As NPR's legal affairs correspondent, Nina Totenberg has been a witness to some of the biggest legal and political stories in modern American history, including a front-row seat to the many legal battles over the last four years of the Trump administration. I recently spoke with Totenberg about the future of the Supreme Court, covering politics in an era of disinformation, what it was like getting her start as a journalist in Boston, and her recent experience filming with PBS' Finding Your Roots.

Here are some highlights from our conversation:

Totenberg on the role of the Supreme Court in 2021:

"We won't have President Trump invoking the kinds of powers that he did as president, but there is a history of that now. And the Supreme Court actually deferred to those powers far more often than it brought him up short, though it did once or twice do that, especially over the election. It'll take a while to see where the Biden administration is, how aggressive it wants to be in exerting executive power. What will be interesting to see is whether what was good for the goose is good for the gander; whether a very conservative Court that probably disagrees with Biden's policies far more than it disagreed with Trump's policies is still willing to uphold executive power in similar circumstances."

"I expect the court to sort of keep its head down a bit in the coming term and then perhaps to move into a more aggressive stance, from opposing abortion rights, to increasing the free exercise of religion, religious rights, to all manner of things — curbing the so-called administrative state, gun rights, that sort of thing."

On the public’s misconceptions about the Supreme Court:

"I think that people actually do view the court these days as partisan. And I still think it's not partisan as in Republican, Democrat. I think it's ideologically divided. Now that may track, in fact, with who's a Republican and who's a Democrat, but the main motivating force for individual justices is not to help the Democratic party or the Republican party — it's to help an idea of how the law should be interpreted. And the way that tracks with the modern division of the parties is quite remarkable, but it doesn't mean that they're politicians."

On getting her start as a journalist in Boston:

"I worked for the old Record, when there was a Winthrop Square. I worked initially on the women's page and at night I would do the police beat in order to get hard news experience. And sometimes the school committee. The school committee at the time was in an uproar over busing. So it was quite a wonderful time to be covering those things in Boston."

"It was in an era when, even though the 1964 Civil Rights Act had passed and discriminating based on gender was illegal, people were not afraid to say to you, 'well, we just don't hire women.' What marks the difference for women of my age from much younger women who have taken their equality for granted. Whereas in my era, you were just lucky to have a job, at least that's the way you felt. And you put up with a lot in order to keep the job."

On the role of public media in today's political landscape:

"We have survived better than a lot of old media entities and especially newspapers and even broadcast outlets that have competition from ideologically driven networks, whether it's MSNBC or Fox or Newsmax. I'd like to think that people want it straight. And I do think at NPR and at GBH, this is what we try our best to do. Nobody's perfect. Nobody is immune from mistakes, but, I think we do better than most other news organizations."

"There's always tension between political figures and the people who cover them. That's nothing new. However, we have endured a four-year period where the president and people in his administration have had overt contempt for the people who cover them, who refer to us as enemies of the people. And it's been a very difficult space to navigate. I, as a reporter who's been around for a very long time, never thought I would be saying things like ‘the president asserted, comma, without evidence’ or ‘the president's baseless charges.’"

"When lies persist, you do as a reporter have an obligation to the truth and news organizations have decided that they have to draw the line somewhere. We traffic in facts, as much as we can ascertain those facts. And when people in power insist on ignoring those facts, it's our obligation to say so."

On filming with PBS' Finding Your Roots:

"My father lived to be 101. And because his mother, when she came to the United States during World War II, she had brought with her all of the documents. So I knew a lot of the history about my father. I knew less about my grandmother because she was a pretty secretive person. She had had three husbands, the first of whom died in the 1918 flu epidemic just after my mother was born."

"I think people's family ancestries are interesting. I would venture to say that if you picked at random 10 people in the United States in any given year, and just said, 'we're to do this about your family' — it would still be interesting."

Watch Finding Your Roots featuring Nina Totenberg on Tuesday, January 26 at 8pm on GBH 2.

Nina Totenberg on her experience filming with PBS' Finding Your Roots.