the phone at 4:30 on election day and by 9:00, 9:30 when she wasn't going to be saved by alaska and probably ripped up whatever it was a sent her. >> that story got written through several times on the course of election night. >> so i would just offer one way to think about polls in terms of legislative contest or legislative politics. maybe the example of the 2013 government shutdown would be helpful. so october 2013, the government was shut down for two and a half weeks. it was all over the spending bills which you will eventually come to terms with why it's so important. but ted cruz, senator, had basically taken the spending bills hostage for an obamacare repeal. in terms of partisan battle, keep in mind democratic senate and republican house. who was going to get the blame, right? were republicans going to be blamed for trying to take the government hostage by going

after obama care or would democrats be blamed for their inability to govern? it takes a little while for that but i think it was a messaging battle to play out. if you looked at the polling results, not just your approval of congress but what do people think of democratic leaders, what do people think of republican leaders, you kind of see even amongst republicans this dive that happens by the second, third week in october in the public and republican perceptions of republican leadership. i think members -- i think mcconnell and i think boehner, i think they under stood it all along but clearly understood once numbers tank they can go to their members and say, look, we're being blamed here. we're losing the messaging battle. we've got to go to the table. because they lost the messaging battle, they didn't get

anything. there was no obama care repeal, raised debt limit. i actually think the spite the fact my whole discipline is having a little issue about polling, i think leaders will still be relying on them and it may help determine the direction these battles go to some degree. >> that's a really good point. candidates still use polling a lot. even if journalists reduce our reliance to some extent, they are still really important behind the scenes shaping legislative battles, campaigns. we're not done with polls for sure. >> we'll probably have more of them.

it was a staggering amount of information to sift through. also a caveat, a lot of the polling at the national level, you know, predicted the margin on the popular vote. where they missed it was with the turnout in the battleground states. >> in some cases the margin of error was large enough that what occurred was still technically accurate. the poll was still technically accurate. >> that does tend to get lost a little bit. it's no fun to state margin of error and how much you can discount the polls. >> right. >> with that i'd like to get into some of the questions with the audience because i know there are probably a lot of questions. at least we hope. who wants to go first? >> i can restate the question. >> that will be good. >> ma'am? >> i had a question -- couple questions for dr. bender. first you talked about how what was going on in the senate with the majority and that 52 republicans, they need at least eight democrats. you said you'd really have to peel off 20.

i was a little confused how that would work. >> the question is just getting into explanations of the majority, there are likely going to be 52 republican senators, but you need 60 to cut off debate on any kind of legislation. and professor bender's statement if you need eight, you really need to aim a lot higher than that, 20 to 30. >> so to clarify, yes, technically on a rule you need 60 as jason just said. the thing is, let's say everybody was lined up left to right, liberals to conservatives. some of these issues ?hhl not be left to right so my line is not going to be helpful. your left to my right. mine because i'm spatially challenged especially when we're talking different directions.

the problem is here -- not the problem but the challenge is here that democrats and republicans are reasonably cohesive. so republicans are probably over here on the right. democrats are scattered over here. there isn't anybody in the middle. to have to go all the way over to attract your 60 votes, you go manchin west virginia, heidi heitkamp, if she doesn't go with the administration, mccaskill, donnelly. the further and further you go, you're going to hit some liberals, right. to get to eight you're going to hit liberals. in other words, the eight probably agrees with the person lined up at 80. that's when in essence it's not that you're aiming to pick up -- you may be. it's not that you need 80 votes but the fact is the moderation of your bill, changes of your bill you need to get to 60, those changes are probably going to be amenable to other democratic senators near them.

so you're not just peeling off -- you're not just buying individual votes, you're probably making concessions to bring everybody over. >> i think also there's a tactical element to this. with schumer, who is going to be the next senate democratic leader, he may let four or five of his most vulnerable democrats vote with republicans on certain issues, those are the people in the middle that professor bender was talking about but democrats may not want to let eight or nine go and give republicans a legislative win unless it's a big bipartisan topic for which you get 20 democrats on board. so you could see six democrats vote with republicans when it helps them but you don't get that whole -- you won't get to the number eight to pass legislation unless it's good for a lot of democrats. >> so i think the last major legislation in the senate at least, where they got right around 60 was a trade promotion authority in june 2015. it was like we were just kind of up there counting. who is going to be the democrat. who will be the 60th vote.

i think those situations because of the political dynamics tend to be a bit more rare than you would think. >> that was a democratic white house lobbying democrats hard to get those votes. >> for sort of a precursor to battles next year, this week in the senate on the 21st century-- there's a little division among democrats. you may see this play out on the floor where liberals like elizabeth warren are not super happy about it. the white house wants this bill. they have sent out a statement of administration policy stating they want this signed into law, wanted senate to pass it, already passed the house. seeing those divisions and how you get past. the white house feels so strongly about it they said vice president will preside over the vote tomorrow. >> since the election everyone in the republican party has been more or less on the same page, at least a lot more than they were during the campaign.

what do you think it would take for house republicans or senate republicans to start picking fights with trump again? >> the question is we're seeing a cohesion among republicans during house and senate we didn't see during the campaign and how long can we expect to see this peace until someone tries to pick a fight in the republican party with the president-elect. >> it's a really good question. we're talking about it this morning on the hill because the house majority leader kevin mccarthy held a pen and pad and talked with reporters. we were asking him about president-elect trump's tweets over the weekend about imposing tariffs on u.s. companies that ship production offshore. and you know, this is a difficult question for free market republicans who they say, well, our answer is overhauling the tax code. but they didn't want to directly answer the question of would you pass legislation imposing tariffs because republicans don't traditionally believe in interfering with the free market and have been reluctant to

impose tariffs. it was this real moment of discomfort with what trump was tweeting, but we did see a reluctance on the part of mccarthy to say directly he disagreed with trump. i don't know how long it's going to take until people do voice their concerns more candidly. so that's a point i'm going to be watching for. what do you guys think? >> i do think we're at a point right now, in a honeymoon of sorts, republicans are ecstatic they control all levers of government, or they will early next year. i think they are -- i think that's natural to have a reticent to criticizes or tweets things you don't agree w i think when you start digging into policy fights, he does send infrastructure plan to the hill or immigration plan. i bet whatever immigration plan he sends, if he sends one, you will have people like jeff flake, dean heller, lindsey graham voice their objections. if it looks like we imagined an

immigration plan from trump would look like. >> they have. >> they have already but that's going to be amplified more once it's knee-deep, a reality of what these policy fights are. i think the infrastructure plan -- this i have less knowledge of but if infrastructure plan has more spending than the fiscal conservatives would like, you'll hear more from the freedom caucus than perhaps right now. >> yeah. i do think, and maybe this is true in sort of every

administration, but it's very clear people who were early supporters of trump are being rewarded. they are on the transition team. they are able to talk to his staff much more closely. >> attorney general nominee. >> they are being discussed for cabinet official posts. there is a price to pay for criticizing mr. trump. you can be in a twitter storm. i don't know how much that will factor into people's -- >> let me factor in lawmakers vote for things they don't agree with logically because it's good for their own electoral back home. vice versa, sometimes lawmakers will vote for things they oppose or vote for things they prefer enacted into law. again, their recognition back home or what the party is trying to put together for the brand. as swab said, look, it's really early here.

but i think one of the most valuable lessons i took, after being wrong so much about the election is not to forget that pattern. this remarkable glue across the branches and within a chamber. there will be a lot more sacrifice than we might expect. we'll be demanded of some of these republicans on crony capitalism issue and many issues. as christina said, we don't know what it will take to crack. my guess it cracks first in the senate because, a, keep in mind two-thirds of them did run on the same ticket with trump. a third of them will never be on the ballot because of presidential term limits. they don't owe him anything, they weren't elected on the same issues. house is much harder, i think, to get that distance from trump. >> their terms are shorter. >> they are facing voters. >> in six months. >> yeah. it rachets up pretty quickly.

>> one thing i think to note, too, there has been a lot of emphasis on the challenging political environment for democrats in 2018 in the senate. there are 25 democrats up to eight republicans. some of those democrats are running in very republican states like west virginia or indiana or north dakota. what we sometimes neglect to mexico, too, two of the people who were just mentioned, dean heller in nevada is up also and jeff flake is up in arizona. they have both been a little more moderate on immigration, to say the least. donald trump has threatened to campaign against jeff flake. they are cognizant of the fact their states are heavily hispanic and that's where the demographics are heading. so it's not to always divert toward the political situation but it is helpful to know the context of what people are making decisions in like this.

next question. yes. >> a narrative come out that senate democrats are going to really try to hold back on trump's nominees because of what's been going on. how successful can they conceivably be with that. >> the question is how successful can democrats be if they want to halt or delay the nominations of donald trump's cabinet officials or judges and so forth because of the way the republicans refer to hold a hearing for merrick garland, president obama's nominee for the supreme court. >> there's very little they can do to stop it. senate democrats triggered so-called nuclear option in 2013 and helped change the level. as we noted earlier, republicans will likely have 52 seats next year pending outcome of louisiana senate election for saturday. so what's more important to stop -- what would be more powerful to stop a trump nominee if you have someone like rand paul or susan collins or jeff flake or a small coalition of those republicans standing

against nominees. democrats can make it definitely painful, insist on roll calls for nominees. if you recall there were half a dozen obama nominees that were confirmed right on january 20th, 2009, to make sure he had at least parts of his cabinet installed immediately. i don't see that happening with this -- next january except elaine cho, who happens to be majority leader and also very noncontroversial when she was announced. you already have some senate democrats in the judiciary

committee demanding long hearings for jeff sessions and demanding a drawn out process that way. in terms of staffing there's very little they can do because of the lower threshold. but in terms of just making it painful and making it kind of annoying for republicans, "eating up floor time and committee time they would rather be using to enact their legislative agenda, democrats can certainly do that. >> i think the one exception is general mattis will need a waiver, which will be legislation and senator gillibrand said she would require procedure which will call for 60 votes. he's the one with the most support. he's the one democrats actually want so that's sort of the pro and con for them. i think we could also talk a little about the supreme court nominees, which is the one category that has the potential to get really interesting this

year. whether if democrats do object to trump's supreme court picks, whether republicans will change the rules again so that it only requires a simple majority to confirm the supreme court nominee. i think it's hard to tell in his press conference the day after the election, leader mcconnell seemed to dwell on the peril of overreaching when you're in the majority. he is an institutionalist. that seemed to suggest he and other veterans might be reluctant to do that. if democrats don't go along i can see a lot of pressure to confirm supreme court nominee and maybe they would. >> we're talking about a fairly small universe of supreme court nominees who have faced that kind of scrutiny going back 100 years.

some of the examples, abe fortis, lyndon johnson's pick on the supreme court faced a filibuster. i mean, there were procedural votes on samuel alito but this is relatively unprecedented for supreme court to filibuster a nominee for the supreme court. >> yeah, except there have been -- there were cloture votes on the most recent ones. i'm sure alito got less than 60 -- 58. i think the others got -- some of them were unified. yeah, i don't know that the fact it's not precedented -- there's less precedent for it is as consequential this is kind of the reality of contemporary american politics, pretty tough, polarized parties and they disagree on quite a lot. certainly supreme court lifetime appointment, particularly in a world where congress hasn't been legislating very much and see the courts weigh in on health care, weigh in on immigration reform, overtime pay.

there are all sorts of ways in which the court is immensely important and increasingly important. so it makes sense to me that the parties would fight over it and makes sense that majority members might be a little circumspect about going nuclear, thinking that the shoe could eventually be on the other foot in having republicans facing a democrat in the white house making appointments. having said that, can solve that problem last. >> one thing i feel compelled to mention, we're focusing on covering congress and the new administration but we've got that other branch of government across the street symbolized by the supreme court. but there are other -- the ways that the judicial branch influences the decision making in congress and pressures on the white house and so forth, i

mean, this seems to me -- i don't know if you feel the same way as an academic, fellow reporters, the judicial branch may be the most undercovered part of government that we have. do you think that there's any merit to that, you know? >> i would just -- i guess i'd answer yes. for many of the reasons you talk about in terms of the ease with which one might cover congress, which access is very, very tough to come by for the court, unless you're in there or listening to tapes later, it's hard to know. you don't ever see negotiations in conference or exchange, if they do exchange. there's black box for reporters and academics. i think the thing to keep in mind here, we do have example during unified republican control where the courts put a

wrench into the republican administrations by dint of court cases that came through them. particularly the war on terror and use of all the of the detainees in guantanamo bay, habeas corpus questions, there was a serious of supreme court cases starting 2004, '6, '8, put screws on administration and forced congress to come to the table, what are we going to do about treatment of detainees. will there be trials, commissions, military commissions. like how are we going to deal with this. what are we going to do about torture. really forced congress to the table. john mccain is still there and he's not forgotten. so the court can kind of shake things up for the administration in ways they probably aren't anticipating.

>> the courts really an interesting venue for democrats to push back on the administration. i'm kind of thinking democrats wiped out in congress and obviously white house but you're going to have high profile, influential state attorneys general i can guarantee a venue to push back against trump policies. i think the one person first and foremost is congressman, outgoing member of house leadership just announced last week he's going to take over camila harris, attorney general. i have a personal focus on immigration. but you're already seeing a lot of what the california legislature, are doing to push back against trump immigration policies. he will be a key person in kind of pushing that and being that antagonist to trump on the federal or state level. so the legal field will be a very interesting venue and interesting story line that way

as well. >> also if you see medicaid changes coming out of an overhaul of obama care, that will be interesting to see democratic governors push back. although there are also fewer states now where democrats have control at the state level. >> you're also seeing some republican governors even say, hey, wait a second he will be a key person kind of pushing that and kind of being that antagonistic trump on the federal or the state level. so, the legal field will be a very interesting venue and an interesting story line in that way as well. >> and also if you see medicaid changes coming out of overall of obamacare, that'll be interesting to see democratic governors push back. although, there are also fewer states now where democrats have

control of the state level. >> and you're also saying that some republican governors say hey wait a second, before you just get rid of the medicaid grant to my state, my own state of arizona, the governor there, doug, who was right out of the gate after the election saying before anything takes hold, we need to figure out how to keep people covered. >> good point. >> coming from a very, republican, like pedigree. questions? >> yes. >> the stories about whether it can be used opposed to appeal obamacare. >> the question is that reports on republicans using the reconciliation process which requires fewer votes and the

senate to get through how much of obamacare could be repeal and medicare. how many changes could you make to that using budget reconciliation process? >> the one principle to keep in mind. the principle is that the reconciliation is unused for measures or provisions that cut the deficit. i mean, and so the overall package can't be increasing the deficit. and so provisions are reviewed and judged by whether or not they can be go on to the package. >> opposed to just dealing. there has to be a budgetary implication of the provision too to make it into reconciliation. if the purpose is incidental to the budget, so then it can't go in. so in a world where they they wanted to repeal the requirement that's you're allowed the

requirement to cover pre-existing conditions, i think that would be judged to be incidental to the challenge of it has to budgetary, direct budgetary implications. just examples of this is the easiest -- i don't know if there's a parallel to health care reform. the package because of tax cuts actually cost money, but the way they got around it was to sunset so in ten years where you have to score all those provisions that went into the bill, they just reinstated all the taxes. so it looked neutral. the whole thing looked neutral. so there are some smoke and mirrors here. there are ways in which to get things into a package to make a budget mutual. and just to keep in mind if things go into reconciliation and to challenge budgetary issue because it's violating the rules. do a point of order and that's 60 votes. yes, 51 is the final threshold for passage of reconciliation. it would have to pass all these 60-vote thresholds that might be lobbed against the reconciliation, provisions of the bills. >> i think -- oh, go ahead.

>> i was just going to say in 2015 they did pass a repeal of aca through a congressional resolution -- >> reconciliation program. >> yeah, but it was vetoed by obama. but it did actually go to the parliamentarian a couple times and they had to rework how some of it was restructured in order to sort of make it to protect it from these points of order. i would go back to what senate republicans laid out in 2015. what that was back 911, it repealed the employer mandate, it repealed two taxes in the health care law, also i believe it ended rolling back the medicaid expansion. and that kind of package -- that's not the entire health care law, obviously. but enough republicans felt that it gutted enough of the health care law to be sufficient to them and it has to be in the parliamentarian. and also defunded planned parenthood. that's kind of like how -- what we're going to start with in terms of how we guess they're going to repeal are those kind of core tenants of that. >> i remember one tiny detail from that was that in getting rid of the mandate, they left it

in, but says at zero. that was how it made it through -- >> they got rid of the penalties. the taxes. they went along for violating. >> but in order to get it through the hoops, i think that was what they did. at least at one point. >> that's why the senate parliamentarian is one of the most powerful people. it's important to point how that the parliamentarian is a political component. and so, they're usually not going to put them in such a dire situation that they have a face-off with the parliamentarian and the majority that sits in there. will it work, will this work? >> worrying about policy and governing. members of congress are single minded seekers of reelection. it is -- we never really separate them.

right? the politics and the policy. they're just like they're intertwined. and so yes, govern and think about reelection. reelection it's the first thing you bump into every single morning, everything is seen through a prism of how is going going affect me and the ability to get reelected? and keep in mind, they make up policy goals. i want to work on health care. i want to work on immigration reform, but you have to get reelected in order to do that. so in the house, particularly prierms within six months they're worried about filing and whether people will run against them. there's no more honeymoon. even in the senate.

little more luxurious time, but even though, they're raising money from scaring off people from running against them. >> it's interesting, congressman rick noland was reelected and his previous stint in congress had been 30 years ago i think. and so it was a really interesting talking to him when he came back to political after three decades and what he said the biggest doimpbs him was that people just had to spend so much more time fundraising now and less time legislating. and i will say that they have put out the house calendar for next year and they are supposed to be in d.c. for more days. so maybe on the margins that affects something, but i think you're right that politics and reelection fights are just a constant. the one thing in the context of this year, this year congress was in session for the fewest numbers of days in my memory and part of that was they stacked the political conventions before their august break which was -- which sort of departing from the last few cycles. so you have the seven-week long

break in the summer. and then, you know, just the political calendar itself has been extended. people are always running for re-election, but i think we saw an extreme version of politics just completely subsuming the policy agenda and policy world last year. and these odd-numbered years are a little bit better for policy reporters. you do get a chance to get to know people a little better and get to know the issues a little better before the next political cycle starts to take over. >> and maybe the fact that we have single control which makes these policy fights richer. because something could potentially happen, increases the potential, at least. >> well, and one other thing to keep in mind, one thing that does threaten to shorten the policy calendar a little bit is

right now, you know, it looks like from all accounts, you know, congress is going to drive to lee this week and wraup the lame duck. it'll be one of the -- it'll be -- in terms of previous lame ducks, a little less productive. they're going to probably, you know, in the next day or two, three, pass a continuing resolution to fund the government just into probably late march or may. that may seem like oh just give the administration a chance to get they're seeing things, that tends to push everything else that you might have had an on agenda starting to january to the side. we'd also have all the nominees for the cabinet. supreme court nomination. the debt limit has to be addressed in march. so it should be in more policy-oriented year, but at the same time it's all the sudden we're talking about may as the time when this slate will be clear. so keep that in mind in terms of booking say vacations or

something like that. yes. >> i have a question i think primarily for them about immigration. and it seems like the administration was going to come in and focus primarily on register, growth and they won't get to the security or convert it until later on in the year. is that an assessment you would agree were or to -- [ inaudible ] >> question is how deeply, how quickly and how deeply will they get into substantive issues on immigration coming in? >> it's hard to dell right now, and i do think just having talked to a couple of people right now the transition is so focussed on getting the personnel appointments and kind of getting the cabinet nominees vetted announced or chosen announced that they haven't thought through the policy part of things. but i don't know what plan trump will send to the hill if you could sense just the border law plan or a broader plan that that? i think it'll be interesting to happen -- because of what -- a border only will not pass congress. democrats won't allow it. i mean, there'll be republicans

who to put other things on there. other issues that have to be addressed including what happens with the obama's 2012 executive action. so there's just -- it's never going to be like a singular kind of piece that comes out. >> i think -- just to add on to that. i think we covered immigration earlier, there was always this traditional calculous that republicans got the border and democrats got path to kroips and h 1 b's and now the question is, does that calculous still hold? i mean, i agree that i don't think a border doesn't pass the senate. doesn't mean they won't try. and could that put pressure on democrats? i guess just do the rules that have traditionally bound what makes on to an immigration package, have they changed? >> and i think the problem with kind of gauging trump's plan is

that beyond just wanting to build some sort of barrier, he's so inconsistent on so many other parts. i cannot tell you -- and i follow this stuff. i cannot tell you what his latest stance on visas are. i am just utterly perplexed because it's all the things he said during the campaign, during the debates and what it says on his campaign website. who his veezers are on what they believe on visas. so, you know, and you've seen how trump has also backed off from saying, you know, everyone must go versus the 60 minutes interview after elected saying two to three, we'll focus on the criminal aliens first. so that's the other difficult part. like i'm not -- just because trump has been such an unorthodoxed nominee, it'd be very hard to see -- it's hard to kind of look at the crystal ball right now and see what kind of a plan he'll push and that's why his cabinet

nominee will be so critical. we've seen jeff sessions as aj, how he stands on immigration and the main agency, as the ag, will he have considerable powers ove. that's why we'll be watching who trump picks as his homeland security secretary. will it be someone like kovak? he's been very hard line. that will set the direction for where trump wants to go. >> i think we have time for one more question. >> i would love to know in terms of your own reporting, using alerts you receive or anything, as we're starting out. >> the question is for specific tips, how do you start and end your day? >> i do this and i know sunlynn

does this, we walk around the capital, we're like professional stalkers. we just walk around and try to bump into lawmakers. we both go to votes often because that's a great place to catch lawmakers and chitchat with aides. one good piece of advice someone gave me was not to stand in one spot too long. and i think about this all the time, i'll have been in one spot and i'll say, i should walk around. so you turn the corner and there's a scrum of reporters talking to a lawmaker that i didn't even know about. so that's what's nice, you have your own ideas but you're in a place with other reporters and other lawmakers, someone else is asking a better question, oh, i should write about that. i would say just keep on walking. and the capitol is a really

beautiful place to walk around. so it could be worse. >> i think that's really an important point, especially for those of you who want to cover congress or cover a policy issue that requires you to be on capitol hill for a certain extent. i'm obviously biased and christine i'm sure feels the same way. congress is by far the best beat in washington. the white house is not the best beat. covering the courts is not the best beat. covering the agencies is not -- it's covering congress. it's primarily because -- i mean, obviously you have 535, you know, animated crazy characters with their own agendas and stories and their own ambitions. but also it's just the access that you get to principals is just unparalleled. i can be hanging around on the ohio clock corridor which is the second floor of the senate -- second floor of the capitol on the senate side right outside the senate chamber, and i could be hanging out there because i

have nothing else to do, i turn the corner and catch harry reid going into his office, oh, leader reid, i have a question for you, and he'll make news that way. very few other beats in washington, maybe no other, do you get access to principals like that. >> i'm always encouraging our beat reporters to come up and talk to lawmakers. if you're covering health care, it's a great place to tomorrow up and spend a tuesday. >> they don't call it more aank oracle one for nothing. >> thank you very much, we appreciate your time. thank you again to the national press foundation. [ applause ] tonight on american history tv, programs from the emerging civil war blogs conference on great attacks of the conflict,

including the army of tennessee's assault at franklin, the federal breakthrough at petersburg, virginia, and a separate program on four influential civil war wives. american history tv begins tonight at 8:00 on c-span3. remarks now from congressional reporters and political scholars as they provide a preview of the 115th congress and some of the challenges of covering congress. also republican plans for immigration reform, repealing the nation's health care law and filling vacancies on the supreme court. okay, we're going to get going for our next panel here. now we're transitioning to the other end of pennsylvania avenue to talk about the executive authority that's vested in the oval office and the white house

and what president-elect trump, then president trump, will be able to do with the power of the presidency, with regulatory power, with executive authority of power, with memorandum power, which is something gregory will talk about. we have four experts and reporters here. susan dudley is director of the regulatory studies center at george washington university. tom hamburger is national correspondent for the "washington post." gregory korte is a white house correspondent for "usa today," and tim mak is a senior correspondent for "the daily beast." each one of them will give kind of a five-minute or less kind of big-picture overview of kind of one of the key issues that they see around this issue when the new president comes into power. then i'll have a handful of questions, but i'm hoping that we'll have a lot of questions from the audience. so, this will -- this session goes until 3:20. the overview comments will be

going on for a little bit. i'll ask questions and we'll have time for questions from the audience. susan dudley, if you could get started for us. big picture, what do you expect to happen come swearing-in day? >> thank you, chris. and thanks for inviting me. i'm going to start by taking issue with what sun ming said at the end of the last one, which is that the congress is the most exciting, is the best beat in town. it is not! it is the executive branch. and that's because a lot of policy really does take place, a lot of the action is in the executive branch. and that's partly because congress passes sweeping laws that delegate authority to agencies. so that means agencies like the department of labor or the environmental protection agency. and this means that even without the support of congress, presidents can achieve their policy goals through regulation. so, for example, president obama

issued far-reaching regulations related to climate change, energy, workplace. president bush before him did related to homeland security and other areas. and president-elect trump has said he is coming to washington with a plan to make big cuts in regulation. so, they can do a lot through this regulatory authority. in fact, president-elect trump has said that for every one new regulation, two old regulations are going to have to be eliminated. and tom was just saying to me that i'm talking to the media a lot lately, and that's because i keep getting this question -- can he do that? so, that's what i thought i would talk to you about in my five minutes is what are the ways that president-elect trump can remove regulations? so, unlike executive orders, which presidents can eliminate with a stroke of a pen -- a new president can write one, then they can also repeal them --

regulations, there is more of a process. and i'm going to lay out five different ways, depending on the circumstances. so, we'll start with midnight regulations. you may not know it, but we are in what is known as the midnight period. and going back to the '40s and probably earlier, we see a big uptick in regulatory activity at the end of an administration. so this administration is working hard to issue regulations before january 20th, midnight. meanwhile, on january 20th, a new team will come in and they will immediately try to start pulling those regulations back. there will be some regulations that don't quite make it to the finish line in part because the federal register where they have to be published tends to get backed up at the end. for those regulations, i'm going make a prediction, and it's my only prediction, and that is that president trump's chief of

staff, one of the very first things that he will do on the afternoon of january 20th is send a memo to all the executive branch agencies saying stop the presses, don't send any new regulations to the federal register, and if there are some there that haven't been published yet, pull them back. and i can make that prediction because each of the chiefs of staff have done that on inauguration day. that's the first one. the second is for regulations that have been issued over the last seven or eight months, so since about the end of may. using simple majorities in both houses of congress, congress can pass a resolution disapproving those regulations. we heard sara binder on the last panel say they need 60 votes. they talked a lot about the 60 votes. this they don't. they only need a simple majority in the senate. now, if that resolution of disapproval were to land on president obama's desk, he would veto it because it's his own

regulations. in fact, he did veto five such resolutions over the last few years. but when that lands on president trump's desk, he will sign it and that resolution will repeal that regulation. so, that's the second way, using the congressional review act. but i think christina mentioned in passing on the last panel. then the third way is that there are several -- for controversial regulations, there is litigation ongoing. and how the new justice department handles that litigation, how it defends that litigation will definitely affect the outcome. especially since -- there are several courts lately, including the supreme court, have shown some sympathy to the argument that the executive branch has been overreaching its constitutional authority and not just in this administration but in previous administrations as well.

so, for example, there was a department of labor overtime rule that was stayed, put on hold just before thanksgiving. epa's clean power plan and the epa and the corps of engineers' waters of the united states rule, are all rules that are on hold while they work their way through the courts. and that's something that the next administration will have to deal with. related to that, one of the reasons, for all that i just mentioned, one of the grounds for challenging them is that had their far-reaching exercise -- they're exercising control over matters that constitutionally are the purview of the states. so that brings the states into the equation. so i think they might -- we might see them playing an important role in the trump administration with respect to regulation, especially because the republican platform said that it proposed to shift responsibility for environmental

regulation from the federal bureaucracy to the states. so now we'll come to my final way you can remove regulation, and that is the standard way, to modify or overturn a regulation that didn't fit into any of those other categories, the agencies would have to go through the same notice and comment rulemaking process that they go through to put a regulation in place in the first place. and that means doing a regulatory impact analysis, the legal justification, the economic, the scientific. so do that analysis, then put out for public comment a regulation with that background. when you get that comment, response to the comment. so you might need to change the regulation as a result. there's also interagency review involved in that, and that process takes at least a year. so, and then at the end of that process, you have a new regulation that either modifies or eliminates the old one, but you've got two dockets now.

you have the old docket saying this is why this regulation was important, and the new docket that says we should overturn it, and the courts are bound -- that is bound to be litigated. so, the final resolution of those, removal of those rules, i think, could take years. and i'll stop there. >> so, i think i'll go to gregory next and just a bit of information. gregory is the second of our two former paul millers on the panel today. gregory is white house correspondent at "usa today" washington bureau and he's written quite a bit about executive authority as practiced by president obama, including some kind of twists on how he practiced that. so i was hoping you could give me an overview of how you see things going. >> great. thanks for having me. i think this is a great subject for a panel and i think it's timely, and i think it's also extraordinary, because usually at this point in the transition, we'd be talking about the president's legislative agenda more than anything else, the traditional first 100 days is a first 100 legislative days. and after all, trump does have

also a mandate from the senate and the house, both being in republican hands. he doesn't have a supermajority in the senate, but he does have a republican congress. so a lot he would want to accomplish as far as his positive agenda he can do by legislation, which is obviously much more preferable than executive action because executive action can always be rescinded by a future president. so, there is reason to think that president trump might not have to result early on to a lot of executive authority except for some of the issues that susan raised. there's sort of this pent-up demand from republicans to just undo everything that president obama did. some of that's going to take an act of congress. some of that can be done by executive action. and president-elect trump, when he was candidate trump, talked -- one of the lines in his stump speeches was that he wanted to rescind all of the unconstitutional executive orders and presidential memoranda that were signed by

president obama. i think there's two things interesting about that formulation. one is, what's unconstitutional? clearly, there are some executive actions president obama has taken that have been, provisions of them have been struck down in the courts. i'm thinking of some provisions of his immigration actions, his clean power plan, and those are going to make their way through the courts. the other thing that trump said was he added presidential memoranda to that formulation. and so, it's a recognition -- i think actually a lot of people in congress are relatively new to this realization, that not all executive authority comes to an executive order. so i wanted to kind of maybe talk a little bit about some of the vehicles for executive action, some of the terminology so you know sort of what they are and how to look for them in the first days of a trump administration. the first is an executive order.

that's i think what we most think of and know about when we talk about executive authority. they're numbered up to the 13,000s since they started counting these. they instruct the executive branch to do something. they're binding. they have the force of law, but only on the executive branch. and they remain in effect until a future president rescinds them. most executive orders go on for years or decades without ever being rescinded by a future president. it's only a really small subset that end up being controversial, but they can do everything from, you know, set broad policy on federal contracting, antidiscrimination in the federal government, down to, there was an executive order earlier this year that allowed the peace corps to change its logo. and the only reason why president obama had to sign that executive order is because president carter had signed an executive order saying that the peace corps can't change its logo without the approval of the president of the united states.

so, that's one important thing to know about executive orders. if you're going to rescind an executive order, you have to do it by executive order. these are all published in the federal register and you can see what they are. there is a second kind called the presidential memorandum that i frankly discovered early on in covering the white house, because at the time there was this big debate about had president obama used executive action more than his predecessors. and if you count up the number of executive orders, he had not. he actually was relatively restrained in executive orders, but his use of presidential memo had gone through the roof, a historically high level of presidential memoranda. presidential memoranda have the same force and effect as an executive order. as a matter of fact, all of these things, no matter what you call them, an order from the president is an order from the president. none of these are prescribed in the constitution. they're just different terms of art for these. presidential memoranda, though, are not numbered. sometimes they're published in the federal register, sometimes

they're not, and if they're published in the federal register, that gives them more weight, and they tend to be more regulatory. i would imagine, for example, you know, susan talked about this, regulation-deregulation idea that trump has to rescind two regulations for every new regulation. i would expect that that direction would come in the early days of the trump presidency in the form of a presidential memorandum. they tend to start regulatory actions. real quick, there's also presidential policy directives. those are executive orders but in the national securities sphere. there have been 31 or 32 of those under president obama. half of them are secret. we don't know what they say. the only reason we know there are 32 of them is because they're numbered and we're up to ppd-32. so, every once in a while, they will have skipped a bunch of numbers, so we know he must have issued some secret ppds at some point but we don't know what they are. and then there's also sort of the humble proclamation, which usually sort of a ceremonial kind of thing but can have power. president george w. bush launched the war on terror with a proclamation.

so, those are important to look out for as well and those are also published in the federal register. there's a whole set of these that sort of go back and forth from one administration to the other. the mexico city policy is one that's sort of famous. there are a whole bunch of policies that -- there's a set of executive actions that each new president comes in and rescinds some from the previous generation, then goes back to the old. in this case, it will be the republican playbook of executive orders and presidential memoranda and certain executive actions that had been in effect during previous republican administrations. so with that, the only thought i think i wanted to leave with you is that i keep thinking of this famous line, celina zito in "the atlantic" coined it a few months ago and it's been often repeated, that the press always took donald trump literally but not seriously, but trump voters took him seriously but not literally.

and so, i think as trump transitions from being a candidate now to president-elect to the future president, i think it's incumbent upon us, frankly, as journalists, to cover him both seriously and literally. and i think you do that by paying as much attention to what he does through executive actions as to what he says in a tweet. i think we end up chasing our tails on some of these tweets sometimes. he often sends out mixed messages, but when he takes executive action, that will have the force of law and we ought to take it literally because he will mean what he says in these executive actions, so they're very important i think for us to keep an eye on. >> thank you. tim mak from the daily beast, you wrote an article earlier this year -- or i'm sorry, just a few weeks ago -- "obama's imperial presidency is now trump's." i was hoping you could maybe give me a sense of, you know what you see coming and what was the thrust of that article there? >> sure. so, i cover national security mostly from a congressional

perspective, not at the white house. but what you find out over and over again is you keep bumping into executive authority, what the white house is doing that trumps basically what congress is doing. so, i wrote an article about the kinds of authorities that the white house, the obama white house will soon be transferring to the trump white house. all sorts of expansions of power in the national security space, so we're talking things like the authority to kill an american citizen that's overseas without a trial. that happened during the obama administration. we're talking about secret courts on wiretapping. that happened under the obama administration. we're talking about waging war overseas without congressional authorization. this is happening right now with the obama administration relying on the al qaeda authorization for the use of military force, not a new one that authorizes them to fight a war against isis.

so, we have all sorts of expansion over the last eight years. not much of that has been -- it hasn't been covered or pointed to by all that many sources. and i think we'll start to see a lot more coverage about the same authorities being used under a trump administration, with the exception of the aclu and, you know, certain news outlets, the vast majority of the press has not sounded an alarm on some of the expansion on national security issues that have happened under the obama administration. the obama administration and the white house in general, the executive has enormous power over the issue of national security, and in many ways, it's been ceded to them by congress. congress has chosen not to pass an authorization of the use of military force to declare war. it could have, but it's not been able to reach an agreement on how long that will be, who would be targeted in such a war, the

actors at play, whether there are geographical limits on where that war can be waged. so right now, i think a lot of people are of the belief that war against al qaeda and related terrorist groups to include isis, even though isis wasn't around in 2001, to include isis, can be fought anywhere around the world at anytime using lethal means. which is not spelled out in the letter of the law. so, i guess the point is to say the obama administration has set all these massive precedents that will now be used, expanded even further by a new administration. other powers that the white house has over national security include things like security clearances and top-secret documents. creating a top-secret document is an extension of the executive's power over hiding information from the public that

they believe to be necessary to be hidden for the purposes of national security. so, i'll give you a couple examples. i did a story a couple weeks ago on steve bannon, who under normal circumstances, if you put him through a security background check and he was working at dhs or something like that, he would have a very hard time getting a security clearance. why? because he has associations with far right groups in europe, because he has a charge of domestic abuse from a decade, decade and a half ago. this is a man who under normal circumstances would find it very difficult to work right next to the president, but he has an ace in the hole. at the end of the day, if the fbi and doj say this guy's not qualified, he's not -- you can't have a security clearance, he doesn't pass our minimum standard requirement, the president of the united states can just say i'm going to override that and i'm going to give that to him.

because what does it mean for something to be top-secret? it's an extension of the white house's belief that that document should not be shown to the public because it would endanger americans' lives and american interests. so, that's like another example of how powerful the white house is on national security issues. another way that the white house can use that power is to mix top-secret information with unclassified information and store that in a place where it's very difficult to get. so, i have a story today that's about documents related to the iran nuclear deal. so, we're talking letters between foreign ministers, we're talking assessments of the iranian nuclear research and development program, we're talking about the details behind a $1.7 billion cash payment to iran in exchange for hostages being released, things like that.

all these documents are in the public interest and they're unclassified, but what's happened is the obama administration has provided them to congress mixed in with top-secret documents and held in a vault on capitol hill in a special location on capitol hill called the scif, which is for sensitive compartmentalized information. and because it's in there, you can't just walk out with documents from that, from the scif. the public can't see classified information that's in the public interest to know. so, that's another way that the white house and the presidency can use its power arguably for good, arguably for bad, on the issue of transparency here at these documents, i would argue for bad. i guess the bottom line of what i'm trying to say is, over the past eight years, we've seen a massive increase in what the white house believes that it can do legally.

and oftentimes, it uses its lawyers to interpret a law in a new way that expands its power. and we should expect and cover and investigate all of the ways over the next four years how this white house is likely to do the same. >> thank you. finally we have tom hamburger, a fabulous investigative reporter for the "washington post" whose job has been birddogging the trump financial empire's finances around the world. and tom, you were telling me that the scope of that empire will cause us to kind of re-examine what we actually think of the power that he might be using in the white house. i mean, can you maybe explain that a bit? >> yes, chris. thanks so much, and thanks for inviting me to be here, and great to be here with this great panel and with all of you. i attended paul miller and press foundation events like this throughout my career. i've mostly covered money in politics, but as part of that,

i've been assigned to cover the transitions of presidents going back to ronald reagan's first term. when i first got to town, jimmy carter was the president. and i have to tell you that this transition strikes me as different than any we have covered before. and i think it creates a special role and opportunity for journalists, in part because in addition to the legal mechanisms that greg was talking about -- memoranda, executive orders, the executive orders and decisions that will move through the omb's regulatory apparatus and that are wonderfully visible to the press -- there is now something else going on during this transition that we've not seen before. and chris mentioned it a moment ago. and that's the arrival in town of a president-elect and his transition team, a president-elect who is approaching the presidency and some of the traditions of the

presidency, not just the powers granted in the constitution and by statute and the traditions of executive orders but is also approaching the traditions and the canon of this moment of transfer of power differently from other presidents. part of this comes because we have a president unlike we've had before, who is not just a businessman -- we have had presidents who have been in business, of course, and our government thrives, and it was originally meant to be a sort of, this is a citizens' democracy -- but this particular president has business holdings all over the world. he has shown during the transition a willingness to discuss, if not pursue, some of those business interests during the transition. it's an extraordinary and different place of power for a president. donald trump has said that he'll

have an announcement on december 15 where he'll explain how he is separating himself from his extraordinary business, unlike that of any other president that we've had that has so many entanglements with foreign businesses and also, i would argue, foreign governments. we saw just in the last couple of days a different use of transition power than we have seen before, not entirely unprecedented, but quite extraordinary, where the president-elect used his nascent executive power to persuade a private company not to expand as it had intended in mexico. so, let me just get briefly to the extraordinary challenge that i think we face. if we have a president who is going to ignore to a certain

extent or not abide by some of the traditions, and by the traditions i was talking about -- when jimmy carter came to town in 1976, stuart ic icenstat, who is one of your those who led the tradition, his domestic policy chief, was in charge of assuring that the president sold any financial interests or moved into a blind trust any financial interests which might intersect with the things that gregory was just describing that an incoming president is likely to do. so, he has -- as many of you know, jimmy carter was in the peanut business -- he moved his holdings in a peanut warehouse into a blind trust that was administered by a family attorney. he went further than that. eizenstat insisted -- actually, it was carter who insisted, but they wrote an agreement -- jimmy carter would not engage in discussion of peanut policy while he was president. and because one of his most staunch backers and most important constituents as

governor of georgia had been the coca-cola company, and because the federal issue which most affected coke was sugar policy, he said, he assigned eizenstat, his domestic policy chief, and others to deal with sugar business and said i'm not going to touch it. this is not an isolated case. lyndon johnson moved the radio stations that were in his wife's name into a blind trust. george w. bush and george h.w. bush also took extraordinary pains to assure the public that their actions would be in the public interests and there will be no infringement on private interests or private holdings. so that's not happening in this administration, at least not so far. maybe we'll get a different announcement on december 15. but my thought would be that we have a president-elect who's already beginning to use executive powers in some unorthodox ways. the accountability for some of

these things are not -- because it's a matter of tradition, president-elect trump has said correctly that the laws of conflict of interest and the gift statutes don't govern the president, so in fact, he can do what he wants. what we're relying on is a very thin line here of presidential canon and tradition. i'm going back to the beginning of the republic. if it is breached -- and i am not saying it will be, because we don't know what will be announced on the 15th -- but my thought has been that we have a special obligation as journalists to try to track the sort of extraordinary behavior from the executive branch of a chief executive unlike any we've seen before. >> thanks, tom. let me ask a quick follow-up to tom. i have a few questions here, but i want questions from you, so when you're ready, raise your hands and i'll start calling on you. but tom, could you give me a brief sense of -- i mean, what is the scope of his empire around the world? and then a secondary question

is, even if some conflict of interest or some rules kind of constrained what he can do in the u.s., is there any notion that what's going on with his business holdings overseas will be kind of totally immune to those kind of restraints? >> so, the business holdings are vast. we don't understand them entirely. one of the things i'd refer you all to, because i think this is going to be one of our jobs, is something i know my panelists know very well, the office of presidential ethics disclosure form, because he's not bound by conflict of interest or gift rules, nor is the vice president, but he is bound by the transparency requirements. donald trump has issued, i think this is 96 pages of, collated, very fine print. you'll need glasses, my magnifying glasses. and what you'll find in here are

560 llcs, private partnerships, many of them registered in delaware, some registered overseas, very difficult to penetrate. but some of them give us a sense of where the trump holdings lie. so we see about 20 countries listed here. sometimes it will just say "djt llc" and then in parens, "saudi." we don't know much about this particular llc, but we know there is at least some expressed trump interest in doing some kind of business in saudi arabia. so we have these vast holdings, and they extend to across sort of the range of human activities in some ways, since it's donald trump, some of the most obvious and maybe the most consistent overseas are golf courses. and there are 18 trump golf courses around the world. one of them came into the

news -- chris, and as everyone will recall -- recently because donald trump is concerned about the view from his golf course, from some of the wonderful links that they developed in scotland on one of his courses, he's concerned that the view will be marred by a british plan to erect a windmill farm off the north sea coast. and so, when he met post election with nigel farrage, who is the head of the up-and-coming ukip party in the british parliament, he mentioned his distaste for windmills. so, here is a president, at least in the eyes of some people, asserting his personal and pecuniary interests in his first discussion with an overseas official. so, i mentioned golf courses. then of course there are hotels around the world. most of donald trump's hotels are now branded. he doesn't own many of them

anymore. most are not quite franchises, but trump sells his name and then he insists on certain quality standards. but there is a very, what we think, the few agreements we've looked at, a profound economic stake in these hotels because not only does the trump organization receive up-front fees for use of the name, but often we've been able to look at a couple of the licensing agreements. he also gets a percentage of each sale. in some cases, the trump organization also manages the hotel, and so, there are percentages and income from gift shops and other things. because -- and let's see, the last thing on the list of course are the real estate, the towers that are being built around the world. there are towers that were discussed, again, during the transition being built in india.

there are two trump towers that are now under construction and half a dozen others that are under discussion. and as all of us know from our own experiences with real estate, zoning and so forth in this country, building a skyscraper is in part a government enterprise. because of the permitting that's required, environmental tests and so forth. there is a huge role for government. so the question is -- and this is the argument that the press has a role to play, is it appropriate for a president to engage and pursue personal interests while in office? and a related question, if these things aren't fully disclosed, how do we know about them? there's a sort of watchdog role that i'd argue anyway is sort of upon us in a way that we haven't faced as other administrations have come into office. >> so if i could ask susan a question then i'll turn it to

you all. susan, you talked -- you mentioned the congressional review act. i was hoping you could give me a little bit more -- a little more background on that. this is something that came about during the gingrich house but it's only been used i think one time before. how come it hasn't been used before? and do we have a sense of how many -- how do they count the scope of it? the scope of days? do we have a sense of how many obama-era regulations could be a part of it? could get wrapped into it. >> okay, so, yes. the congressional review act was a bill passed in 1996 and it gives congress 60 legislative days or session days to review after a regulation is published to send a resolution of disapproval to the president but that 60 days, as you all know, is -- 60 legislative days turns into a lot more when you count the time at home and weekends, et cetera. so the crs has estimated that

it's around may 30 that any regulation issued since may 30 would be subject to disapproval by congress and -- i should back up. so the reason -- so any rule issued after that point that doesn't get the full 60 days in this congress the clock starts over again in the next congress. so 50 days in the next congress the clock starts over again so that means the new congress has another seven months or so to decide which of these regulations to vote to disapprove. how many are there? likely we're talking hundreds. maybe not -- at least over 100. over -- probably over 200. over 200 regulations would be subject to disapproval. how many congress would overturn, it's going to take

time to do this. even though they're expedited procedures and the senate only needs a simple majority, it still could take 10 hours per regulation so i don't -- certainly i don't think anywhere close to all the regulations, probably less than a dozen. and then i keep remembering your questions, chris. and his other question was, it happened once, why haven't we seen it more so the one time it happened was very similar circumstances to what we are now -- it was the ergonomics regulation published at the very end of the clinton administration and so the new congress then was able to take a look at it. they sent a resolution of disapproval, it landed on george w. bush's desk and he signed it. the reason i think we didn't see it being used in the transition from bush 43 to obama, was that any rule disapproved using this procedure, the agency cannot issue anything

substantially the same. so it's a ledge hammer. it isn't something -- i imagine the obama administration -- and i was involved in that midnight period, i was part of the team pushing things out the door, although, trust me, i was trying not to push them out the door. but i suspect that the regulations that were issued at the end of the bush administration, the obama team would like to have tweaked and modified but not eliminated so they could write something else. so i suspect that's why it's only been used once. >> so let's start with katie. >> i have a lot of reading to do on these processes. my question is really -- is there one avenue -- i don't know, take the regulation for clean water that you get npds permits or something. is that type of regulation -- is there really only one legislative path for it to be repealed or can a regulation go

through any of the five that you outlined and then the general public -- what would be their recourse? do you envision a situation in which people will question whether that was the appropriate channel to undo that regulation and what do they do to voice that? does that make sense? >> yes, four of the five options that i mentioned apply in more limited circumstances. so i think these are water discharge regulations under the clean water act. there might be one that would be in this window that could be overturned by congress. but most of them will be things in place that the epa would have to go through notice and comment rule making. there is a lot of opportunity for the public to get involved there. and if agencies don't take that public comment into account in the final regulation, courts

can overturn it, call it arbitrary and capricious. so the public record on regulations is -- is important and tom talked about transparency, there is transparency in the rule making process and the public has an opportunity to weigh in before the decision is final. >> so follow up to that, is this where the chevron doctrine will come into play, that they'll want to undo that quickly in order to ease the path for undoing legislation?. >> so chevron, it probably wouldn't play that well. so chevron, it's a court decision that said that when things are complicated there are several steps to it, but the bottom line is courts tend to defer to agencies' interpretation of their own legislation. so chevron could well get involved if there were litigation over the two -- say trump chose to overturn one of the -- or write a new

regulation which will take more than a year to change that regulation. courts will look at that and it will be complicated because which docket do you defer to because they're both done by the agency. >> okay. so we got quite a few questions here. we'll go to you first, you second, then i'll go over to this side of the room. and if you have -- if your question is directed at one of the four panelists, direct it specifically or just generally address it. i need to restate the question, so i'll get back in the habit of doing that. you can go here. >> my question is, can you elaborate a bit more that you mentioned the president-elect will have this press conference on the 15th. i assume he will state what he stated before, that he's going to turn control of his businesses over to his children, but also talk to us about potential conflict of

interest there because we've already seen that gray area and blurred line. today ivanka trump sat down with al gore, she was at the meeting with the japanese prime minister, yet his kids are running the business. what type of conflict of interest that could present and, b, is there anything to hold them to account or is this just going to be a murky gray area for the next four years? >> so briefly restating, the question is about what sort of conflict of interest will be inherited if he's turning his business over to his kids, is there any kind of way to work around that. tom? >> well, all of this is the sort of the new world that we're in. in addition to the conversation you mentioned, ivanka trump was on the line while donald trump talked with the president of argentina where they announced two days after the conversation that a long-stalled trump tour tower in buenos heiress is moving ahead.

ivanka trump was on the line with the japanese prime minister as well. what role ivanka trump and her husband jared will play and eric trump and donald jr. will play in an administration and advising donald trump and so forth is a really big question. we don't really have the answers to it. to some ethics lawyers, the sort of guiding principle goes back to the -- is the now-famous clause in the constitution with a funny name, the emolument clause which prohibits the president from accepting gifts and emoluments, favors, from a foreign leader, so if the -- if argentina's president was to give a green light to a long-stalled tower for the trump family, for which the president or his children would benefit, is that an emolument?

there are some ethics lawyers from both across the ideological perspective who think, yes, there is a constitutional issue here and it may be while the president is not bound by our traditional conflict of interest or gift prohibitions, he obviously is bound by the constitution and that could set up a constitutional crisis at some point. remember, though, that the -- ways in which you might raise those constitutional questions are limited and so those are the -- oh, there are two things i should mention. there's the emoluments clause which provides a very specific prohibition on certain activities by the chief executive, and then there's

also, congress a few years ago, 2010, 2009, passed the stock act, which is focussed on congress, it requires the president and vice president be covered by this law. it doesn't specifically restrict, i don't think they're covered by the conflict of interest portions of it but they are required to report transactions involving quits to this -- again the office of government ethics, oge.gov within 45 days of any transaction. and so there will be one additional area of disclosure and an opportunity to watch these transactions and, chris, i neglected to mention, the stock portfolio of the trump organization and of donald trump is not insignificant. tens of millions of dollars in stocks, some of them in

industries that could be affected by some of the regulations and executive orders we were talking about today. >> my name is chris washington johnson with the "washington blade." i think a lot of our readers are concerned about the rollback of president obama's executive actions that protect minority groups. this question is for professor dudley. the first of these is the daca executive action for those who have the right to be under the dream act and the second is the executive order president obama signed which prohibits discrimination against lgbt people and the third is a broader set of initiatives relating to civil rights law that prohibited sex discrimination to apply to lgbt people. can you talk to the ease with which congress could undo those two things and the last two how easy would it be for them to be compromised by inserting a religious exemption?

>> basically how easily could president trump undo some civil rights and lgbt protections? >> and greg might weigh in on this, too, for the executive orders he can rescind them as quickly -- yeah, he can rescind them by signing something. by signing. now, the regulations -- and some of those you're talking about are regulations that have been issued by the department of labor. those will go through that longer process we talked about did you want to add more? >> i think that's it. ted cruz had a line during his campaign that you live by the pen, you die by the pen. and executive actions can be rescinded by a future president. in this case the executive orders you talked about of one dealing with non-discrimination against lgbt people and federal contracting. that's something that could be rescinded.

now, i'm not going to presume that trump is going to do any of it. he said some things during the campaign that he loves the lgbt people and he loves the hispanic people. who knows what exactly he's going to do. but one thing that president obama, i think, has done is raised the bar on these kinds of things. so with many of these executive orders, every time a president takes one of these they set a new status quo. there's an example of this and the -- in the transition from president clinton to president bush where president clinton in his midnight era passed this arsenic rule and -- dramatically lowered the amount of arsenic allowable in the water and bush's new epa chief came in and said there's no science behind that, that's not the right level. we'll rescind that. it got perceived publicly not as

going back to the status quo but that bush was trying to increase the amount of arsenic allowable in the drinking water even though the original regulation hadn't been implemented yet. so the only protection i think that you have there is that there will be -- these things have to be done conspicuously so if president trump signs such an executive order, it will be very clear what he's doing and that he will be changing the new status quo and there's a political cost to that that's not insignificant. but can he do it? absolutely. >> throughout the campaign, we didn't really have the tendency to go into great detail on how he was going to accomplish these things and didn't seem to care for some of the more day to day operations in the presidency.

do you think when he becomes president, he's going to go into the more fine level or stay with the broader themes like immigration he talked about during the campaign. to whoever wants to answer it. >> i think the only gauge that we have is based on his career as a businessman. so has he been a detailed-oriented businessman? from the reporting out there, he can very much micromanage issues but it seems to happen sporadically and without -- without a really discernible pattern. so he'll -- if i had to make a guess he'll focus on the big things, and then something -- something may set him off. maybe he'll still be up at 5:30 watching a fox news segment about burning the flag and it will be the most important thing

to him that morning. we've seen that happen already, there wasn't an ongoing national conversation about flag burning until one morning the president-elect tweeted about it. so my prediction would be probably big themes but sometimes deep micromanaging on issues that we hadn't thought about. >> let's go to ben and then back to you. >> i think this is for anyone. when tim was talking, obviously president obama -- the obama administration has really brought more power to the presidency specifically in national security as tim was talking about. are there any indications that the current administration is trying to shrink things down a little bit ahead of the new administration or do you think they feel comfortable with the power that they've ceded or somewhere in between? >> so basically, is the current administration, the outgoing administration, are they comfortable with where things

are, are they trying to rein in some of the authority before the new guy comes in? tim? or whoever? >> i think there's a philosophical way to look at that ideologically and then there's a legal authority perspective. so during the course of the campaign the trump campaign has said that it wants to -- in some ways move away from nato. it wants to renegotiate trade agreements. it wants to reduce the role that americans are playing in wars overseas. so from a philosophical perspective and an ideological perspective you might argue they're going to draw back a little bit. from a legal perspective, the president's authority has been increasing for years and years and years. i'm not sure if president-elect trump has thought very much about the need for a need for a new authorization of military force.

i'm not sure it's crossed his head. i'm sure it's crossed hillary clinton's head, she's talked about it. it was a major theme of senator tim kaine's senate career. so i know they've thought about it but i've never heard president-elect trump say the presidency needs to be more constrained, that congress needs to be more involved in the conduct of war and military action. so there's no reason to think that from a legal authorities perspective the president -- the president-elect will want to rein that in. >> just briefly, with respect to regulation i think we're seeing actually more of a -- more of a reach rather than less. an example of that is, evaluate pa just last week issued a 30-day comment, which is very short, a very significant

regulatory action on fuel economy for vehicles. it did that without going through the internal review process that is done for all regulations, that's not the kind of thing i would think they want want the next president to be able to do but yet i guess they're anxious to get it out before the end of the administration and they were willing to take process-wise quite dramatic actions. >> so i'll go to you in the back in a second, but susan, while i have you here, could you give the journalists in the room a bit about the regulatory studies center at gw? what kind of research do you do and what resources do you have for journalists? >> well, thank you, chris, that's a great question. it's -- the george washington university regulatory studies center is part of the school of public policy and public administration. we have a date -- a weekly newsletter that's a digest on all the things that are going on in the regulatory world so just e-mail us and we'd love to put you on that so that's not just what we're working on but what

all the other think tanks and academic institutions who focus like me with a laser beam on regulatory issues, we write working papers, we file comments on individual regulations and of course we teach, we love teaching our students but we also would be happy to do more things like this and talk about how regulation works. >> back in the room. do you still have a question? >> with trump appointing a variety of individuals to his transition team and starting to appoint or nominate his cabinet, there's been a lot of discussion about kind of his lack of expertise or specific expertise in different policy areas and i wonder if you think that that may

empower people who are heading these agencies more than, in, for example, the obama administration? in the obama administration a lot of directives came from the white house, the epa policy agenda for climate action plan from the white house. but in a trump administration do you see that changing and having agencies have a stronger foothold since maybe that may not be a strength of the white house? >> i had one conversation recently with a brookings nyu professor who studies changes of administration and the nature of cabinets. one of the things that's -- one of the things that distinguishes this transition from others is the level of preparation. so they're scrambling, it seems, to find cabinet nominees. one of the questions is, what about the subcabinet positions?

under the george w. bush white house, i think where you served there was a lot of emphasis. the white house played a very hands-on role, as i understand it, in reviewing appointments for deputy secretaries assistants and chiefs of staff even so that the white house would have more -- tus t was one of the things that karl rove introduced. the idea of having the cabinet secretary and white house ability to monitor and also have consistent policy in the agencies was a gbig deal. obama has continued that. this may give cabinet secretaries power to select the junior personnel that -- whose appointments would normally be reviewed or initiated by the white house. >> yeah, i have no inside information so i don't know. >> so we'll go to shannon and then we'll go to you there. so shannon. >> i just have a follow-up

question on that. is there -- what chance do you see, this is for anyone. what chance do you see of president-elect trump keeping around the head of the fda and dr. collins, the head of nih. there's pressure from certain provider groups, scientific research groups to keep both of those people around. is that a possibility? >> is it possible the heads of the nih and fda would be held over? >> there are holdovers in any administration. it's usually a small subset. some of them are statutory. there are people like the fbi director who have a term that transcends partisan administrations. there are usually some holdovers. there's an olive branch extended by democrats and republicans to a cabinet of the opposite party.

i'm not aware enough of the specifics of what the policy differences might be, whether those would be one. >> let's go to the blue checked shirt and then cogan. >> this is mainly's question for you, tom. you alluded to them earlier, but what are some of the tangible steps, whether they are congressional or from another branch or ngo that could be taken to hold a trump administration accountable on financial conflicts of interest. >> the question is, are there things that can be -- steps that can be taken to hold them accountable on financial conflicts? >> so there's been -- very interested in that question and went to a bunch of the lawyers and advisers who had led or worked on this area for previous transitions. and there's a range of respon

responses. jimmy carter's adviser said it's, in addition to the sort of blind trust approach, there's some which he is only a halfhearted subscriber who suggests the trump empire is really too vast to consolidate quickly into a blind trust. it may not be fair to the children. trump has said he doesn't want to do it. so they've suggested the idea of a sort of federal monitor. somebody who would oversee or sort of be a watchdog and have access to confidential and proprietary information, would occasionally make reports to the office of government ethics or something like that. i think this is eisenstat who has worked with monitors before in private corporate settings, but that was unlikely even though we're hearing a number of people just talk about the idea.

so his conclusion, and it's also the conclusion i hear at the end of conversation with every other ethics lawyer is what will depend on is a free and robust press. it's up to us because this is, in some ways, except for the constitutional prohibition that i mentioned earlier, this is a kind of extra legal activity where there may not be specific legal remedies but there are remedies in the public realm and in the response of public opinion to some of these actions. >> so i think this might be the last one. we might have time for one more. go with cogan. >> i'm try to be fast. i was curious in terms of regulatory affairs how previous things -- we talk a lot about the agency heads and secretaries and assistants and things like that that get appointed. obviously, there are career civil servants in these agencies

all the time. i cover the labor department which tends to be one of the more partisan ones, and we can see a lot happen under elaine chao and there was a lot that happened this year. i'm curious how much the career civil servants can influence these things. if there's a regulation coming through that they are really -- their ideologically opposed, to can they make it difficult to get it through? can they take their time? what can they do on that level when they disagree? >> that's a very -- >> oh, sorry. >> i want to restate it. we'll go to susan for this. but basically, what's -- what level of power do the civil servants have to resist what changes might be coming from on high? >> i think it's an excellent point about regulation because regulation does -- it's developed by these agencies that are mostly career civil service people who have been working for -- across administrations. and i think they do have a lot of influence because they do. they develop the docket. they do the analysis.

and heads of agencies are reluctant to do something to propose an action that goes against the docket that has been developed. that isn't to say that the career civil servants are -- i mean, they also might have particular goals in mind and so the dockets may reflect that. that's an excellent point that you've got the civil servants and it's not easy to come in as the head of the new agency and say we're going to shake thins s up and do things totally difference because there are all kinds of reasons why you can't. >> we'll go with akila if you promise to keep your question to 20 seconds and the answer to less than 60 seconds. >> you mentioned taking trump seriously as part of a prescription for journalists post-election. some people turned to his response to hamilton and didn't

pay attention to the -- there's a practical line to draw, but is twitter news? are trump's tweets news? >> no, i think we are all struggling with that because he has the ability to make news in a very sort of visceral way. the hamilton thing took off. it has nothing do to do with public policy but something everybody can relate to. so whatever else he did in the transition that day got lost amid the national conversation over hamilton. and the same thing happened with the flag burning. it's an open question about whether this is an intentional. whether there's a bit of a head fake going on here. the hours these tweets come, the tweet storms, i don't -- i would not presume to tell any journalist not to cover those. and frankly, when the president

of the united states says he wants to deport flag burners in violation of the first amendment, not to mention immigration laws, that's something we need to pay attention to. we can't completely ignore it. the point i was making was that in contrast to a tweet, if the president signs an executive order that says flag burners should be deported, it's going to be right there in black and white. he's not going to do this. it's going to be there in black and white and legalese and we'll see what is the mechanism for doing this? it's something that can be challenged. n that's where i think we need to take him especially literally because his power, you know, two months from now his power is not going to come from his twitter account but from the signature of the united states. >> and with that, we'll have to close this panel down. i want to thank you very much. very illuminating. so we are going to roll this panel off and bring the next three guests on. and we'll get started with that

one in just a couple of minutes. coming up tonight on c-span3, american history tv. programs from the emerging civil war blogs conference on great attacks of the civil war. we'll look at the battle of atlanta and lieutenant general john bell hood's assault on union forces. then the confederate army of tennessee's failed attack at the battle of franklin. a discussion on the engagements between confederate and union forces around petersburg, virginia, in the spring of 1865. later, a conversation with candice shy hoover about her book "lincoln's generals' wives."