The State of the Union is Endless

I am the major questions doctrine. I am a monster. I feel like you could have channeled Gilbert and Sullivan right there, but you did another move. I am the very model of a modern major questions doctrine. Yeah, exactly. Hello and welcome to this late political gab fest. For February 26th, 2026, the State of the Union is Endless Edition. I'm David Flotz of CityCast. I'm here in Washington, D.C. I'm joined from New York City, where she's taking a restful vacation from her home in New Haven, where it's too bustling and busy. Emily Bazlon of The New York Times Magazine and Yale University of Austin. Hello, Emily. Hello. Quiet week in the country for you. It is true that there's less snow here. Then from New York City, John Dickerson on March 7th at the Athenaeum Bald Room. John will be giving the first public performance of his epic poem about Samuel J. Tilden titled quite boldly, John. I love the title J. And he John gave me permission to read the first few lines of it. Sing, O Republic of Samuel J. Tilden, reformer, stern and resolute who rose from New York's thundering streets to challenge power's gilded root. with ledger law and iron he faced corruption's brazen throne and sought to claim the people's trust as fraught election winds were blown it's great john did you write that what do you know have you heard of generative ai i also asked i also asked uh i also you know because john i know is like has a more modern sensibility. And so a more modern epic poem. Samuel J. Tilden wasn't fireworks. He was a slow burn, a man with receipts in an age of smoke, counting votes like they were promises, standing in the static of a country that couldn't quite decide. Which one did you write, John? Which one do you think? Well, one is an earlier version of my work. And then as I became a more mature poet, I wrote the first one you read. And I also started really at first in etchings. You know, David, when you do all of this great work of your imagination, it creates things. So a listener created an advertisement for 1600 energy drink and sent it to me. And it's Field of... Field of Ben Buren? Yeah, yeah. Phil the Van Buren. And his name is Matt. And I don't know Matt's last name. But anyway, the possibilities are endless. Because you could do Fillmore Alert. Oh, yeah. A Nixon tiredness. It goes on and on. Anyway. Hi, guys. Hi. All right. This week on the Gap Fest, Trump's belligerent and braggadocious State of the Union. Then the Supreme Court's tariff rebuke. Is it an important ruling? Is it a good ruling? Will it stop the president from tariffing the world? Then the Defense Department's threat to blackball Anthropic for not permitting the Pentagon to use its AI however it wants to. Plus, we'll have cocktail chatter. Unsurprisingly, surprising no one, President Trump gave the longest State of the Union in modern history this week, an hour and 48 minutes of jingoism and sliming of Democrats and showiness and, you know, congratulating people. John, what were the main themes of the speech? And in what ways was it effective or ineffective in your view? The main theme was America's great. It's winning. We're in a golden era. I turned around. I created the greatest turnaround in American history. And I mean, people who may not have listened to the speech might think I'm kidding. I'm not. And it was also a genuine celebration of American heroes in combat, which was wonderful, both recent and also World War II. And then an effort to bait Democrats, shame them. It was basically like a Donald Trump rally in which he had, you know, forced Democrats to sit through it. You know, for a person who is in such bad political shape as Trump is and who needs Republicans to be more enthusiastic because they're not. This was an attempt to rile up his team. I don't know whether that will work. There were certainly there's lots in there for his team to applaud. But his main problem is the thing he was elected to do, which was to address high prices. The majority of Americans think he has not done to the extent that he has got a signature economic plan, it's tariffs, and they think that both that is a bad idea and it's made things worse. And particularly with respect to the things he said about the economy, he was only a couple of minutes in before he started lying about verifiably obvious things, inflation, growth, et cetera. just totally lying about the way they were and the way they are. I mean, he does that a lot. But on the economy, you know, everybody has a fact check in their wallet. And so it'll be quite difficult for him to turn around the perception people have, particularly when his only real answer to people's economic concerns is basically you're wrong, which has not been successful in the past. Didn't Biden say everything was great economically when people didn't feel like it was like, I feel like that part of the speech felt like a rerun. No, he didn't say we're in a golden era. We've created the greatest turnaround in American history, which like, you know, FDR would like to have a word. What Biden said is things are getting better. He did the glass half full, but he didn't say I've got a case full of glasses that are totally full, which is, I think, an important distinction. We know with presidents always obviously talk about how things are doing well, getting better. They cherry pick numbers. All of that stuff is familiar. What Trump does, which is new, is assert things for which there is contrary evidence in such numbers, despite fact checking. That's what's different here. But John, I think what Emily's getting at is this is in the same family that Biden tried, maybe not as mendaciously and not as aggressively to talk Americans into believing that they felt better about the economy than they actually did or told them they would feel better about the economy than they actually did. And it was ineffective for Biden. Is there any reason to think, Emily, it would be more effective for Trump to do that? Well, no, thank you for asking me that. That is what I was thinking. Like, I think it's just a hard turn for a president to make. I listened to part of the speech. It just went on too long for me. But I was trying to take a step back and think like, OK, if you really were going to claim accomplishments for the last year, What would you claim? And I mean, Trump did some of this, right? He has secured the border. That is true. You know, we can talk about like at what cost and with what consequences. But that is a real thing he can say. He took credit for the release of the Israeli hostages and the ceasefire in Gaza. they did bomb Iran's military program there's been some kind of setback and then you know if you're Trump you celebrate the doge cuts and the supposed end of DEI whatever that means like there are real things he could talk about and he sort of did but it was all so slathered in bullshit and preening that it just felt to me like he was just couldn't get out of his own way i don't know john's face is so interesting here it's john's what john is thinking is like emily have you not paid attention to what donald trump has been like for the past ten and a half years no no um uh no i'm i mean uh nobody's gonna vote about doge cuts when it gets to november and his biggest challenge is to get people to turn out in november and as i said everybody's got a fact check in their wallet. So yes, it's the same problem that Biden had. I think you exacerbate the problem when you claim something is wholly opposite to people's experience. But the other thing that I think for the thing people care the most about, which is the hostages, that's, he can definitely, and he talked about Venezuela and other things, but I mean, nobody's going to be voting on those issues in November, but he could make an argument. Wages are up. The problem is that wages aren't up that much. And they're also split. People at the top in the top quartile are doing a great deal better than the people in the bottom. And the three things people spend their money on that are most associated with the American dream, housing, education, and health care are going up faster than CPI inflation. So when even if wages are up, the things people care about and make their purchasing, you know, and feel threatened by are not going down in a way that they feel or not going down at all, which is why you have to answer that question somehow. And he did nothing to get at that. And that's a problem because that's what people are likely to think about when they vote. Yeah. So most of the things or maybe all the things I mentioned are kind of ancillary. And then there was the whole part of the speech that was like, I found quite hard to listen to like terrible stories of violence. And then there was the baiting the Democrats. And I guess the baiting the Democrats was like maybe the best play that he made because he was trying to remind voters that he thinks they're crazy, the Democrats, and maybe they're crazy. And like he got Ilhan Omar to yell at him. Like, I don't know, is that that just seemed to me to be what he was resorting to, because if you weren't going to buy his made up story of the American economy and in particular, in particular, the tariffs, then you're kind of left with what's wrong with the Democrats. They won't stand up for these basic things that everybody agrees on, in my view. Yeah, that's why I said it's it was a base speech with a culture war. You know, running the culture war play, which is pretty familiar. like you know people are going to get enraged about ilan omar and trans issues and not standing up when you uh to the simple proposition that americans should be defended instead of illegal aliens and you know not standing up to denounce murder on the on the trains and all of that so i mean that that seems quite familiar not just to trump but to politics in general the um i will note two two annoying data points or two like disheartening data points since the speech one is that a guest of Ilhan Omar was arrested, literally arrested for standing up during Trump's speech, you know, sort of as a form of visual objection to what Trump was saying for, you know, for disrupting the proceedings of the House. And it's just a ludicrous thing. I'm sure the charge will not go through. I'm sure this person will not, you know, serve any time or pay any fine, But just the kind of form of harassment that that represents that Mike Johnson, I assume, is responsible for is annoying. The other is like on the affordability. There's this wonderful story today. Now, I can't even remember if I read it. It must have been The Times or The Post that the Trump administration's new idea about affordability for health care is these very cheap health care plans under the Affordable Care Act. They would have deductibles that are thirty one thousand dollars for a family. Thirty one thousand. you would be on the hook for $31,000 before you'd get coverage, which is just like crazy. But, you know, it's part of what John's talking about, that the prices for healthcare are growing at this rate that is untenable. So I, you know, watched the little bits of this. I don't watch Trump as a matter of, I just don't feel that my body deserves to be treated that way. I'm not willing to submit myself to that kind of abuse. And I would note I didn't with Biden either. I didn't I didn't want I wouldn't watch Biden. I just it's just too painful. But John, do you think that there is is the audience for this? It sounds like you think is really it's the base audience. The people whose priors are already there. And it's a kind of like, let's build their enthusiasm. It's not it's there's no this is not a let's reach a broad swath of the American people and and sort of shift their thinking. It's it's jazz up the people who already believe what we already believe. Yeah. In the past, the White House, Trump White House has tried. It's the same thing every year. And even the first time they did it, it would drive me nuts. So the White House would, and this is all very familiar. You were talking about, well, it wasn't what Trump was doing like Biden. I think it's not. But in this case, it was like Biden. It's like every White House. They come, they say to the reporters and they bring in the anchors and they say, this is going to be a speech about unity. It's going to be about unity. We're going to unify the nation, unity, unity, unity. And then there is not a scintilla of evidence in the actual speech of what unity is. But because the people who cover White Houses need things to say, they say unity for two straight days. And so it doesn't matter what the president does and whether it is or isn't unifying in the actual speech. But with Donald Trump, guess what? The speeches haven't been unifying. And in this case, they didn't even make the unity like faint. They didn't even say this is going to be a unifying speech. It was much more dominance. It was, this country is 250 years old. We celebrate patriots and American exceptionalism. And these freaks on the other side won't even stand up and applaud for the notion of protecting Americans over murderous, illegal aliens. And that, so there was no, to the extent there was any bipartisanship, it was such a surprise that the president remarked about it, that he was surprised that the Democrats stood up. We're a long way from what this speech was originally intended to be. I mean, if you go back and look at George Washington's original, his first day of the union, it was a bunch of like suggestions to Congress. He's like, you might think about this and maybe we should educate people because then they'd be able to identify tyranny and the threats to their liberty. But, you know, I'm just suggesting like whatever you guys want to do, that's cool. And Donald Trump was like, this is what I've done. This is what you should do. please applaud me for it. And by the way, I'm getting my tariffs back and no Congress. I don't need your help with that, even though the Supreme Court just told me to go legislate about this. Yes, I have many questions for you, Emily, about that. Yeah, we're about to get that. Yeah. I mean, the theater of the Supreme Court being there, you know what I noticed in doing my research about this? So the case that this was compared to the most was the Truman case, Youngstown Steel. He takes over the steel companies to avoid a strike and he loses 6-3. one of the justices who voted against Truman was his former attorney general. So Trump thinks he's, you know, been done a bad one by shafted by his people. Imagine if you're attorney general. I mean, imagine if Pam Bondi were on the Supreme Court. My guess is she might vote with the minority. I wonder, we've talked a little bit in recent weeks about this, the Trump aggrandizement, which knows no bounds. Like he, as much as he can aggrandize, he will aggrandize. And here's another example where he uses this national TV spectacle to aggrandize himself in grotesque ways and goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on about it And I just wonder Emily you thought about this and talked about it Like I don think that Trump is boring exactly but is this overexposure and this way that he demands all the attention, all the oxygen, is there, is it running, is it ultimately damaging him and damaging the Republicans because there's no, there's no space besides the space that he occupies. And that that will redound against them at some point. In fact, probably already has. Yeah, I mean, I think it's part of the narrow casting you were talking about, where you're only talking to your base. Like, who other than your biggest fan wants to hear you take all the credit, be such a narcissist about things as you're lying about them? It just is, I don't know, the word overwhelming. Yeah, boring, but also just, the megalomaniac part of it is so prominent right now. I don't know. I mean, who finds that appealing? I mean, obviously, some people do. They're huge fans of his, but I think you really have to be dialed in to want to hear a lot of that. The Supreme Court with, I don't know, like 36 or 37 different concurrences and dissents and opinions overruled most of President Trump's I want to read every of the 170 pages. Is that how many pages it added up? I'm a big fan of the Gorsuch concurrence, but we will get to that in a minute. Yes, that was 40. That was 46 pages. They overruled most of Trump's tariffs this week, the IEPA tariffs. This was not a surprising decision, but I think a lot of people who've been concerned about Trump's power grabs and who've been worried about the role of the Supreme Court found it a heartening one. So, Emily, what briefly, you hear that adverb, briefly. Don't listen to him. Ignore him. Give us everything you got. Overturning the IEPA tariffs. And what were some of the sort of interesting side debates that sprung out of that. All right. Well, let's just take the first question so I don't go on too long. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote a 20 page majority opinion. And there are two things going on in it for saying that Trump did not have the power to do the tariffs under this statute from the 1970s. The first part is about this creature the Supreme Court has recently invented, more or less, called the major questions doctrine, which the conservatives are attached to. I am a major questions doctrine. I am a monster. I feel like you could have channeled Gilbert and Sullivan right there, but you did another move. I am the very model of a modern major questions doctrine. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so the major questions doctrine is the conservatives answer to how to reign in Congress when you have ambiguous words in a statute. And they're demanding clarity if they think that the president is trying to do something that is a big deal that Congress didn't directly address. And the metaphor for this is that from Justice Scalia is that you don't go around hiding elephants in mouse holes, right? That like you're supposed to have more clarity. This is their doctrine that they've been developing. So that was ground one. However, the three liberals who are part of the sixth justice majority did not sign on to the major questions doctrine. They don't think it's necessary. They think it's made up. And so the second and really the basis for the majority opinion is just plain old statutory construction. We're just going to look at the words in the statute. Yes, they include the words regulation and import, but we don't think that that means the power to tariff. And we're going to look at that in context against the background of the statute and how it was enacted and also crucially against the larger constitutional background, which is that Congress has the power to tax and spend. That is essential. And so then it follows that we want a real clear statement from Congress if they're going to delegate any of that power to the president in an emergency situation. And we don't see that here. So that's the basis of the majority opinion. Yeah, they're calling it the birthright power of Congress. He's like, this is the, you know, the capo de tutti capi. This is the power of all the biggest powers that Congress has. And when they've abrogated any of that power to the executive, they've been very clear in their legislation. They've used the word tariff where necessary. That's not, as you pointed out, in AIPA. And that's why I love Gorsuch's concurrence, because he does this little he has that little paragraph in there where he's like, I know the supporters of the tariff policies are going to be disappointed. But you see, the Constitution gives the power to Congress because they're the closest to the people. Like it was a little mini schoolhouse rock that he was doing in there. A hundred percent. And we all every it was like all over social media, like this ode to oh, yes, legislating. It's messy. It takes a while. And that's how it goes. Tell us a little bit more about what Gorsuch said, one of you. So Gorsuch is in the majority. He's one of the three conservatives, Roberts and Barrett, who are in the majority. But he decided to use this as an opportunity to basically take everybody else to the cleaners for being a hypocrite. So he goes after Justice Kagan in particular and the liberals in general because they voted on the other side of these issues when Biden was in office. That's like a kind of crude way to put it. But, you know, there are these questions about Biden using ambiguous language in statutes to impose COVID restrictions, to forgive student loans. And the liberals said that Biden did have those powers and this time voted against Trump. So Gorsuch shall ask them for that. I will just stop and note, Justice Kagan has a strong response to this, which is basically say, I don't do the major questions doctrine. Don't accuse me for being a hypocrite about that because I'm not doing it at all. What I'm doing is statutory construction. And I think those other laws were different. So then in order to evaluate whether you think that holds up or not in this hypocrisy charge and counter charge, you have to really go in and read those statutes and decide what you think about whether Biden had those powers, even though this time Trump didn't. Then Gorsuch goes after the dissent, which is Justice Kavanaugh, but also Alito and Thomas. And they're arguing, yes, the major question doctrine applies. But first of all, we think that Congress did make a clear statement about giving these powers to the president. And basically underlying that is this very strong theory of executive power and a bigger presidency. And then they want to create an exception to the major questions doctrine for things that touch on foreign affairs, which some law professors had written about this in a plausible way, but nobody had ever done that before. So if the court had landed on that with a majority, I think that would have really freaked out a lot of people, right? Because it would have seemed like super hacky to create this exception. I mean, also like the idea that you can understand an exception, you know, the United States is, you know, their missiles directed at the United States in that moment. And, you know, the invasion of Canadian troops has come across the border into Minnesota and Minnesotans are being rounded up by the tens of thousands. You can understand, like in that moment, you would say there's an emergency. The president has to have like total liberty to exercise because it has to be like the gap between that sort of emergency and the sort of so-called foreign affairs emergency that tariffing a bunch of goods that are coming in as part of perfectly peaceable trade at a time where nothing has fundamentally changed in the world economy or in world affairs is crazy. Like that exercise, like the idea that the exercise of emergency powers could be so broad and the president has that much latitude. That seems very unsettling. Remember during the war on terror period, people used to talk about the Jack Bauer. You know, if there's a bomb on a train, then a president has to, you know, act in emergency. But here they claimed it was for a foreign policy negotiating and leverage with countries like China. It was the terrorists were necessary to onshore the more American manufacturing. It was necessary to balance the budget. I mean, they claimed a whole host of different things. And Emily, didn't they get into difficulty? Right. Drug interdiction, fighting drugs. Although that seems, you know, that's at least in the plausible category. Like as a revenue raiser, didn't they explicitly argue in front of the court that it was not being used for revenue? Right. Meanwhile, the president is out there saying that it's going to be used so much for revenue. It's going to get rid of the income tax, which $195 billion came in in tariff. Income tax brings in about $2.75 trillion. So that's cockamamie. And you've also got the Secretary of the Treasury saying, no, here's how it's going to work. The tariffs are going to be high at first, but then all these manufacturing operations are going to come back to the United States. The tariffs will lower, but we'll make up the difference with all this income tax and corporate tax that we're going to take in, which you can't take in if you get rid of the income tax, as the president says. Anyway, Emily? So, I mean, I guess what I would say about this is, to me, the headline of this decision is that the court stood up to the president about something the president cares extremely deeply about and has been very vivid in expressing. And that's a big deal. Like that's co-equal branch, you know, put on your big boy pants time. So good for them. And, you know, in some ways, when I was reading the Kavanaugh dissent, he's he makes some points. He doesn't have no law on his side. Right. There was a path toward just siding with Trump and three conservative justices, including two who Trump appointed, did not take it. So that seems important to me just as like a statement of where we are with the separation of powers. I kept thinking about that expression from the 70s. your lack of planning is not my emergency because Trump kept saying, you know, if you reverse these tariffs, we're going to have to pay back these 179 billion dollars in tariffs. Now, of course, the administration is saying they aren't going to have to pay them back. And we should talk about the politics of that briefly. But Kavanaugh sort of got into that and said, oh, this is going to create chaos. But like there is an obligation, not in law, but like presidents should not do things that are of such magnitude and so risky and where the stakes are so high when their legal theory is built on sand. Or is it least questionable? And so that was also brave of the court. I don't know if that's the right word, but to basically stand up for the underlying structure and principles and not worry about the consequences. And that's also, I think, a kind of arm of the emergency question, which is Trump's view on everything is if it's an emergency, I can do it and like, damn the consequences. And like, that's, you know, when you invoke emergency over and over again, like you do have to bear the consequences if it's not an emergency. And if it doesn't, John, you're, I can't even speak because you're so excited to jump in. So jump in. No, you're so great. Well, that's of course, one of the things that, that, that Roberts relied on too, which is that the founders said, you know what? Emergencies are going to breed emergencies and executives to get things done are just going to claim emergency. I mean, it was 250 years ago that they were writing about exactly what Trump was doing. And when Trump said, I'm using this power because it's an emergency. And if you take the power away from me, that'll be an emergency. Also, the bearing of the consequences, Kavanaugh brought this up in his dissent. So, like, first of all, I thought the conservative justices didn't care about consequences. This is a point that, John, you made to us earlier in the week. And it's true. They are supposed to be doing, like, abstract constitutional law. And, like, all of a sudden consequences seem to matter. I mean, Kavanaugh framed it as like in any event rather than basing his dissent on it. However, it was prominent. But if there's a big mess here in terms of refunds, then that is the fault of the president who invoked the statute in a way that was wrong. Can we move to one of the consequences of the – just go back to Gorsuch. I think Gorsuch's point about legislation and that Congress is the body that is closest to the people and its job is to do things like decide what the taxes are. And that's very clear. It is an idealistic position that doesn't have much relationship to the troublesome period we live in now where there's a quite impotent and locked up Congress that has lost its capacity to act. And I wonder, I applaud Gorsuch for standing up for this principle and certainly what is intended in the constitution. But this is one of the big tensions that this country is going to have to grapple with in years to come, which is that if you say that Congress has these obligations, but Congress is incapable of acting on these obligations, it either creates a vacuum where politics and policy are not able to be carried out at all in a meaningful way, or it invites the president to do what Donald Trump has done in extremity or in maximus maximally, which is to just take every space and do what he wants and just say, well, someone's got to do it. Stop it. Yeah. And I just, I worry, I mean, this is not a, no sense of rebuttal or counter to what Gorsuch is saying, because I think what he describes is right. But it is, he's, he is highlighting the fact that these branches are not actually working in the way they were supposed to, because this first branch is so inept and so divided. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think Gorsuch might say like, well, if we push back on the president, we're opening up a space for Congress and eventually they're going to fill it. And if they don't, that's still not our problem because this is our separation of powers. Yeah. I do think, though, there's another part of this. So one of the conservative responses to this opinion was to really celebrate what you're talking about and even to claim that the court is creating a weaker presidency, which I find to be. I don't know how that possibly can make that claim in light of the immunity decision from a year and a half ago that gave Trump so much power. Plus, they are about to say that he can fire all the heads of independent, semi-independent federal agencies. Oh, except for the Fed. Right. And so I struggle with understanding all of that. And I particularly think it's important to remember with the agencies like Congress set up the structure of these semi-independent agencies. And that really has been a way of cabining presidential power. It's the executive branch, but it's really, as we've talked about a lot of times, it's this expert class of people who work on regulation in Washington. And so for the court, they're about to pull the rug out from under that part of the structure, which does in some way limit the presidency. And I know Gorsuch has a way of reconciling those things in his head. Like he thinks that there's a bad kind of delegation that Congress does that he wants to stop that has to do with like the breadth of the presidency. But then he sees the independent agencies as being the kind of like vertical part of the presidency because it's all in the executive branch and it's fine to give the president more power over that. I just don't think it's a realistic way of thinking about reforming American government right now. Kind of to your point David about like where we really are versus these abstract principles So you know like as usual with the Supreme Court it a a running story and they going to be other cases this term that are going to fill out the picture of this relationship more we should take note of the fact the president also called the three justices who voted with him on the immunity decision 19 months ago essentially traitors to the country um i mean which is which again you know other presidents have grumbled about the Supreme Court, FDR called them nine old men. To say what the president did, that's not a difference of degree. That's a difference in kind. And it certainly smells of the kind of delegitimizing talk that he was throwing around on election night in 2020. He didn't do it right to their face at the State of the Union, but I'm sure we'll get more rounds of that. And once you say the Supreme Court has no legitimacy and you have supporters who take that as a cue. Yeah. I mean, I don't think you're, you know, you're messing around with dangerous stuff. Yeah. I mean, Trump said they were disloyal to the Constitution and a disgrace to their families. But really what he means is that they're disloyal to him. Finally, John, what will the consequences be in the real world of overturning these tariffs? There's this ambiguous question about whether they will, those who've paid will get refunds from the payments. But then it is – President Trump has already issued 15% tariffs under Section 122 tariffs, which incidentally, we could have a whole other segment about – I didn't realize this. They themselves are almost certainly illegal, these tariffs that he's issued. And the Justice Department said that in the course of the current litigation. Right. Right. But then he will follow with Section 301 investigations where he'll find – they will find that certain countries are engaging in unfair trade practices and will then tariff But that requires sort of an administrative investigation, but they'll get there. And then Section 232 tariffs, well, they'll find that certain industries, whole sectors are engaging in unfair practices that are hurting America, and they'll put other tariffs on those sectors. So I think realistically, there's still going to be a very heavy tariff regime in this country. It just will be based on different things of varying legality. And that will create and continue to stir up massive uncertainty for American businesses, small, medium, and large. And that's the economic consequences, which is you had 4.5% growth in the third quarter, but you had 1.4% growth in the fourth quarter. And even if you add the percent back that came from the government shutdown, that's still only 2.4 percent growth, which is not what the administration has been boasting about and not as high, by the way, as the average growth. Just among the lies the president told the average growth in 2025 was not roaring. It was slightly under the last year of growth in the Biden administration. So growth is going to be affected by companies in this kind of constant state of uncertainty about these tariffs, which they've already always been under, but they were hoping for something to settle. This is just a diet of constant and unending uncertainty. And if you believe the economists, we're facing a period where a lot of the companies that boosted their inventories and advanced the tariffs have been basically eating up their inventories so they don't have to raise prices. Now prices might very well rise. So there's an economic impact here that will matter. As a political matter, Democrats are saying, hey, give us our refund. You owe us. And, you know, you can imagine it's not that far of a leap for them to say, you know, as he did with his subcontractors, Donald Trump is stiffing you. You know, you can you can imagine tying that and talking about that a lot throughout the election. And that connects to what they want to be talking about anyway, as far as Democrats are concerned, which is affordability. Donald Trump said he was going to fix high prices and your economic woes. And he came in and installed a tariff regime that the tax foundation says has cost you a thousand dollars for the average family. So I think it's a political pain in the neck for him. And back to the question whether any of it's legal, he said Congress didn't have to vote. I'm not sure that's true. And so there's that's a problem for Republicans to have to vote to support the president's tariffs. And I would just say as a final thing, another lie he told in the in the State of the Union, which matters, is he said these foreign countries are paying these tariffs. The foreign countries aren't paying the tariffs. American companies are paying them. Consumers are paying them. And to keep saying that, you know, is basically to hoodwink people. And finally, the manufacturing boom that's supposed to take place, there were a tiny bit of manufacturing jobs created in January, but that was the first month manufacturing jobs have been up since this whole thing was rolled out. Mostly manufacturing jobs have decreased. The Department of War, the Department of Defense, Department of Extreme Workouts, whatever it is we call it these days, they have threatened the AI company Anthropic with a huge punishment if Anthropic doesn't comply with Pentagon demands that Anthropic's defense AI model called claw.gov be unleashed to do any lawful thing that the Defense Department wants to do. Anthropic, which I think is widely seen as the most careful of the AI companies, is demanding that its AI not be used for surveillance of Americans or for autonomous weapons, such as autonomous drones that don't have human oversight. If Anthropic doesn't comply by Friday, according to the Defense Department. The Defense Department will effectively seize the software, demand that it be operated as they want. And they will also label Anthropic a supply chain risk, which might endanger its business broadly. The other major AI companies that are trying to do work with the Pentagon, Grok, OpenAI, Google, Gemini, have signed agreements that would allow the Department of Defense to use their models for any purpose. But Claude, which has not signed this agreement is more important because Claude is already integrated into the Department of Defense systems that are classified, the Palantir, they're integrated into Palantir's classified defense systems. This is a fun one. This is a good one. So, Emily, is the law clearly on anyone's side here? Is Palantir's anthropic right to say, you know, you can't use this for these dubious and possibly illegal purposes or do they have no leg to stand on because it's like you know you you're you're doing business with the government the government can take this product and do things with it why are you holding your hand up john because the um the auto the tracking of my head in the um camera that's how you stop it from doing that okay so emily answer my question i there's so little law here right so the pentagon's position is that they won't accept any contractual constraints other than what's lawful. They want to be able to do whatever they want to be able to do with Claude as long as the law allows it, and they get to set the terms. And the company's point of view is like, we're signing a contract with you, and so we are trying to put this into the terms of the contract. And there is just no regulation addressing these specific questions, which is kind of crazy. The idea that Anthropic and the head of Anthropic would be setting these limits on the military without a big public conversation about whether we want AI to have limits set on it more generally, it just is fascinating that this is how this issue is surfacing, right? So then I think like there's a couple of questions, you know, does the Pentagon really want to do mass surveillance or, you know, non-human killings? Maybe, especially mass surveillance. Like they've already kind of started down the surveillance road or ICE has. So that doesn't seem like it's some totally abstract, theoretical, crazy idea. And then, you know, what kind of conversation should we be having? Why did the other AI companies just like knuckle under? I mean, we know the answer to that. Standing up to the Trump administration is become very unattractive. And much of Silicon Valley seems to be like really ready to just go along to get along. And where's the sort of larger public conversation about this? Like, should this be something that, you know, civil liberties groups are agitating about that Congress is talking about? I am so excited about this. I think it is so interesting. All right. So first of all, I'm kind of shocked at the level of naivete and anthropic here. When you when you're first, you've already integrated your product into Palantir. Like that way you made a deal, which was to integrate your product into Palantir. Like what is Palantir if not this kind of device for, you know, this this this this topic device for mass surveillance and manipulation and like to then be like, I am shocked. I am shocked that the Defense Department might somehow hypothesize that they could use this for surveilling lots of people, lots of Americans, or for autonomous killing drones. I mean, they made the decision to get into bed with the Defense Department at some point a few years ago. And it seems to me really quite ludicrous to think they didn't contemplate that, oh, maybe the Defense Department might not want this for wholly innocent purposes so that they could monitor dolphins that got near submarines or something. Let me keep going. Let me keep going. Of course, you shouldn't trust the Department of Defense around this. Like, obviously, the Department of Defense is going to do really dubious things. They are obviously going to surveil in ways they are not going to be careful about reducing the risks of AI. If you remember the Terminator movies, the Terminator movies begin because this Department of Defense AI system, Skynet, becomes autonomous. And, you know, that will probably come true also. Palantir is, you know, this horse is so far out of the barn. They rode the horse out of the barn to begin with. I don't think the punishment they're proposing, I don't think the public way this is unfolding is good for anybody, but it does not at all seem to me unreasonable for the Pentagon to be like, of course, we're going to use this how we were going to use it for any lawful purpose. that's what our job is. Like there are, there are, you know, Congress has oversight over what we do and the president, you know, has oversight over what we do, but our job is to figure out the most effective ways to fight wars. And this is obviously the most important new technology and we've got to learn how to, to use it. And so get, get with the program guys. What makes this different than And perhaps, perhaps in that, because maybe I'm not maybe, of course, I'm ignorant of all the technological developments that the Pentagon has used before. But it seems to me what makes this different is that artificial intelligence is so on the edge of discovery that their Congress is never going to catch up. And Congress, especially not in its shambolic state, is going to be in a position to provide the kind of oversight that the Defense Department relies on when it says our job is to fight wars and we are constrained by the laws of the country. And so we are in an odd place here because there's if there's ever going to be not very much congressional oversight, either from incompetence or just it's hard to keep up with all of the developments. Secondly, AI is doing things that even the people who make AI don't know exactly which way it's going. I mean, because it's iterative based on and can create things that surprise its authors. And in fact, Anthropic, when they publish all the research that they do, often publishes things that have surprised it that AI does. And they do that in keeping with what you said, David, which is their more publicly stated, ethically minded approach to AI, which is to say, here's how dangerous it could be. even our own product, which arguably hurts our bottom line by saying how dangerous it could get, but let's all rally around and come up with some standards so this doesn't knock us over. And I think that's their theory was, yes, we'll get in bed with the Pentagon, but we will never give them anything that we think can go overboard. And now the Pentagon is saying, that's not your decision. And I think Anthropic as a private company is okay to say, yes, it is our decision. But then the Pentagon says, all right, well, then we're locking you out of your, you know, and so now it's a moment for Anthropic to decide what they really believe in. What I find fascinating, and I'll try and make it short, is that Anthropic has this parallel argument, which is we're changing our standards because our belief that we should be on the cutting edge of risk management can only happen if we are on the cutting edge of discovery. In other words, We only will know what's truly dangerous if we're right there along with all of our competitors, which is both a plausible argument and it would also be the best possible argument you could make for why you want to drop your standards and stay in the hunt because you want to compete economically with your competitors. And now, John, you're talking about the separate move that Anthropic made this week to drop this safety pledge it had made earlier where they said, like, if we aren't sure that we can do this safely, we're not going to keep developing. Now they're saying, well, nobody else in this world signed onto this pledge. And we think it's more important for us to, like you said, stay in the hunt. The justification they gave is like, we think it's riskier for the world if we don't keep developing because these other companies are worse. So there's like these two kind of contradictory things happening this week, which is on the one hand, they're standing up to the Pentagon and trying to prevent their Claude from being used in a way that they think could really be dangerous. And on the other hand, they're changing their stance on the safety principle, which may or may not be justified. Excellently managed. Yes, perfectly done. It also feels like what they said at the Wuhan lab. Right. Well, right. Right. It doesn't mean it's never true, but it does always have that. Like, really, are you sure this isn't just totally in your self-interest? Can I say one thing about, I mean, it seems like they don't want Claude being used for non-human firing weapons because they think that that will kill people by mistake. Like this is part of not really being able to necessarily control the AI and what actually happens. And this whole thing of how the AI is now improving itself, right? And working on itself in ways that humans may or may not fully control and grasp. Yes, but it is I think it is fairly it's fairly obvious from the experience of Ukraine that future warfare is going to involve huge amounts of drones killing people and acting in spooky and increasingly autonomous ways like that is obvious. It's also pretty clear that China is investing enormously in this similar technology. China, which is our biggest geopolitical competitor, is investing enormously in it. And the United States, if I were at the Pentagon, I would feel like we have an absolute moral obligation to the citizens of this country to to stay at the tip top cutting edge of this because this is going to be an increasingly dangerous world. And if we want our citizens to live free and we want our soldiers to be able to fight as safely as possible, we have to be at the head of this. And we can't be constrained by the moral concerns of these pointy heads at anthropic labs. And I'm sure it's those people who lived through what happened with nuclear weapons in the 40s, 50s, and 60s have a lot of relevant things to say about that similar experience where you had this idea of a peaceful technology, a technology that could be used for harnessing power in interesting ways. And it is rapidly converted into this this incredibly you know humanity threatening weapon like that they went through the same set of arguments and they lost because we built nuclear weapons were under the controls of states and governments and these potential weapons or tools are not which is like a huge difference i mean the other thing that gets me i i don't know what to do well they're not but they are because anthropic made a deal with congress they made a deal with the pentagon they've signed a 200 million dollar contract with the pentagon that doesn't mean but then they tried to make it conditional like i don't agree with you that once they got into this contract with the pentagon like all bets were off and they couldn't try to limit it in any way it seems to me like they can try um i don't know if they're going to succeed or not but i sort of appreciate the trying if nothing else at least we're having a conversation about all this right otherwise you know the race with China argument, like it's so potent, but then it also excuses absolutely everything. Well, I think it goes back to John's point, which is that if you have a Congress, if you have a Congress is unable to keep up and unable to effectively regulate and monitor and oversee the Pentagon, your capacity in a democracy to sort of hold yourself to lawful and decent rules of warfare is minimal and that's a problem right i mean also the main federal effort to legislate about ai so far has been to try to stop the states from setting any kind of going the other directions right yeah exactly i just like uh it's just worrisome it's a really really interesting i mean by the time this comes out maybe it's already settled it wouldn't surprise me if they've already reached an agreement i'm sure this is not gonna this is not gonna end with anthropic being barred from doing business with the government. I don't think that's going to happen. Did I ever tell you guys, this is just a weird tangent, but I started thinking about this as I was reading about it. So the fundamental issue in this case is if you are doing work for the Pentagon, if you're doing work in the service of the military, what is your corporate obligation, liability? Where do you end as a private company and does the government begin? And I started my professional life as a paralegal in the Department of Justice. And one of the cases that I had to work on, this is in the early 1990s, was about the manufacture of aviation fuel in World War II at various refineries around Huntington Beach, California. And there was, I think it was Shell and a couple other oil companies were making aviation fuel for the government during World War II. And as you make aviation fuel, there's a lot of waste and they were dumping all this waste. And so there became these enormous, super fun toxic sludge sites in california and this question all the way up and into the 90s and then beyond was who was responsible for cleaning this up is it the private company which is which has caused the pollution done the pollution like dumped it there because they were you know working quickly and are just like oh we're just going to dump it here responsible for the cleanup or is the government responsible for the cleanup because shell is doing this yes they're doing it but they're doing it because they're being urged and pushed by the government to complete the war effort And like it's an emergency and they've got to do it. And this was like being litigated 50 years later when I was there. And I just I went and looked it back up and finally was settled in 2009. So 70 years after the fact, 60 years after the fact. And the government had to pay. The government had to basically pay for the cleanup because the ruling was like, yes, it was whatever the companies were that had done the dumping. But they'd done it only because the government had told them, you've got to meet these supply demands and, you know, don't don't be don't worry about the consequences. It was interesting. Let us go to cocktail chatter. Emily Bazelon, when you are having a post winter drink, a mint julep to start the spring because the spring has started. What are you gonna be chattering about this weekend? I saw another really good movie. It was just an accident, which is this Iranian film directed by Jafar Pahani. So good. It's this crazy setup. Have you guys heard about this movie or seen this movie? Did you watch it intentionally or was it just an accident? I mean, okay, whenever I watch a movie with subtitles, it is so intentional. I really have to screw up my courage for that. This movie is so good. I mean, it's about this totally dark subject of someone. This happens very quickly in the movie. Someone thinking he has found his previous torture and then trying to figure out what to do. And yet it's hilarious and charming and like just full of pathos throughout. Okay. I really deeply recommend this movie. Oh, that's great. Yes. So good. And then I just have to note one thing. The Epstein files. The news this week that there are missing files related to serious accusations against President Trump. Like, what is going on here? I am very interested in this part of this story. So let's just all watch it going forward. I just felt like that was a big deal. We found out about this because a very enterprising journalist did a lot of sleuthing and realized that the inventory for the files had these had noted that there were these interviews with the FBI from a woman who came forward, I think, in 2019 to say that Trump had sexually abused her when she was a teenager, I think, in the 1980s. And the interviews themselves are missing. But the serial numbers for the other pages show like that there is really a significant chunk of pages here anyway what is happening yeah fascinating fascinating uh john obviously didn't obviously didn't get a mention in the state of the union um nor did anything to do with the epstein files even though a bunch of the victims right that's what i mean i mean and also by the way ukraine really didn't get mentioned even though it was the fourth anniversary of the day of the four years to the day that the Russians started the invasion. What's my chatter, you ask? I didn't, but yes. Yes. Okay, well, I'm going to tell you. So two things. One, useful. One, you'll have to decide. The first thing that is super useful is this computer app, which runs on both a Mac and a PC called Handy. and basically it allows you to um it's not text to speech but it is speech to text anybody who uses smartphone undoubtedly sends text sometimes by just talking to their phone instead of actually typing it out and you know three quarters of it get it gets right um uh my favorite one is that i'm constantly sending text to ann saying that i'm getting in the can uh as opposed to getting in the cab. But that's not really, that's an autocorrect problem, not necessarily a translation problem. But anyway, Handy is super useful. Once I started using it, I just use it all the time, and the transcription ability is super, or the translation, I should say, is very, very accurate. So that's news you can use. That's just like the way I say, hey Siri, text Emily, we're starting at 9.30 today. Exactly. So somebody sends an email. But you ask Candy and it's just better? Yeah. You respond to the email and you're like, I'll be right down. I've just got to finish up a few things and start dinner without me. That's a text or an email or both? That's an email or a text. Or even when you're – like sometimes when I'm writing, I'm like – I just – also because I have like mild carpal tunnel, I'll just start talking. So once it's on your phone, it integrates into everything? You put it on your laptop. It's not on your phone. It's on your laptop. And it integrates everything. Any text box you have open, it'll do it. And I mean, maybe it's my own idiosyncratic way of behaving, which is, I realize, quite idiosyncratic. But I use it quite a lot. Basically, I hit control and spacebar, and that tells it to listen. And then it goes right into the text box. Anyway, give it a shot. I learned about it in Wired Magazine. I should give them credit. They were very excited about it, too. The other thing I did is in preparation for going on Stephen Colbert's broadcast, then I did the State of the Union, for which I was very grateful and had a great time. I would thought about, like, what is the State of the Union when it comes to our economy? and that sent me down a huge rabbit hole which i have um put on my uh substack which is basically like a dashboard of the american economy and what's really happening or what i think is really happening it's um it's very long and it's kind of dense but people might be interested in it um anyway it's there for anybody who wants to read it it's basically with the home my homework um i don't think i talked about any of it on the broadcast but uh since it is this you know one of the key questions um i thought i'd try to figure it out so anyway all of that homework is now there for anybody to look at and pick apart if they if they would like to or learn from it my chatter very basic i just want to chatter about tv show i watched this week unexpectedly and loved uh and when you hear the name of it you'll be like well you're like the 10 millionth it's the knight of the seven kingdoms so good yeah hbo it's the hbo sort of new uh incarnation of the game of thrones world is based on some shorter books that george r r martin wrote about a uh a hedge knight named dunk a gigantic uh gigantic young man who is like a kind of quasi knight trying to make his way in this chivalric world and his young squire a little boy named egg And I'm not like a, I'm a moderate Game of Thrones fan. This is not really Game of Thrones-y in that it is, it's really, there is a, there's some violence in it and it gets actually- It has Targaryens with their white hair and the little music plays at a few moments. It gets, and it does get seriously violent in a couple of episodes, but it is beautiful. I didn't watch those parts. It's beautiful and funny, filled with just small details that are wonderful and just It's both sentimental and funny and just darling. And the two lead performances, Peter Claffey, who plays this gigantic knight, is an ex-Irish rugby player. He's wonderful. And this kid, Dexter Saul Ansel, who plays Egg, his squire, is amazing. 11-year-old boy. Amazing. It's just genuinely a beautiful experience to watch. I love the word sentimental being used in connection with the game of Thrones, because in the previous one, like the level of sentiment was like, I mean, only if you're sentimental about keeping your blood inside your body. It was I mean, so I love that it can that word can be applied. Have you finished it, Emily? Yeah, I want to ask you what you think about the last episode, but I don't want to do any spoilers. Oh, yeah. Don't spoil it because I because three years from now, I'm going to get on this. you liked game of thrones i feel like we watched the finale with you or something oh yeah no no i definitely liked game of thrones i mean liked is a weird word but i was into i was i mean i'm in i'm definitely into that stuff we're i'm gonna be all over this though that's true i don't even i don't even think i think you could not like game of thrones unlike this and i don't even like game of thrones that much and i love this but i mean i've watched i'm up to date on Witcher. So like this is in my category. So I'm so grateful. I think to me, the closest analog actually was normal people. That was the vibe I got. I mean, I think in having an enormous player at the heart of it, an ex-Irish rugby, but like there's this, the kind of like the intimacy of that relationship was, I don't know why I thought of it. I think because of an enormous ex-rugby player. Anyway, listeners, you've got chatters. Please keep them coming to us by emailing gabfest at slate.com. And this week's listener chatter is just for John. From Matt, for John. Hey, Gabfest. Matt Wagner here from beautiful Hell's Kitchen, New York, and a proud Gabfest listener for 10 plus years. This one's mainly for John because, hey, he's our resident pen enthusiast, and this chatter is about staples. That's right, staples. There's a TikTok creator who works there named Oblivion, handle at blivxx, who has somehow turned print services into appointment viewing. Full uniform, bejeweled nails, soft ASMR clicks, and then genuinely useful breakdowns of paperweight, gloss finishes, laminating, and the rest. It's deeply soothing and oddly informative. She also gives each printer a personality. One's a clean girl who loves oysters. Another is basically the villain in a workplace rom-com. I didn't know I needed printer lore, but here we are. What I love is the sincerity. We've been told print is dead, paper is over. Everything is digital. Meanwhile, she's out here delivering. Here's the tea on 10 point gloss like it's a state of the union. It's making things feel tactile again. And Staples wisely is cheering her on in the comments instead of trying to brand speak their way into it or out of it, for that matter. The Staples girl is the moment. And honestly, give her a raise. well charming i'll go check it out um that also reminds me um i wanted to acknowledge um macon phillips who i met at a jason isbel show as a fan of the the gab fest and you guys so um i send his regards um and ryan who i met on the c train uh also a fan of the show um and so uh thanks to both of them for saying hi and for listening and um and yay listeners we are not the only slate podcast we may be your favorite one we might not even be your favorite one but there are a lot of other good ones to listen to and this week's slate money has planet money in book form uh so the beloved npr podcast planet money is a book and the author of that book is an old colleague of mine alex mayasi alex uh worked with me at atlas obscura he's so great he's just wonderful and smart and creative and he goes on slate money to talk to Felix Salmon and Elizabeth Spires and Emily Peck about the planet money book, a guide to the economic forces shaping your life. So they are delightful people, all of them. And Alex is great. And I'm sure the book is great. So check it out. That's all for our episode this week. We also have a bonus episode in your feed about the Texas democratic primary and James Tallarico. go, is he the future of the Democratic Party or maybe not? Slate Plus members get a lot of great stuff for their subscription, including discounts to live shows and bonus episodes on lots of Slate podcasts. And they never hit the paywall on the Slate site. So if you are a Slate Plus member, good on you. Thank you. If you're not a member, become a member today. Subscribe to Slate Plus directly from the GabFest show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify or visit slate.com slash GabFest Plus to get access wherever you listen. that's our show for today the gap is produced by nina morzuki our researcher is emily ditto our theme music is by they might be giants ben richmond equals senior director for podcast ops mia labelle equals executive producer for slate podcast hillary fry is the editor chief of slate for emily bazlan and john dickerson i'm david plots thanks for listening we will talk to you next week Thank you.