The Daily Signal - Progressives Finish Usurping Democrat Establishment, Supreme Court Argues Tariffs | Nov. 6, 2025

Starting point is 00:00:00 At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak equipment modernization. We're fluent in data digitization and expansion into foreign markets. And we can talk all day about streamlining manufacturing processes. Because at Desjardin business, we speak the same language you do. Business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us. And contact Desjardin today.

Starting point is 00:00:25 We'd love to talk. Business. Election aftermath gets a bit contentious for all parties involved. The old guard of the Democrats is now officially uprooted by the new progressive generation and one old senator. And the Supreme Court argues tariffs with the Trump administration. I'm Tony Kinnett, host of the Daily Signals Tony Kinnett cast, syndicated nationally at 7 p.m. Eastern. It is Thursday, November 6th, 2025. This is the Daily Signals, top news in 10.

Starting point is 00:01:00 No time was wasted after the off-year election of 2025 getting into some rather contentious territory. Zoran Mandani, the Democrat mayor-elect of New York City, gave his victory speech by quoting the self-professed Bolshevist, Eugene V. Debs. The sun may have set over our city this evening. But as Eugene Debs once said, I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity. He announced that the people of New York, well, certain people in New York were free of their shackles, going off on a list of multicultural microgroups, per se. And after tearing into the traditional political system, he claimed was oppressing many in the city, Zoron ended by saying there would be no problem too big or too small for the government to look in on.

Starting point is 00:01:57 We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve and no concern too small. for it to care about. This was how CNN's Van Jones, who had previously been very praiseworthy of Mandani, reacted to Zoran Mondani's speech. But I think he missed an opportunity. I think the Mamdani that we saw in the campaign trail, who was a lot more calm,

Starting point is 00:02:22 who was a lot warmer, who was a lot more embracing, was not present in that speech. And I think that Mamdani is the one you need to hear from tonight. And that's not the only content to announce that the new generation of progressives was truly ready to take over. Senator Bernie Sanders, the progressive and self-ascribed Democrat Socialist of Vermont,

Starting point is 00:02:43 took Chuck Schumer's podium after Chuck was late for a press briefing yesterday afternoon to announce that it was finally time for the establishment who didn't support any of the prior candidates in primaries to step aside and let the progressives take over. Check it out. That's a good sign. I agree with it. What are your takeaways from? My takeaways is, there are many reasons why people win an election and lose election. What happens in Virginia, New Jersey and New York City, they're different.

Starting point is 00:03:18 For more on this and the broader trend of Democrat and Republican politics moving forward after the 2025 off-year elections, we sat down with Daily Signal President Rob Blue for a bit of perspective on where we can go forward from here. and those who might be seen as the new guard for the party. Rob Bluey, president of the Daily Signal, and in our swampy nation capital on this interesting Wednesday evening. Tell me, Rob, is everyone just gloom and doom in D.C. on Capitol Hill? What's kind of the vibe you're getting? Well, Tony, I will answer that question in just a moment,

Starting point is 00:03:55 but I would be remiss if I didn't congratulate you on an outstanding election night show. We're so proud to work with you. and your team. It was phenomenal. The best coverage you could find among any news organization, the guests that you had, including our own stars and talent here at The Daily Signal. So, thank you for that. I wanted to make sure I got that out right up front. Second, doom and gloom. Yeah, there's a certain extent of that. I mean, I, the President Trump hosted the Republican senators at the White House this morning. The president is clearly at the point where he is showing his annoyance with the government shutdown, blaming the government shutdown for the Republican losses.

Starting point is 00:04:32 in the States last night. I'm not sure that that's the entirety of what happened, but certainly I expect it was a factor in Virginia, maybe by the overwhelming margin that Abigail Spanberger was able to defeat Winsome Earl Sears. But yeah, it's a wake-up call for sure. Republicans need to make sure that they don't have a repeat of this in 2026, or otherwise the president's final two years of his term are going to be not pleasant.

Starting point is 00:04:57 Let's just put it that way. I've seen a lot of national focus on the New York City mayoral, We've covered that a little bit earlier in the show, so we're not going to get too much into it. Earlier on in the show, though, I did make a reference last night to Buffalo, New York. And the mayoral race over that way. There were a lot of smaller elections last night that didn't steal the show that have a lot of people maybe looking over their shoulders. Of course, we saw the Pennsylvania retention of their Supreme Court justices, all three Democrats, all three retained. Of course, we saw as well the Georgia Special Commissioner elections.

Starting point is 00:05:31 And then, of course, although maybe not a surprise, though you're from Western New York. Buffalo also going very heavily blue. You can find the link for the rest of that interview down in the description below. And lastly, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments yesterday on many of the national emergency levied tariffs by the Trump administration. While a lot of the argument occurred between Trump administration's Sawyer and members like Gorsuch and Amy Coney-Barritt on the validity of using national emergencies declared by the. executive on certain economic tariffs seemingly having perhaps nothing to do with national security or a major security threat to the United States requiring a national emergency. One justice, Katanji Brown Jackson, the most liberal justice on the bench, had a little bit of

Starting point is 00:06:18 trouble keeping up with tariff policy and United States history, confusing Nixon for Abraham Lincoln and then asking everyone to circle back. Did any president under TWA, did any president under TWA use that language to impose tariffs? Well, yes, President Nixon's 1971. Not a tariff. That wasn't a tariff. It was a licensing agreement during wartime. It was a specific thing.

Starting point is 00:06:46 A tariff I'm talking about. I'm referring to President Nixon's 1971 terrorist. I'm sorry. Excuse me. Yes, I thought you meant Lincoln. Now, on the matters of the debate itself, Gorsuch and Sawyer debated the necessity of executive power to invoke tariffs, according to Constitution's allotted power to Congress regarding tariffs. Through those words, I think you're saying that no, the president doesn't have inherent authority over tariffs in peacetime.

Starting point is 00:07:14 Absolutely. We do not assert that. We say that Congress can delegate that to him. And when Congress does so, as it does when it uses the phrase regulate importation. I follow all of that. Okay. You emphasize that Congress can always take back its powers. You mentioned that a couple of times. But don't we have a serious retrieval problem here? Because once Congress delegates by a bare majority and the President signs it, and of course every President will sign a law that gives him more authority, Congress can't take that back without a supermajority.

Starting point is 00:07:50 And even that, it's going to be veto proof. What President's ever going to give that power back? pretty rare president. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett then clarified why no prior president had used national emergencies as well as the IEPA regarding tariff use in the last couple of decades. In January 2020, 2003, Congress voted to terminate one of the biggest IEPA emergencies ever, the COVID emergency, and the president went along with that. So what the statute reflects is there's going to be the ability for a sort of political consensus

Starting point is 00:08:22 against a declared emergency. What happens when the president simply vetoes legislation? to try to take these powers back. Well, he has the authority to veto legislation to terminate a national emergency, for example. I mean, he retains the powers in the background because he is still on the books. But if he declares an emergency and Congress doesn't like it

Starting point is 00:08:38 and passes a joint resolution, yes, he can absolutely veto that. Congress is a practical matter. Can't get this power back once it's handed it over to the president. So one-way ratchet toward the gradual but continual accretion of power. Gorsuch ended up framing this particular debate around a possible,

Starting point is 00:08:56 Democrat administration, say under Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, using a national emergency at her discretion to declare climate change to be an imminent threat to the United States and then invoke a heavy climate-based tariff on the entire country. That's a major question, though. Could the president impose a 50% tariff on gas-powered cars and auto parts to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat from abroad of climate change? It's very likely that that can be done. I think that has to be the logic of your view.

Starting point is 00:09:32 Yeah, in other words, this administration would say that's a hoax. It's not a real crisis, but I'm sure you would. Yes, but that would be a question for Congress under our interpretation, not for the courts. All right. Justice Amy Coney-Barrant also asked whether or not it would be possible if the court ruled against some of these tariffs. Again, some of the tariffs are not under question like the U.S. security tariffs against China or the secondary tariffs, tariffing countries who buy oil from Russia, for example.

Starting point is 00:09:59 Some of these tariffs, though, if they were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, there would be a question of how that money would then return to those who were tariffed. This is the question that Justice Amy, Connie Barrett, asked yesterday. And then if you win, tell me how the reimbursement process would work. Would it be a complete mess? I mean, you're saying before the government promised reimbursement, and now you're saying, you know, well, that's,

Starting point is 00:10:23 rich but how would this work it seems to me like it could be a mess so the first thing i'd say is that just underscores just how major a question this is the very fact that you were dealing with us with quotas there's no refund process of the tunes of billions of dollars or embargoes but there is here but for our case the way it would work is in this case the government's just stipulated for the five plaintiffs that they would get the refunds we'll be following the rest of the updates on the supreme court and this developing argument series as well as a possible ruling from SCOTUS on the Tony Kinnett cast. And if you head down to the description before you go, you can subscribe there and not miss

Starting point is 00:10:59 a second of our coverage starting at 7 p.m. Eastern for a roundup of the news and nonsense that never seems to stop. I'm Tony Kinnett, and this has been the Daily Signal's top news in 10. Take care.

The Daily Signal - Progressives Finish Usurping Democrat Establishment, Supreme Court Argues Tariffs | Nov. 6, 2025

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.