Morning Joe - Morning Joe 4/8/25

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

Trump holds firm on tariffs amid stock market turmoil

I don't know if you watch the whole world. She seemed to have a deep and specific understanding of what the Dodgers accomplished last season. All year the Dodgers faced down adversity. You entered the playoffs battered and bruised but not broken. When you ran out the healthy arms, you ran out of really healthy, they had great arms, but they ran out. It's, it's called sports. It's called baseball in particular and pitchers, I guess you could say, in really particular.

Yeah, yeah, I guess you could say that. It's called sports. It's called baseball in particular, and pitchers, I guess you could say, in really particular. His brain is basically a pouch of Big League Choo. And Max Muncie, I want to congratulate Max. Max? Max? Come here, Max. His arms are very strong when I touch them.

I'm used to shaking politicians and hitting their armors like jello. And now it's like, now it's like steel, all these guys. Steel? Well, put a tariff on it then. It's steal. All right. Good morning and welcome to morning, Joe. It's pretty good.

Tariffs, because if you can put tariffs on pitcher's arms, it'd be great if we could do that with the Yankees, right? Woof. We're hitting but not pitching. It's a long, long season. Still in first place by half game, ten games in. But we've got to get our pitching together, Joe. Yeah.

It's only April. But what about last night, huh? What about last night? I'll tell you what. You get so used to, especially in the NBA, not seeing any defense. And I will say down the stretch with the Gators, you were just sure Houston was going to go back and forth and say now the Gators like when it counted unlike Duke not to keep rubbing that you know salt in that wound but unlike Duke when when defense mattered the Gators rose up and just great defense the last minute or two last night. Yeah I have to be honest I went to bed with Houston up

12 in the second half in Florida really unable to do anything against their defense in the first half. Houston defense was incredible. They had a great game plan. They didn't let Walter Clayton Jr. The first team all American for Florida basically touched the ball, let alone get a shot off. He was scoreless in the first half, but then Florida locked down their defense came all the way back from that deficit. We're up by two points, but Houston did have a chance to win the game or tie it on this possession. Here's the last possession of the game. National Championship is in the balance. 13 seconds left. Florida leads it by two. Uzant gotta go.

Uzant, give it up. Crier, six seconds, five seconds. Sharp. He locked, he can't touch it. He can't. One second. Usain give it up. Crier six seconds five seconds So sharp Joe rises up for that three-pointer that would have been the game winner Walter Clayton the guy just mentioned incredible defensive closeout gets a hand up sharp can't shoot and then a great hustle play by Florida to dive on the ball and end the game heartbreaker for Houston. But a great effort start to finish Clayton lit up in the second half Florida. Yeah. The national champions of college basketball. national champions of college basketball.

Well, and John, it was really it was the reverse of the other night when when we were we were talking about going yet with Duke. You know, saying, well, that game's over. Not watching that of the same thing here. The Gators, I think, didn't lead until, you know, maybe they led a couple of seconds the whole game until you get to the final minute or so. And then again, they did what it took to win. Yeah. Tremendous defense. Houston really locked down for the first half. Teams hovering in the low 30s in terms of point total but you know Florida put it

together at the at the end. I feel I gotta say I feel real bad for that Houston kid. I you know that the last the last shot not getting that off there but it was tremendous defense and look Florida first time you know since the Al Horford Joaquin Noah days, winning a national championship here. And I will say, not much else in my bracket went right, but did have Florida winning it all. I did, I did.

You win your bracket? No, no, the rest won, the rest went poorly. But good for them. And it continues to have the evolution of the SEC as a basketball conference too. You have 14 teams into the tournament Joe two in the final four and the national champ for the SEC. Yeah, no doubt about it. Very very exciting for for the Florida Gators. Headlines New

York Times talking about the trade war escalating and market turmoil spreading across the world uh... the world uh... wall street journal i will say meek a uh... fortunately uh... that the in overnight asia rebounded pretty strongly europe's looking pretty good futures also looking strong right now uh... for the united states of for those working-class middle class Americans, small business owners who've seen the 401Ks evaporate over the past three, four, five days.

Hopefully some respite today from that. We'll see. Joining us at the top of the show here, we have U.S. national editor at the Financial Times, Ed Luce, and CEO of the Messina Group, Jim Messina. He served as White House deputy chief of staff to President Obama and ran his 2012 reelection campaign. And let's get to our top story. The markets are rising this morning after three tumultuous trading days.

The Dow is up more than 700 points, while the S&P and NASDAQ futures have added more than 1 percent in value. It comes after another volatile trading session yesterday tied to President Trump's tariffs. But the president says he's not backing off his trade wars. And when asked if the overall tariffs are permanent or open to negotiation, a point that his advisors struggled to clarify last week, the president insisted that they

can both be true. Would you be open to a pause in tariffs to allow for negotiations? Well, we're not looking at that. We have many, many countries that are coming to negotiate deals with us, and they're going to be fair deals. And in certain cases, they're going to be fair deals and in certain cases they're going to be paying substantial tariffs. There'll be fair deals.

There can be permanent tariffs and there can also be negotiations because there are things that we need beyond tariffs. We need open borders. So we're going to get fair deals and good deals with every country and if we don't we're going to have nothing to do with them. They're not going to be allowed to participate in the United States. And I will say this. Virtually every country wants to negotiate.

If I didn't do what I did over the last couple of weeks, you wouldn't have anybody wants to negotiate. We would have gone to these countries, you want to to talk and they were, well, we don't want to talk. Now they're coming to us. Well, the tariff battle with China is escalating to a whole new level this morning in a social media post issued yesterday. President Trump threatened an additional 50 percent tariff on China if the communist nation did not withdraw its 34 percent retaliatory

tariff on U.S. goods by today. In response, China said it would, quote, fight to the end and take additional countermeasures against the United States. The world's second-largest economy hinted that more retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. could be coming. At the same time, the European Commission has proposed counter tariffs on 25 percent on a range of U.S. goods in response to President Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum. That's according to a document seen by Reuters, which revealed the tariffs on some goods would take effect

on May 16th and others later in the year. You know Willie, first of all the Wall Street Journal editorial page, three important editorials today by the board. First, how tariff damage spreads auto edition. It goes into how this is already causing problems, especially for Detroit and Michigan. And then a follow-up on the Senate passing a resolution. The journal says the country needs a tax cut and soon, they say, as a counterbalance for the tariffs. And then at the bottom, which we'll be reading later, the case of mistaken migrant expulsion, where they end up telling the Trump administration, you made a mistake. Like this is, you can't do this.

This is, as Judge Wilkerson said, this is a recipe for, quote, total lawlessness. The Supreme Court seemed to agree yesterday in a decision we'll get to in a little bit where all nine justices said, these migrants deserve due process. All nine justices saying that. Getting back though to this, a lot of concerns, not only in Michigan but across America about the impact. And you saw also yesterday several times the markets just sort of capitulate wildly. The president puts out the truth social posts saying that he's going to go after China. The markets react negatively to that.

There's a, I think there's a tweet that gets it wrong on social media saying that he's going to go off that the market goes back up. It also responded somewhat positively during a press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu when the president suggested he was open to talking to China and other countries. I think I have that right. And so again, the markets are looking for any reason to believe that this president's willing to talk to other countries and strike a deal. But China obviously going to be much harder. Yeah, and it's really a moment-to-moment thing.

The minute the market stabilized, the president says, we're going to throw another 50 percent tariffs on China and the markets go down. So they're not sure how to read this president. And we have heard, as you guys were talking about a little bit yesterday and again happened yesterday evening, which was supporters of Donald Trump in the business world Wall Street guys can land go on the co founder of Home Depot saying what is going on here who's advising this guy expressing shock that Donald Trump was love tariffs for most of his adult life if not all of it is

now actually implementing that you had our next on to really I thought I don't know. These are the guys who've known him forever. You know, Howard Lutnick and those guys brag about hanging out with him in the 80s socially and getting to know him really well and they're expressing, not Lutnick, but others expressing shock that Donald Trump is now using tariffs as a cudgel to negotiate with other countries. It's pretty wild and Jamie Dimon, obviously one of the most prominent voices on Wall Street, came

out in his briefing, his newsletter yesterday saying prices are going to go up. This is bad. So it's pretty objective when you look at the analysis on Wall Street. But as you said, the markets, at least for now, and the futures are up a little. Let's bring in this anchor of CNBC's World Exchange, Frank Holland. Frank, I'm looking down here. Looks like the Dow futures up pretty significantly, about a point and a half so far. What are you looking at?

Yeah, futures up significantly across the board. So the big question on Wall Street today, is this a turnaround Tuesday or what some people on Wall Street call a dead-cap bounce, a very brief recovery that ends quickly before more losses gave you something to talk about at a cocktail party? So really, just too soon to tell. With so many variables, including, as you already mentioned, the escalation of the trade war with China, the president threatening tariffs over 100 percent.

Also, EU leaders pushing back on the Trump tariffs and also sentiment just continues to be kind of mixed at best. I think that's the positive way to talk about it. I want to go back to the action yesterday, really a wild day of action yesterday, the Dow swinging 2600 points from its highs to its lows. We also saw the S&P 500 often called the broader market moving from down 4.5% to up almost 3.5%, also losing three days in a row. So the move is actually coming from reports that the White House was considering a pause

in tariffs and then later the administration pushing back on that. The president really emphasizing he's committed to that tariff strategy. Some interesting notes in the markets yesterday. So, the SPY ETF, the tracks, the S&P 500, very popular investment vehicle. It saw its busiest day of trading ever in its entire history. $127 billion traded. Also, retail traders, they bought about $1.5 billion in net stock buying. So, the SPY, it's really dominated by MegaCap Tech. A lot of those names in the so-called Mag-7, a lot of them likely got a boost from that ETF buying.

A number of them up considerably yesterday. Amazon up, Alphabet up as well. One stock, however, that was not up yesterday, is higher up today, is Apple. It really seems to capture the full concern of tariffs. Apple's actually coming off its worst three-day stretch since all the way back in 2001. It's lost about $640 billion in market cap. To put that in perspective, that $640 billion it lost over three days, that's bigger than the market cap of about 90% of the companies in the S&P 500.

So huge losses there. A lot of concerns about their supply chain. Some reports today that Apple is considering moving more of its iPhone production over to India. So really emblematic of a lot of companies trying to figure out what to do next when it comes to this trade war. All right, CNBC's Frank Holland, thank you so much. And it's so interesting, I hear Frank talking about Apple continuing to get pounded and they really are. And I just got to say, go back and look at what Warren Buffett has done over the past year.

He dumped his Apple stock. There's past year. He dumped his Apple stock. There's a way he's dumping his Apple stock. He's gone mainly to cash. People are saying, why is he going mainly to cash? Well, for the same reason, he got out of the markets before the dot com bust, and everybody was saying, oh, the old man, this is what, 99? He's lost it. We all got 15%, 20%.

He got three or 4%. He had to write a letter to his shareholders saying, I would have done better this past year just watching movies, staying in a movie theater, sort of apologizing. Then, of course, the dot com bust came. And it was Warren Buffett who was right. The same thing happened in 2008. And the same thing, Mika, of course, has happened this it was Warren Buffett who was right the same thing happened in 2008 and the same thing make of course has happened this time where Warren Buffett's been sitting on

the sidelines knowing that volatility was coming and especially especially with Apple. I mean this again this is is has been very predictable and these titans of Wall Street that seemed shocked and stunned and deeply saddened that Donald Trump's doing exactly what he said he was going to do since 1987, you got to scratch your head and ask where they've been. So we can now look at Republican reaction. A bipartisan Senate bill that would curtail a president's power to implement tariffs has gained the support of six additional Republicans. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa is co-sponsor of the bill.

And now Senators Jerry Moran, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell, Tom Tillis, and Todd Young have all signed on to support the measure. The legislation would require a president to notify Congress of a new tariff within 48 hours of implementation and explain the reasoning behind it. It would also require new tariffs to expire after 60 days unless Congress approves them. The White House has already said it would veto the bill if it were to pass both the House and the Senate. Meanwhile, two sources tell NBC News that during a House GOP conference call on Sunday, Republican Congressman Darrell Issa of California asked for a detailed briefing from the White

House on the tariffs. House Speaker Mike Johnson, for his part, asked that members trust the process and the president. In addition, he told them he'd arrange for someone from the administration to talk to the conference. The rumblings in the House come as the upper chamber has grown more vocal in their concerns. Take a listen to Republican Senators John Kennedy and Ted Cruz. I think by introducing the tariffs to the extent that he has, this is President Trump's economy now.

I don't think it would, it's believable for anyone to say that President Biden or any former administration caused what's happened. And I got to say, if we're in a scenario 30 days from now, 60 days from now, 90 days from now, with massive American tariffs and massive tariffs on American goods and every other country on earth, that is a terrible outcome. It's terrible for Texas, which obviously I care about deeply, and it's terrible for America.

It will hurt jobs and hurt America. Number one, it would destroy jobs here at home and do real damage to the US economy if we had tariffs everywhere. Number two, and this is a virtual certainty, inflation, this is gonna have a powerful upward impact on inflation. Which, you know, it's what every economist says.

Let's, and you're starting to hear this, you're certainly starting to see You know, it's what every economist says. And you're starting to hear this, you're certainly starting to see Republican senators, especially from farm states, really starting to get nervous because their farmers are going to pay for this. Again, the very people that can afford this the least are the ones that may get hurt here. Ed Luce, though, I want to go back to Mike Johnson saying, trust the process. $11 trillion of wealth wiped clean. That's not just in New York City or Los Angeles, the left. That's also in Louisiana. That's in Texas. That's across red state America. The loss is pretty significant. We'll see, again, hopefully a good rebound today. It

looks like we may have one. But again, the idea that the Speaker of the House, the third most powerful person in America can't, has no better answer after $11 trillion of wealth wiped clean than to say trust the process. I've been in the House. That leaves a lot of members of the House not trusting the Speaker. Yeah, it does. I mean, I guess that's Mike Johnson's way of saying we have no collaboration in this

process. It's not just true of Republicans in Congress, Republican leaders in Congress. It's true most of the time, seemingly, of Trump's cabinet officials. People like Scott Besant of Treasury are clearly not in the loop here and find themselves floundering on TV trying to explain what Trump has just done. Look, I think the sort of deeper problem here is trust in the American system. The world has got used to, over history and over dealing with America, the very famous, justly famous checks and balances that are built into the American system. What we have happening now is essentially a king or a Roman emperor crooking his finger

and the market goes up two trillion, uncrooking it, it goes down two trillion. That kind of power in one man is an extraordinary situation that I think is causing real nervousness. We've been amongst foreign investors and you know that a huge share of American debt, of U.S. Treasury debt, is held by foreign countries. And yesterday we started seeing 10 year Treasury bonds and 30 year Treasury bonds being sold off. These are the safe assets that you fly to, you know, in COVID, in the 08 meltdown, whenever there's a panic, you flee to Treasury bonds.

I think that there's a reevaluation now going on about how safe those assets are. And that's because the foreign holders of these assets are worried about who's in charge of the United States. The speaker doesn't know what he's going to do next. His Treasury Secretary doesn't know what he's going to do next. This is essentially a Roman emperor having fun with this extraordinary power over global asset markets. It's not a good thing and it's not a very American thing.

You know, Willie, it's interesting that Ed brings up the Treasury Secretary and his discomfort. We mentioned that yesterday on the air that every time he's on TV this past week and they got poor guy look petrified. I called around with contacts, people that have known him on Wall Street, known him in the finance industry, several saying he's deeply uncomfortable not only with tariffs, but deeply uncomfortable with the position that he's been put in and he is obviously, as Ed said, also odd man out. Well, again, the secretary is a very successful businessman. He understands how this works.

A professor of economics at Yale for many years, clearly he understands that these are a bad idea and then put in the uncomfortable position, as as you say of going out and having to defend the tariffs. So Jim Messina, as you look at this from the people you work with, the people you talk to, the people you advise, how are they planning to grapple with all this domestically, but also around the world? How are they reading Donald Trump right now? Yeah, look, I have over a dozen presidents and prime ministers as my clients, and I agree with what Ed just said. There is complete uncertainty about what this guy wants and

what he is going to do. The one thing that prime ministers, presidents, and CEOs all have in common is they hate uncertainty. And what you've seen is just beyond uncertainty with the market wild swings based on comments and bad rumors and all this. And what happens, you can't plan. His whole goal here is I want to bring people back to America, I want to make them create jobs in America. With this kind of uncertainty,

when you're not knowing where the tariffs are, you can't plan that, you can't start to make investments that are going to take five to 10 years going forward. So all of my guys are sitting back trying to figure out what's happening. And then you kind of look at tomorrow. There's a consensus to people that I'm talking to that China's not going to back up today and that tomorrow Trump's going to impose more rounds of tariffs. We are finally going to realize we're in a full-blown

trade war. And that all caused by one guy who yesterday in the Oval Office said, I'm the only guy who could do this. I'm the guy who's right for this moment. And he is right. He now owns this economy. He owns all these decisions. Senator Kennedy who just has it exactly right. This is now Donald Trump's economy and these members of Congress are about to lose their minds. And that's why so many Republicans are starting to speak out quietly, expressing some anxiety about what's happening here.

And there shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that Donald Trump is imposing these tariffs. What has surprised even some of his staunch allies is just how big he went, that he went across the board at these huge numbers and we are seeing mentioned the Treasury Secretary some rifts start to emerge within the administration. Elon Musk has been out there suggesting he's not supportive of these tariffs doing on social media no direct confrontation with the president yet I am told I have new reporting on this today. The Treasury Secretary has met with the president not opposing tariffs because we need to talk about these differently. We need to talk about end games. We need to give the market something to look towards. But then there are

hardliners Peter Navarro, Howard Lutnick, Stephen Miller who's an sort of an overlooked power source in this. They're all pushing for these tariffs wanting to be punishing China and the rest. And where we are now is Trump for the moment is willing to ignore what had been his usual pressure points. He's ignoring the slides on Wall Street. He is ignoring unflattering cable news coverage, which in the last day or so has started on Fox News as well.

After a couple days of being sort of ignoring this, Fox yesterday also started to dwell on the ramifications of this Willie. And right now, he is able, he said he's willing to take the political pain. The question is for how long? And those around him want to know, what is the off-ramp here? At the end of the day, everyone assumes Donald Trump

will have to declare some sort of victory, but no one quite knows what that victory looks like. Is it simply, is negotiations enough? We heard Japan yesterday, they're going to start. Or do they need sort of concrete investments? Because if that's the case, that's gonna be a long time, and there's a lot more economic pain between now and then. Yeah, how much damage will be done by the time he finds his off-ramp, whatever that

is. Joe and Mika, Jim and I were just noting that President Obama played the game we've played for many years the other day when he asked, can you imagine what they would have said about me if while the global economy was melting down and Americans 401ks were being liquidated, I was playing golf all weekend and tweeting hang in, hang tough from the golf course. Well, you know, Willie, I mean, we actually we know what they said about Joe Biden when those same people were making, and we said it every day,

they're making millions of dollars during their golf rounds because the stock market kept breaking new records. Can you imagine if a Democrat were sitting in the White House when $11 trillion was lost to the U.S. economy? So it is interesting. I do think, and I'm glad John underlined this, I do think one of the lasting impacts of this may be the ultimate separation at least from the White House of Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

Elon Musk is, again, based on reporting, just enraged that the tariffs are causing the damage that they're causing specifically on his economy. It's saying it's dealing nearly a death blow to Tesla and is enraged at the way, again, based on my reporting, enrage on the way that this is being done in such a haphazard way, and taking aim at Navarro and Lutnik, Navarro publicly, but Lutnik privately as well, based on my reporting.

It's very interesting how quickly that has changed, where Elon Musk, letting people close to him now, is very upset with the direction that this is going. All right, still ahead on Morning Joe, we'll have expert legal analysis on the Supreme Court's ruling on the Trump administration's use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants. Plus, what the Wall Street Journal is saying about the case of wrongful migrant deportation. Morning Joe is back in 90 seconds.

["The Daily Show"] All right, welcome back. 29 past the hour. The US Supreme Court is letting President Trump pursue the deportations of Venezuelan gang members under a really invoked wartime law. But here's the catch. Only after judicial review,

which is what a lot of people were pretty shocked about, all nine justices concluded that the Venezuelan migrants filed their challenges to the Alien Enemies Act in the wrong jurisdiction and also acknowledged potential deportees must get due process. They continued that the migrants should have filed their cases in Texas where they were being detained before the deportation plights rather than in Washington. The 5-4 ruling means the Trump administration can try to resume deportations. The decision raises various legal questions about the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act,

including whether the Trump administration can even invoke it against gang members. administration can even invoke it against gang members. In a dissent opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, the government's conduct in this litigation poses an extraordinary threat to the rule of law. That a majority of this court now rewards the government for its behavior with discretionary equitable relief is indefensible. We as a nation and a court of law should be better than this. Let's bring it around. MSNBC legal correspondent and former litigator Lisa Rubin.

Lisa, the White House is declaring victory. Obviously, many, many are concerned. I, what, what my takeaway from this decision is, when Brett Kavanaugh writes, basically, make no mistake, all nine of us agree that those that face deportation must get due process. They must have their claims heard before the court. And basically you're saying must not be taken away like they were for these 320 plus migrants who were whisked away to El Salvador in the middle of the night. Well, Joe, one of the things that's difficult here is there is an ongoing open question

about what happens to those people who are already deported and are now imprisoned in El Salvador, right? So the court is saying sort of on a forward-going basis, you have to provide reasonable notice to people and give them an opportunity to contest their detention and potential deportation in the districts where they are being held. But nobody is squarely confronting here

what happens to those 300 people. And there is a big open question in Supreme Court precedent as to whether habeas corpus relief is even available to someone once they are taken out of the country and put in the custody of a foreign nation. So I don't want to sugarcoat this and say all is good because all nine justices agree process is due, we still have to figure out whether or not there's any remedy for those 300 something people you were just invoking.

Right. Obviously all is not well. We're dividing it though. What I was just saying for if you read the headlines of some newspapers, it suggests that that the president can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. Actually, all nine justices have said, no, that is not the case. Moving forward, you have to provide notice. You then have to give them a process before the court, before they are deported.

That's moving forward. Now, I'm so glad you brought this up, Lisa. This is the problem, and Mika and I were talking about this before. You have the other case, which the Wall Street Journal editorial page is talking about, about the migrant who was wrongfully deported, that the government admitted was wrongfully deported. The Wall Street Journal editorial page has a very powerful editorial, quoting a judge there, Judge Wilkinson, saying that this is a total injustice and opens up to further total injustice. And so John Roberts stayed.

The judge's orders said, give us three or four days to try to figure out what we do about this particular case. And so Lisa, here's the rub. How does the court put an order out there when the White House can just say, as they've said already, we have no power over this other government? Is this a concern about them issuing an order

that the White House could say, well, we just can't respond to that? And how does the court address that properly? Well, I think the court is really between a rock and a hard place, Joe, because if they don't provide relief with respect to Mr. Rodrigo Garcia, whose case you were just discussing, then the question becomes, if you can't force the government to try and make its best efforts to get him back, what's to say that they can't try to accomplish some larger mass deportations that are error prone everywhere?

And Justice Sotomayor raises that prospect and her dissent. What's to stop the government from making errors all over the place that are unredressable? On the other hand, one argument that Mr. Arbrego Garcia's lawyers have is it's not clear at all that the U.S. government doesn't have some control here. Let's remind ourselves that Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, was at that prison last week, right there in front of all the detainees. If the U.S. government has no control, how is it that the Secretary of Homeland Security was allowed to visit that facility?

Those folks are there subject to an agreement between the government or the White House more specifically and the El Salvadoran government. And the contention by Mr. Abrego Garcia's lawyers are that having made those arrangements, they are definitely in a position to unwind them and the court has jurisdiction to order them to facilitate his return. Well, and Willie, as Dave Ehrenberg said yesterday, quoted Kristi Noem as saying that this prison is just one of our tools in our toolkit. And if in fact that is a case, that would be an admission against the government's own interest.

Yeah. Filling that notable video a couple of weeks ago there in front of the jail cell and the prisoners. Yeah. I want to ask you about Mr. Garcia's lawyer said yesterday, this is just a temporary administrative stay. We have full confidence the Supreme Court will resolve this matter as quickly as possible. Do you share his confidence that this is just a pause?

The Supreme Court does appear to be on the side of Mr. Garcia here, or do you see a larger problem? I think it will depend, obviously, on the outcome here. I agree with him that this is just a short pause. An administrative stay is meant to be a preservation of a status quo while a court takes its time to make a more considered decision. However, we should all be concerned by the fact that cases like these are being resolved so quickly without oral argument, without the benefit of a review of the record.

That's something that both Justices Sotomayor and Justice Jackson raise in their dissents, why is it that we are having really large dispositions of major policy questions in this country with constitutional dimension in the way that we're doing on these emergency dockets without even allowing Judge Boasberg, for example, in the Alien Enemies Act case to have his preliminary injunction hearing today that would have occurred on a more fulsome record. And let's take a moment to recall that over the weekend on Air Force One, President Trump was asked, like, well, the El Salvadorian president said he would take American citizens to your prisoners, and we pulled him in the prison here.

And he seemed very open to that idea, which set off alarm bells for many. So, Jim, with this as the backdrop here, and we did see over the weekend, sort of the protest movement kind of be revived here in the United States, you know, cities across the country. This was this idea of immigration due process is one of the many things that was discussed there. Let's talk about the politics of it, though. Is this something this is really upsetting to a lot of people, but is it an issue? The White House thinks it's got a clever trap here. Like, hey, we're taking someone who we've deemed unsavory.

Are you really going to defend them? That is the American way to have due process for all. It really is. And it is a motivating thing for the Democratic base. What you're seeing in these rallies this weekend, and in some ways more importantly in the Wisconsin election, the Florida elections, I've been saying to you guys for a long time, don't look at the poll numbers, look at the enthusiasm numbers. And Democratic enthusiasm is just off the charts. You have a completely united

party in fighting all of this stuff, right? I think a challenge for my Democrats is which are going to be the major things you really want to fight on. You want to make your issue. In 2005, when we didn't have the House, didn't have the Senate, and Bush had been reelected, we made it about one thing, Social Security. Ended up taking the House and Senate back and then winning the White House two years later. Democrats have got to show some focus here. We can't fight everything, but it is true that the Democratic base is looking for people

to fight for them, and that's why the thing that Cory Booker did last week, you can argue whether or not it was, you know, got anything done, but it showed Democrats that he was willing to fight and that's where they are. Well, and you've got to do two things at once. I mean, you've got to do it. Yeah, I think you can fight them more than once. As Jim said, as Jim said, you know, you see what Cory Booker's doing and that's exciting a lot of people in the base.

You see what AOC and you see what Bernie Sanders are doing. That's exciting a lot of people on the base. You see what AOC and you see what Bernie Sanders are doing. That's exciting a lot of people in base. And also, the other side of it, you've got to figure out, okay, what's our strategy? What's our main issue that we're going to take into the next election? And then, loose, you look at the numbers. And if you look out generally on immigration, most Americans support Donald Trump's immigration policies. We're not talking about the specifics of anything, but again, just snapshot of the polls right

now. Immigration is one of the issues where he's doing quite well. You also though do, it's not just Democrats, we've brought this up before. You have a foundation that's funded in large part by Charles Koch, that it's going against tariffs. You have Ann Coulter, who's talking about these detentions and asking, don't we have First Amendment anymore? You have Andy McCarthy and others who, very conservative voices, who have been quite critical of some of the deportations and the way they've gone about. So again, this may be one of those issues that you have libertarians on the right lining

up with people on the left and coming together to fight what they see as an overreaching big government move. Yeah, I mean, it's worth noting that the level of deportations under Trump so far is lower than what it was under Biden in 2024. So what we're getting is a series of sort of propagandistic test cases where the Trump administration is seeking to create a precedent through its actions on the ground

and through court rulings that could have far, far wider implications for many, many more people. But in terms of volume of deportations, as opposed to the really quite sort of menacing quality of them, that hasn't yet taken off. That is a shoe yet to drop. And I wonder whether in practice, if we really did get into that kind of situation with Insurrection Act, with the military getting

involved, with some kind of martial law in certain districts, I wonder whether that would actually prove popular, getting rid of 12-15 million people. I suspect it would really scare the bejesus out of most Americans, the degree of coercion and military or paramilitary involvement that would be required to reach into communities like that. So I'm hoping that is a shoe that does not drop because it would be terrible for America. because it would be terrible for America. And as we've said here for months now, and we've said it for months now, Jimmison, it's too expensive. They don't have the number of people they need

to have deportations on a large scale level. The southern border is more secure than it's been in quite some time. It was very secure at the end of the Biden administration, and I think is still very secure right now. But when you look at some of these extreme instances of grabbing people in the middle of the night, grabbing people off the streets, sending them down to El Salvador, I think Ed brings up a great point.

It's almost like the administration wants these images out there and wants the reaction from Democrats and wants the reaction from the courts and wants the reaction from the media because it does compensate for lower numbers. And lower numbers just because, you know, 10, 11 million

deportations it is impossible to do unless you just completely break the bank and unless you just hire hundreds and hundreds of thousands of new government employees which Donald Trump's not gonna do no he's not and this is exactly the fight Donald Trump won. So I think Ed has two very good points. The first is bringing the word bejesus back into American politics. Yeah, I like that. It has taken way too long.

Too long. It's been too long. Right, right. Right and then two, to remind people that broadly these things are popular right now. And this is not where the Democrats want to fight this is where Donald Trump wants to fight and he's going to try to do press release things like this to distract from him burning the American economy down on the other side and so I think you'll see the White House attempt to find these kinds of cases I think Democrats ought to let you know

counselor Rubin fight these things and not get too excited about defending these cases and focus on the economy where the real voters are sitting. Jim Messina, Ed Luce, thank you both very much for being a part of this conversation this morning. And MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin, thank you as well. And coming up, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants the CDC to stop recommending fluoride in drinking water. We'll talk to a leading health expert about the potential impact this could have on Americans.

Right now, just checking the markets if you're waking up. Asia had a strong rebound last night. Europe rebounded as well. And the Dow stock futures also up significantly over 1.5% points. We're going to be covering that throughout the morning as you take a look at Reagan National Airport. We'll be right back. If you look at some of the headlines today regarding what the Supreme Court did yesterday, it's confusing. And what the Supreme Court did yesterday overall was make a procedural ruling which said you have to take these cases, if they're being held in Texas, that's where the challenge needs to be, not in DC.

They also did say though, all nine of them, Justice Kavanaugh saying all nine justices agree that in future deportations, there has to be notice. First of all, and secondly, there has to be a process where migrants can defend themselves. Regarding the underlying case, and I'm reading directly from the Washington Post here, the 5-4 ruling did not touch under the underlying legal questions about the government's use of the Alien Enemies Act, one of the most high-profile and contingent immigration enforcement actions so far in President Donald

Trump's second term. I've been getting a lot of questions this morning about that. And again, yesterday was mainly a procedural question. The only thing that we know for sure moving forward is that migrants have to be given notice and then they have to be allowed to go before a court and present a testimony to defend themselves before they are deported. And we shall see. We shall see what happens with the Supreme Court when they do ultimately rule on the president's use of this act. All right, let's take a look at some of the other stories making headlines this morning. The Pentagon has fired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield, the only woman on NATO's military committee.

Although no reason was given, the AP reports that officials said it was apparently tied to comments she has made that supported diversity in the force. Chatfield is the third top female officer to be fired since President Trump took office. South Korea is set to hold a snap presidential election on June 3rd. Last week, the country's Constitutional Court removed President Yoon Suk-yul from office over his short-lived declaration of martial law last December Now South Korea must elect a new leader within 60 days The new president will serve a full five-year term and will assume the position Immediately after the election the country's prime minister is currently serving as the interim leader and congestion pricing will likely remain in Manhattan through late summer and possibly

into the fall. That comes after the federal government and New York transit officials reached an agreement on a timeline that would not resolve the dispute until July. The Trump administration, which has vowed to kill the tolling program, has floated threats about potential funding cuts if the state didn't comply. Let's go to the alum. We have an alum on panel of the New York Daily News who I'm sure is following this very closely. You know he used to chase Bill de Blasio to his gym. Some of the best times of his life. Exactly. Yeah, scouting out.

What gym was it, Lemire, in Brooklyn? He went to the Y in Park Slope, despite, you know, of course, living in the mayor's office, a mayor's residence, which is Gracie Mansion, that Parise said. Maybe like Park Slope. It was a New York Daily News, New York Post. It was a thing for a while. I can just assure those watchers. It was a thing. I remember the day, it was a thing for a while. I can just assure those watchers. It was a thing.

Those were the days, my friend, when those were the things we had to worry about. And what kind of thing was it? Those were the days. Simpler times. So let me ask you, though, about congestion pricing really quickly. I'm seeing reports that it's actually making money, raising revenue, and that business is up in New York. And I think any of us that have been driving around New York all agree, my gosh, you can get around the city much faster now.

Yeah, by most accounts, a surprising success, a significant success in terms of raising money, but also reducing congestion. It is a market difference. And there have been studies here over the first couple months the program has been in place about how traffic in Manhattan has been reduced. You can get around much quicker. Now there are some dedicated opponents to this. Some of the suburbanites, the governor of New Jersey has come out against it because

it's his residents who are impacted. The New York Post is waging war against this. But most people, per polling in New York like the program and the governor Hokel has said she'll defend it. It's on the books until the fall then we'll see its future.