A Big Test for Trump’s Tariffs, and Major Cuts to Air Traffic

0:14From the New York Times, it's the headlines. On April 2nd, President Trump determined that our exploding trade deficits have brought us to the brink of an economic and national security catastrophe. At the Supreme Court yesterday, the justices heard one of the most consequential cases of the term as they considered arguments about President Trump's aggressive use of tariffs. The question at the center of the case is whether Trump overstepped his authority when he used a decades-old law to impose sweeping surcharges on goods coming into the U.S. I want to make a very important distinction here.

0:46We don't contend that what's being exercised here is the power to tax. It's the power to regulate foreign commerce. Lawyers for the government argued that the law gives the president broad authority to respond to economic and national security threats. Past presidents have used it to impose things like sanctions or embargoes. But Trump is the first president to use it for tariffs. I just don't understand this argument. It's a congressional power, not a presidential power to tax. And you want to say tariffs are not taxes, but that's exactly what they are. They're generating money from American citizens' revenue.

1:22The court's liberal justices sharply questioned the administration, and they were joined by several key members of the conservative majority who seemed skeptical of Trump's authority to impose the widespread tariffs. I mean, these are kind of across the board. And so is it your contention that every country needed to be tariffed because of threats to the defense and industrial base. I mean, Spain, France, I mean, I could see it with some countries. Ahead of Wednesday's hearing, President Trump said the case was, quote, literally life or death for our country. And Trump's Treasury Secretary and Commerce Secretary went to the courtroom to sit in on the arguments.

1:59The outcome of the case could be decided in weeks or in months. If the court rules against the administration, the government could be forced to refund some or all of the billions of dollars the U.S. has collected in tariff revenue so far. Still, trade experts say there are other ways that the president could tax imports going forward, including by using some obscure legal provisions. For more on the hearing and what it could mean for presidential power more broadly, listen to today's episode of The Daily with Times Supreme Court reporter Adam Liptak.

2:36Now, two more updates on the Trump administration. I anticipate there will be additional disruptions. There will be frustration. But in the end, our sole role is to make sure that we keep this airspace as safe as possible. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says that the federal government will limit air traffic at 40 of the country's busiest airports starting tomorrow if the government shutdown continues. The new limits could lead to thousands of flights being canceled going into the busiest travel season of the year. Duffy said the move would lift some pressure from air traffic controllers.

3:13They haven't been paid for weeks, and many were working overtime shifts before the shutdown due to staffing shortages. Across the country, air traffic controller absences have already led to significant delays. In recent weeks, Duffy's increasingly dire warnings around disruptions to air travel have been notably political, as the administration has tried to turn up pressure on Democrats to end the shutdown. Also, a federal judge in Illinois has ordered immigration officials to improve conditions at a detention center near Chicago, conditions he had described as unnecessarily cruel. He said the government must provide detainees with showers, clean water, and access to lawyers, among other things.

4:00The order came a day after several former detainees told the judge about the site's squalid conditions, with no soap, no beds, garbage everywhere, and some people sleeping on the concrete floor. While the facility was designed for short-term detention, some people have been locked up there for days, as the administration has ramped up its immigration crackdown in Chicago. In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security said detainees' claims of poor conditions at the center are, quote, false. The judge gave federal officials until midday tomorrow to submit a report on their progress.

4:43This is something that I've lived as a woman, but we've lived as women in our country. In Mexico, President Claudia Sheinbaum says she's filed a criminal complaint against a man who groped her on the street, an incident that was caught on camera and shocked many in the country. It happened on Tuesday. She was walking between meetings in central Mexico City when the man approached her, moved to kiss her, and put his hands on her chest. He has since been arrested. Speaking at a press conference, Shane Baum said, If this can happen to the president, what's going to happen to all the young women and women across our country?

5:28Shane Baum is Mexico's first female president, and she made ending violence against women a centerpiece of her campaign. After the incident, she said she would ask officials to reconsider the fact that sexual harassment is not a crime in all Mexican states, or even a federal crime. The high-profile case has prompted many Mexican women to reflect on how common it is to be groped even while walking in public during the day. Many women the Times spoke with recalled being touched inappropriately on public transit in particular. People who study gender-based violence in the country said Sheinbaum's decision to speak out and press charges was a meaningful change in the status quo, with one saying, quote, it sends an important message that such violence is completely real.

6:21A new analysis released this morning found that Hurricane Melissa, which ravaged Jamaica and parts of the Caribbean last week, was made more violent and more intense by climate change. The findings come from World Weather Attribution, a group that looks at the links between burning fossil fuels and extreme weather, like droughts, heatwaves, and hurricanes. The researchers found that Melissa had stronger winds and produced significantly more rain than it would have had it happened without the impact of man-made climate change. That's partly because hurricanes draw energy from ocean heat, and water temperatures in the Caribbean were elevated when Melissa formed.

7:03Meanwhile, Times reporters have been on the ground, reporting from one of the hardest-hit parts of Jamaica, the town of Black River. The hurricane destroyed almost every single building there. Residents and first responders have spent the last week trying to begin the process of recovery, even as electricity is out and phone service is still down. Some people have been sleeping in cars, and many of the police, firefighters, and doctors that the Times talked with said they haven't even gone to check on their own houses yet, though they assume there's nothing left. Across the country, authorities are still working to clear roads and reach stranded communities.

7:43The death toll from the storm has now risen to more than 30 people.

7:56And finally. In the past few years, dating apps have struggled with what they call the cycle of despair. You download an app, swipe on a bunch of matches, and then don't get responses or get ghosted and delete the app, only to redownload it a few months later. These issues have really hurt the companies behind the dating apps. And as people are less willing to pay for subscriptions, the dating apps themselves are struggling to make money. So now they're trying to come up with a new plan to turn their businesses around. And that involves AI. Eli Tan is a technology reporter at The Times. who's been covering the AI-ification of dating apps, from top brands like Tinder to new AI-native startups.

8:40He says there's a whole range of tools the apps are rolling out. One example, there's an AI matchmaker service that has you spend about a half hour on a phone call with a chatbot that asks you questions about the kind of person you're looking for. It then charges you$25 for a single custom match who's supposedly a great fit. There's also the app Grindr, which has what it calls an AI wingman that gives conversation advice. And Hinge lets you use AI to review your profile and give feedback about what to tweak. It's still yet to be seen if these features will catch on, but a lot of people are already turning to them.

9:14One person I talked to named Emma was a 25-year-old in San Francisco. She tried out the AI matchmaker, and she was nervous about the date, but it ended up going great. They talked for multiple hours at a bar, and afterwards they exchanged numbers and said they were looking forward to a second date. But in the end, he ghosted her and never texted her back. I think it's a reminder that the AI and the algorithms can only do so much for our dating lives, and in the end it's still going to be two human beings that are talking to each other. Those are the headlines. I'm Will Jarvis. We'll be back tomorrow with the latest updates and the Friday News Quiz.

9:55Thank you.