Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump

We will hear argument this morning in case 24-1287 learning resources versus Trump. Hey everyone, this is Leon from Prologue Projects. On this week's episode of 5-4, Peter, Riannon, and Michael are talking about learning resources be Trump. Early last year, President Trump issued a series of executive orders, imposing tariffs on goods from Mexico, Canada, and China. Then, in the spirit of inclusivity, he expanded the tariffs to include every other country on Earth. My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day waiting for a long time. To issue these tariffs without congressional approval, Trump relied on a statute called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which allows the President to impose economic sanctions and regulate importation during national emergencies. 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. I'm ashamed of certain members of the court. Absolutely ashamed. This is 5-4, a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks, even when they get it right. Welcome to 5-4, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have chased away our civil rights. Like a Ron chasing influencers out of Dubai. I'm Peter. I'm here with Riannon. And Michael. I've only loosely seen this story. I mean, I've seen the hedge fund guy being like, this wasn't the trade we wanted when we moved to Dubai. Was to be involved in foreign relations. I came here for a crypto conference. I have no comment. I'm smiling. I'm rosy cheeked. I'm laughing. I have anime eyes. But I have no comment. All of our thoughts are with the influencers trapped in Dubai. Bro, Dubai bling. The next season. It's going to be off the chain. All of the Dubai real housewives. Our thoughts are with you. I mean, imagine having to flee back to America and having no slaves. You know. Just having to pay your servants to do stuff. I mean, again, they are at the forefront of my mind. Today's case folks learning resources, the Trump is a big case from a few weeks back about tariffs. 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. Yeah. Real, let's take it away. That's it. That's that's as much intro as we're going to get because yeah, this one is just opinions on opinions. And then what you get on top of the opinions on opinions is media commentary on media commentary. And it's all hot garbage. So let's get into this tariffs. You know, I sat down to read this case. I sat myself down. I said to myself, self, what's a tariff? And so our president never learned and you shouldn't have to either. That's what I'm thinking. You know what I mean? But just to give you a very basic rundown of like what part of the economy we are talking about here, what what did the president try to do? Right? In a very basic sense, tariffs are a kind of tax. But there are tax imposed by one country on goods imported from another country. All right. Goods coming from China. For example, Trump imposing a tariff on that means the American buyer, the corporation buying those goods pays attacks on those goods coming from China. Right? Now one purpose of tariffs is to ostentibly, theoretically like protect domestic businesses from lower priced foreign competition. Hey, China's trucking out those goods and services cheaper than American corporations can do so. We want to protect American corporations. So we impose a tariff on on those imported goods. But unfortunately, there's a huge downside risk with tariffs, of course. And today's global economy, you know, imagine the amount of things that the American economy imports, right? And so a ton of US 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? 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? 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. So it really fucks things up. Let's just keep it basic, right? Let's just keep it really basic. We're not getting into nerd, it's pretty simple. But of course, Trump was promising tariffs from the time he was running in 2024. 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, right? More stuff around reducing fentanyl in the United States and of course just being aggressive and wielding like a sledgehammer through the global economy. Right. And a trade deficit for our listeners is just an imbalance in the import export volumes between two countries. So for example, America almost certainly imports more from India than India imports from us. And that's because the cost of manufacturing is very low in India. 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. So we buy more shit. Oh, for sure. 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 economy. I mean, we do export some things corn crypto, for example, ideas. The real housewives. And so Trump doesn't understand trade deficits. He also perhaps does not really understand what a tariff is. He views tariffs as a way to like even these out because he believes that trade deficits mean you're losing money or something. Right. And this is sort of lurking behind the whole tariff policy discussion, just like Trump not actually understanding what a trade deficit is. And perhaps not understanding what a tariff is. That gets completely ignored in this opinion, which I think we should talk about a little bit later, but it needs to be out there. Right. No, I think this is key. But let's talk about the implementation of these specific tariffs that are issue in this case. So in February 2025, Trump announced tariffs on Canada and Mexico, a separate category of tariffs on China. 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 IEPA. That's the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. It empowers the president during emergency times to make economic decisions. Right. We can all recall Trump talking about these tariffs. He's talking about efforts to stop illegal drugs like fentanyl coming into the United States. He's talking about stemming the flow of undocumented immigrants by imposing tariffs. And he sort of did 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 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? It feels like itself controversial, but also besides the point and like weird. Yeah. So he's sort of doing a few things like he's he's very typical of Trump. Like a lot of justification is just sort of floating in the ether, right? Right. It's so typically Trumpian that like you know that somebody told him a story about the gilded age, right? Right. And he's like, you know what? William McKinley. Like, yeah, let's do that. Right. 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 under that, these 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. 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. Yeah. You sort of have these two categories of tariff. One are like the national security tariffs, right, against China and Canada and Mexico in particular. And Trump's like they're doing fentanyl and they're doing illegal immigration and we're punishing them with tariffs. Right. 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. But for purposes of this case, it's all functionally the same at least for this issue. So, you know, he imposes these tariffs under the IEEPA this 1977 law, which allows the president to quote regulate importation during national emergencies. And Trump has declared, you know, that this is an emergency that you got the fentanyl emergencies and then you have the trade emergencies. And the question here is whether quote unquote regulating importation includes imposing tariffs. Does this law give him the ability to impose tariffs? John Roberts writes the majority opinion here joined by Barrett Gorsuch, Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson. And he says no, no tariffs. First, he says that the word regulate is not ordinarily used to include taxing. 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. Plus the law itself never references tariffs or duties of any kind. Plus the court points out that no president has ever interpreted the law to allow for the imposition of tariffs. So, as a matter of historical practice, there's no indication that the law allows the president to do this. 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. And so a law should be pretty clear if it's going to delegate that power to the president, right? That's the first part of the opinion. That's the one that the liberals join. But there is a second part of the Roberts opinion and that is only joined by Barrett and Gorsuch. The Libs jump ship here. And this has to do with the major questions doctrine. The major questions doctrine is something that we've talked about before. The conservative has really manifested it during the Biden administration in order to like thwart much of his agenda. 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 unless the law very expressly says otherwise. 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. The Libs have always opposed this rule because it's basically just a made up way to defang the administrative state. So they do not join this portion. Right. And just, you know, a reminder we've talked about this before. But the major questions doctrine is sort of opposed 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 Congress, you know, delegated their authority 40, 50, 60 years ago for some of these agencies. And now the court is coming in and saying, well, you need it to be more clear. You needed 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. So that's the Roberts opinion and then you have three concurrences. So the amount of opinions here guys a little bit unwieldy unwieldy. It's fucking annoying. It's excessive. Three concurrences, one each from Kagan Jackson and Barrett Barrett basically dispends work in currents and a little slap fight with Gorsuch about the major questions doctrine. Don't care about that. We'll skip that. You're welcome, by the way. Then you have concurrences from Kagan and KBJ Jackson. Kagan is joined by the other two liberals. She basically writes to say, hey, we don't need to do the major questions doctrine. We can just interpret the law like normal people in a normal way and it shows that Trump loses, right? Yeah. Jackson has a solo concurrence. No one joins it. And it's actually kind of interesting. She talks about the legislative history of this law, the IEPA. And by legislative history, I mean the House and Senate reports congressional reports are prepared by committees and they are about a law. They contain things like the reason for the legislation, findings of fact about the legislation, right? And she's saying, hey, we can look at this stuff and realize that this is not intended to include tariffs. Now for a layperson, you might think, well, this is sure there are congressional reports. You look at the congressional reports and you figure out what the law means, right? But this is actually very controversial. Conservatives believe that this is sacrilegious. For many years, they railed against the use of these materials, legislative history. They believe that they are unreliable. 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 on something. Right. So KBJ is doing something kind of interesting here. She's saying, we shouldn't abandon this as a tool for figuring out Congress's intent. She's sort of resurrecting this idea. And she's right to. Yeah, I think it's interesting. I mean, Kagan famously said, we're all textualists now. 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? She's saying, hey, we lost this battle 30 years ago, three decades ago, everyone said that we were wrong. But we were right. We shouldn't have lost that battle. Take it and run with it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, some of these other lives who won't join this concurrence. Let's do this. You know, it rocks. It's cool. I'm doing me. Yeah. She's saying, listen to five four. Right. Yeah. Speaking of old school, Thomas opinions, we've got an instant classic Thomas dissent here. He comes in hot. He wants to talk about the non delegation doctrine, which is this idea that Congress cannot assign certain of its powers to the executive branch, like it does when it creates agencies administrative agencies. And he says, well, when you're talking about core legislative powers, they can't assign those. And that, but that only has to do with the deprivation of life, liberty and property. Where does he get this? I don't know. He makes it up. He doesn't cite anything. He sites. He sites. I know where the Constitution, which says, here are all the legislative powers and then just lists all the legislative powers. It doesn't like differentiate between any of them. Like what the fuck are you talking about? But, but he's like, well, taxing and duties and tariffs. That's not core legislative powers. I don't know about that. And he's like, so Congress can't assign it. Not only can they assign it, they can assign it entirely without limit to the executive indefinitely to the degree where it can never be peeled back. Right. I don't understand the whole taxing is not a core power thing. What are you talking about? It's in the constant, like, how much more core could it get? It's right there, right? It's one of Congress's enumerated powers. Section 8, right? Yes. And I seem to remember so many Supreme Court cases that like establish that taxation, that the tax power is a core power of Congress. Right. Like there's there. I don't know. I was thinking a lot about like I was thinking a lot about the Obama care case. Right. Right. Like they said John Roberts says the Supreme Court says, I mean, I know conservatives don't agree with that. Right. Don't agree with that decision. But there are so many cases where it's like, no, it's Congress that has the power to tax. Like this is, this is very clear. Right. He justifies this by like going into like British common law and talks about like the king, the king's power to tax, which I just like, corsage, corsage talks about this and his concurrence. So I don't want to like take too much of this thing out of it. But it's like, yeah, we fought a fucking war about that, dude. Right. We fought a war about that. We don't have a king. That's the difference. I don't want to get too nerdy, but these natural law perverts. You know what I mean? These weirdo natural law guys, like Clarence Thomas comes from the school of thought that our rights emanate from God. Right. Like natural law. And so like the roots of them are felt all throughout the common law. And you can go back to fucking 1547 or whatever. And and maybe glean some wisdom because, because God, God put that put that there. Now, of course he abandons this all the time. It's like it's very strategically deployed, but it's important to understand that it is so fucking stupid. And like you end up being like, well, well, the, you know, in England, you had the king and it's like, right, and then we wrote the Constitution. Right. Right. Like what's your job? We wrote the Constitution to be like declaration of dependence. We yeah. Right. Like it's insane. We wrote the Constitution so that the head of state wouldn't be like that anymore. Right. And it like again, it's it's in it's right there. Article one section eight. It's like the stuff that Congress can do. You know, and like this is pretty clearly one of them. So I don't get it instant classic. Yeah. That's right. You know, we're jumping around a little bit here between concurrences and dissents. Like we said, there's a lot of different opinions here. But we're taking it in this order intentionally. I'm going to talk about the Kavanaugh descent here. Let's let's spend a little time on this 63 pages of hot fecal matter. 63 pages. But that's so we can set up the sort of gorsuch kudagra concurrence here where he is so mad at at everybody. Right. Right. Right. Okay. So Kavanaugh. This descent is is bad folks. Kavanaugh is joined by Thomas and Alito. We'll talk in a little bit about how they each get a special boy shout out from Trump when this decision comes down. But I think what characterizes this whole descent Kavanaugh's entire opinion here is how wrong it is. And gorsuch calls this out, but Kavanaugh is like straight up doing like Trump pandering, like supporting Trump policy on tariffs in this descent. Kavanaugh's big arguments here are that tariffs are quote a traditional and common tool to regulate importation that the president has the power in lots of different ways by different federal statutes to impose tariffs. 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. Kavanaugh says so Kavanaugh saying, well, you know, there are other laws that would green light Trump imposing the these tariffs. Well, bitch, that's not the law that is cited as the justification for doing these tariffs. Well, he's trying to he's trying to he's talking to his boy. That's right. He's like Donald. He's winking at Donald being like a yes. Hey, this might be legal, baby. In a different statutory scheme. I'm saying. So he also makes as part of his argument. He says that 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. So like just just sort of baldly saying like I think this was good foreign policy. Trump is doing good business here. Yeah, you know, we love our daddy Trump. That's right. That's right. Maybe some more technical arguments, although they're they are all on their face wrong. Kavanaugh says we shouldn't be extending the major questions doctrine to foreign affairs. Like says that's that's like that major questions doctrine apparently should just be limited to domestic policy. Well, the doctrine that we just made up exactly that actually has a limitation you might not have heard of. Yeah, because there are no major questions in foreign affairs. That's right. He also says that the majority is applying the major questions doctrine in an elevated fashion to the taxing power. So you guys are you guys are changing the major questions doctrine. You're elevating it to something else. Really ridiculous stuff. Just completely arbitrary hollow arguments here. You know, the IEEPA, the law here that that Trump is using to justify imposing these tariffs says that the president can regulate. Imports in certain circumstances. Kavanaugh says that the word regulate effectively in all circumstances is a synonym for taxation. Just as like I think regulate in this statue means taxing right. He's reading the IEEPA to say the president can tax imports. Except that's not what it says baby girl. Right. This is something that the Roberts majority touches on. 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. But when you're talking about laws, there are clear reasons to be specific, right. 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. It's a huge part of any law in which Congress is sort of outlining the scope of an administrative agency, for example. Right. So the idea that every single time these laws say regulate it like automatically means tax. It's just a little bit wild. It's just a hyper aggressive reading. And it doesn't really make any practical sense. Right. Because we have examples, tons, countless examples of Congress also delegating tax. And taxation or tariff or duty responsibility to the executive. And we know what language they use when they do that. We know how they structure it. They usually put time and like monetary caps on the delegation. Like you can do it for X number of years. And to X percent. And they use words like duties, levy duties and tariffs and shit like that. They don't say regulate like we know what it looks like when they do this and it doesn't look like this. Right. Yeah. And I think that gets to the last argument. I'll mention from Kavanaugh's dissent, which goes to this separation of powers concerned. Right. Big overarching concern about the president imposing tariffs in this way 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 is 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 for the executive branch to continue to implement the tariffs. This is wrong. This is wrong. Congress cannot fight back when the president is raising revenue outside of congressional approval. Trump's like doing tariffs and handing the cash to his son in law. No, this is this is right. Who collects tariffs. It's CBP. It's customs and border patrol. There's no appropriations here. There's no rules. Congress that there's no oversight. Like this is a slush fund for the president. Right. And Congress has has no accountability mechanism here. No oversight. And Kavanaugh is just saying that they do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a weird thing going on here. And so what I mentioned earlier and I wish that one of the lives brought it up. 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. But the other part of this is the fact that Donald Trump has declared these emergencies. Right. Right. And there is something kind of weird going on where the emergency power is very broad under our laws. Right. Presidents have a lot of leeway to be like national emergency. Right. Yeah. Now 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. So he's like, you know, these countries are shipping fentanyl in. And it's like, OK. 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. And that's just trade deficits, which he couldn't pass like a junior year business school exam about, you know, right. I also saw in reading about this that like the United States has had a trade deficit for decades like. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's like, like, how is it an emergency now? Right. Right. I mean, so, you know, there are certain nations where the trade deficit is inherent. Right. I mean, like, or almost inherent. Right. It's just sort of like a natural function of the relative size of the two economies. It's one of those things where the reason he has this power is so that like we have, you know, the ability to act decisively when emergencies actually happen. Right. You don't have to fucking operate through committees when a real emergency occurs when the homeland is attacked. Right. When there's a line 11 or an asteroid, right. You need a deep impact sort of president. Right. The need for that sort of leeway to be like it's an emergency. It's kind of apparent 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. Maybe that's an emergency of a different kind. And we should be devoting some resources to that. Yeah. Maybe we need a different system. Maybe we need a system that's more like when you give your sibling the controller that doesn't work. You know what I mean? Let's think creatively here. Okay. All right. Yeah. Let's get to this gorsuch concurrence. That's a good point to end on the cap. Yeah. Descent. So yeah, let's move to the gorsuch concurrence, which I think is interesting. Like to be clear, he doesn't disagree with the majority. He signs on to it. And he doesn't have anything different to say about why this case should be decided the way it is. This is a true haters opinion. This is an opinion to answer every other concurrence and descent to be like, no, you're all fucking wrong. I think what's going on here between Kevin Gorsuch is that when Kavanaugh was before he's 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 powers doctrine, which is what eventually would become the major questions. 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 principle dissent being like, I'm the major questions guy and you guys are doing it wrong and stupid. And gorsuch is like, no, you're a fucking delatant and a political hack and you're sucking Trump stick. I hate the administrative state. I'm the major questions guy. Check this out. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you to everyone. Everybody. Amy Cody, bear it. You're a fucking coward. Fuck you. You're a squish. That's that's like one section of the field. No, but he's catching strays here. Everybody's in the crosshairs directly. The lives he's like your hypocrites. You're fucking hypocrites. Your opinions you say you're not doing the major questions doctrine. You are. Look, look at this. You're doing the major questions doctrine. Fuck you. Kavanaugh, he's like your history. Shoddy. You're reasoning shoddy. This is a shoddy opinion. And you're foreign affairs exception. Are you fucking on drugs? Like what are you talking about? It's great. Before we get to Thomas, I want to talk about a paragraph he wrote that gets to my problem with the major questions doctrine really well when he's calling bear it a squish. He's like, look, take FDA V Brown and Williamson tobacco core. There, the question was whether the F.I.A. could regulate tobacco products looking only to common sense the answer would have been yes. Congress authorized the FDA to regulate drugs as matter of common sense nicotine qualifies as a drug based on the statutory definition. It's a might even as a matter of everyday speech. Still, we held the FDA could not regulate tobacco products. Other cases follow suit. We have ruled that the term air pollutant does not include greenhouse gases, even though those greenhouse gases pollute the air. 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. We have said that closing coal power plants is not the best system of emission reduction, even while acknowledging that closing them would reduce emissions. It's like, yeah, bro, why is this a brag? Why is this like you sound like fucking more? You sound like idiots. What are you talking about? You're like, yeah, they said they could regulate drugs, but we said not this drug and not these greenhouse gases. We have created an elaborate series of excuses to ignore basic human language. It's an incredible paragraph. It's an incredible paragraph. And he's just like, he's being like, so eat shit, Amy Coney Barrett. Yeah. He's so distainful, which is great. This is the first time I think I've seen another justice respond directly to one of Thomas's crazy opinions. I might have missed one, but I'm pretty sure this is it. I recently talked about this. Of course, it's just so up his own ass that if he really feels confident about something, he will go at you very directly. And I think Thomas, he is probably losing his mind on Twitter or whatever. We've talked about Thomas's solo opinions in the past. 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? And I think Gorsuch sort of like just smells blood in the water. Like he's ready to be a snarky little bitch. Thomas is just like sort of chummed the waters enough for him that he feels comfortable going out there. Yeah. You can like hear the sarcasm dripping off his writing, right? He's like, just as Thomas suggests that Congress may hand over most of its constitutionally vested powers to the president completely and forever. That's like, oh yeah. That's so exo. Yeah. You don't even need to expand on that. Like anybody reading that is like, yeah, that sounds dumb as shit, right? Yeah. Yeah. He does like a lot of what we were doing. He's like, and of course it was duties on foreign tea that triggered the Boston Tea Party. Are we really to believe that the Patriots that night in Boston Harbor considered the whole of the tariff power some kingly prerogative? He's like, I don't need history. Fucking use common sense. We fought the war for independence over this. Like literally over tariffs over the king levy tariffs. Like fuck you. Like, what are you talking about? It's great. I loved it. His opinion is terrible. His position is terrible. And I loved reading every every paragraph of it. I enjoyed that. Which is so different from like the experience of reading Thomas, right? Yes. Yes. Yes. It's worth mentioning that the court didn't really specify a remedy here and kicked it down to the district court. And so there's a question of like, well, a lot of tariffs have been collected, like billions upon billions of dollars. What happens to that? You know, companies are suing, saying we want our money back. There's a question of well, some companies passed on at least some of that cost to consumers. So our consumers going to have a way of recouping the money they paid into tariffs basically. And the Trump administration has suggested that they're going to fight any efforts at refunds in court. Right. And the other side of that is that this case originally came to the Supreme Court on the shadow docket last year. And they let the tariffs remain in effect. Right. They created this huge mess. The argument against doing that was that it creates exactly this mess. Right. Now half a trillion in refunds is owed to fucking who knows who. But probably a little bit you and me. Yeah. If you're listening to this, they probably owe you 20 bucks at least, you know. And the question is how could you possibly recoup that who recoups in? 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. Like, oh, we can just we can just do a refund. Now, of course, that the Supreme Court has said these are illegal. The government's like, go fuck yourself. We're doing like, you know, calcium bets with this money. So you can't have it. I'm betting on the airstrikes as we speak. There's been some developments on the question of remedies after the Supreme Court decision. It's all 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 tariffs and duties have to be uniform. And it's one judge who's handling all of these tariff cases under, you know, the IEPA that we're talking about here. So the judge was like, you know what? Fuck this. I don't want a million different cases. The first case he heard for someone asking for a refund. He was like, yeah, you get your refund. So does everybody else. Everybody gets a refund. CBP. You are ordered to give everyone a refund. A very funny moment at conference. We're right over where the government got the sense he was going to order this and was like, can we get some time to brief the merits on that? And he just replied, there are no merits. Like fuck you. You got nothing to brief. You've lost. Like fuck off. King. 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. But basically we can reprogram it. If you give us like a month and a half, two months, we can reprogram our entire system and create like a functionality where importers who paid the tariffs can make a claim and we can process them quickly and get those all paid out. And so it does seem like all the companies are going to get their refunds and none of the consumers are. Have we been paying tariffs on international subscribers? Do we need to do we need to make a claim with CBP? No, I don't think we're going through ports eventually. 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? So they would get the money. And other small business group by Donald Trump. You may have paid some pass through costs on Shrek. It's possible. It's got got knows how affordable the Shrek would have been without tariffs. That's a world I can only dream of. Let me paint a picture for you folks. It's 3 p.m. You're part and I ask you, what are we doing for dinner? And you're like, damn it. Damn it. I haven't thought about that at all. This is one of life's great burdens. It's up there for me with clipping my dog's nails. But home chef has made figuring out what to eat super easy for me. The other day I made the chicken with lemon garlic butter came with a nice side of asparagus, super simple, popped it in the roasting tin that they provide, stick it in the oven, you know, for 20 minutes or so. Had a gorgeous, fully prepared meal. Super easy, super good. And you know, people really love it. Home chef is rated number one by users of other meal kits for quality convenience, value taste, and recipe eats. And so that's the goal here. Get a nice meal and lift one of life's great burdens from your shoulders. For limited time, home chef is offering our listeners 50% off and free shipping on your first box. Plus free dessert for life. Bro, we're feasting. Your life is crazy, but they're doing it. Go to HomeChef.com slash 5-4. I'll spell it out at homechef.com slash 5-4. I'll spell it out for 50% off your first box. And free dessert for life. Go to HomeChef.com slash 5-4. Must be an active subscriber to HomeChef to receive the free dessert for life. Alright, so maybe turning to the responses. The president's response to this case, the media's response to this case, law professors response to this case. So starting with Trump, president Trump had lots of psychotic, lots of absolutely psychotic, 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. He said, quote, I don't want to say whether or not I regret. I think their decision was terrible. I think it's an embarrassment to their families. To their families. You want to know the truth? The two of them. An embarrassment to their families. It's such a caddy little bitch. It's so great. An embarrassment to their families is fucking hilarious. The next day he posted on Truth Social. My new hero is United States Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and of course Justice's Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. There is no doubt in anyone's mind that they want to make America great again. I agree with him on that. There is no doubt in anyone's mind that they want to make America great again. They are back at Pilt. He had so many Truth Social posts about this case. Like he was losing it. He was losing it. And like some of them are a lot. Like we can't even read them to you. It's 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. 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. A little bit later, he says, is there rehearing or re-ajudication of this case possible? Question mark, question mark, question mark. He wants an appeal from the Supreme Court. Where's it going to go? Appeal to God, dude. Yes, it's so good. It's so good. I think we're all sort of used to it now, but his thing where he just like randomly puts quotes around something or capitalizes something. Capitalizes, yeah. 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. I'm right. 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 in you know, we've been looking at it for 10 years and say you're sort of like, yep, that's a Trump post, all right? Yeah. You know, last thing I'll say, Michael, you made the point when we were talking about Kavanaugh's descent that Kavanaugh 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. Hottest. 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 descent and he quotes Kavanaugh's descent saying the other statutes that Trump can use, thank you, Justice Kavanaugh. Thank you. Justice Kavanaugh. And so that's our president losing his mind, folks. Yeah. And Justice Kavanaugh losing his mind. Remember a few years ago and people were like, it's Justice Kavanaugh part of the moderate block. The three three core. The center. Yeah. He's a Lincoln Trump taint. Let's let's talk about the media response because we got some good ones. Speaking of mental illness. After a full year of the Supreme Court siding with Trump in statistically anomalous rates, right? Yes. Like to degrees that would shock experts and no one could explain other than bias. A single Trump loss has emerged and you know that the Dibchits at the New York Times are all over it. Right. Democracy saved everybody. Chief legal correspondent at the Times, Adam Liptack wrote a piece called the Supreme Court's Declaration of Independence. Oh my god. I didn't know that was the headline. Yeah. He said it's a lot like when we declared independence from the British. I see. Yeah. I think it's a lot like the American comparison, in case you're unfamiliar, he's comparing this to the revolution. So, so he says starting with the 2024 decision that gave President Trump substantial immunity from prosecution and continuing through a score of emergency orders, provisionally green lighting and array of his second term initiatives, Mr. Trump has had an extraordinarily successful run before the Supreme Court. That came to a sudden jolting halt on Friday when Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., I don't know why. I don't know why. The middle initial writing for six members of the court, roundly rejected Mr. Trump's signature tariffs program. 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. It amounted to a declaration of independence. So again, he admits that President Trump has been on a roll in front of the Supreme Court and then he loses one case. It hurls a new era. And it's a declaration of independence. Yeah. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. And also like we don't even know how this is going to shake out. What if they uphold the new tariffs, right? Right. Right. No one has any idea. And his district court is like these remedies are like not administrative and the Supreme Court is like, okay, yeah. Right. Like, you know, we don't know what's going to happen. We also don't know what's going to happen with the feet. He says it like this means the court is going to start handing Trump else. Right. Maybe. Maybe. But maybe not. Maybe not. Like, who were you to say that? Like based on one fucking case. Like. It's just bizarre. So he also said in his first administration, Mr. Trump did poorly in the Supreme Court in argued cases. He prevailed only 42% of the time, the lowest rate since at least Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. 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. I posted about this on Blue Sky just to point out that there was not a six justice conservative majority during his first term. And I know, you know, so I posted like, Hey, I think that like the chief legal correspondent for the New York Times should know that. Yeah. It just feels simple to me. Right. You know that it was a five four court literally until like during the election, like October of the election. Right. 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. But I also want to point out correction aside, if you're going to like write a piece about the court's independence from Trump, then like how about some data from this term? Like right. You're like, yeah, back in 2017, they actually didn't quite agree with him that much. It's like, all right. What's happening now? Surely, surely the new data would be interesting to look at. No. Another Supreme Court watcher over at the New York Times, Linda Greenhouse, the headline Roberts is losing patience with Trump. Or there's an alternate headline, John Roberts sent Trump a message. It starts off with chief justice, John Roberts doesn't waste words. His majority opinion in last week's terror ruling was characteristically a model of succinctness. Where? Where? Now false. False. Bitch, where? Similar to how Adam Lippack should know that it was not six to three during Trump's first term, maybe even worse, because that was probably a brain fart. You know what I mean? Right. He just brain farted that. He could have answered that question. If you would ask him, he would have told you was by the court. Wendy Greenhouse gets burnt, die and change the balance of the court. Right. He just brain farted because he's stupid and old. Now, Linda Greenhouse saying that Roberts is like typically succinct is outrageous. It doesn't make sense. Nobody has ever said that. Nobody has ever described John Roberts as succinct. Also, this is one of those things that's relatively verifiable empirically. There's like empirical scotus, which is like a blog that tracks like random Supreme Court data shit. And they've always found that Roberts is one of the more verbose in the sense that his opinions tend to be longer. Right. So like what? You can't just say this. You can't just say this in the New York Times. You don't fuck. What are you talking about? Anyway, that pissed me off as someone who has to professionally read John Roberts' opinion. You know what I mean? I was just like, don't fucking talk to me about this. Well, and you would think she does too. Yeah. You would think, but now I feel like maybe she doesn't say. Right. But maybe not. Maybe not. But the private press releases that he sends to his favorite reporters. No, she's often chatted GPT. Here is some of these substantive portions of this piece. 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. The administration frequently got what it wanted, a stay of the ruling while on appeal proceeded. Chief Justice Roberts was usually in the majority on these unsigned and generally unexplained orders. Obviously, he thought the stays were called for. 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. So step back here, the court spends basically all of 2025 siding with the Trump administration on shadow-docket cases in numbers that again, our statistical improbabilities is our court is actually unbiased. But then Roberts 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. This is all inferred from this one case, but you can't possibly infer anything from the dozens of cases that preceded it. Can you infer anything from Roberts writing the immunity decision? Like, right. Right. Like, what are you talking about? Like, what the fuck are you talking about? These guys are all, they love Trump. They fucking love Trump. Exactly. What are you talking about? She goes on, this is how she wraps up the piece. Mr. Trump has helped create an atmosphere in which judges appropriately fear for their personal safety and that of their families. Many people expected the chief justice to address this issue directly in his year end report in December, but he did not. 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. But these occasions have been infrequent as if the only messages this notably self-possessed and buttoned down man cares to send are those his opinions deliver noted. Go home, Linda. So the fact that Roberts did not address Trump's attacks on the judiciary in his year-end report somehow is transformed into more evidence that Roberts is at odds with Trump, right? It's fucking bizarre. This isn't just like seeing things where they don't exist. Seeing the opposite of what's happening. Yeah. Right. Right. So there was also another New York Times opinion piece by David French. Thank God they got a third one in. Yeah. Yep. Is it better? No. No. No. There's no way David French has the best of the three. Right. Right. Right. Right. Headline is this the most important Supreme Court case of this century. Let me tell you guys. Oh, God. I can answer that for you. No. It's not the most important case of this term. Right. Yeah. Right. What's the rule that the journalistic rule that every headline that asks 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. It doesn't matter how they rule on the voting rights act. That'll be more important. Like there are just going to be more important cases in this term to say nothing of Bush before citizens united Shelby County. Windsor and Trump. You were a 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. What are you talking about man? It doesn't say it's insane. It's insane. Oh, it's so stupid. It's so stupid. I don't want to get into the piece because it's so stupid. And it's rehashing a lot of this. Oh, they're independent now and they're declaring their dependence, which is just like based on a projection of what you hope will happen. Right. Should we read from our rivals podcast? Yes. Yes. However it's slate, there's a Supreme Court podcast called Amicus with our friend Mark Joseph Stern and his colleague, Daniel. Yeah. So in this episode, Dalia 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. Today was their equal opportunity to have no idea of what's really going on with Donald Trump. And weirdly, it saves the day. If he wanted this to feel like an existential threat to them, they're not having it. They're just going to do egg headed judicial construction all day long. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's what the Supreme Court's doing. All right. Just judicial construction all day long. Thank God we've got you on the beat, Dalia. 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 and they're not having it. Like they're dumb, but they're independent. Right. Right. Which is just saying that they are oblivious to politics. And that's why they ruled for Trump on like C. Cote, right? Right. Let me tell you, if Donald Trump was not the Republican nominee for president at the time, Trump, the United States would have gone a different way. And it's fucking insane. It's fucking insane that she cites that as an example of them not being aware of the political atmosphere and the political implications or their decisions. 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. It seems like she's saying that like the defining characteristic of the Supreme Court is that they're not paying attention to politics. And I'm trying to think of a worse conclusion to draw from what's been happening from somebody who writes and comments and follows the Supreme Court. It's insane. It's insane. I mean, it's up there with John Roberts, it's a sink, you know? Yeah. It's not like materially worse. Like on the substance. Yeah. It's worse. Yeah. Anyway, at the end of the day, we're the only good ones. That's right. And there's nothing more to it than that. All right, folks, next week we're going to be talking about the war. War powers. What does it mean to declare a war? What does it mean to authorize military force? Which war? There are so many. There are so many, but a lot of them are just kind of one, legally. Yeah, it's correct. 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? Right. Follow us on social media at 5.4 pod. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com slash 5.4 pod all spelled out for access to premium and ad free episodes, special events, our Slack all sorts of shit. See you next week. Bye, everybody. Bye, y'all. Five to four is presented by Prologue Projects. This episode was produced by Alice and Rogers. The on Naefok provides editorial support. Our website was designed by Peter Murphy. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at Chips and Y. And our theme song is by spatial relations.