[SPEAKER_07]: We will hear argument this morning in case 24, 1287 learning resources versus Trump. [SPEAKER_02]: Hey everyone, this is Leon from Prologue Projects. [SPEAKER_02]: On this week's episode of 5-4, Peter, Reannon, and Michael are talking about learning resources V-Trump. [SPEAKER_02]: Early last year President Trump issued a series of executive orders imposing tariffs on goods from Mexico, Canada, and China.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then, in the spirit of inclusivity, he expanded the tariffs to include every other country on Earth. [SPEAKER_00]: My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day, waiting for a long time. [SPEAKER_02]: to issue these tariffs without congressional approval, Trump relied on statute called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which allows the President to impose economic sanctions and regulate importation during national emergencies.
[SPEAKER_02]: When the tariffs took effect, two small businesses sued the administration, and just a few weeks ago on February 20, Supreme Court ruled against Trump. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm ashamed of certain members of the court, absolutely ashamed. [SPEAKER_02]: This is five to four, a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks, even when they get it right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome to five to four, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have chased away our civil rights, like Iran chasing influencers out of Dubai. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm Peter. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm here with [SPEAKER_07]: Michael. [SPEAKER_07]: I've only loosely seen this story. [SPEAKER_07]: I mean, I've seen the hedge fund guy being like, this wasn't the trade. [SPEAKER_07]: We wanted when we moved to Dubai. [SPEAKER_07]: It was to be involved in foreign relations.
[SPEAKER_07]: What the fuck? [SPEAKER_03]: I came here for a crypto conference. [SPEAKER_05]: I have no comment. [SPEAKER_05]: I'm smiling. [SPEAKER_05]: I'm Rosie Cheek. [SPEAKER_05]: I'm laughing. [SPEAKER_05]: I have anime eyes. [SPEAKER_05]: But I have no comment. [SPEAKER_03]: are with the influencers trapped in Dubai. [SPEAKER_05]: Pro do by bullying the next season. [SPEAKER_05]: So it's going to be off the chain. [SPEAKER_03]: All of the Dubai real housewives are thoughts are with you.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I mean, imagine having to flee back to America and having no slaves. [SPEAKER_03]: You know. [SPEAKER_03]: Just having to pay your service to do stuff. [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I mean, again, they are at the forefront of my mind. [SPEAKER_03]: Today's case folks, learning resources, the Trump. [SPEAKER_03]: This is a big case from a few weeks back about tariffs.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's unusual for us because it is sort of a good one in that the court ruled against Trump and struck many of his tariffs down, but we wanted to cover it regardless because it produced many opinions and many reactions from the media and all of them reveal various mental diseases that need to be discussed. [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, ring a letter. [SPEAKER_03]: I like to take it away. [SPEAKER_03]: That's it. [SPEAKER_03]: That's it.
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[SPEAKER_05]: I sat myself down, I said to myself, self, what's it, Terrif? [SPEAKER_03]: And so our president never learned and you shouldn't have to either. [SPEAKER_05]: That's why I'm thinking, you know what I mean? [SPEAKER_05]: But just to give you a very basic rundown of like what part of the economy we are talking about here, what did the president try to do, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: in a very basic sense, tariffs are a kind of tax, but they're a tax imposed by one country on goods imported from another country. [SPEAKER_05]: All right, goods coming from China, for example, Trump imposing a tariff on that means the American buyer, the corporation buy those goods, pays a tax. [SPEAKER_05]: on those goods coming from China. [SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: Now, one purpose of tariffs is to ostensibly theoretically like protect domestic businesses from lower priced foreign competition. [SPEAKER_05]: Hey, China's trucking out those goods and services cheaper than American corporations can do. [SPEAKER_05]: So we want to protect [SPEAKER_05]: So we impose a tariff on on those imported goods. [SPEAKER_05]: But unfortunately, there's a huge downside risk with tariffs, of course, in today's global economy.
[SPEAKER_05]: Can imagine the amount of things that the American economy imports, right? [SPEAKER_05]: And so a ton of U.S. companies, all of the big ones, and many of the small ones, are highly, highly dependent on foreign-made components, foreign-made equipment, big and small, right? [SPEAKER_05]: And so when the United States imposes high tariffs on all of these goods and services, it raises the cost of production for American companies, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: It increases the cost of the product and then to keep production costs down that American company has to find, you know, the required components from another source, often that other source is not available. [SPEAKER_05]: So it really fucks things up. [SPEAKER_05]: Let's just keep it basic, right? [SPEAKER_05]: Let's just keep it really basic. [SPEAKER_05]: We're not getting into nerd, it's pretty simple.
[SPEAKER_05]: But, of course, a Trump was promising tariffs from the time he was running in 2024. [SPEAKER_05]: Big campaign promise was tariffs, and he's talking in 2024 and through 2025, the justifications for these tariffs being more like foreign policy goals. [SPEAKER_05]: Right? [SPEAKER_05]: Uh, more stuff around reducing [SPEAKER_05]: fentanyl in the United States. [SPEAKER_05]: And of course, just being aggressive and wielding like a sledgehammer through the global economy.
[SPEAKER_07]: Right. [SPEAKER_07]: And a trade deficit for our listeners is just an imbalance in the import export volumes between two countries. [SPEAKER_07]: So for example, America almost certainly imports more from India than India imports from us.
[SPEAKER_07]: And that's because the cost of manufacturing [SPEAKER_07]: So a lot of companies outsource their manufacturing and offer their manufacturing to India and the result is we have a trade deficit with them But also you get lower prices on the goods right and also I mean, it's not just where the manufacturing is it's also we have more money [SPEAKER_03]: so we buy more shit. [SPEAKER_07]: Oh, for sure.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, we're buying from other countries and they're producing things and they're exporting for their economy and we are not a big exporter for our economy. [SPEAKER_07]: I mean, we do export some things corn for example crypto ideas. [SPEAKER_03]: the real housewives, and so Trump doesn't understand trade deficits. [SPEAKER_03]: He also perhaps is not really understand what a tariff is.
[SPEAKER_03]: He views tariff as a way to like even these out because he believes that trade deficits mean you're losing money or something. [SPEAKER_03]: And this is sort of lurking behind the whole tariff policy. [SPEAKER_03]: discussion just like Trump not actually understanding what a trade deficit is and perhaps not understanding what a tariff is.
[SPEAKER_03]: That gets completely ignored in this opinion, which I I think we should talk about a little bit later, but you just need to be out there. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_05]: Right. [SPEAKER_05]: No. [SPEAKER_05]: I think this is key. [SPEAKER_05]: But let's talk about the implementation of these specific tariffs that are issue in this case. [SPEAKER_05]: So in February 2025, Trump announced tariffs on Canada and Mexico, separate a category of tariffs on China.
[SPEAKER_05]: But the justification for these at least the statutory justification, the thing that Trump and the Trump administration are saying allows him to do this under the law is a law called the IEEPA. [SPEAKER_05]: That's the international [SPEAKER_05]: It empowers the president during emergency times to make economic decisions, right? [SPEAKER_05]: And we can all recall Trump talking about these tariffs.
[SPEAKER_05]: He's talking about efforts to stop illegal drugs like fentanyl coming into the United States. [SPEAKER_05]: He's talking about stemming the flow of undocumented immigrants.
[SPEAKER_03]: by imposing tariffs and he sort of to the like this recall thing back to the 19th century gilded age saying we're going to we're trying to get back to that by by doing the you know the federal income tax doesn't exist until the early 1900s and before that the primary source of revenue was tariffs right for the federal government so he's sort of like weren't we doing great back then [SPEAKER_03]: It feels like it's self-controversial, but also besides the point, and like weird.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And so he's sort of doing a few things. [SPEAKER_03]: Like he's very typical of Trump. [SPEAKER_03]: Like a lot of justifications just sort of floating in the ether, right? [SPEAKER_05]: Right. [SPEAKER_05]: It's so typically Trumpian that like you know that somebody told him a story about the Gilded Age, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: And he's like, you know what, William McKinley, like, yeah, let's let's do that, you know, and so a series of executive orders were issued first in February 2025, then another executive order in April 2025, that one he called the day that executive order came out liberation day and
[SPEAKER_05]: And under that, this new tariff plan basically nearly all incoming goods were set to a 10% tariff from those countries I mentioned earlier and then with about 60 additional countries setting even at higher tariff rates.
[SPEAKER_05]: And Trump also stated his intent to use reciprocal tariffs that we're going to be calculated based on countries trade surpluses that trade deficit thing with the United States and so this is a mess that Trump started and lots of businesses sue the Trump administration and this is how we get to the Supreme Court. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you sort of have these two categories of tariff. [SPEAKER_03]: One are like the national security tariffs, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Against China and Canada and Mexico in particular, and Trump's like they're doing fentanyl. [SPEAKER_03]: And they're doing illegal immigration, and we're punishing them with tariffs. [SPEAKER_03]: All right. [SPEAKER_03]: And the other is the reciprocal tariff idea where all these countries that we have, these trade deficits with need to receive tariffs that are quote unquote reciprocal so that everything evens out.
[SPEAKER_03]: But for purposes of this case, it's all functionally the same, at least for this issue. [SPEAKER_03]: So he imposes these tariffs under the IEEPA, this 1977 law, which allows the president to quote regulate importation during national emergencies. [SPEAKER_03]: And Trump has declared that this is an emergency, that you've got the Fenton oil emergencies, and then you have the trade emergencies. [SPEAKER_03]: And the question [SPEAKER_03]: includes imposing tariffs.
[SPEAKER_03]: Does this law give him the ability to impose tariffs? [SPEAKER_03]: John Roberts writes the majority opinion here, joined by Barrett, Gorsuch, Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson, and he says no, no tariffs. [SPEAKER_03]: First, he says that the word regulate is not ordinarily used to include taxing. [SPEAKER_03]: There are a lot of laws that allow the president to regulate something or other, but they are not generally understood to give him the power to tax.
[SPEAKER_03]: Plus, the law itself never references tariffs or duties of any kind. [SPEAKER_03]: plus the court points out that no president has ever interpreted the law to allow for the imposition of tariffs. [SPEAKER_03]: So as a matter of historical practice, there's no indication that the law allows the president to do this.
[SPEAKER_03]: And lurking underneath all of this legally is the fact that the Constitution expressly grants Congress not the president, the power to impose duties and taxes. [SPEAKER_03]: And so a law should be pretty clear if it's going to delegate that power to the president, right? [SPEAKER_03]: That's the first part of the opinion. [SPEAKER_03]: That's the one that the liberals join.
[SPEAKER_03]: But there is a second part of the Roberts opinion and that is only joined by Barrett and Gorsuch. [SPEAKER_03]: The Libs jump ship here. [SPEAKER_03]: And this has to do with the major questions doctrine. [SPEAKER_03]: The major questions doctrine is something that we've talked about before. [SPEAKER_03]: The Conservatives really manifested it during the Biden administration in order to like thwart much of his agenda.
[SPEAKER_03]: They created this rule where if there is a so-called major question of policy, they will assume that Congress did not delegate its authority to the president [SPEAKER_03]: So the court used this Biden to strike down his student debt relief program, for example, saying Congress did not delegate him that power expressly enough. [SPEAKER_03]: The limbs have always opposed this rule because it's basically just a made-up way to defang the administrative state.
[SPEAKER_03]: So they do not join this portion. [SPEAKER_07]: Right, and just remind or we've talked about this before, but the, the major question is doctrine is sort of opposed to the, to the administrative state, because it applies a higher burden to Congress to delegate some of the authority to these agencies and it does so after the fact like, [SPEAKER_07]: Congress, you know, delegated their authority 40, 50, 60 years ago for some of these agencies.
[SPEAKER_07]: And now the court is coming in and saying, well, you need it to be more clear. [SPEAKER_07]: You need it to be more explicit about what authority you were delegating, which makes it harder for the agencies to function and requires Congress to go back and pass updated statutes and things like that. [SPEAKER_03]: So that's the Robert's opinion, and then you have three [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, a little bit unwieldy and wieldy. [SPEAKER_05]: It's fucking annoying.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's excessive. [SPEAKER_03]: Three concurrences. [SPEAKER_03]: One each from Kagan, Jackson, and Barrett. [SPEAKER_03]: Barrett basically dispens recurrence in a little slap fight with Gorsuch about the major questions doctrine. [SPEAKER_03]: Don't care about that. [SPEAKER_03]: We'll skip that. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm skipping that. [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, you're welcome. [SPEAKER_03]: By the way. [SPEAKER_03]: then you have occurrences from Kagan and KBJ Jackson.
[SPEAKER_03]: Kagan is joined by the other two liberals. [SPEAKER_03]: She basically writes to say, hey, we don't need to do the major questions doctrine. [SPEAKER_03]: We can just interpret the law like normal people in a normal way and it shows that Trump loses, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Jackson has a solo concurrence, no one joins it, and it's actually kind of interesting.
[SPEAKER_03]: She talks about the legislative history of this law, the IEEPA, and by legislative history, I mean the House and Senate reports. [SPEAKER_03]: Congressional reports are prepared by committees. [SPEAKER_03]: and they are about a law. [SPEAKER_03]: They contain things like the reason for the legislation, findings of fact about the legislation. [SPEAKER_03]: And she's saying, hey, we can look at this stuff and realize that this is not intended to include tariffs.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, for a layperson, you might think, well, this is sure. [SPEAKER_03]: There are congressional reports. [SPEAKER_03]: You look at the congressional reports, and you figure out what the law means, right? [SPEAKER_03]: But this is actually very controversial. [SPEAKER_03]: Conservatives believe that this is sacrilegious. [SPEAKER_03]: For many years, they railed against the use of these materials, legislative history. [SPEAKER_03]: They believe that they are unreliable.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're produced by a handful of members of Congress and their staff, you know, what a Conservative say is like, well, you never know the actual intent of every senator, every representative who signs off. [SPEAKER_03]: on something, right? [SPEAKER_03]: So KBJ is doing something kind of interesting here. [SPEAKER_03]: She's saying, we shouldn't abandon this as a tool for figuring out Congress's intent. [SPEAKER_03]: She's sort of resurrecting this idea.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she's right, too, rather than- Yeah, I think it's interesting. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, Kagan famously said, we're all textualist now. [SPEAKER_03]: and KBJ comes along like, well, maybe you are dipshit, you know, not me, this concurrence very old school clearance Thomas in the sense that it's for law students, right? [SPEAKER_03]: She's saying, hey, [SPEAKER_03]: We lost this battle 30 years ago. [SPEAKER_03]: Three decades ago everyone said that we were wrong But we were right.
[SPEAKER_03]: We should have lost that battle. [SPEAKER_04]: Take a run with it. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so You know Fuck these other libs who won't join this concurrence Let's do this. [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, it rocks. [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, that's cool. [SPEAKER_06]: I'm doing me. [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, yeah, she's saying listen to five for right [SPEAKER_07]: Speaking of old school Thomas opinions, we've got an instant classic Thomas dissent here.
[SPEAKER_07]: He comes in hot, he wants to talk about the non-delegation doctrine, which is this idea that Congress can not assign certain of its powers to the executive branch, like it does when it creates agencies administrative agencies. [SPEAKER_07]: And he says, well, [SPEAKER_07]: when you're talking about core legislative powers, they can't assign those. [SPEAKER_07]: But that only has to do with the deprivation of life, liberty, and property. [SPEAKER_07]: Where does he get this?
[SPEAKER_07]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_07]: He makes it up. [SPEAKER_07]: He doesn't cite anything. [SPEAKER_07]: He writes, he's like, oh, I know where the Constitution, which says, here are all the legislative powers. [SPEAKER_07]: And then just lists all the legislative powers. [SPEAKER_07]: It doesn't like differentiate between any of them. [SPEAKER_07]: What the fuck are you talking about, dude? [SPEAKER_07]: But he's like, well, taxing and duties in tariffs.
[SPEAKER_07]: That's not core legislative powers. [SPEAKER_07]: I don't know about that. [SPEAKER_07]: And he's like, so Congress can't assign it. [SPEAKER_07]: Not only can they assign it. [SPEAKER_07]: They can assign it entirely without limit to the executive indefinitely to the degree where it can never be peeled back. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't understand the whole taxing is not a core power thing. [SPEAKER_03]: It's seen the concept like how much more core could it get?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's right there, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Or what if Congress is a new rated powers section eight, right? [SPEAKER_05]: Yes, and I seem to remember so many Supreme Court cases that like established that taxation that the tax power is a core power of Congress, right? [SPEAKER_05]: Like there's there, I don't know. [SPEAKER_05]: I was thinking a lot about like I was thinking a lot about the Obama care case.
[SPEAKER_05]: right like it like they say John Robert says the Supreme Court says I mean I know conservatives don't agree with that right don't agree with that decision but there's so many cases where it's like no it's Congress that has the power to tax like this is this is very clear [SPEAKER_07]: Right.
[SPEAKER_07]: He justifies this by like going into like British common law and talks about like the king, the king's power to tax, which gets just like gorsik gorsik gorsik talks about this in his concurrence. [SPEAKER_07]: So I don't want to like take too much of the sting out of it, but it's like, yeah, we we fought a fucking war about that dude. [SPEAKER_07]: Right. [SPEAKER_07]: fought a war about that. [SPEAKER_05]: We don't have a king. [SPEAKER_05]: That's the difference.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't want to get to nerdy, but these natural law perverts, you know what I mean? [SPEAKER_03]: These weirdo natural law guys, like Clarence Thomas comes from this school of thought that are right to emanate from God, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like natural law. [SPEAKER_03]: And so like the roots of them. [SPEAKER_03]: are felt all throughout the common law and you can go back to fucking 1547 or whatever and maybe glean some wisdom because God put that there.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, of course, he abandoned this all the time. [SPEAKER_03]: It's very strategically deployed, but it's important to understand that it is so fucking stupid. [SPEAKER_03]: And like you end up being like, well, in England, you had the king and it's like right. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: What's your job? [SPEAKER_07]: We've wrote a conversation to be like, declaration dependence, we'd, yeah. [SPEAKER_07]: Right. [SPEAKER_07]: Like, it's insane.
[SPEAKER_05]: We wrote the constitution so that the head of state wouldn't be like that anymore. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: And it, like, again, it's, it's, it's, it's right there. [SPEAKER_03]: Article one section eight. [SPEAKER_03]: It's like, yes. [SPEAKER_03]: The stuff that Congress can do. [SPEAKER_03]: you know, and like this is pretty clearly one of them. [SPEAKER_03]: So I just, I don't get it. [SPEAKER_07]: Instant classic tops. [SPEAKER_07]: Instant.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_05]: That's right. [SPEAKER_05]: You know, we're we're jumping around a little bit here between concurrences and descents. [SPEAKER_05]: Like we said, there's a lot of different opinions here. [SPEAKER_05]: But we're taking it in this order intentionally. [SPEAKER_05]: I'm going to talk about the cabinet descent here. [SPEAKER_05]: Let's [SPEAKER_03]: 63 pages.
[SPEAKER_05]: But that's so we can set up the sort of Gorsuch Kudagra concurrence here, where he is so mad at at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy at every boy
[SPEAKER_05]: is how wrong it is. [SPEAKER_05]: And Gorsuch calls this out. [SPEAKER_05]: But Kavanaugh is like straight up doing like Trump pandering, like supporting Trump policy on tariffs in this descent. [SPEAKER_05]: Kavanaugh's big arguments here are that tariffs are, quote, a traditional and common tool to regulate importation. [SPEAKER_05]: that the president has the power in lots of different ways by different federal statutes to impose tariffs.
[SPEAKER_05]: And in fact, you know, under those other laws, those other routes, those, quote, might justify most if not all of the tariffs at issue in this case. [SPEAKER_05]: Kevin Os says. [SPEAKER_05]: So, Kevin Os saying, well, you know, there are other laws that would green light Trump imposing these tariffs. [SPEAKER_05]: Well, bitch, that's not the law that he cited as the justification for doing these tariffs. [SPEAKER_03]: Well, he's trying to, he's talking to his boy.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's right. [SPEAKER_03]: He's like Donald. [SPEAKER_03]: He's winking it. [SPEAKER_05]: Donald being like, hey, hey, hey, this might be legal baby in a different statutory scheme. [SPEAKER_05]: You know what I'm saying? [SPEAKER_05]: Um, this is so he also makes as part of his argument.
[SPEAKER_05]: He says that the tariffs have helped Trump's foreign policy since they quote helped facilitate trade deals worth trillions of dollars, including with foreign nations from China to the UK to Japan and more. [SPEAKER_05]: So like just sort of boldly saying, like I think this was good foreign policy, Trump is doing good business here, you know. [SPEAKER_07]: We love our daddy Trump. [SPEAKER_05]: That's right, that's right.
[SPEAKER_05]: Maybe some more technical arguments, although they are all on their face. [SPEAKER_05]: Wrong. [SPEAKER_05]: Kevin says, we shouldn't be extending the major questions doctrine to foreign affairs. [SPEAKER_05]: Like says, that's like that major questions, doctrine apparently should just be limited to domestic policy. [SPEAKER_03]: Well, the doctrine that we just made up. [SPEAKER_05]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: That actually has a limitation you might not have heard of.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_07]: because there are no major questions in foreign affairs. [SPEAKER_05]: That's right. [SPEAKER_05]: He also says that the majority is applying the major questions doctrine in an elevated fashion to the taxing power. [SPEAKER_05]: So you guys are changing the major questions doctrine, you're elevating it to something else. [SPEAKER_05]: Really ridiculous stuff, just completely arbitrary. [SPEAKER_05]: Hollow arguments here.
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, the IEEPA, the law here that Trump is using to justify imposing these tariffs says that the president can regulate imports in certain circumstances. [SPEAKER_05]: Cavanagh says that the word regulate effectively in all circumstances is a synonym for taxation. [SPEAKER_05]: Just as like I think regulate in this statue means taxing. [SPEAKER_05]: He's reading the IEEPA to say, [SPEAKER_05]: except that's not what it says baby girl.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is something that the Robert's majority touches on. [SPEAKER_03]: But like this is one of those things where it's like, okay, you might believe that taxation falls under the umbrella of regulate, right? [SPEAKER_03]: But when you're talking about laws, [SPEAKER_03]: there are clear reasons to be specific, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Which is why, and there are a ton of laws that grant the president the power to, quote unquote, regulate this, that or the other thing, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a huge part of any law. [SPEAKER_03]: in which Congress is sort of outlining the scope of an administrative agency, for example. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: So the idea that every single time these laws say regulate, it like automatically means tax. [SPEAKER_03]: It's just a little bit wild. [SPEAKER_03]: It's just a hyper-aggressive reading, and it doesn't really make any practical sense.
[SPEAKER_07]: Right, because we have examples of tons, countless examples of [SPEAKER_07]: taxation or tariff or duty responsibility to the executive and we know what language they use when they do that. [SPEAKER_07]: We know how they structure it. [SPEAKER_07]: They usually put time and monetary caps on the delegation like you can do it for X number of years and they use words like duties, levy duties and tariffs [SPEAKER_07]: shit like that. [SPEAKER_07]: They don't say regularly.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like we know what it looks like when they do this and it doesn't look like this, right? [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_05]: And I think that gets to the last argument I'll mention from Kavanaugh's descent, which goes to this separation of powers concern, right? [SPEAKER_05]: Big overarching concern about the president imposing tariffs in this way.
[SPEAKER_05]: is that it's a massive power grab for the executive branch, right, where there's no accountability mechanism and no sort of oversight by Congress, Kavanaugh's trying to like reassure everybody that that like permanent worldwide emergency economic power can still be constrained because he says that Congress can show its disapproval by quote, not approving annual appropriations necessary,
[SPEAKER_05]: for the executive branch to continue to implement the tariffs, this is wrong, this is wrong. [SPEAKER_05]: Congress cannot fight back when the president is raising revenue outside of congressional approval. [SPEAKER_03]: Trump's like doing tariffs and handing the cash to his son-in-law. [SPEAKER_05]: No, this is, this is right. [SPEAKER_05]: Who collects tariffs? [SPEAKER_05]: It's CBP. [SPEAKER_05]: It's customs and border patrol. [SPEAKER_05]: There's no appropriations here.
[SPEAKER_05]: There's no rules, Congress that there's no oversight. [SPEAKER_05]: Like, this is a slush fund for the president, right? [SPEAKER_05]: And Congress has no accountability mechanism here, no oversight, and Kavanaugh's just saying that they do. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, there's a weird thing going on here, and it's like what I mentioned earlier. [SPEAKER_03]: one of the lives brought it up.
[SPEAKER_03]: But like the part of the law that this case is really about is whether or not tariffs are included in like the regulating importation under this law. [SPEAKER_03]: But the other part of this is the fact that Donald Trump has declared these emergencies, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And there is something kind of weird going on where [SPEAKER_03]: the emergency power is very broad under our laws, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Presidents have a lot of leeway to be like national emergency. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Um, now. [SPEAKER_03]: that gives them certain powers under certain laws, including this one, but the, the weird lurking problem here is that Donald Trump is illiterate and doesn't understand any of this shit. [SPEAKER_03]: So he's like, you know, these countries are shipping fentanyl in.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's like, okay, sort of, right, like that's there's like the tiniest sliver of truth to that then the other emergency is like this economic emergency. [SPEAKER_03]: And that's just trade deficits, which he couldn't pass like a junior year business school exam about, you know, right. [SPEAKER_05]: I also saw in reading about this that like the United States has had a trade deficit for decades.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like, yeah, well, I mean, so of course, like how is it an emergency now, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, so, you know, there are certain nations where the trade deficit is inherent. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, like, or almost inherent, right. [SPEAKER_03]: It's just sort of like a natural function of the relative size of the two economies.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's one of those things where the reason he has this power is so that like, [SPEAKER_03]: we have, you know, uh, the ability to act decisively when emergencies actually happen, right? [SPEAKER_03]: You don't have to fucking operate through committees when a real emergency occurs. [SPEAKER_03]: When the homeland is attacked, right? [SPEAKER_07]: When there's something like 9-11 or an asteroid, right? [SPEAKER_03]: You need a deep impact sort of president, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: the need for that sort of leeway to be like, it's an emergency, it's kind of a parent in those cases, but I feel like it's worth just throwing a footnote somewhere, it's like, hey, maybe we should think about what happens when the president can't read. [SPEAKER_05]: Maybe that's an emergency of a different kind. [SPEAKER_05]: And we have to voting some resources to that. [SPEAKER_03]: Maybe we need a different system.
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe we need a system that's more like when you give your sibling the controller that doesn't work. [SPEAKER_03]: You know what I mean? [SPEAKER_03]: Let's thank creatively here.
[SPEAKER_07]: Okay, all right, let's get to this gorsage concurrence, that's that's a good point at the Yeah, so yeah, let's move to the gorsage concurrence, which I think is interesting Like it to be clear he doesn't disagree with the majority he signs onto it and he doesn't have anything [SPEAKER_07]: different to say about why this case should be decided the way it is. [SPEAKER_07]: This is a true haters opinion.
[SPEAKER_07]: This is an opinion to answer every other concurrence and dissent, to be like, no, you're all fucking wrong. [SPEAKER_07]: I think what's going on here between Kevin Gorsuch, [SPEAKER_07]: Is that when Kavanaugh was, um, before he was on the Supreme Court when he was on the court of appeals, he had this opinion where he coined the term, he called it the major power of doctrine, which is what eventually would become the major questions doctrine.
[SPEAKER_07]: And I think, I think he might feel a little bit of ownership over it, and he's sort of being like, writing this big, principal descent being like, I'm the major questions guy, and you guys are doing it wrong and [SPEAKER_07]: You're a fucking deletant and a political hack and you're sucking Trump's dick. [SPEAKER_07]: I hate the administrative state. [SPEAKER_07]: I am the major questions guy. [SPEAKER_07]: Check this out.
[SPEAKER_07]: Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you to everyone. [SPEAKER_07]: everybody. [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_07]: Amy Cody Barrett, you're a fucking coward. [SPEAKER_07]: Fuck you. [SPEAKER_07]: You're a squish. [SPEAKER_07]: That's that's it. [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_07]: It's like one second. [SPEAKER_05]: Nobody's catching strays here. [SPEAKER_05]: Everybody's in the crosshairs directly. [SPEAKER_07]: The lips. [SPEAKER_07]: He's like, you're hypocrites.
[SPEAKER_07]: You're fucking hypocrites. [SPEAKER_07]: You're opinions. [SPEAKER_07]: You say you're not doing the major questions to action. [SPEAKER_07]: You are. [SPEAKER_07]: Look at this, you're doing the major questions, Dr. And fuck you. [SPEAKER_07]: Cavanol, he's like, your history is shotty. [SPEAKER_07]: Your reasoning is shotty. [SPEAKER_07]: This is a shotty opinion. [SPEAKER_07]: And your foreign affairs exception, are you fucking on drugs?
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, what are you talking about? [SPEAKER_07]: It's great. [SPEAKER_07]: Before we get to Thomas, so I want to talk about a paragraph. [SPEAKER_07]: He wrote, that gets to my problem with the major questions, Dr. And really well, when he's calling Barrett a squish, he's like, look. [SPEAKER_07]: Take FDAV Brown and Williamson tobacco core. [SPEAKER_07]: There, the question was whether the FTA could regulate tobacco products.
[SPEAKER_07]: Looking only to common sense, the answer would have been yes. [SPEAKER_07]: Congress authorized the FTA to regulate drugs as matter of common sense. [SPEAKER_07]: Nicotine qualifies as a drug based on the statutory definition. [SPEAKER_07]: It's a might even as matter of everyday speech. [SPEAKER_07]: Still, we held the FTA, it could not regulate tobacco products. [SPEAKER_07]: Other cases follow suit.
[SPEAKER_07]: We have ruled that the term air pollutant does not include greenhouse gases, even though those greenhouse gases pollute the air. [SPEAKER_07]: We have held that the phrase regulations necessary to prevent the spread of communicable diseases does not include eviction moratoriums, even without questioning that eviction moratoriums were necessary to prevent the spread of COVID-19 a communicable disease.
[SPEAKER_07]: And we have said that closing coal power plants is not the best system of emission reduction, even while indulging, that closing them would reduce emissions. [SPEAKER_07]: And it's like, yeah, bro, why is this a brag? [SPEAKER_07]: Why is this like, you sound like fucking moron? [SPEAKER_07]: You sound like, it's like, it's like, when you're talking about, you're like, yeah, I said they can regulate drugs, where you said not this drug, and not these greenhouse gases.
[SPEAKER_03]: We have created an elaborate series of excuses to ignore basic human language. [SPEAKER_07]: It's an incredible paragraph, it's an incredible paragraph and he's just like, he's being like, like, so each hit Amy Coney Barrett. [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_07]: He's so distanful, which is great. [SPEAKER_07]: This is the first time I think I've seen another justice respond directly to one of Thomas's crazy opinions.
[SPEAKER_07]: I might have missed one, but I'm pretty sure this is it. [SPEAKER_03]: We were recently talking about this, of course it's just so up his own ass that if he really feels confident about something, [SPEAKER_03]: he will go at you very directly. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And I think Thomas is probably losing his minds on Twitter or whatever. [SPEAKER_03]: Like we've talked about Thomas's solo opinions in the past.
[SPEAKER_03]: He'll do some weird descents, but they're mostly like internally coherent, and this one is like, you're like, what the fuck are you talking about? [SPEAKER_03]: Like, and I think Gorset sort of like just smells blood in the water like he's ready to be a snarky little bitch Thomas has just like sort of chummed the waters enough for him that he feels comfortable going out there. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_07]: You can like hear the sarcasm dripping off his writing, right?
[SPEAKER_07]: He's like, just as Thomas suggests that Congress may hand over most of its constitutionally vested powers to the president completely and forever. [SPEAKER_07]: Like, oh, yeah. [SPEAKER_07]: That's so like so. [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_07]: Like, I don't even need to expand on that. [SPEAKER_07]: Like, anybody reading that is like, yeah, that sounds dumb as shit, right? [SPEAKER_07]: Like, he does like a lot of what we were doing.
[SPEAKER_07]: He's like, and of course, it was duties on foreign tea that triggered the Boston Tea Party. [SPEAKER_07]: Are we really to believe that the Patriots that night in Boston Harper considered the whole of the tariff power some kingly prerogative? [SPEAKER_07]: He's like, I don't need history. [SPEAKER_07]: Fucking. [SPEAKER_07]: use common sense. [SPEAKER_07]: We fought the war for independence over this, like literally over tariffs, over the king-leveling tariffs, like fuck you.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, what are you talking about? [SPEAKER_07]: It's great. [SPEAKER_07]: I love it. [SPEAKER_07]: His opinion is terrible, his position is terrible, and I loved reading every paragraph a bit. [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, enjoy that. [SPEAKER_05]: Such which is so different from like the experience of reading Thomas, right? [SPEAKER_07]: Yes, yes, yes. [SPEAKER_07]: It's worth mentioning that the court didn't really specify a remedy here and kicked it down to the district court.
[SPEAKER_07]: And so there's a question of like, well, a lot of tariffs have been collected, like billions and billions of dollars. [SPEAKER_07]: What happens to that? [SPEAKER_07]: You know, companies are suing saying, we want our money back. [SPEAKER_07]: There's a question of well, some companies passed on at least some of that cost to consumers. [SPEAKER_07]: So our consumers are going to have a way of recouping the money they paid into tariffs, basically.
[SPEAKER_07]: And the Trump administration has suggested that they're going to fight any efforts that refunds in court. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: And the other side of that is that this case originally came to the Supreme Court on the shadow dock at last year. [SPEAKER_03]: And they let the tariffs remain in effect. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: They created this huge mess. [SPEAKER_03]: The argument against doing that was that it creates exactly this mess. [SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now. [SPEAKER_03]: half a trillion in refunds is owed to fucking who knows who, but probably a little bit you and me. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: If you're listening to this, they probably owe you 20 bucks at least. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And the question is how could you possibly recoup that who recoups in?
[SPEAKER_03]: and it's a big fucking cluster and part of the reason that the Supreme Court said, okay, we'll leave the tariffs in place last year was because the government had expressed that they were theoretically open to refunds. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, oh, we can just do a refund. [SPEAKER_03]: Now, of course, that the Supreme Court has said, these are illegal, the government's like, go fuck yourself. [SPEAKER_03]: We're doing like, you know, Calshy bets with this money.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you can't have it. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm betting on the air strikes as we speak. [SPEAKER_07]: There's been some developments on the question of remedies after the Supreme Court decision. [SPEAKER_07]: So I'll happening in the court of international trade, which is a very specific jurisdictionally limited court set up by Congress that geographically covers the United States because the Constitution says terrorists and duties have to be uniform.
[SPEAKER_07]: And it's one judge who's handling all of these tariff cases under the IEPA that we're talking about here. [SPEAKER_07]: So the judge was like, you know what? [SPEAKER_07]: Fuck this. [SPEAKER_07]: I don't want a million different cases. [SPEAKER_07]: The first case he heard for someone asking for a refund. [SPEAKER_07]: He was like, [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, you get your refund, so does everybody else. [SPEAKER_07]: Everybody gets a refund, CBP, you are ordered to give everyone a refund.
[SPEAKER_07]: A very funny moment at conference, wherever we're at the government. [SPEAKER_07]: Got the sense he was going to order this and was like, uh, can we get some time to brief the merits on that and he just replied, there are no merits, like fuck you. [SPEAKER_07]: You got nothing to brief. [SPEAKER_07]: You've lost, like fuck off.
[SPEAKER_07]: King. [SPEAKER_07]: So since then, CBP has submitted a filing basically being like, we can't strictly comply with your order because of the way all this is done, it's all automated. [SPEAKER_07]: But basically, we can reprogram it.
[SPEAKER_07]: If you give us like a month and a half to a month, we can reprogram our entire system and create like a [SPEAKER_07]: functionality where reporters who paid the tariffs can make a claim and we can process them quickly and get those all paid out. [SPEAKER_07]: And so it does seem like all the companies are going to get their refunds and none of the consumers are. [SPEAKER_03]: Have we been paying tariffs on international subscribers?
[SPEAKER_07]: Do we need to make a claim with CBP? [SPEAKER_07]: No, I don't think we're going through ports of entry. [SPEAKER_03]: No, because even that would just be apple passing the cost of the fee of the tariff to us or like, or a Patreon, right? [SPEAKER_03]: So they would get the money. [SPEAKER_07]: another small business screwed by Donald Trump. [SPEAKER_07]: You may have paid some past through a costs on Shrek. [SPEAKER_03]: It's possible.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's gotten, God knows how affordable the Shrek would have been without tariffs. [SPEAKER_03]: That's a world I can only dream of. [SPEAKER_03]: Let me paint a picture for you folks. [SPEAKER_03]: It's 3pm, your partner asks you, what are we doing for dinner? [SPEAKER_03]: And you're like, damn it, damn it. [SPEAKER_03]: I haven't thought about that at all. [SPEAKER_03]: This is one of Life's Great Birds. [SPEAKER_07]: It's up there for me with clipping my dog's nails.
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[SPEAKER_05]: The president's response to this case, the media's response to this case, law professors response to this case. [SPEAKER_05]: So starting with Trump, President Trump had lots of psychotic, lots of, [SPEAKER_05]: Absolutely psychotic, petty, immature things to say about this decision coming down, a reporter at a press conference on February 20th asked Trump if he regrets nominating Gorsuch and Barrett. [SPEAKER_05]: He said, quote, I don't want to say whether or not I regret.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think their decision was terrible. [SPEAKER_05]: I think it's an embarrassment to their families. [SPEAKER_05]: You want to know the truth, the two of them, and embarrassment to their families. [SPEAKER_06]: Oh, he's such a catty little bitch. [SPEAKER_03]: It's so great. [SPEAKER_03]: And embarrassment to their families is fucking hilarious. [SPEAKER_05]: Then next day, he posted on truth social. [SPEAKER_05]: My new hero is United States Supreme Court Justice, Brett Kavanaugh.
[SPEAKER_05]: And of course, Justice is Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. [SPEAKER_05]: There is no doubt in anyone's mind that they want to make America great again. [SPEAKER_07]: I agree with him on that. [SPEAKER_03]: they're just so long they're like rambling in the way that his posts often are lots of like random capitalization and shit like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: A few days later he said the recent decision of the United States Supreme Court concerning tariffs, all caps tariffs could allow for hundreds of billions of dollars to be returned to countries and companies that have been quote ripping off the United States America for many years. [SPEAKER_03]: A little bit later he says, is a rehearing or rejudication [SPEAKER_03]: question mark question mark question. [SPEAKER_05]: He wants an appeal from the Supreme feel.
[SPEAKER_05]: Where's it going to go? [SPEAKER_03]: Appeal to God, dude. [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, it's so good. [SPEAKER_03]: It's so good. [SPEAKER_03]: I think we're all sort of used to it now, but his thing where he just like randomly puts quotes around something or.
[SPEAKER_03]: capitalizing something if like if one of your friends started talking like this you'd be like oh no like it's an episode of some kind and it they're mentally ill and you need to figure out what it is so I can help them that's like it and now it's just like and you know we've been looking at it for 10 years and so you're sort of like yep that's a Trump post all right [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, last thing I'll say in Michael, you made the point when when we were talking about Cabinosa descent that Cabinosa was clearly like spotlighting other statutory routes that other statutory justifications that Trump could take for imposing these tariffs and Trump himself said that our country is the hottest anywhere in the world right?
[SPEAKER_05]: our country is the hottest anywhere in the world, but now I'm going in different direction, which is even stronger than the original choice, as Justice Kavanaugh wrote in his dissent, and he quotes Kavanaugh's dissent saying the other statutes that Trump can use. [SPEAKER_05]: Thank you, Justice Kavanaugh. [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_03]: He has this cabin. [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, and so that's our president losing his mind folks.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And just as cabin all losing his mind, remember? [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: A few years ago, and people were like, it's just as cabin up part of the moderate block. [SPEAKER_07]: This is three, three, three, four, three, three, yeah. [SPEAKER_07]: It's a number of robots in the cabin. [SPEAKER_05]: He's Lincoln Trump Taint.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's talk about the media response, [SPEAKER_03]: After a full year of the Supreme Court sighting with Trump in statistically anomalous rates, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like to degrees that would shock experts and no one could explain other than bias. [SPEAKER_03]: A single Trump loss has emerged and you know that the dipshits at the New York Times are all over it. [SPEAKER_03]: Right, democracy saved everybody. [SPEAKER_03]: Chief legal correspondent at the Times had a flip-tack.
[SPEAKER_03]: wrote a piece called the Supreme Court's Declaration of Independence. [SPEAKER_05]: My god, I didn't know that was the headline. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: He said it's a lot like when we declared independence from the British. [SPEAKER_03]: I see. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: That's the comparison in case you're unfamiliar. [SPEAKER_03]: He's comparing this to the revolution.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, he says starting with the 2024 decision that gave President Trump's substantial immunity from prosecution and continuing through a score of emergency orders provisionally greenlating and array of his second term initiatives, Mr. Trump has had an extraordinarily successful run before the Supreme Court.
[SPEAKER_03]: That came to a sudden jolting halt on Friday when Chief Justice [SPEAKER_03]: It was the Supreme Court's first merits ruling, a final judgment on the lawfulness of an executive action on an element of the administration's second term agenda. [SPEAKER_03]: It amounted to a declaration of independence. [SPEAKER_03]: So again, he admits. [SPEAKER_03]: that President Trump has been on a roll in front of the Supreme Court. [SPEAKER_03]: And then he loses one case.
[SPEAKER_03]: It hurls a new era. [SPEAKER_03]: And it's a declaration of independence. [SPEAKER_03]: unbelievable, unbelievable. [SPEAKER_03]: And also like we don't even know how this is going to shake out. [SPEAKER_03]: What if they uphold the new terrorists? [SPEAKER_03]: Right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like what? [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: No one has any idea. [SPEAKER_07]: What if the district court is like these remedies are like not administrative and the Supreme Court is like okay.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, like, like, like, you know, we don't know what's going to happen. [SPEAKER_07]: We also don't know what's going to happen with the feet. [SPEAKER_07]: He says it like this means the court is going to start handing Trump else. [SPEAKER_07]: Right. [SPEAKER_07]: Maybe, maybe, but maybe not, maybe not. [SPEAKER_07]: Like, who are you to say that? [SPEAKER_07]: Like, based on one fucking case.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, it's just bizarre, I mean, so he also said in his first administration, Mr. Trump did poorly in the Supreme Court in argued cases, he prevailed only 42 percent of the time the lowest rate since at least Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. [SPEAKER_03]: In other words, a fundamentally conservative court with a six justice majority of Republican appointees that included three named by Mr. Trump himself had not been particularly receptive to his arguments.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, I posted about this on blue sky and just to point out that there was not a six justice conservative majority during his first term. [SPEAKER_03]: And I know, you know, so I posted like, I think that like the chief legal correspondent for the New York Times should know that. [SPEAKER_07]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: It just feels simple to me. [SPEAKER_07]: Right.
[SPEAKER_07]: Should know that it was a five four court literally until like during the election like October of the election. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: And then, so like two hours after I posted that, there was a correction, which I will take credit for, I think that's right.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I also want to point out, correction aside, if you're going to like write a piece about the courts independence from Trump, then like how about some data from this term, like right away, you're like, right. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, back in 2017, they actually didn't quite agree with him that much. [SPEAKER_03]: It's like, all right, what's what's happening now? [SPEAKER_03]: Surely, surely the new data would be interesting to look at. [SPEAKER_03]: No. [SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Another Supreme Court watcher over at the New York Times, Linda Greenhouse, the headline Roberts' losing patience with Trump, or there's an alternate headline, John Roberts sent Trump a message. [SPEAKER_03]: Wow. [SPEAKER_03]: It starts off with Chief Justice John Roberts doesn't waste words. [SPEAKER_03]: His majority opinion in last week's tariff ruling was characteristically a model of succinctness. [SPEAKER_04]: Where? [SPEAKER_04]: Where? [SPEAKER_03]: Now false.
[SPEAKER_04]: Which where? [SPEAKER_03]: Similar to how Adam Liptax should know that it was not 6 to 3. [SPEAKER_03]: during Trump's first term, maybe even worse, because that was probably a brain fart. [SPEAKER_03]: You know what I mean? [SPEAKER_03]: Like he just brain farted that. [SPEAKER_03]: He could have answered that question. [SPEAKER_03]: If you would ask him, he would have told you to do spider-gamesburg die and change the balance of the court. [SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: He just brain farted because he's stupid and old. [SPEAKER_03]: Linda Greenhouse saying that Roberts is like typically succinct is outrageous too. [SPEAKER_05]: Does it make sense? [SPEAKER_05]: Nobody has ever said that. [SPEAKER_05]: Nobody has ever described John Roberts as succinct. [SPEAKER_03]: Also, this is one of those things that's relatively bearifiable empirically.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's like empirical scotists, which is like a blog that [SPEAKER_03]: tracks like random Supreme Court data shit. [SPEAKER_03]: And they've always found that Robert's is one of the more of her boasts in the sense that his opinions tend to be longer. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: So like what you can't just say this. [SPEAKER_03]: You can't just say this in the New York Times. [SPEAKER_03]: You don't fuck what are you talking about?
[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, that piss me off as someone who has to professionally read John Robert to pin you know what I mean? [SPEAKER_05]: I was just like don't walk and talk if he does too. [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, you would think, but now I feel like maybe she doesn't see it, but maybe not, maybe not. [SPEAKER_07]: Maybe not, maybe reads his private press releases that he sends to his favorite reporters. [SPEAKER_05]: Now she's asking Chad GPT.
[SPEAKER_03]: Here is some of these substantive portions of this piece. [SPEAKER_03]: For the past year, the Trump administration has trolled the Supreme Court, sending up one emergency application after another to demand temporary relief from adverse lower court rulings. [SPEAKER_03]: The administration frequently got what it wanted, a stay of the ruling while on appeal proceeded. [SPEAKER_03]: Chief Justice Roberts was usually in the majority on these unsigned and generally unexplained orders.
[SPEAKER_03]: Obviously, he thought the stays were called for, but he probably isn't happy with the drip drip drip of public perception reflected in polls and social media chatter that the court was handing the president a blank check. [SPEAKER_03]: So, step back here, the court spends basically all of 20-25 siding with the Trump administration on shadow docket cases. [SPEAKER_03]: in numbers that, again, are statistical improbabilities, if the court is actually unbiased.
[SPEAKER_03]: But then Robert sides against Trump in one case, and that becomes proof that he secretly bristles about Trump, that he's upset about the image of the court and that he's sending Trump a message, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like that. [SPEAKER_03]: This is all inferred from this one case, but you can't possibly infer anything from the dozens of cases that preceded it, right? [SPEAKER_07]: And infer anything from Robert's writing the immunity decision.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, right, right, right, like, what are we talking about? [SPEAKER_07]: Like, what the fuck are you talking about? [SPEAKER_07]: These guys are all, they love Trump. [SPEAKER_07]: They fucking love Trump. [SPEAKER_07]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_07]: What are you talking about? [SPEAKER_03]: She goes on. [SPEAKER_03]: This is how she wraps up the piece.
[SPEAKER_03]: Mr. Trump has helped create Nat Misferon, which judges appropriately fear for their personal safety and that of their families. [SPEAKER_03]: Many people expected the chief justice to address this issue directly in his year-end report in December, but he did not. [SPEAKER_03]: In two decades, as the nation's top jurist, he has at times spoken directly in defense of the judiciary, as in his 2024 report.
[SPEAKER_03]: But these occasions have been infrequent, as if the only messages this notably self-possessed and buttoned down man cares to send are those [SPEAKER_03]: Trump's attacks on the judiciary in his year and report somehow is transformed into more evidence that Roberts is at odds with Trump, right? [SPEAKER_03]: It's fucking bizarre. [SPEAKER_03]: This isn't just like seeing things where they don't exist. [SPEAKER_03]: It's seeing the opposite of what's happening.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_07]: Right. [SPEAKER_07]: So there was also another New York Times opinion piece by David French. [SPEAKER_07]: Thank God they got a third one in. [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, yep. [SPEAKER_05]: Is it better? [SPEAKER_05]: No. [SPEAKER_07]: No. [SPEAKER_07]: No. [SPEAKER_07]: There's no way David French has the best of the three. [SPEAKER_05]: Right. [SPEAKER_07]: Right.
[SPEAKER_07]: Headline is this the most important Supreme Court case of this century. [SPEAKER_03]: Let me tell you guys, I can answer that one. [SPEAKER_07]: Right now, no. [SPEAKER_07]: No. [SPEAKER_07]: It's not the most important case of this term.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah right right what's the rule that the journalistic rule that every every headline that ask a question can be answered with no yeah exactly but yeah it doesn't matter how they rule on birthright citizenship one way or another that'll be more important doesn't matter how they run on the voting rights act that'll be more important like they're just going to be more important cases this term to say nothing of
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you wish for, Citizens United, Shelby County, Windsor and Trump, you ever fell, like, they're just so many more, like, there are so many more cases, even if he abandoned tariffs entirely, that would just send us back to where we were for every part of American history before last year. [SPEAKER_07]: It says stupid. [SPEAKER_07]: I don't want to get into the piece because it says stupid. [SPEAKER_07]: And it's rehashing a lot of this. [SPEAKER_07]: Oh, they're independent now.
[SPEAKER_07]: And they're declared the evidence, which is just like based on a projection of what you hope will happen. [SPEAKER_07]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: Should we read from our rivals podcast?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes. [SPEAKER_03]: Over at Slate, there's a Supreme Court podcast called Amicus with our [SPEAKER_05]: So in this episode, Dahlia says, quote, it's such a funny, corrective to our constant complaint that some members of the Supreme Court have no idea what's happening in Congress, no idea about the enormity of the insurrection that happened across the street a few years back, no idea about those rendition flights to El Salvador, no idea about anything.
[SPEAKER_05]: Today was their equal opportunity to have no idea of what's really going on with Donald Trump. [SPEAKER_05]: And weirdly, it saves the day. [SPEAKER_05]: If he wanted this to feel like an existential threat to them, they're not having it. [SPEAKER_05]: They're just going to do egg-headed judicial construction all day long. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's, that's what the Supreme Court's doing. [SPEAKER_03]: All right, just sure.
[SPEAKER_07]: So what she's saying here is that like the court is unfazed by political constraints they essentially do not see the politics of the day and so Trump can try to intimidate them on this. [SPEAKER_07]: and they're not having it. [SPEAKER_05]: Like they're dumb, but they're independent. [SPEAKER_07]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: Which is just saying that they are oblivious to politics. [SPEAKER_03]: And that's why they ruled for Trump on like C. Coat. [SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Functionally. [SPEAKER_07]: Let me tell you, if Donald Trump was not the Republican nominee for president at the time Trump being United States would have gone a different way. [SPEAKER_07]: And it's fucking insane. [SPEAKER_07]: It's fucking insane that [SPEAKER_07]: she cites that as an example of them not being aware of the political atmosphere and the political implications of the decisions.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's true that they are not good at assessing the political atmosphere per se because their brains are cooked right because they're dumb but it seems like she's saying that like the defining characteristic of this Supreme Court is that they're not paying attention [SPEAKER_03]: of a worse conclusion to draw from what's been happening. [SPEAKER_05]: From somebody who writes and comments and follows the Supreme Court. [SPEAKER_03]: It's insane.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's, I mean, it's up there with John Roberts' succinct, you know? [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: But like, materialy worse. [SPEAKER_07]: Like, on the substance, it's worse. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, at the end of the day, we're the only good ones. [SPEAKER_03]: Alright folks, next week we're going to be talking about the war, more powers, what does it mean to declare a war? [SPEAKER_03]: What does it mean to authorize military force? [SPEAKER_05]: Which one?
[SPEAKER_05]: There's so many. [SPEAKER_03]: There are so many, but a lot of them are just kind of one legally. [SPEAKER_03]: It's correct. [SPEAKER_03]: Well yeah, we're going to talk a bit about what's going on in Iran and the legal questions there and maybe and hopefully shed some light on why nobody ever just declares a war anymore, you know?
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