VA Governor Abigail Spanberger ran as being a moderate. Well guess what? She s now putting in a radical left agenda and we re going to expose it for you. Also, we break down the tariffs argument that was at the Supreme Court and what it means moving forward. This is very important for the president to be able to use tariffs to get better deals for the American people.
00:10:39.420Chief Justice Roberts repeatedly tried to reframe the case away from foreign affairs and towards taxation of Americans.
00:10:48.580So, for example, Chief Justice Roberts asked, he said, tariffs and dealings with foreign powers, yes.
00:10:56.100But the vehicle is the imposition of taxes on Americans.
00:10:58.900And that has always been the core power of Congress.
00:11:02.560And John Sauer tried to press back on behalf of the Trump administration.
00:11:08.360And Roberts responded, well, who pays the tariff?
00:11:12.720If a tariff is imposed on automobiles, who pays them?
00:11:16.840And the answer, as I said before, is consumers pay some of them and the foreign producer pays some of them.
00:11:22.500Roberts went on and he highlighted the structural collision between the executive foreign affairs power and Congress's taxing authority.
00:11:32.560Roberts said, quote, to have the president's foreign affairs power, Trump, that basic power of Congress, seems to me at least to neutralize between the two powers, the executive power and the legislative power.
00:11:48.280And then he said, yes, of course, tariffs and dealings with foreign powers.
00:11:52.880But the vehicle is the imposition of taxes on Americans.
00:12:05.400She was the dean of the Harvard Law School.
00:12:07.160She was the U.S. Solicitor General also.
00:12:10.280And she's a very, very smart liberal lawyer and judge.
00:12:15.720What Justice Kagan tried to do is frame this all within the non-delegation doctrine.
00:12:21.680So Justice Kagan said about the taxing power, she said, quote, but not with respect to tariffs, not with respect to quintessential taxing powers, which are given by the Constitution to Congress.
00:12:34.740And she framed the case through the delegation doctrine, saying, quote, in consumers research just last year, which is a case the Supreme Court just decided, we had a tax before us.
00:12:47.200If there's no ceiling on this tax, we sort of assumed if there was no ceiling, it would raise a delegation power problem.
00:12:55.660And then she applied that logic to AIPA.
00:13:00.020She said, how does your argument fit with the idea that a tax with no ceiling, a tax that can be anything the president wants, would raise a pretty deep delegation problem?
00:13:12.580And she rejected the government's argument to relabel tariffs.
00:13:16.800She said, no, not with respect to tariffs, not with respect to quintessential taxing powers.
00:13:22.040Now, understand what Justice Kagan is doing.
00:13:23.820The non-delegation doctrine is a very important constitutional limitation on Congress giving too much power to the executive.
00:13:33.580It is also something conservatives care a great deal about.
00:13:36.660I think Justice Kagan, Justice Kagan, the three liberals are going to vote against Trump, no matter what, in any circumstance.
00:13:44.640But she's trying, in a very savvy way, to argue it in a way that will appeal to Justice Gorsuch, Chief Justice Roberts, or Justice Barrett.
00:13:55.580She's trying to frame it in terms of conservative principles.
00:13:58.780Now, Justice Gorsuch, if you look at his questions, his questions showed a significant degree of skepticism to the administration's position,
00:14:10.280and in particular focusing on the major questions doctrine.
00:14:13.320Again, the major questions doctrine is a big conservative principle that limits the power of the executive branch.
00:14:51.700He said, once you accept that premise, it's hard to see what's left of the limitation.
00:14:57.520Justice Barrett, she went on to say, Congress knows how to grant tariff authority explicitly.
00:15:08.380Why isn't clearer language required if Congress meant to confer that power?
00:15:14.060And she pressed the U.S. Solicitor General.
00:15:16.720She said, if regulate imports includes tariffs of any size, what work is left for the rest of the statute to do?
00:15:24.260Where do we find the limiting principle in the statute itself?
00:15:31.500So, look, in terms of the questioning, Roberts appeared skeptical, Gorsuch appeared skeptical, and Barrett appeared skeptical.
00:15:42.280So, on the conservative side, the justice that seemed most receptive was Brett Kavanaugh.
00:15:47.880Well, and Brett Kavanaugh said, the court has historically been very comfortable with very broad delegations in the foreign affairs context.
00:15:56.780So, he framed it in terms of, look, the president has enormous flexibility when it comes to foreign affairs.
00:16:04.120Justice Kavanaugh said in one of his opinions that the non-delegation concerns have less force where Congress is empowering the president in foreign affairs.
00:16:14.780And Justice Kavanaugh focused on the historical practice, said there's a long tradition of broad delegations over foreign commerce going back to the founding.
00:16:27.000And he engaged the Solicitor General seriously.
00:16:31.340He said, that's consistent with cases like Chicago and Southern Airlines and Curtis Wright.
00:16:35.820I think Kavanaugh is going to be a likely vote to uphold the tariff authority.
00:16:43.040And so, that argument was significant.
00:17:47.980What evidence do we have that Congress historically could not confer this kind of authority in matters of foreign commerce?
00:17:57.900Justice Thomas' question suggests he is very likely to vote in favor of the president's tariff authority.
00:18:06.160And then let's focus on Justice Alito.
00:18:08.200Justice Alito was really focused on workability, remedies, and consequences.
00:18:17.940So, he said, he was asking about practicality.
00:18:22.160He said, if we accept your position, what happens to all the tariffs that have already been collected?
00:18:29.580He also highlighted, and I think this is critical, this may be the most important question asked.
00:18:34.920There are enormous reliance interests here, both for the government and for private actors who have ordered their affairs around these tariffs.
00:18:56.840And he pressed whether the case could be resolved narrowly.
00:19:00.540He said, why isn't this something that can be handled through a limiting construction, rather than a broad holding that calls into question a lot of past practice?
00:19:10.400I actually think Justice Alito's questioning is going to frame what the court does.
00:19:16.700Now, we have, in a lot of big cases, a 6-3 divide.
00:19:22.000You have the three liberals who vote against Trump on everything.
00:19:25.160And you have six justices that are on the conservative side of the aisle, although they vary.
00:19:31.960I'm going to predict we're going to lose one.
00:19:33.860I don't know which, but I think we will lose, in all likelihood, either Gorsuch or Barrett.
00:19:40.440But, even though Chief Justice Roberts was skeptical at oral argument, I'm going to predict that Chief Justice Roberts votes to uphold the tariffs, and I'm going to predict that he writes the majority opinion.
00:20:06.820I did spend my entire career, before I was in the Senate, was arguing before the court.
00:20:11.840And, look, Roberts, in particular, is an institutionalist.
00:20:16.500And I actually think this case is quite similar to the Obamacare case.
00:20:22.160The Obamacare case, during the Obama presidency, was a challenge to Obamacare, and ultimately, Chief Justice Roberts upheld Obamacare.
00:20:31.700And I think he did so, because he thought to strike it down would be a massive change, would wreak chaos, and it would question the legitimacy of the court.
00:20:43.760It would question the authority of the court.
00:20:45.520So, I think he made an institutionalist decision.
00:20:50.580I think that same instinct here is going to lead him to say, these tariffs have been imposed, they've been the heart of the president's foreign policy and economic policy, and so we're not going to set them aside.
00:21:06.240That is my prediction, and you will end up with a majority that consists of Chief Justice Roberts writing the majority opinion, Thomas, and Alito, and Kavanaugh, and either Barrett or Gorsuch.
00:21:21.600And the dissenters will be the three liberals, and either Barrett or Gorsuch.
00:21:26.820As before, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic, you can go back and download the podcast from early this week to hear the entire thing.
00:26:45.160So this is different from nuking the filibuster.
00:26:49.020So nuking the filibuster, that phrase involves breaking the Senate rules to change the Senate rules.
00:26:56.960So what happens, and we saw, for example, the Democrats nuked the filibuster for cabinet appointees and judicial appointees.
00:27:07.340And the way they did it, the Senate rules made it clear in the terms of the Senate rules that a nomination required 60 votes to go forward to proceed to it.
00:27:20.540However, what happened was Harry Reid, when he was majority leader, any ruling of the chair can be challenged on the floor of the Senate,
00:27:29.400and 51 senators can overrule the ruling of the chair.
00:27:34.200And so Harry Reid inquired of the chair, what is the rule, and was told the rule is 60 senators.
00:27:40.060And then he said, I appeal the ruling of the chair, and the Democrats all voted party line.
00:27:44.780And when they did that, that becomes a binding precedent.
00:27:48.740So they broke the rules of the Senate to change the rules of the Senate.
00:27:51.940It is still in the Senate rules that a filibuster can be used to stop legislation.
00:27:58.800And I will say, we have used that, Republicans have used that, to stop terrible legislation from the Democrats.
00:28:05.180I think that's an important safeguard.
00:28:06.380So it is valuable, is the point that people need to also understand.