.

So, no, no judge has ever been impeached like President Clinton or like President Trump wants Judge Boasberg to be impeached because they didn't like their opinions and just clearing something up a displayed this we know this, but it's still out there.

A president cannot eliminate the United States Department like the United States Department of Education.

That requires an act of Congress.

Is that correct?

Well, in theory, the answer is he can do it if Congress just sits there.

And that seems to be what's happening right now.

You know, they the president can't cancel the spending of money that's called and impoundment.

And the courts have said you can't do that.

You if you want, not if you think the Congress appropriates money and, you know, Article one gives them that power.

If if the Congress says, you know, you shall spend this money and the president says, I don't think we should do that, he has to go to Congress, say, why?

It sits there for, I don't know, 30 or 60 days.

And then Congress votes on it.

He can't do it himself unless Congress just sits there, which is what's happening.

So, yes, in theory, the president cannot do a lot of this stuff by himself.

And there's a real question now about tariffs, because the the the the emergency power that he is justifying for the for the imposition of tariffs, it's pretty hard to argue that something that's been going on for 25 years is an emergency.

So there are already lawsuits over that.

But yet the answer is in theory, no, you can't just you can't disestablished a.

Look, Congress basically didn't do anything about USAID, the Agency for International Development.

It's pretty dead now.

There's a few people that work for it that are scattered around town.

But all the contracts that USAID had are canceled.

Look, we have an online question.

Absolutely.

So this one actually comes from in-house.

It says recently, 600 federal judges have signed a petition to impeach Chief Justice Roberts.

What do you think of this move?

Let's see.

I think was it Salmon Chase?

Was they tried to impeach a Supreme Court justice.

It didn't work very well.

I don't think that's going to happen.

I would I would describe that as quixotic.

I'm Shawn McGrane.

I'm a lawyer in town.

You are very, very fluent in what you call legal nerd isms.

My question is, a, are you an attorney?

And B, if not, how challenging was it to cover justice in the Supreme Court without any formal legal training?

So the answer to the question is no, I'm not a lawyer.

About a third of the reporters who cover the Supreme Court do have law degrees.

Adam LIPTAK for the Supreme Court covers the Supreme Court for The New York Times.

Actually was The New York Times in-house counsel.

And then when Linda Greenhouse retired, he took that gig.

But Robert Barnes, who covered the court for The Washington Post for many years, didn't have a law degree.

Nina TOTENBERG from NPR doesn't have a law degree.

So it varies and the answer is it was really hard at first because I did not know mens rea from the men's room.

And so I would sit there and read the Supreme Court, I should tell you this.

So, you know, I came to NBC in 1993 and a a an alumnus of, WKYC, Carl Stern, who was an anchorman in Cleveland here for many years, was it NBC was covering the Justice Department.

Did fabulous work.

He's the guy who uncovered the whole COINTELPRO scandal at the FBI.

Brilliant guy.

Had a law degree, by the way.

Well, as I was arriving in 1993, he was leaving to become the spokesman at the Justice Department for Attorney General Janet Reno.

So there was an opening.

Tim RUSSERT said, you want to cover the Justice Department?

And I said, yes.

And then he said, Well, you know, Karl covered the Supreme Court.

Would you like to do that, too?

Now, I think the reason he asked me that is that nobody else wanted to do it.

I think they all thought that covering the Supreme Court has a very high homework to being on the air ratio and so I got that gig.

But I would sit there and read Supreme Court briefs and not have the vaguest idea what they meant.

But here's the thing.

When you work for an organization called NBC and you want to understand something, you called Laurence Tribe at Harvard, you call Rick Hasen, one of the nation's leading experts on election law, and they'll return your calls, not because you're Pete Williams, but because you work for NBC.

And so it was on the job training.

Adam, you know, is a dear friend who covers the court for The New York Times.

He basically says the longer you do it, the better you get at it because you're always learning something.

How valuable was your time working at an administration when it came to doing your job as a correspondent for NPR, for NBC?

Well, not so much in covering the court, but in covering the government and covering the administration.

It was because having been on the other side and seeing how the sausage is made, you know, it cut two ways.

One is when you would call and try to get an answer and people would say, well, I really can't help you with that.

You'd say, come on, I know you can do better.

I've been there.

Come on.

Right.

So that was an advantage.

But I also felt that, you know, having been in their shoes gave me a little more sympathy for what government employees go through.

I think sometimes journalists are too quick to say, oh, he lied to me.

Well, that's, you know, lying, as you would know, has an element of intent.

So if you say something because you think it's right and it's wrong, that's not a lie.

And so anyway, I think it gave me a little more.

On the one hand, it made me a little more aggressive in getting an answer that I thought they should get.

On the other hand, I think it made me a little more sympathetic to what they go through.

Another question right here.

Yes, we have another internal text question.

With the White House's exclusion of the AP Bezos's ownership and censorship of the Washington Post and the public having maybe the most and least diverse consumption of news.

It seems clear that the state of journalism is in a major shift at the moment.

How do you see journalism and its coverage of modern history evolving?

Well, it is in a great period of change right now, but it has little to do with the elements of that question.

It has everything to do with economics.

I don't know how many people here in this room own and watch that wonderful contraption called a television set.

But the fact is that your children and your grandchildren don't.

And number one, that's wrong.

Number two, you know that journalism has to go where the audience is.

Most Americans don't get a daily newspaper for several reasons.

Why only a third of American newspapers today publish a daily edition.

Only one third the number of newspapers is rapidly vanishing.

The number of people, the number of journalists is rapidly vanishing.

So it's a it's a technological challenge for the press to try to follow the audience.

You know, if we keep going to the same public square and no one shows up there, well, we're not going to get the message.

We need to go where the people are.

And that's a huge challenge.

I see that as more of a thing than, you know, Jeff Bezos is.

And I would quibble with the word censorship.

But, you know, I certainly think he didn't.

Look, I think it's perfectly reasonable for a newspaper publisher to say, why are we endorsing political candidates?

That's not what we should do.

And many news organizations have had that view.

The post itself did for many years.

But to do that on the eve of an election is looks really bad.

So that was that.

That was a that was a stupid move.

But I think that's the real challenge for journalism right now.

It's the technological change.

It's the shifting audience.

Yes.

This is a text question.

Can you talk about the constitutionality of Trump suggesting he'll run for a third term?

Sure.

If you can't do it for two reasons.

The 22nd Amendment says, don't you wish you had your own?

No person shall be elected to the office of president more than twice.

Okay, that's pretty unambiguous.

But let's look at it.

No person shall be elected to the office of president more than twice.

And no person who has held the office of President or acted as president for more than two years, a term to which some other person was elected shall be elected.

Blah, blah, blah, blah.

Okay.

So the theory goes, well, all you have to do is get a a toady to run for president and you run for vice president and then the toady steps down and you take their place, except for the 12th Amendment, which says no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of vice president.

So, you know, the answer is no, he can't do it.

And by the way, Chuck Todd, who is a dear friend and, you know, was for many years the political analyst and and moderator of Meet the Press was at John Carroll two nights ago.

And he said he thinks that the Trump isn't serious about this, that he despite the fact that he says he's serious, it's just he's just laughing up his sleeve and he doesn't really mean it.

QUESTION right here.

Yes.

The next text question says, and thinking about perspective, what advice with the late great Tim RUSSERT give to people today who struggle with being overwhelmed by the news of the day and react to everything said by the current administration?

Well, the late great Tim RUSSERT would say if it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press.

So watch Meet the Press, and you'll get all the answers you'll need.

Look, I think I think you have to be you know, when you go to the grocery store and you're trying to decide which bananas to buy, you know, you check them out and you look at the ones you think look good and you discard the others and you be a selective shopper.

And if you think the prices are better at the Aldi than they are at the A&P, then you go there and I think you have to be that kind of a consumer of news.

You should, you know, if you just if the only news you ever get is just MSNBC or FOX, you're not getting the big picture.

If you watch Ross on WKYC, however, you are, of course, because.

But, you know, I think I think you should seek out different views and different news sources and, you know, be an intelligent news shopper just as you when you're buying produce.

Thank you for.

That's the first time you haven't accused me of something today and said I need the protections to be pardoned or anything like that.

But it was very nice of you to say that.

I do it now in that.

Well, thank you.

We've only got a few minutes, couple of minutes left before we have to wrap it up.

But I guess I have to ask you, you talked about the state of journalism, how things are changing, how people are going to different sources now to get their news.

Are you optimistic about the future of journalism?

Oh, yes.

I'm I'm I'm I'm mystified by it.

I'm not sure how it's going to end up.

But, you know, the company that I worked for for 29 years, NBC is the National Broadcasting Company.

And when NBC started broadcasting meant radio and there was no such thing as television.

And when television came along, NBC had to retool itself and turn that aircraft carrier around.

The same for CBS, where Russ worked.

You know, it was the Columbia Broadcasting System.

And, you know, when you sounded that little gong, I thought, wow, that's just like the new sound at the top of the hour.

That's right.

So, you know, the news industry is having to do this.

John Carroll faces this in the Department of Communication.

How do you educate today's young people to be the journalism tomorrow?

The fact is that whether you know, whether it's going to come on the Web or whatever, there is still a need for people like Russ who know how to find stuff out, know how to get dependable information, and know how to communicate it in a clear and accessible way.

And that's just never going to go away.

You know, we were telling stories to each other around the campfires in the caves, and we're going to continue to do that as long as humans live.

And there'll be a need for people who know how to do that and write effectively.

You know, I can't predict how it's going to shake out in ten years.

I there are a lot of questions.

I mean, for example, my old company, NBC, had MSNBC and Soul, but it still has news.

Now, the streaming service in five years.

Are both of those going to continue to exist?

I don't know.

I mean, I think that's a I think that's a question.

Russ, as a former anchor of evening newscasts at, CBS, when I was in grade school, I used to read articles about how the nightly newscast we're going to end in three years.

And it's been a little more than three years since I was in grade school.

So, you know, all these predictions, I don't know where they go, but am I an optimist?

Yes.

A lot of people don't know.

The Pete's a jazz aficionado.

You have a show that you have here when you're here in Cleveland at John Carroll.

Yeah.

Jason, is it Friday?

Tomorrow?

Oh, tomorrow.

What time?

What's the frequency?

There you are.

All right.

So and so while you're reading your pocket constitutions, jazz with Pete.

Sounds good.

Sounds good.

We want to thank very much Pete Williams for joining us here at the City Club.

And thank you to the Press Club of Cleveland and John Carroll University for their programing partnership on today's forum.

Forums like this one made possible thanks to generous support from individuals like you.

You can learn more about how to become a guardian of free speech at City Club dot org.

Today's forum is the Samuel Friedlander Memorial Forum on Free Speech.

Mr. Friedlander was a of the city club most of his life serving as president in 1962 during the City Club's 50th anniversary year.

And we're honored to have his granddaughter, Wendy Abrams Fishman, with us in the audience today.

Wendy, are you okay?

You.

Good to have you.

The City Club would also like to welcome guests to the table as hosted by the friends of Linda, Megan and John Carroll University.

Now.

Wave.

There we go.

Oh, my gosh.

Look at that.

Says Pete on them mic.

You can't see it.

Coming up next week at the City Club on Monday.

You know, it's okay.

You know, 1812.

I had plenty of my day, though.

Coming up next week at the City Club on Monday, April 14th, the City Club will welcome back U.S.

Congressman Ro Conner from California.

He will share his vision for a new economic patriotism where, in his words, in this pivotal moment, America faces a choice, continue down a path of political division or unite around a shared patriotic vision of economic prosperity.

Tickets for this and other forms are available at City Club dot org.

This brings it in to today's forum.

Pete, once again, thank you for coming in today.

We appreciate.

And this forum is a journey.

Thanks so much.

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