Episode notes
As President Trump leads the U.S. into his very own middle eastern war, now may be a good time to ask: what part of the government actually has the power to declare war? And why does this theoretically limited power get used…constantly? Countries around the world would love to know. If you're not a 5-4 Premium member, you're not hearing every episode! To hear this and other Premium-only episodes, access to our Slack community, and more, join at fivefourpod.com/support . 5-4 is presented by Prologue Projects. This episode was produced by Alli Rodgers. Leon Neyfakh provides editorial support.…
Transcript
Read the transcript · about 940 words, follows along as you listen
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey everyone, this is Leon from Prologue Projects. [SPEAKER_01]: On this subscriber only episode of 5-4, Peter, Reannon, and Michael are telling the story of war in America, and tracing the evolution of the law around who in the government gets to decide when the country starts one. [SPEAKER_01]: as the Trump White House continues its war in Iran. [SPEAKER_01]: It felt like a good time to take a look at what the Constitution has to say about the power to declare war.
[SPEAKER_01]: And how various presidents from both parties have pushed this power to its absolute limits. [SPEAKER_01]: Broadding it so that America can drop bombs wherever the president wants without congressional approval. [SPEAKER_01]: This is five to four. [SPEAKER_01]: A podcast about how much this Supreme Court and the unchecked power of the executive to wreak havoc around the globe suck. [SPEAKER_03]: Welcome to five to four, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have closed off our rights, like a Ron closing off, the straight of hormones.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Peter. [SPEAKER_03]: All right, I'm here with Michael. [SPEAKER_03]: Hey, everybody. [SPEAKER_03]: And Rianan. [SPEAKER_00]: Straight of shut. [SPEAKER_00]: Shut. [SPEAKER_02]: Shut. [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of people being like, oh, Trump's gonna talk out. [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, maybe, maybe Trump will chicken out, but it's not really up to him anymore. [SPEAKER_02]: Now is he excited? [SPEAKER_02]: He doesn't really get to decide when the straight opens.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: No, Benjamin Netanyahu does. [SPEAKER_03]: It's a glorious King, one level above the president. [SPEAKER_03]: It's the first time in a while we've done a topical, open metaphor. [SPEAKER_03]: One that ties into the episode, because today we are talking about war powers. [SPEAKER_03]: the power to declare and conduct wars. [SPEAKER_03]: This has been, of course, in the news a bit lately, with Trump's actions in Venezuela and especially Iran.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's confusing. [SPEAKER_03]: And I imagine that most people are watching the news wondering what exactly the law says about this. [SPEAKER_03]: You might hear someone say, this is an illegal war. [SPEAKER_03]: And you're like, what does that mean? [SPEAKER_03]: Right? [SPEAKER_03]: What does that mean in this context? [SPEAKER_03]: So we're going to walk you through the law and the history and explain how past generations lead the groundwork for Donald Trump, for Donald Trump to swoop in and do Donald Trump shit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we're going to talk about some history and like how the hell we got to where we are in terms of a context of modern warfare that puts us in endless constant perpetuated wars with other countries all of the time now wars that are executed. [SPEAKER_00]: In many different ways in terms of operations, whether that's cyber attacks, drones, strikes, outright bombing, invasion, all of these things. [SPEAKER_00]: But meanwhile, we have this modern context of how warfare is done in the year 2026.
[SPEAKER_00]: But meanwhile, you have this history of [SPEAKER_00]: very limited or not as much as you would expect in terms of congressional action. [SPEAKER_00]: On war, we have only declared war against other countries officially 11 times in the total existence of the United States. [SPEAKER_00]: We have not done that since World War II, but okay, [SPEAKER_00]: had, you know, outright three full-scale wars, we have bombed at least 10 countries.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that is a conservative estimate. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that the US, you know, in terms of cyber attack and drone strikes has had operations in many more than that. [SPEAKER_00]: And those stats are just [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think it can be overstated. [SPEAKER_02]: We've been a very sort of militaristic society, but that has ramped up after 9-11 to an extreme degree, both domestically and abroad. [SPEAKER_02]: Right at home, you have surveillance at a broad, you have invasions, you have drones, you have, you know, all of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so what you're going to see throughout this discussion, as we build on, you know, what is the history of the war powers, the authorization, whether they're president or Congress, what we're going to see is these common themes that there are bad faith arguments about what the definition of war is, what does it, if the president has some limited authority to do war? [SPEAKER_00]: Well, what does it mean if the president says, well, I'm not doing war, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing [SPEAKER_00]: And I think what we're also going to talk about throughout this history, certainly certainly in the modern era, is really a lack of political will in both political branches, but especially in Congress to constrain the executive branch, to constrain the president as commander-in-chief in doing all of this war and getting us to where we are right now. [SPEAKER_03]: Hey folks, if you want to hear the rest of this episode, you're going to have to subscribe.
[SPEAKER_03]: This episode is one of our premium Patreon only episodes. [SPEAKER_03]: Membership starts at just five bucks a month. [SPEAKER_03]: If you want to hear the rest join us at patreon.com slash five four pod. [SPEAKER_03]: That's five four pod. [SPEAKER_03]: I'll spell that. [SPEAKER_03]: Members get a bunch of stuff, not only do you get access to the premium episodes, but access to subscriber-only events discounts on merch. [SPEAKER_03]: And at the $10 a month level, you get bigger discounts on merch and membership in the incredibly rowdy five to four slack.
[SPEAKER_03]: So again, that's patreon.com slash five four pod, five four pod all spelled out. [SPEAKER_03]: Become a member today.
Transcript supplied by the publisher with the episode.
Podcast
5-4
Prologue Projects · News · English
5-4 is a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks. Hosted by Peter Shamshiri, Rhiannon Hamam, and Michael Liroff, it's a progressive and occasionally profane take on the ideological battles at the heart of the Court's most important landmark cases and an irreverent tour of all the ways in whic
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