In short
Podcast Summary: The Beat with Ari Melber - Episode: SCOTUS Rejects Trump Tariffs
Episode Overview
- Date: February 20, 2026
- Host: Ari Melber
- Guest: Neal Katyal, former Acting Solicitor General
- Main Topic: The Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling against President Trump's unilateral imposition of tariffs, marking a significant constitutional check on presidential power.
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Key Discussions
Supreme Court Decision
- Ruling: The Supreme Court ruled that President Trump does not have the authority to unilaterally impose tariffs, affirming that such powers reside with Congress.
- Context: This ruling comes as a major setback for Trump during his second term, emphasizing limits on presidential power amidst claims of emergency authority.
- Importance: The decision is viewed as a pivotal moment in maintaining the separation of powers and preventing a more autocratic presidency.
Implications of the Ruling
- Economic Impact: The ruling nullifies billions in tariffs, which were a key part of Trump's economic strategy.
- Political Ramifications: This decision has broad implications not just for trade but also for Trump's overall approach to governance and his use of emergency powers.
- Legal Precedent: The case serves as a critical example of the Court's willingness to check presidential authority, irrespective of political affiliations of the justices involved (including Trump's own appointees).
Guest Insights
- Neal Katyal:
- Arguments: He argued against Trump's tariff strategy, stating it violated constitutional limits on presidential power.
- Court's Reaction: Katyal noted that the justices, including Trump appointees, were clear in their rejection of Trump's claims as extreme and without precedent.
Trump’s Response
- Trump publicly acknowledged the ruling as a loss and expressed frustration over what he perceives as limitations on his power to impose tariffs.
- He suggested looking for alternative avenues to implement tariffs, highlighting his continued insistence on maintaining a hardline trade stance.
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Key Takeaways
- Constitutional Limits: The ruling reaffirms that the imposition of tariffs is a power exclusively vested in Congress, highlighting the importance of legislative authority in economic matters.
- Political Landscape: This decision may reshape the dynamics of Trump's presidency and influence future actions regarding emergency powers.
- Judicial Independence: The ruling illustrates the Supreme Court's independence, showing that even justices appointed by a sitting president are willing to rule against him when the law demands it.
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Conclusion The Supreme Court's decision represents a significant legal and political moment in the ongoing tension between presidential power and constitutional limits. As Ari Melber discusses the ramifications of this ruling, it becomes evident that the checks and balances inherent in the U.S. system of government remain robust, even amidst the controversial presidency of Donald Trump.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOSupreme Court Strikes Down Trump's Tariffs
1:27 to 2:45
Ari discusses the implications of the Supreme Court's ruling against Trump's tariffs.
“That ranges from trade, the subject of this case, to potentially military policing, and a lot more in this MAGA era.”
Analyzing Trump's Defeat and Its Impact
2:45 to 3:40
Analysis of how this ruling affects Trump's power and future governance.
“The chief justice, dealing Trump a clear defeat.”
Legal Insights from Neil Kochal
3:50 to 4:50
Neil Kochal shares insights on the Supreme Court's ruling and its rationale.
“That is just not something that any president has ever had the power to do in our history.”
Understanding the Court's Rejection of Trump's Claims
4:50 to 6:30
Discussion on how the Supreme Court viewed Trump's claims as extreme.
“And we had thought, you know, going into today, we felt very good about our arguments.”
The Separation of Powers and Constitutional Limits
6:30 to 8:30
Exploration of the constitutional limits on presidential power regarding tariffs.
“We knew that in order to win this challenge, we had to persuade the court not just that it was like minorly unconstitutional, but a major betrayal of our constitutional conscience.”
The Historical Context of Presidential Power
8:30 to 10:00
Contextualizing the ruling within American history and presidential powers.
“And indeed, in Article I of our Constitution, the power to impose tariffs is given to Congress.”
Reflecting on Legal Strategies and Future Implications
10:00 to 12:25
Discussion on litigation strategy and future implications for presidential powers.
“We've been talking about the meat of it.”
Supreme Court Ruling Against Trump's Tariff Powers
14:01 to 22:01
Explore the Supreme Court's ruling limiting Trump's ability to impose tariffs and its implications for presidential power.
“And if they get away with it, you'll see that kind of claim more often.”
Interview with Norm Eisen on Trump's Power Limits
22:01 to 27:59
Former ambassador Norm Eisen discusses the implications of the Supreme Court's ruling and Trump's reactions to it.
“The learning curve may be tough, but it's the other way.”
Impact of Trump's Tariffs
28:21 to 29:27
Discussion on Trump's tariff plans and potential economic repercussions.
“although he's lost a lot of power today.”
Show all 17 chapters
Analysis of Tariff Effects
29:27 to 31:38
Exploration of how tariffs affect consumers and the economy at large.
“And you might have thought to yourself, well, that's the end of the relationship.”
Legal and Economic Ramifications
31:38 to 33:24
Examination of the legal implications and financial outcomes of the tariffs.
“reasons and the high court has been very friendly to Trump in letting him kind of break laws on the short run.”
Consumer Consequences of Tariffs
33:24 to 34:38
Discussion on how tariffs ultimately affect American consumers.
“They're going to pay it off to the companies.”
Humor in Tariff Discussions
34:38 to 35:18
A light-hearted moment discussing olive oil and cooking.
“What do you I'm out of time, but what do you use your olive oil for, Justin?”
Food Prices and SNAP Changes
35:23 to 39:59
Discussion on new SNAP standards and food pricing issues.
“What about food prices and food assistance and a lot more in that MAGA MAHA agenda next.”
AI in the Arts and Authenticity Crisis
39:59 to 41:49
Exploration of AI's impact on acting and authenticity in art.
“Art is supposed to be fundamentally human.”
Exploring Artistic Identity and Success
42:01 to 43:31
Learn about the intersection of creativity, identity, and personal success in music.
“Unless you're true to who you are, it's not going to resonate.”
Transcript
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1:02Ari Melber:Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber. We're reporting on this Trump defeat at the Supreme Court today. Six justices striking down these tariffs. It's a clear blow to what we know is a clear and major economic priority for President Trump. The high court nixing Trump's tariffs. All of this is important and lands as a path to potentially a wider check on the president's efforts to seize emergency powers. That ranges from trade, the subject of this case, to potentially military policing, and a lot more in this MAGA era. This ruling is obviously a setback for Trump. It is the most sweeping rejection of Trump's attempted power grabs from the Supreme Court that we've seen his entire second term.
1:43Ari Melber:It's driving headlines tonight about both the obvious economic importance, trimming billions in international tariffs, and the wider pushback to Trump's efforts at a more unilateral or some say king-like presidency. Now, later tonight, I'm going to give you a detailed breakdown on what the court's rebuke means, especially going forward. Right now, we begin with the seismic news landing across the nation.
2:06Neal Katyal:An increasingly rare directive from the Supreme Court. It told Donald Trump no. A major slap at the president of the United States. It is fundamentally a reversal of the president's position.
2:19Ari Melber:It's a conservative court and Trump doesn't often lose, does he? The court said, look, you can't make a sow's ear into a silk purse. Would you say that he lost this one? He did.
2:28Neal Katyal:He did lose. He did.
2:29Ari Melber:This decision is a loss for the administration.
2:31Neal Katyal:This is an enormous decision and a rare loss for President Trump, reinforcing the separation of powers enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
2:41Ari Melber:The ruling is about power more than economics. It reinforces the limits on any president's power, including this president. The chief justice, dealing Trump a clear defeat. Under law, the power to authorize tariffs in peacetime is constitutionally vested in Congress alone, we saw today. Now, Trump could have avoided today's laws had he simply worked with Congress on the raft of tariffs he famously announced. Of course, Congress is run by his Republican Party. And while he relished the spotlight in rolling those tariffs out, plus the uncertainty he sometimes stoked, announcing those tariffs, standing alone on the world stage, threatening other countries, even if often later backing down, Today, he stood alone in a very different way, in defeat.
3:25Ari Melber:He came out to face reporters and cameras as he railed against a clear loss. He acknowledged the limit on his powers by discussing what could be other paths to temporary tariffs he might push, but not for long without Congress under this ruling. All of this comes after Trump has faced several losses on the issue in the lower courts. and this big news also vindicates the Americans who sued to stop Trump from what they said exceeded his power as well as the legal strategy of their well-known advocate Obama's former top Supreme Court litigator and a frequent voice on our air Neil Kochal joins us now I want to play what he told the court in the arguments some of which are now reflected in the new ruling today
4:08Neal Katyal:This president has torn up the entire tariff architecture. That is just not something that any president has ever had the power to do in our history. And the idea that Congress, by implication, did this in 1977 and handed him all this power, I think is really difficult.
4:27Ari Melber:Neil, your view of today's ruling?
4:31Neal Katyal:Well, thank you, Ari, for having me on. And yes, I mean, I think I asked the Supreme Court for about six things in my oral argument on November 5th. And the Supreme Court gave us each one and gave it to us resoundingly, both in clear language written by the chief justice in the majority opinion and also in separate opinions. And notably, Ari, you know, this was a decision joined by two appointees of Donald Trump himself, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, joining the chief justice, who's itself a Republican appointee, and others on the court to say, uh-uh, not under our Constitution. You don't get to do this.
5:08Neal Katyal:And we had thought, you know, going into today, we felt very good about our arguments. But nonetheless, we expected the president to somehow spin it as a win because he does that in other realms. But he couldn't spin this one. I mean, the Supreme Court was unequivocal and clear. He went way beyond the constitutional parameters and the Supreme Court reigned him in appropriately. Mm hmm.
5:31Ari Melber:In the ruling, we have a description of what was Trump's position, as argued by DOJ, that if he had his way, he'd have the power to unilaterally impose unbounded tariffs, change them at will. They note in the law's half century, no president has invoked the statute to impose any tariffs, let alone tariffs of this magnitude. How did you view what the court today says was extremism? Not some debatable thing as we sometimes have in court, but what they viewed as the president and by extension the DOJ's defense as a kind of extremism that could not stand?
6:06Neal Katyal:Yeah, that's exactly why we were confident, Ari, in our position. It wasn't about President Trump. It was about the positions that the president had taken on tariffs, which were just so radical. I mean, if you go back over American history, I think you can count on one hand the number of times a president loses a major case. You know, normally courts defer to the president. You may not even have many fingers on that hand, quite honestly. It's incredibly rare. And we knew that going in. We knew that in order to win this challenge, we had to persuade the court not just that it was like minorly unconstitutional, but a major betrayal of our constitutional conscience.
6:45Neal Katyal:We thought that's what it was. I think the questions at oral argument, which were super hard, it was a really intense oral argument in November. They gave me a very hard time, to be sure. But I think the questions really pointed to the court thinking, yeah, this is this is well beyond anything any other president has done. And we can't tolerate it here. Yeah.
7:06Ari Melber:And in our system of government, the president has big powers. People know that some of the members of this court have been associated with a view that that's a good thing, that you need a kind of clear, active, almost sometimes brash executive. It can't be second guessing everything or worried about everything being litigated. And so I'm curious about that, that arc of jurisprudence against what Chief Justice Roberts wrote today, which, you know, and I'll read to viewers, the president's assertion of a broad statutory power over the national economy, basically the way he wanted to conduct the trade war without Congress was, quote, extravagant by any measure.
7:43Ari Melber:Can you talk to us about that line, how you argued it, but also the majority you found for that line that sure, he's got big powers, but not this big alone?
7:54Neal Katyal:Exactly. I mean, one of the hard things when you're a Supreme Court advocate fighting against a presidential claim of power is the president is saying, look, I really need this court. And like, who are you as some private person? Here I had the privilege of representing five small businesses, but who are they to second guess a president's determination? Well, I really need this. And that's what makes a challenge like this very hard. At the same time, we do live under a constitution. And the most important thing our founders did was say the power to tax is the power to destroy. And therefore, it's got to be lodged in the Congress of the United States.
8:30Neal Katyal:And indeed, in Article I of our Constitution, the power to impose tariffs is given to Congress. And it's the first power Congress has given. And so they really made that clear. And so our whole litigation strategy was to really emphasize that and to say, look, separation of powers and waiting for legislation might be cumbersome. It might take time. But that is the American way. And I closed both my brief to the Supreme Court and my oral argument on November 5th with the same quote from Justice Jackson back in the steel seizure case in 1952 in which he made that point. And today I was really glad to see Justice Gorsuch, again, one of Donald Trump's own appointees, picking that up.
9:12Neal Katyal:And the last paragraphs of his opinion are written as beautifully as anything I've seen in the United States reports. And it's all about that kind of need for legislation, for Congress to do its job and for the president to have the inability to cut them out of the equation. Yeah.
9:29Ari Melber:And you're nodding towards history where real problems, including real global challenges and threats under Truman, did not mean a limitless blank check. That happened to be a Democratic president. Here we have to be talking about a Republican president. But but you're pointing to a strong limit that courts have said throughout history, even war, even foreign threats doesn't mean that we have a king. We don't become a monarchy just because there are international emergencies. I'm going to do a breakdown on why this was such a big loss for Trump coming up. We've been talking about the meat of it.
10:02Ari Melber:I do have one sort of nerdy jurisprudential detailed question for you since I have you, which is you won big, you won six, three. But there were a lot of sub parts to the ruling today. It seems that this court does that more often than in some past periods of history. There's a whole debate about that. As someone who was intimately involved, did you notice that? How do you view that? Why were there so many subparts about other doctrines and sort of is that because they're staking out fights for the future? How did you view that?
10:34Neal Katyal:Yeah, so I do think this court is very methodologically divided as to how to interpret the Constitution, the original understanding and a lot of modern doctrines. There's a lot of disagreement on the court. And in litigating this in crafting a strategy, that was always a challenge because you've got to count to five. That's the most important thing at the Supreme Court. You've got to get five justices to agree on a core proposition. And so what we tried to do was strip down each argument to its essence and then appeal to different wings of the court. And that's what happened today. Yes, there were six justices in a bunch of different opinions, but they all agreed, Ari, six of them, on the core constitutional idea, which is tariffs or taxes.
11:15Neal Katyal:Taxes can only be done by Congress, and Congress has to be explicit if they're giving the president that power. And I just want to pick up on something you said in the last hour. You talked about how this Supreme Court has been giving a lot of deference to the president on the emergency docket, the shadow docket, and case after case, you said, in which they're rushed up to the Supreme Court on emergency motions, the rule for the administration. We knew that. And because of that, we did something pretty unusual here. We decided, even though I argued the case in the Court of Appeals and won seven to four that Trump's tariffs were illegal, we didn't seek to immediately enforce it.
11:53Neal Katyal:We didn't want to have some emergency rush to the Supreme Court. Instead, we just let it play out because we knew if the court took its time with this case and took the time instead of an emergency posture to understand the nuances and the implications of the extraordinary claim that President Trump was making, we felt very confident. And so that's why the president has been able to collect these illegal tariffs for the last year, even though a court has struck them down, you know, many months ago.
12:25Ari Melber:Yeah, and that's you're referring to, again, the discussion we're having with Nicole and a lot of folks have looked at the challenges in this environment. You're discussing sort of your legal strategy, which was vindicated today. So that's also super interesting. Neil, congratulations. Thank you very much. Coming up in 90 seconds, we turn to my special report. What more we can glean from this rebuke of Trump. That's next.
12:48The U.S.
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13:08Ari Melber:Big news to end the week. A major loss for Trump at the Supreme Court, striking down his tariffs as illegal. The court found Trump did not have the power to do what he wanted alone. Now, over a year into Trump's second term, he's back at square one on his trade war. How did Trump try to claim these powers in the first place? The answer matters for the rest of his second term, because he argued the U.S. faced big emergencies. So he had to claim emergency powers. It's the same kind of fact-free, often extreme power grabs he has deployed, used to put soldiers and agents around the U.S. Some of those folks have been out doing things.
13:49Ari Melber:Some have been kicked out under court orders. But these can be autocratic king-like claims where rulers make emergency claims so they can try to see if they can have more power. And if they get away with it, you'll see that kind of claim more often. If they don't, if they lose, it can stem this type of power grab. Well, Trump did not get away with this one. He lost this case by a wide margin with his own appointees that you see there, Gorsuch and Barrett. Those are Trump-appointed justices also ruling he exceeded his power. So my first point to you on this, if you remember just one thing about this big Trump loss, it's this.
14:30Ari Melber:you're looking at the coalition that may stop President Trump from abusing other emergency powers. Because while of course the U.S. can face real emergencies or wars, and they can empower a president to take certain actions, obviously presidents can't just declare a permanent global emergency across their entire term. And on this issue, if you're interested in the facts, there's a 77 law that enables some extra powers in unusual and extraordinary threat situations. But that law doesn't even mention tariffs. And surely it doesn't apply to the 100 plus countries that Trump tried to tariff, claiming it was all under this one law.
15:09Ari Melber:And if you're worried about government overreach, it doesn't really matter whether you agree with a given president or their party or even the goal. That's what government overreach looks like. That's why the court ruled against Trump today. And this point was on display with the initial skepticism we saw against the Trump DOJ when this case was first argued in the court.
15:32Neal Katyal:I just don't understand this argument. It's not an article. It's a congressional power, not a presidential power to tax.
15:42Ari Melber:He didn't have that power to tax and tariff on his own. That's the law. You heard there Justice Sotomayor being nice about it. She said she didn't understand the Trump defense's argument because it made no sense. And now, from that set of questioning to today's loss for Trump, the chief justice rules that Trump asserts the independent power to impose tariffs on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time. In other words, that type of claim is an absurdly impossible kind of king-like power if you had it. And Roberts went on to explain ruling against Trump today, no president has ever read that law I just showed you to, quote, confer such power.
16:27Ari Melber:The other presidents who didn't see it that way were right, because no president has that kind of power. So this Supreme Court, which has clearly helped Trump in other ways, noted this is ultimately about those limits on power against any leader who would want to act like a king in this country. More about that than, say, economics data. The judge is concluding that they ruled against Trump while noting they have no special competence in economics or foreign affairs. We claim only the limited role by the Constitution, they explained. Quote, we hold that the law does not authorize the president to impose tariffs.
17:04Ari Melber:The law does not authorize those powers, so Trump doesn't have them. This matters, especially at a time when we have a president who lies about elections he lost and is sending the FBI in to seize ballots and is trying to indict his political opponents, journalists, and others. There are some people who like Trump so much, they want to look the other way on that stuff. I'm not here to talk to you about whether people like or dislike Trump. We still have a First Amendment in this country. You're free to make up your mind and express yourself. But that First Amendment that protects you is in a constitution that also protects you by limiting him and anyone else who comes into power and tries to abuse government powers like a king.
Read the full transcript
17:47Ari Melber:And that's why this one is a lot more intense than just a tariff debate. Trump tried an emergency excuse and it bought him some time, but the court has now ruled it was false. Because there wasn't the kind of emergency that justified these powers. And it failed. Chief Justice Roberts holding the line here as a longtime conservative appointed by Bush, joined by other Trump appointees, Barrett and Gorsuch, appointed by Trump. And that reinforces even at a time where people are skeptical and there's so much partisanship that on this issue, the court had independence. It wasn't just a vote based on the party of the appointee or whether they had a history with Trump.
18:25Ari Melber:Quite the contrary. Gorsuch may appreciate that Trump appointed him. They may like each other to some degree, but the law is the law. And this wasn't a close call by the time it reached the high court. They'd lost in the lower courts. Trump did acknowledge the loss today. He complained. He lashed out. He showed a kind of anger, maybe, because he knew he lost in public at one point, complaining that he has other powers, like embargoes or war powers. So he thinks it's unfair that if he has those other big powers, why should this whole tariff power be limited? Well, let me tell you something, and this is an easy thing to understand.
19:00Ari Melber:that complaint is not a legal or even a logical argument. The whole point of limited and separate powers in our system, the reason why we're not like Putin's Russia or Stalin's Russia or many other countries you could think of, is that we separate the powers. We have different powers in the government spread out. They're not all held by one person, let alone the king. And yet I'm going to let you hear, alongside the ruling, our president marveling at this system of checks and balances, almost as if he just learned about it today.
19:34Neal Katyal:I cannot charge them anything. Think of that. How ridiculous is that? I'm allowed to embargo them. I'm allowed to tell them you can't do business in the United States anymore. We want you out of here. But if I want to charge them$10, I can't do that. It's incorrect. Their decision's incorrect.
19:53Ari Melber:He's upset. He disagrees with it. He thinks it's incorrect. And yet Trump's presentation references the limits on his power as he conceded the limits. He said he'd look for other ways to pursue tariffs, meaning other ways not barred by the limit on his power under this court and longstanding law.
20:12Neal Katyal:They merely overruled a particular use of IEPA tariffs. And essentially it's used to get a fee. It's ridiculous, but it's OK because we have. Other ways, numerous other ways. We have a totally firm decision now. And I don't think the court meant it because the court doesn't show great spirit toward our country, in my opinion.
20:36Ari Melber:He's entitled to his opinion. But the president was speaking as a man shown up here by a code he does not control. That's how power works. You can have some and still face other forces with their own power. that's true from the halls of government power in Washington out to the streets or as a classic simple moment captured it in the hit show The Wire which explores power and its limits law and its inconsistencies you'll see how when one man experiences the limits on his supposed authority he wants it to be one way but it's the other you want it to be one way What? You want it to be one way. Man, I don't know what you...
21:27Ari Melber:Man, stop! Stop saying that.
21:34Ari Melber:But it's the other way. Trump wanted it to be one way. But sometimes, it's the other way. Today, it was the other way. The Supreme Court was able to say, uh-uh. And this is a crucial setback for any parts of Trump's second term that involve him wanting to be a king or seize unitary autocratic powers or claim that emergencies mean he gets to do what no one else is allowed to do. The learning curve may be tough, but it's the other way. We're going to get into that next.
22:18Ari Melber:You want it to be one way. What? We want it to be one way. Man, I don't want it to be one way.
22:26Neal Katyal:Stop! Stop saying that.
22:33Ari Melber:But it's the other way. What? We're joined by former ambassador and Obama lawyer Norm Eisen. Norm, for Donald Trump today, it was the other way.
22:45Neal Katyal:That's right, Ari. Another great line from The Wire. A man has got to have a code. He discovered that he's got a code, as Omar Little said, and that code is the Constitution. And over and over again, whatever you may think of the Supreme Court and the Alien Enemies Act case, in the city of Chicago National Guard case, and now in the tariffs case, the Supreme Court has said to him, you stick with your powers under Article 2. Do not encroach beyond the authority we've given you. Very, very important for maintaining democracy and combating Donald Trump's authoritarian bent.
23:32Ari Melber:Yeah. And when you look at sort of Donald Trump's claims today, I want to play another one of these contrasts. He clearly knew he lost. It was a different type with Trump. And maybe because the ruling came out and he insisted on live reacting within, you know, two hours or so, you could see that he just sort of didn't have a big lie yet to shroud it. I mean, I remember when we covered the 2020 loss and it was, they measured the longest time he'd gone without coming out to take questions as president. He went a couple of weeks. Today, he came right out and had anger. Take a look. President,
24:11Neal Katyal:are you going to ask Congress to take additional action on tariffs now? I don't need to. It's already been approved. I mean, I would ask Congress and probably get it.
24:21Ari Melber:And we showed earlier him sort of saying, oh, I have these other powers. Why don't I have this one? He could have asked Congress. On day one, there was a lot more political capital. How do you view this as someone who's worked in the White House, understands Washington, that the Supreme Court didn't say you can't do this. It just said you can't do this without Congress. A more cooperative or collaborative leader might try.
24:44Neal Katyal:Well, Ari, the problem is that Donald Trump doesn't actually want to do it the right way. He has other authorities that he could have used to do this, But they would require things like an investigation. He would have to substantiate it with data. He couldn't target countries with random tariff rates to scratch his foreign policy itches. He'd have to have a genuine basis for doing it. You know, I'm not so sure that he could get this kind of tariff authority from Congress. I represented in this case more than two dozen prominent conservatives. We filed briefs at every level of the case, including at the Supreme Court, at our public interest law firm, the Democracy Defenders Fund.
25:41Neal Katyal:They represented every administration from Nixon to Trump. Blah, Nari. And they told the Supreme Court that this kind of irrigation of power is something more befitting King George III, who we threw off 250 years ago, then an American president. So let me ask you that because of the role you have.
26:02Ari Melber:Does this coalition, this majority today, give you a strategy for dealing with Trump's other power grabs, including on elections and other meddling going forward? Is this something you think you can build on?
26:20Neal Katyal:I think it is. We've had success in the lower courts in his elections power grab. For example, he tried to do something similar to foreign countries, what he tried to do with tariffs, sorry. He tried to do to American states with his elections executive order, take over parts of election administration. We went to court, shut that down. With the redistricting, trying to grab extra congressional seats again he attempted to go outside the bounds of law we litigated prop 50 in california we won that the supreme court affirmed california counteracting donald trump's effort to steal legislative seats california bounce it out with new seats without noted dissent arey so yes clearly there is support on the court but as you noted earlier uh There's also been issues with this court, including their use of the shadow docket.
27:24Neal Katyal:On these extreme flexes of emergency power, the Alien Enemies Act, the National Guard, now tariffs, there does seem to be a 6-3 majority. And I even think Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, you know, some of these cases you may pick up Kavanaugh as well.
27:42Ari Melber:Well, that's really striking because while there's a lot of concern in the country about what the president has gotten away with. This was a major rebuke today on a core priority for the president. And as you say, it shows where some of that work is. Of course, you got to bring the cases and have the action out there to ever get to this point. Ambassador Eisen, a litigator and someone we've relied on over the years on these stories. Thank you so much. Thanks, Artie. Appreciate it. By the end of the hour, we will change it up and hear from Melissa Ford, who's worked with Alicia Keys and Usher, and been a big part of the culture.
28:19Ari Melber:That's by the end of the hour. Trump is planning to find ways to still issue some tariffs, although he's lost a lot of power today. We have a special guest on What's Next, so you understand where we're headed and whether Illinois and these other Democratic states are going to get their refund. They started demanding Trump pay up for his illegal tariffs tonight.
29:08Neal Katyal:to MS Now Premium on Apple Podcasts.
29:14Ari Melber:We're back with Professor Justin Wolfer, his economist host of Think Like an Economist podcast. What happens now?
29:23Neal Katyal:Well, you know, I don't know if you remember Sex and the City. Sure. Carrie got together with Big. They broke up. And you might have thought to yourself, well, that's the end of the relationship. But of course, what happens in the next season? they just go right back to the whole thing. So the story here is the writer's room hasn't changed. It's going to be the same old guys with the same old plot points with a few different constraints. It's hard to bring back either characters that have died or legal powers that have died, but I'm expecting season two to be no less chaotic than season one.
29:58Ari Melber:More, okay, more chaos, but even the president acknowledged today, all right, there's a lot he can't do alone. And he said he's not going to work with Congress, which I was discussing earlier in the program. So these other tariffs are now say 10%. I mean, those expire in a few months. What else can he really do? I mean, it would seem that the whole thing is narrowing.
30:17Neal Katyal:Absolutely. It's narrowing in every sense, except the president's rhetoric. So actually, the tariff he put on today is really worth thinking about because I think it shows the economic bankruptcy of this response. This is a Section 122 tariff, which, as you know, he's only allowed to put on for 150 days. So the question is, what problem is this the solution for? The president says he's all about getting bargaining power. Well, imagine calling the Chinese and saying, I demand concessions or else I'm going to put this 10 % tariff on you. And I'm pretty sure the Chinese know how to wait 150 days and then say, you know what, mate, there's nothing left.
30:54Neal Katyal:Or it could be the president says he's going to onshore manufacturing. But I tell you what, I've talked to some factory owners, no one's going to break ground on a new factory when the tariffs are off before the concrete's even set. What you're left with here actually is a 10 % tariff that performs no role except being a tax. So what we have is a pro-tax president. Yeah.
31:16Ari Melber:And a tax that, again, our very founders fought kings to not be taxed without representation. Here we are all these years later, so much has changed. Not that, apparently. and Bloomberg is already reporting the tariff ruling will kick off a fight for what is a serious chunk of change because as Neil Koch was explaining they let this play out for strategic reasons and the high court has been very friendly to Trump in letting him kind of break laws on the short run. I mean this is now as of today illegal but yesterday they were taking this money so$170 billion with a B is out there companies filing suits companies want their money back of course able to sue precisely because they were paying and harmed by this.
32:00Ari Melber:How will that process play out? How much that money is actually going to come back into those pockets?
32:05Neal Katyal:I know you care deeply about the numbers here. I think the number is going to end up being closer to$130 billion, but it doesn't really matter. I actually think this is an interesting rhetorical point, but not that interesting for the economics. Why? Well, first of all, it's all about what happened in the past. And the question is, does the money end up in the government's coffers or in our pockets. If it's not in our pockets and the government needs money, it's going to reach back into our pocket and take it back out. The bad news for people at home is you and I aren't going to see any of this.
32:34Neal Katyal:Why is that? Well, I buy my olive oil from Costco. It's imported. Costco imported the olive oil. Therefore, Costco in the first instant paid the tariff. That's who has a claim here. Now, Costco jacked up the price and I had to pay more for my olive oil, which is deeply disappointing. But Costco is not going to call me and say, Justin, we noticed that you might've paid a little extra, but that was just the price we wanted to pay to charge you. So this whole fight is basically about whether Costco or other American importers get the money or the government pockets the money.
33:10Ari Melber:So if that's the case, you have a Trump government that jacks up those prices. Some of it paid, as you say, on the way. And if they passed off some of it to consumers, then we don't get any of that money back. They're not going to track us down and give us that. They're going to pay it off to the companies. How was any of this good for the American consumer?
33:31Neal Katyal:Mate, it's not. So look, I know you're the lawyer here, but here's a very simple rule of thumb. If you're going to institute a policy that's going to upend your own economy, the global economy, foreign relations, and change our position in the world, probably best to check that it's constitutional first. Right. Just hint for beginners. I, you know, I just, so they created them as sort of strategically on purpose, making it harder to undo all of this. So the trade war was bad, but having a trade war that you were never allowed to actually run is even worse. This is literally, we can be for or against tariffs.
34:09Neal Katyal:This is the dumbest thing you could possibly do. It means we get all the costs and none of the benefits.
34:15Ari Melber:It's really extraordinary. And it's a massive scale. And you think about people worried about inflation and high prices and jobs. This is another form of a price gouge. If in the end it was all for not. And this was a president who ran on what? He ran on fixing the high prices, getting to the bottom of the Epstein thing and a couple other things. He's putting up zero after zero. What do you I'm out of time, but what do you use your olive oil for, Justin?
34:42Neal Katyal:oh mate i shave with it no i'm kidding i don't do that i i i i grill vegetables i like to grill my vegetables with a good olive oil and my son likes to dip his bread in it add a little salt
34:52Ari Melber:recommend it 20 yeah i do it with the i do it with the bread i sometimes use avocado oil uh for the vegetables wow is that healthier i don't know i feel like as a news person if i if i say i could say i think it is but i feel like anything beyond that and kid rock and rfk Jr. are going to be out here fact-checking us. So we'll look into it. I'll get back to you and answer on what the healthiest oil is. Have a good weekend, Justin. You too, brother. We're going to finish a break. I have Elisa Menendez coming up as we turn to a related issue. You talk about prices. What about food prices and food assistance and a lot more in that MAGA MAHA agenda next.
35:35Ari Melber:There is a lot going on, but we always make time to fall back. We have two special guests tonight returning for her fifth fallback. Our colleague, Alicia Menendez, who, of course, also hosts Latina Latina, a great podcast. The author of The Likeability Trap. And joining for her fallback debut, Melissa Ford, who got her start in some of the most iconic music videos dating back to the 2000s. Hey, I got this, sweetie. You got it? Your boy just walked in. You do? You know I fuck em, hug em, love em, leave em, but I don't trust or need em.
36:11Neal Katyal:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Honey got down, said come and get me. Yeah, yeah.
36:19Ari Melber:And she has not only, of course, that set of throwbacks, But a thriving media career, including her podcast Hot and Bothered. She's interviewed Congresswoman Presley, Jadakiss, Charlemagne and many more. She's also, we should know, nominated for an NAACP Image Award, which is awesome. Welcome to both of you.
36:37Neal Katyal:Hi.
36:37Ari Melber:Hi.
36:38Neal Katyal:Thank you for having me. I'm so excited.
36:40Ari Melber:It's great to have you both here. You have a pro with you. Home court advantage. What's on your fallback list?
36:46Neal Katyal:My fallback is there are a new set of standards for SNAP for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. And they're pretty confusing, is what I'd say, in part because they're different by state and in part because even within states, the standards aren't clear. Iowa is particularly restrictive. You can use SNAP benefits only to purchase food and beverages not subject to the state's sales tax. So imagine that you're someone who relies on Snap, who goes into your local grocery store in order to buy things, and you're supposed to figure out what that means. There's sort of the fundamental question of why are they doing this?
37:23Neal Katyal:It's all under the banner of make America healthy again, supposedly. But fundamentally, this is about food stability.
37:31Ari Melber:I don't know if enough people are asking this question, Melissa, but where does this leave Lloyd Banks? You think about a song like Cake. And now I guess you can't get your benefits through that way.
37:41Neal Katyal:I think he's ish out of luck. Yeah, it's not looking.
37:44Ari Melber:Someone had to go there.
37:46Neal Katyal:And it was you.
37:47Ari Melber:And that was me. That someone was me. Melissa, what's on your fallback list?
37:52Neal Katyal:Oh, I got so many things that I want to fall back on. So let's start with the AI actress, Tilly Norwood. She's caused quite a stir. Wild. Yeah. And this first of all, this is not an actress. This is a computer generated character. And the reason why the studio or the reason why actors are up in arms is basically because for several reasons, acting is born from a lived experience and computers and simulation can only mimic it. But they can never understand what it's like to have a childhood, experience trauma. The depth and the breadth that people bring to their acting experience is their lived experience.
38:36Neal Katyal:It's their biographical experience. And also what really irritates me is when innovation is a poor disguise for labor issues. And the reality is that we watched people really suffer during the first writer's strike back in 2008. People lost their homes. They had they struggled to eat. And then we just saw the same thing happen with the SAG strike and also the writer's strike that was a couple of years ago. This is a slap in the face to everybody who was on those front lines and not crossing the picket lines and standing up for what they believed in. And so this really innovation disguised as what is just a labor issue is also what's frustrating.
39:22Neal Katyal:And we're already living in an authenticity crisis. Everything is deep fake. Everything is algorithmic. Everything is synthesized. Everything is filtered. And it's getting really difficult to determine what is real and what's not. I don't understand what is our obsession. with racing towards the destruction of humanity. Like, what is it? I don't get it. So that's my fallback.
39:53Ari Melber:Well, and as Moneybagg Yo said, the love is so fake, but the hate be so real.
40:01Neal Katyal:It's art. Art is supposed to be fundamentally human.
40:05Ari Melber:Unflappable.
40:06Neal Katyal:Unflappable. Because we've been together so long.
40:09Ari Melber:She's unfazed. He did say that. Do you think we are in an authenticity crisis?
40:14Neal Katyal:Yeah, absolutely. And I think part of the reason that it hits hard with actors is that it's supposed to be, as you said, a profoundly human experience, right? Like it is not going to AI to ask a question that is supposed to be born of emotion, is supposed to be born of experience. It's lazy and it's cheap. And it actually takes away from the experience.
40:38Ari Melber:So let me tell you about a meme I saw. Okay. Because this is real news, hard-hitting news. So I'll bring up a meme I saw. I saw a meme that said, isn't this backwards? We're doing all the work and the robots get to make art. It's like if someone came in and said we can try to help organize your life and you still could have dignity in a job, that'd be one thing. But instead, people are toiling away at all kinds of jobs. And you've got, as you say, these these robot AIs interfering or taking away the time that we have for the few people who are commercial artists.
41:14Neal Katyal:I don't want the holograms of Tupac in a concert. I'm not going, you know. And when actors and just everybody who's just a part of the studio machine, gaffers, lighting technicians, just everybody, when they hear AI, what they hear is that they are disposable. That's what they hear when the studios are excited about AI and the innovation and the technology and where it's going to take us. All human beings hear is that I am disposable and I'm going to be replaced. And that is terrifying because the vast majority of these people are living paycheck to paycheck.
41:49Ari Melber:Really wonderful to have both of you here and Melissa's debut. We hope you'll come back.
41:53Neal Katyal:Absolutely. If you'll have me.
42:01Ari Melber:what a week huh just doesn't stop i want to share with you a little bit from our maverick series which you can always find online i'll tell you how in a moment but take a look
42:16Ari Melber:i'll tell you everything i'm an open-faced sandwich it's important to be an artist and
42:20Neal Katyal:To speak truth? Unless you're true to who you are, it's not going to resonate.
42:25Ari Melber:Music really is you kind of defining who you are. The Blue Note Jazz Festival and you just came off headlining.
42:33Neal Katyal:You have to remind yourself of the kid on the bedroom floor with the Beatles record. This is fire. This man, let me explain. Drake was in Anchorman 2. Drake's got some chops. All of a sudden, my queerness is my superpower.
42:47Ari Melber:Do you see yourself as a motivational speaker?
42:49Neal Katyal:No. I just speak and I'm motivational. When it comes to making beats, you already know this. It's about the four count. One, two, three, four.
42:59Ari Melber:Reinvention is the key to a survival in this business. Favorite lyric I wrote. I like, if I could give you the moon, I would give you the moon. I knew I'd made it when. When my accountant said I had a million dollars. Success means. If your problems are different than they used to be.
43:19Neal Katyal:You obviously have to find people who would believe in you, who are crazy enough. The LFGIC on MSNBC. This is how we do it. Gotta kick it with the free.
43:30Ari Melber:That's the note we end on. Snoring? Gasping during sleep? Feeling fatigued?
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44:02Ari Melber:Z-Bound contains terzepatide and should not be used with other terzepatide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Z-Bound is safe and effective for use in children. Do not share needles or pens or reuse needles. Don't take Z-Bound if allergic to it or if you or someone in your family had medullary
44:17Neal Katyal:thyroid cancer or multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop ZEPBound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes, depression, or suicidal thoughts before scheduled procedures with anesthesia.
44:36Ari Melber:If you're nursing, pregnant, planned to be, or taking birth control pills, taking ZEPBound with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low
44:42Neal Katyal:blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zetbound.lily.com. Zetbound and its delivery device base in QuickPen are registered trademarks owned or licensed by Eli Lilly & Company, its subsidiaries or affiliates.
From the publisher
February 20, 2026; 6pm; In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that President Trump cannot unilaterally impose tariffs. MS NOW's Ari Melber reports and is joined by former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal.
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