The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3586 - Corruption and Trump's Major SCOTUS Tariff Loss w/ Mark Joseph Stern

Episode Date: February 23, 2026

It's Fun Day Monday on the Majority Report   On today's program:   Director of the FBI, Kash Patel slams beers with the U.S. hockey team on the taxpayer's dime. This is interesting given that in 2023, Patel criticized members of the Biden administration for using taxpayer-funded flights for personal travel.   Trump loses his train of thought when slamming Zohran Mamdani and never finds his way back home to finish the point.   Senior writer at Slate, Mark Joseph Stern joins Sam and Emma to discuss the Supreme Court's recent rulings including the tariff strike down.   In the Fun Half:   Trump's polling with independents has sunk to -47 points, a number so low that Trump himself finally acknowledges the plummet, sort of.   Democratic voters are extremely at odds with the party's leadership.   Saager Enjeti and Andrew Schulz have buyer's remorse over Donald Trump   all that and more   To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: DELETEME: Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindeleteme.com/MAJORITY and use promo code MAJORITY at checkout. TRUST & WILL: Get 20% off trustandwill.com/MAJORITY SUNSET LAKE: Use code FlowerPower to save 30% on all CBD smokables at SunsetLakeCBD.com  Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com

You are listening to a free version of the Majority Report. Support this show at join the Majority Report.com and get an extra hour of content daily. Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Monday, February 23, 2006. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps. From the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA.

On the program today, Mark Joseph Stern, senior writer covering courts in the law for Slate co-host of the Amicus podcast on the stunning loss, the Trump administration at the Supreme Court last week over tariffs. And Trump's authority to institute and. new tariffs. Speaking of which, Trump hauls at the moon and threatens a 15% global tariff regime, stopping the EU from voting on its U.S. trade deal with the biggest buildup of bombers since the Iraq war Trump considers bombing Iran. Buried DNC autopsy following the 2024 election shows,

Gaza's stance cost Harris significant votes. No. No way. Surprise, surprise. Mexico kills top cartel leader. Cartel retaliates, causing Mexican league soccer games to be canceled. Trump demands Netflix fires Susan Rice. Tennessee Republicans would

allow death penalty for women who have an abortion. Cuban health care system pushed to the brink by U.S. fuel blockade. Senate Republicans weigh the a filibuster fight to push through the Save Act. DHS reverses its suspension of TSA pre-check workers as the DHS shutdown continues. also EPA to loosen mercury rules for coal plants. Oh, and also arsenic and cadium and lead and nickel. Mom Donnie fails to stop the East Coast blizzard, but does issue a real snow day. Wow.

FDA pulls back on the ban of artificial food coloring and more on today's majority report. welcome ladies and gentlemen it is fun day Monday Monday I am back from vacation welcome back thank you I gained one buckle fracture

wrist in my family over the week of the week and also throughout my back okay well you and you and you and Sala are in solidarity together exactly Exactly. Snow related injuries.

Snow related injuries. But happy to be back. And of course, we are in today, despite the blizzard. It was quite something getting in today. There is no other. In fact, it was illegal to drive here today. But that's the magic of public transit. And, of course, the fact that as podcasters, we are essential workers.

It was like death stranding. Video game players will know what that reference is about. Matt came in. And he was a little bit annoyed that Dunkin' Donuts wasn't open. I mean, the whole thing I was looking forward to as I trudged through, like, I don't know, on some trail to the north is a coffee. And no, no coffee. No coffee.

Don't talk to me yet until I've had my coffee. You're always saying that. And you have so many T-shirts that say it, too. Things were a little, a little testy in the office this morning. New Jersey mailman says, how did you get in the office? It was so bad in New Jersey, the U.S. Postal Service canceled operations. Oh, come on. We're working in the post office.

That's bullshit. Honestly, I was going to say, like, we're in here. We're only a second to the Postal Service, but apparently we're number one. But New Jersey Mailman also suggests that Emma or Matt or Brian call OSHA ASA. I texted Sam, I go, are we doing a show today? And you got back to me like, almost like that was a dumb question. I was in the subway when you said that. I already walked through.

But I was like, oh. Well, you texted us about it when we would all be coming in. So it was, I think I was literally out the door. So, yeah. That's when Brian texted me, too. I'm like, wait, if this is something we're going to talk about. What are you doing? We're sickos.

We enjoy this. Hadn't occurred to me. Yeah. All right. Well, that said, the. Olympics are over. And the way you know the Olympics have ended is because, as is tradition, the United States sent the head of the FBI in the middle of multiple investigations to go and party with some of the athletes. Here is Cash Patel. I mean, it's, this is, I don't know. I don't know

how the USA hockey team feels about this. Oh, they love it. This is very unfortunate. It was quite hard for me to root for this group of guys, the Kachuk brothers. There's so many MAGA associated, MAGA-loving players on this team. So they, I'm sure we're thrilled to have cash-a-dell down there.

It's ruining the sport. I hadn't followed them, but I like to think that there's at least one guy in the locker room going like, like, hey, seriously? Epstein Files? Yeah. What's your shouldn't have you busy?

Here is, here is your director of FBI. There's Dylan Larkin right behind him. Oh, there's Matthew Kachukh. There's Matthew Kachukh. There's the gold model. That cash won.

Jesus Christ. They're singing country music. This is the Iraq War buildup song. Oh, that's fantastic. I wish they lost. Oh. I mean, and... I don't mind saying it at all.

Well, I'll just... I was a little bit of sports. Canada was by far the better team. They just got goalied. If you can root for one guy, it's Connor Hellebock, who's one of the best goalies in the history of U.S. hockey.

So, also, if you want, like, a little bit of a, you know, to stick it to them here, I don't know how you can be this euphoric about a gold medal when the Russians aren't playing. I mean, it really is amazing to me that the, like,

the Olympics have marginalized themselves to such. a degree that the U.S. and Israel committing a genocide right now get to participate, but the Russians don't. Like, of course, Russia's war in Ukraine is horrendous. We're committing genocide. None of those three countries should be involved. The Olympics marginalize themselves as a relic in the West by having these completely unequal and hypocritical stances. be that as it may

I am I would say agnostic as to whether the head of the FBI should be partying with the USA hockey team or any of the athletes but the thing that I find a little bit

annoying about it is that we all paid for him to fly there and party. That was a business trip, I guess. And I don't know. I think this guy agrees with me

that this is not the best use of U.S. taxpayer dollars. And I'm not saying take all their funding. I'm not to defund everything guy. I'm just saying Chris Ray doesn't need a government funded G5 jet to go to vacation. Maybe we ground that plane. $15,000 every time it takes off.

Just a thought. Minimum. Yeah, minimum. but we paid for his jaunt. We also paid for him to go see his girlfriend in a concert or something. Yeah, did she get to go to the Olympics? No, it's just for the boys. The boys were out.

They needed to party. But to be fair to Cash Patel, he's not the only one in the Trump administration who is incredibly corrupt. Here is a tour of the $70 million luxury jet. that taxpayers have bought for christie noem and cori lew indowsky uh... their love definitely not make out flying love shack uh... here's jacob sobraff b i p bt seventy seven thirty seven eight max jet uh... let's go into the hallway here we're going to do this together guys uh... paneling's quite nice this is what i think maybe a powder room on the left hand side that the secretary may use somebody said there

are badees on board uh... i don't know if you flip up the toilet seat there that's a a day or just a toilet seat, but nice looking either way. And I don't know it was real wood or laminated or whatever, but pretty fancy looking. This is the kitchen, the galley kitchen. When you go in here, perfect stainless steel appliances. Are those mixed nuts up there? There's a microwave. I don't even have a microwave in my house, I swear to God.

Two fridges, it looks like. Let's go back into the hallway here and head back towards the back of the plane. Sobrough and I are kind of spirits on the microwave. They look like. Nice leather. I don't think it's pleather. If there are deportees there, I don't think they're going to be using the wet bar. No, we don't need to hear more.

I mean, ostensibly, this is for deportees to be sent out. But I guess it is for Lewandowski and Christy Noem to oversee the deportees, I guess, to fly out. We've got to fly, too. Christine Nome also, I believe, because, you know, allegedly she and Corey Lewandowski are in this multi-year-long extramarital affair, she needed her privacy and kicked out a military member in one of the, like, that they don't have actual traditional housing as a way cabinet members would just have a home in D.C. They live on military bases for extra privacy. she also had someone fired for leaving her blanket on the plane and then they rehired him

so Lewandowski fired him for her right because they forgot the blanket And just to top it off just to give you a this is really just we're trying to provide the various flavors of corruption

that are going on this administration we don't talk about how corrupt this administration is on a regular basis because it is almost now normalized by this administration. The entire tariff regime was a leverage point for corruption so you could provide waivers. Here's Judd Leggham. He has a, his substack is popular info.

Popular info. Really good. Definitely worth a subscription to. He writes on January 23rd, Crypto.com donated $5 million to Maga, Inc. Trump's primary super PAC. The donation was first disclosed in an FEC of filing Friday night. That would have been last Friday. Less than a month later, on February 17th, the Trump administration intervened on crypto.com's behalf in a high-stakes federal lawsuit.

Keep scrolling through the... The lawsuit concerned whether Crypto.com could offer prediction markets on sporting events in Nevada, even though it violated state law. Crypto.com lost and is appealing Trump's consumer financial, CFTC, the Commodities Future Trading Commission, is backing crypto.com's appeal. So it's essentially functioning as their sort of a, filing amicus brief or, you know, their co-counsel. The timing of the CFTC's intervention raises serious ethical questions. I'll say. This is just part for the course.

We know stories of people buying pardons for a million dollars, a million five. I mean, it goes on and on. If we were to cover the Trump administration's daily corruption stories, we would honestly have time for little else. But it is important for us to sort of just keep you in mind, or I should to remind you to keep in mind the fact that the Trump administration is incredibly corrupt and is continued that corruption on a daily basis.

in a few minutes we're going to be talking to Mark Joseph Stern about the tariff ruling. Here is Donald Trump responding to this tariff decision yesterday. Is this the one where he meanders where he's talking about? Oh, no. This is from Friday. But I like this clip if you want to play this one. Let's get to this one a second. What was the other one?

What number was that one? I'm sorry. Brian. At the bottom under, under Trump polling. Okay. Let's do the polling. We'll do that last one. All right. Yeah. Okay. Here we go. Here is

Oh, it was the shoveling I wanted to get to. Here is Donald Trump. I bring this up only because Saul and I were up in Vermont. doing a little, well, very, very little snowboarding because he injured himself. But we went to a, we like to go to escape rooms. That's really fun. We'd like to do those together.

And we're actually quite good. I'm not going to get into it too much. But anyways, and met a guy who had all sorts of like weird Mamdani theories. he had visited New York and was like I heard mom donnie's not doing good with the shoveling and like

it seems like you know I was in New York it seems like there's a lot more immigrants there and I'm like first of all I was shocked you know this is something you expect to hear from like maybe

like a 65 year old you know divorce guy but this guy was was relatively young I think it was 20 And gives you a sense of what's being pushed to the top of people's feeds and algorithms.

That's the thing is that there has been such a concerted effort to attack Mamdani. Now, it's not terribly effective in New York City because Mamdani has a direct relationship with the citizens of New York City in a way that most politicians don't have. But outside, it's fascinating. But here is another. Mamdani made a call, and to say volunteer is the wrong word in my estimation. I think this is part of the confusion. You made a call for people who want essentially a gig job to shovel snow, and the city was going to step up and pay people to shovel areas that don't usually get shoveled,

like corners of sidewalks very often don't get shoveled because somebody owns a building or they own a brownstone or something like that and they shoveled just the exact area of their uh of their apartment building or uh office building or whatever it is and at the corners there's like a there's a there's an empty zone so mom donnie put out this call to pay people for gig work, frankly, if I wasn't in here, that's something I would have done. I love to shovel for money. That was how I made my first dollars as a kid. But it gets communicated like you're not allowed to just go out with a shovel and shovel.

Like you can't volunteer to shovel. In other words, do for free without paperwork. Because, of course, Mom Dani was like, you got to sign up. Right. If we're going to pay you, you have to give us your social security number and that type of stuff. The city can't just Venmo you. I mean, right? It has to be some sort of formalized situation.

But the use of the word volunteer has caused every right-wing outlet to jump on this. We also covered this last week. They smell blood in the water, they think, because the New York Post has been clipping his scenarios about the budget out of context and claiming that his worst-case, doomsday scenario that he's speaking about with the property taxes is what he's proposing when it's just a leverage point for Hockel. And here is Donald Trump. Apparently, they told him there's a good mom-dani talking point here for your save act.

And he drifts. He weaves and he forgets what he's talking about. Why would we do this? And they walk in, nobody even asked for like, do you have an identification? Do you have an ID? It's so crazy. You know, the mayor of New York, and he's a very nice person, I met him, but his ideology is not too good. But we're having a massive snowstorm right now, and I've heard that he's asked people to come out and help shovel the snow.

Okay, so you get a shovel and you start shoveling, right? What the hell? You're not going to help too much, but you can help. Hello, darling, how are you? No, right behind you, look, my friend, right? Are you okay? Yes, you. Are you okay?

Are you okay? Good. Good, are your eyes okay? What? I gave her money to get her eyes fixed. A lot of money to get her eyes fixed. That doctor ripped me off, but that's okay. And when do you go?

Well, you get them done. It's a pretty, it's an operation, but it's a, operation, but it's a, it's 100%, you know, it's great. Good. You're going to have 20-20 vision. She's almost blind, cataracts. She's almost blind. And with one operation, that'll take a very short period of time. Hope you have a good doctor. He's an expensive, he's an expensive doctor, top of the line, right? But you know what? You're going to have 20-20 vision, because I noticed you're wearing glasses. I saw you yesterday in television, wearing glasses. And I said, well, but you know speaking of your family it would be a lot different right now

except for the election so I always say it's too bad that happened and if I had it that's called staying on message and you guys totally you're not operating on his level gonna break a couple of hippolars

and then what was I talking about he didn't even get to the point that there's the reason everyone brought this up in the first place which is they want to use it as an attack to say, this is why we need voter ID. Oh, yes, okay, okay, okay, right, okay, right, yes. Right, sorry. Cataracts, yeah, cataracts.

Yeah, let me get back to the vote. Hello, nurse. You've missed you over there. How are you doing? Hello, my friend, no you. Not you, you, you. I don't know. What was I?

Where was I talking about? But the Republicans are talking about, waging a filibuster fight in the Senate to pass the Save Act. In other words, if the, upping the requirements of the Democrats, if they're going to attempt to filibuster. The way the Senate has been working for years is that all the opposing party needs to do is signify we're going to a filibuster. They don't actually technically have to filibuster.

And they'll go right to the vote on ending cloture. And then if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. The Senate can change its rules to force a talking filibuster. In other words, you have to continue to hold the floor for an extended period of time until you hit some limit where you have exceeded the, amount of time for discussion and therefore the vote can't take place. You know who could have exercised this option in the past? Chuck Schumer, when he was the Senate majority leader. So it remains to be seen. Trump is trying to convince the Senate to do that, John Thune to do that, but he gets distracted. Oh, yes. Yeah. And also, I mean, it's going to be an enormous hurdle

to begin with because Trump needs to convince some of these senators that are getting a little scared about their re-election effort. And it may not, you know, benefit all of the Republicans in the Senate in the way that this crazy act implies that it would. It's more designed to benefit Donald Trump. It would remove tens of millions of people from having the ability to vote. Yeah, the SAVE Act is a disaster. And I still don't believe it's going to pass. And I think the Democrats will filibuster, but it is interesting for the Democrats to get a up-close idea of what you can do to make things more difficult. We're going to be talking to Mark Joseph Stern in a moment about this tariff ruling. In the meantime,

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and I should say co-host of the Amicus podcast with Dahlia Lithwick. We'll be right back after this. We are back, Sam Cedar, Emma Viglin, on The Major Report. It is a pleasure to welcome back to the program. Mark Joseph Stern, senior writer covering courts in the law for Slate. Co-host the Amicus podcast with Dahlia Lithwick. Mark, thanks so much for joining us. Always a pleasure to be back on.

Big case took place last week. it was much anticipated. They took a real long time with this case. But the official name of the case was learning resources versus Trump. But it was a case about Trump's tariff powers. Just give us the sort of like the top line before we get into how it was decided. So Trump claimed the power under federal statutes designed for international. emergencies to issue tariffs of any scope, any duration against any country that he wanted. It's this federal statute called AEPA. It's supposed to be used only in emergencies, but Trump claimed that trade imbalances and fentanyl smuggling were emergencies. And so he seized

on this law to, as we all know, from Liberation Day onward, slap tariffs on most countries around the globe. The language in the statute that he used to justify those tariffs was two words, really. The statute said that he could regulate foreign importation. And Trump said that regulate includes taxes and tariffs. And so his power to regulate importations encompassed an authority to issue, again, these unlimited tariffs anywhere, anytime, any place that he wanted. And by a six to three vote, the Supreme Court said no. The phrase regulate importation, those two words cannot bear the weight that Trump is trying to put on them. Regulation includes a lot of things, but as used in the statute, it does not include the tariff power. And so the Supreme Court said there are other ways

you can impose tariffs, but you can't use this law to do so and struck down the global tariffs that Trump had attempted to issue under this law. All right. So I get two questions that just at this stage. In what other instances have the government used IEPA? Just to get a sense of like, you know, what type of, what are the use cases for that? Yeah. So the words regulate and importation in the statute are actually separated by 16 other words, all of which indicate the real purpose of this law, which is to really impose embargoes

on countries that are acting against the interest of the United States. So past presidents have used AIPA to impose embargoes. I believe they have used AIA to impose certain limited quarantines. They have tried to restrict trade with other countries, especially countries accused of engaging in or fostering terrorists, terrorism. Those are the sort of like basic use cases for AEPA. Never before, and this law has been on the book since the seven. 70s, never before has a president tried to use the law to impose tariffs.

That was breaking entirely new ground. And that was one of the reasons why the Supreme Court said, look, it's fine for embargoes. It's fine if you want to cut off anatomy from trading with the United States. But you can't essentially use it as a backdoor to reach into Americans' pockets and pull out taxes that Congress didn't offer. Well, that was the other part where they read, regulate importation. And of course, again, like you say, 16 words in between. those words, it would be, I would love the idea that if Congress has given the executive of the

branch, the authority to regulate, we're allowed to put unilateral taxes. I would enjoy that authority for a president, AOC, let's say. But before we get there, tariffs equal taxes. I mean, I think most English speakers knew this, but there's a pretend, there's been this pretend thing, the tariffs are something different. And they're not. But how explicit was that made in this case? Very explicit. And I kind of felt like this case was decided at oral arguments when the chief justice got

really mad at Donald Trump's Solicitor General, John Sauer, for pretending that tariffs aren't taxes. He said, no, they are taxes, that the American. American people pay. And as soon as he said that, the case was sort of over. And that is reflected in his opinion for the court. I mean, the Constitution grants the taxing power to Congress primarily. And it like enumerates the different kinds of taxes that Congress can lay, including duties, which we usually call tariffs now, but it's the same thing. And there's not like any differentiation between them. The idea is that they're all taxes. They're all things that people pay to the government

that the government then uses. Tariffs were, in fact, the main tax that the federal government collected for most of American history until the 20th century, which is one reason why Trump seems to like them because he wants to go back to the 1890s. And so, like,

this was really a fundamental component of Robert's opinion for the court. Only Clarence Thomas tried to sort of dispute the idea that tariffs are taxes, and I don't think his logic got him very far, but other members of the court accepted this proposition. Well, I'm also curious about if you could flesh out the other like subterranean fight over the major questions doctrine that is a part of, of this opinion here. So you had six to three decision, obviously the three right wing justices that didn't join, Clarence Thomas, Alito and the beer chugger in Brett Kavanaugh.

But what was funny to me was how aggressively Gorsuch was trying to apply their decision in this case to the major questions doctrine, which we've spoken about many times on the show before, is their Biden-era invention that allowed them to strike down things like the eviction moratorium, student debt forgiveness, among others, that they came up with to basically supersede Chevron deference, that this is the court can weigh in on these kind of issues if it involved. a so-called major question. And then the three liberal justices were not having it. They're not going to try to be wrapped into this. But it was almost like Gorsuch was trying to legitimize their past very activist usage of major questions to strike down regulations under a Democratic presidency to be like, hey, we do it too for Trump. But only when like the economy is involved, the only time we'll stand up to him is if the economy like, you know, the Chamber of Commerce is upset about it, basically. Right. Right. I mean, quite literally, because this is, similar with the Lisa Cook case and firing executive officials, right? The Supreme Court is like,

Trump can fire anyone he wants unless they're a member of the Fed and the Chamber of Commerce is telling us that he's going to start a recession. There's like a very consistent way in which that some of the conservatives deviate from Trump's demands and it's when the corporate community tells them to. But yeah, you know, Gorsuch's concurrence was 46 pages. That is more than twice as long as Robert's opinion for the court. Sam, you mentioned that this took a long time. I think that a huge amount of the time that it took was Gorsuch writing this concurrence that basically attacked seven of his colleagues. And then his colleagues had to sort of like respond to him in turn. And there was all this sniping in footnotes. Gorsuch wanted this to be the arrival of the

major questions doctrine in a kind of cross ideological way. He wanted this to legitimize the major questions doctrine and devoted much of his concurrence to that project. But the three liberals would not go along with it. So even though this was a six three decision against Trump, the six in the majority split three three. You had Roberts, Barrett, and Gorsuch applying the major questions doctrine saying, look, this is a matter of immense economic significance. The president could collect trillions of dollars by using the statute this way. We are invoking the major questions doctrine because we think that if Congress wanted to let the president do this kind of thing, it would have said so more clearly. And we're going to demand a clearer authorization than this

kind of vague statute before we allow the president to claim this power. And the three liberals, in a really, really great opinion by Justice Elena Kagan, that's like short and sweet, six pages, exactly what the majority probably should have said. It's like, look, we don't need a thumb on the scale through a made-up doctrine in this case. All we have to do is basic statutory interpretation. And, you know, Sam, to your point, like, I would love it if regulation always included taxes. I'm sure there are a lot of members of Democratic administrations who could scour the U.S. Code finding all kinds of regulations that they might try to exploit to impose taxes. But the reality is that there is not a single statute on the books in this country. And it seemingly

never has been one that uses the word regulate to authorize taxes. Every single time Congress authorizes taxes, it uses additional language that talks about taxes. Never before, I mean, really never, has Congress authorized taxes through the word regulate. And so Kagan said, look, it's simple. It's easy. This is what the statute means. And I'm still not going to embrace or legitimize the major questions doctrine because I think that that is a kind of illegitimate tool that my conservative colleagues are going to use to try to box in future Democratic presidents when they want to use the administrative state to implement good policies. Right. So, okay, so, I mean, just we're sort of going backwards here on some level, but the idea of statutory interpretation and the idea of the extension of regulated taxation, this gets to the, this is something that the court does on any given basis, right?

I mean, like the idea of, of we're just going to take the sort of like words in the statute. And this, in terms of like the building blocks of a case, this is a rudimentary, this is a rudimentary function of the court, right? Like this goes before the question of could, could Congress authorize the president to have taxing authority? could they delegate that? It goes before that. It's simply like, as stated here, we're just following the plain letter of the law. And there is no authority on top of the fact that Congress already had a constitutional authority to tax. And that's not given anywhere else. Yeah. It's just basic statutory interpretation, as Kagan said. Now, there's nothing wrong with sort of bringing in constitutional principles to statutory interpret. Like one thing that Roberts and Kagan agree upon is that the Constitution assigns the power over tariffs primarily to Congress. And so if Congress is giving away that power to the president, you would expect it to do so in kind of clear terms and with some limitations. And in fact, as we learned on Friday at Trump's press conference, there are other statutes that Congress has enacted that clearly allow the president to impose tariffs. Now, they're more limited.

tariffs. They're limited in scope and amount and duration. But there have been instances in which Congress told the president, we are giving you the power over tariffs to this degree. You can use it this way. And this emergency statute that Trump wanted to use as a blank check, it just didn't fit into that category. So I agree with Justice Kagan. I agree, I think with what you're saying, Sam, like, they didn't need the major questions doctrine whatsoever here because the most basic tools that you learn, like your first month of law school of how to interpret a statute, get you where you do. need to go. And in order to, like, avoid that, you either have to really want to legitimize the major questions doctrine as the conservatives did, or you have to be a hack like Brett Kavanaugh

and just start from the conclusion that Trump can do anything he wants and try to work your way backwards. And particularly for those conservatives who espouse a strict constructionist perspective on this language and don't believe that Congress has the ability to to delegate this authority would need the major questions doctrine even less. If the major questions didn't exist, and we should remind people of what the major questions doctrine is. It is a made-up doctrine. I mean, they're all made up, but usually doctrines are made up over time through like decades of law. And this one was just sort of introduced like 10, 15 years ago. And it's, It's basically the, these conservative justices are using it in the same way that we would use like a wild card or get out of jail free card.

Like circumstances be damned. We step in, we throw this down and we can do anything on some way. Right. Right. You know, Brett Kavanaugh, I think in his dissent, illustrates exactly why these made up doctrines are so dangerous. Because he was a huge proponent of the major questions doctrine on the D.C. circuit when he joined the Supreme Court. He's been advocating for it for a very long time in law review articles, whatever. And in this case, he decided that it didn't apply because he announced the magical new

exception that major questions doesn't apply in the realm of national security or foreign affairs. And so the wonderful thing about these fabricated doctrines that put a very heavy thumb on the scale in one direction or the other. Here, it's almost always against the administrative state is that when it leads you to a place you don't like when you're like, oh, no, the major questions doctrine might force me to rule against Trump, you can just carve out an exception. You can just make it up. And by the way, Clarence Thomas did a very similar thing in his dissent in this case with something super similar called the non-delegation doctrine, which is this idea that Congress can't delegate its core powers away to the executive

branch, you know, even if it does so explicitly, it just doesn't have the authority to tell the president you can use this power however you want. And Clarence Thomas has been advocating for this for ever since the early 2000s. He was like a huge proponent of it. He put out a call to lawyers in this opinion where he was like, come to me with justifications for the non-delegation doctrine so I can strike down all these statutes

that empower federal agencies. And then in this case, he announced that the non-delegation doctrine doesn't apply to tariffs. Surprise, magic. It doesn't apply to the thing that Trump now wants to use without any congressional authorization.

So the ultimate kind of Trump card, so to speak, with all these doctrines that the conservatives have been making up is that you can always kind of twist it and contort it to get you where you want to go. And the dissents in this case were like the excellent, most excellent illustration of how that works. And just to be clear on the non-delegation doctrine, this is where Congress might say, we want people to not be born with birth defects. EPA, figure out what things are being, what pollutants are in the air or the water that are are causing birth defects and get rid of those, that is, that is something that would be struck down

in theory under the non-delegation principle. And it's what ultimately struck down the Chevron deference, which was that the court generally defers to the agency prior to this court, defers to an agency because they have expertise on what would constitute a threat to, let's say, birth defects. Right, right, exactly. Or, you know, we want cars to be safe. So Congress enacts a law that tells some federal agency implement regulations that ensure cars meet reasonable safety standards or the same thing with planes, the same thing with chemical, whatever. There's a million delegations in the federal code. And Clarence Thomas has never before met one that he didn't want to strike down. He's always like, Congress can't give away this power. Congress has to spell everything out clearly and explicitly. Federal agencies shouldn't have this much discretion. And then when it comes to, Trump trying to seize upon an extremely ambiguous and sort of the hazy law to issue any tariffs he wants of any rate and any duration. Clarence Thomas announces a tariff exception to the non-delegation doctrine and says that Congress can completely and fully give away its tariff authority to the president forever. I do not think that you can square that intellectually

with anything that Clarence Thomas has said in the past 30 years. So let's get to the implications of If Gorsick didn't need the major questions doctrine to resolve this issue, in other words, it could have been done on what was basically very vanilla Supreme Court rulings in that like the law doesn't say this. So he doesn't have the authority. But they invoke this special, this major questions doctrine. What is the purpose of doing that from their perspective? Like, if they don't need it to strike this down, why do it? So, look, I think I don't have any special insight into what happened behind the scenes. But my sense is that Roberts went into conference after arguments and pushed to get the three liberals to finally sign on to the major questions doctrine to legitimize it.

Like Emma said, you know, this has been a project of his along with Kavanaugh and Gorsuch to really entrench this into the law. But there's long been this footnote because the liberal justices don't endorse. because they say it's made up because it is. And so I think this was the case where Roberts and probably Gorsuch really wanted to bring them into the fold so they could in the future say, look, it's not a partisan thing. It's not an ideological thing. This is just how the court does statutory interpretation with a thumb on the scale against federal agencies and delegations. And the liberals just wouldn't play ball. And my guess is that the votes against Trump were firm enough at conference that the liberals understood they didn't need to play ball. You know,

if Roberts and Gorsuch had gone to the three liberals and really twisted their arm and been like, we're only going to rule against Trump. If you sign on to the major questions doctrine and finally legitimize it, maybe they would have. But I just think it's clear from the way these opinions read that they didn't need to. And so they kind of held the line. And so what we have is like not a majority to apply the major questions doctrine in this case. It's really only Roberts, Gorsuch, and Barrett, who say it applies here. And so, you know, what I suspect Roberts, Gorsuch, and Barrett get out of this is that the ability to say in the future, this was not only made up for Joe Biden. We don't only apply this against Democratic administrations. We apply this to all administrations and all presidents of any party. And here's

the proof. We used it against Donald Trump. That's what those three really get out of it. Do you think if there were six liberals on the court and three conservatives? and everything was flipped here, would those three conservatives, Gorsick, Barrett and Roberts, be pushing for the major questions doctrine in this manner, where a liberal court would dictate what would dictate what a president can and cannot do, or a Congress for that matter. So Gorsuch wants us to think so. That's why he wrote this 46-page concurrence, being like, I really, really believe this, no matter whose ox is getting gourd.

No matter if, for whatever reason, Thomas and Alito and, you know, and Kavanaugh were hit by a bus the day after, you know, President AOC becomes president, I would still be in favor of the major questions, doctor. Yeah, I am skeptical that that would be the case because, of course, what we've seen over and over again is that the conservative justices are giving a lot more latitude to Trump in his exercises of executive power and creative interpretations of statutes than it gave to Biden. And that's been true of almost every case until now, including major immigration cases like TPS, deportation cases, impoundment cases where Trump is claiming this authority to refuse to disperse federal funds

appropriated by Congress. You know, of Gorsuch really believed in congressional primacy. And, thought that the courts needed to jealously safeguard Congress's place in the separation of powers, then you would think he would rule against Trump when Trump takes appropriated money by Congress and freezes it forever and refuses to spend it. It's their primary function. It's their number one function. That is what Congress does is appropriate money that the executive branch can spend. We now have the executive branch refusing to spend those funds. And Gorsuch, in all of those cases, has sided with the executive branch and against, the Congress and the would-be recipients of the money.

So when Trump exercises these authorities in an expansive way that Republicans like, as a general rule, the six conservative side with him, it was in this case where, again, to Emma's point, like you have the Chamber of Commerce, you have the business community, you have all of these very wealthy people saying, please don't let Trump tank the economy, that finally you get three conservative justices like, recognizing that they should probably rediscover their principles. And so in your hypo, I highly doubt that you would see the three conservatives in the minority on a six three liberal court pushing for this restrictive interpretation of the law. And do you think the liberals recognized on the

court what Emma recognized was that they're not going to go against. They're not going to, like, they're trying to get us to sign on to the major questions doctrine because they want to build up the and people have to understand that lawyers think a little bit differently they need to be able to justify to themselves or to their friends or to the institutions that this has some heft as a doctrine and here's the proof you know you had by by you know trans you know cross ideological cross ideological support of this doctrine because they've never signed on to this doctrine before. The liberals have never signed on to this doctrine. This has been an exclusively conservative wielded doctrine.

This was their opportunity to get the cross ideological support. But the liberals probably also knew that like they're not going to, they're not going to go against the Chamber of Commerce. I read that section from Kagan that was bitchy, and I say that in a positive way about trying, the, the, you put it on blue sky. That was really good because she was basically saying like, F you're not going to rope me into this. Right. Gorsuch was trying to claim in a footnote that actually the liberal degree. Yeah. They knew they had the leverage. Yeah. And I think you saw something similar in the Federal Reserve case, right? Because like when Trump was firing all of these people and the Supreme Court started to say like, oh, you can fire. members of the FCC and the NLRB and all these other agencies, but you can't fire members of the Federal Reserve. The liberals called BS. And the liberals were pretty blunt. I mean, Justice Kagan was very blunt in saying, like, what the court is doing right now is unprincipled. I am not going to sign on to this distinction that the majority is trying to create between the Federal Reserve and

everyone else. It is very clear that the court is worried about the markets, and that is the only real reason why it is carving out the Federal Reserve from Trump's purges. And she refused to endorse it. And she could have, you know, she could have signed on and said, oh, yes, well, the Federal Reserve has a unique structure and history and our constitutional, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the liberals know that John Brett and Amy are not going to let Trump purge the Federal Reserve because they want to be able to send their grandkids to college. And so in these cases where they know they have the leverage or they sort of know there's a majority for the right position, they are being pretty ruthless and hardball in a way that I admire because I think

it, you know, it does telegraph to all of us, like, we're, they're not going to to be strong-armed. They're not going to be pushed into legitimizing nonsense, made-up doctrines that are sort of gerrymandered to fit Trump's agenda and then draw the line when the Chamber of Commerce says no, they are going to exercise their independence. And what's the value of that? Like, what's the value of that, you know, because all well and good, the three justices are writing dissents saying the major question's doctrine is bullshit and your point out that what's the value of that down the road or even now. So, I mean, to me, down the road, the value is that it will be much easier to overturn

these doctrines as precedent and to overturn the precedents in which they are enshrined when a future court can say this was never a cross ideological point of agreement. This was never like not controversial. This was always very contentious, very unsettled. And one of the rules about respect for precedent, stare decisis, is that if something remains, kind of unsettled and contentious and difficult to apply, then it's more vulnerable to being reversed down the road. So I think the liberals, to some degree, are planting a flag for a future court, which they may or may not sit on. I mean, we could be talking about 50 years if it hasn't been replaced by chat GPT at that point. And they're going to want a future court to say,

this was not unanimous. This does not have the sheen of like broad ideological support. And that's why Gorsuch is fighting so hard the other way. That's why he's fighting so hard to say, the liberals agree with me. They just don't understand that they agree with me. Like the gaslighting serves that purpose. As for right now, I think they're also women. They're also women. Yes. So they can't. I mean, they're not going to. By the way, they're not going to Gorsuch. Gorsuch's got going on. It's almost impossible to communicate with the women. He also goes after Barrett. Barrett wrote a fairly encouraging concurrence here where she was like, you know, I kind of understand the major questions doctrine in this case, but I do not think it's doing as much

work as Gorsuch wants, and I do not agree that it should always be a thumb on the scale. And it seems like Barrett is actually drifting a little bit more toward the Kagan camp on the major questions doctrine. So maybe that's just because Gorsuch doesn't know how to talk to women. But I think that the liberals are sending the message to litigants to litigants. He's operating on a higher level. That's the thing we're going to understand. We will never understand the brilliance of Neil Gorsuch. But I think the liberals are sending a message to litigants today. Like, don't cave in on this. You know, don't just think, oh, well, if we can use major questions against Trump.

Everybody might as well accept it. And we are seeing some of that. Like lower court judges on the left have had a lot of difficulty sort of deciding, do we embrace these made up doctrines if like they get us to a place where we rule against Trump where Trump deserves to lose? You've seen liberal litigants invoke these doctrines. And I think I think Justice Kagan is telling them, don't fall for it. It is a trap.

As soon as everybody embraces this, it becomes even more entrenched as precedent and we can never get rid of it. And the reality is we want to get rid of it. it as soon as we can. And a circuit judge can cite its dissent. So it doesn't have the, but a circuit judge can, you know, it can cite like this is not a major question's doctrine case. You don't need it as, as Kagan said in, you know, in learning resources. If the statute, if this is a simple case of statutory interpretation, you don't need to cite that. I mean, so, so people should understand this is used as a tool for other courts.

It's, you know, when you're, when you're creating this doctrine, it's turning like a, you know, one of those aircraft carriers. It takes it very slow. And anything that could slow that role makes it easier to tack back the other way. So what authority remains? And I know there's a little bit outside your portfolio, but what authority remains for Trump, to impose tariffs unilaterally without Congress? So there's two main statutes that allow the president to impose tariffs. One is for purposes of national security.

And both Biden and Trump and his first administration used these against like China, when they felt that the American supply chain needed to have like more consistency. And they didn't want to be bringing in all these materials from abroad, steel, aluminum, whatever. So there are some national... Were those challenged at all right? all? Not in this case. And I don't even think they were challenged. I mean, that is very clearly within the scope of that law. So the national security tariffs will remain. Now, the particular application of those tariffs is always vulnerable to challenge. And if Trump tries to move it past the kind of basic like supply chain or true national security stuff and he says, oh, like, you know, this trading partner is a national security threat because their president criticized me, I'm going to slap a massive tariff on the country. that would be susceptible to a legal challenge.

The other statute here is one that addresses so-called trade imbalances and allows the president to impose relatively low tariffs on other countries with which the United States has a trade imbalance, but only for up to 150 days. And after that, Congress would have to reauthorize the tariffs where they expire. And we've already seen from the House voting against some of Trump's tariffs, Congress is not going to reauthorize the tariff. even this Congress is not going to reauthorize those tariffs. So Trump came out of the gate saying, look, I have these other tools.

I can do whatever I want. Brett Kavanaugh kind of egged him on in his dissent. He was like, oh, Trump just checked the wrong box. He can use these other tools at his disposal to replace these tariffs. It'll be no big deal. But the clock will be ticking. And if and when Trump tries to get too creative with these other statutes, then like the Court of International Trade will have its doors open to a challenge that may well prevail.

That's the 15% global tariffs. he's using that justification section 122, just to repeat that for people. That means that he has 150 days. That's the time limit. And then you need that congressional authorization. And like, for example, the Canada tariffs, the lumber, the aluminum ones, those are under the separate authority that wasn't struck down by the Supreme Court. But it was a majority of them, like, you know, because these were right, these global tariffs, this was really significant, the ones that were struck down by the court. But these are the ones that Trump just, you know, spouted off and said, like, because this president, you know, bothered me, I'm going to, I'm going to use this as a point of leverage.

The ones that are more tailored, like the Canada ones, that's under that authority. That's under the other, the other national security authority. Yes. And so the global tariffs, like, even though a lot of them were 10% across the board, he also had some that were like 145% against certain industries. And those are not permissible under 122 authority. So he cannot just on a whim say, I'm going to crush this particular industry in China by imposing a massive tariff tomorrow morning under this authority. It really is much more limited. And there's also these requirements that there has to be an investigation and the trade envoys have to do all of this kind of like logistical work. And it's just not what he wants. He wants to be able to go out like on Liberation Day and make up a bunch of numbers and completely upend world trade.

and the statutes that actually authorize tariffs do not allow that. And the other part that is not being discussed enough is the refund element, which they basically punted to the lower courts. So the opinion said that it's like $175 billion that is deemed like a legal tariff money that was collected. But the court didn't really address that they said that the courts are going to have to deal with that on the case by case basis. And then Scott Besson goes out there, another gift to the Democrats for the midterms for clips and is like, the American people aren't going to see any of this. And it seems like that's true.

The Lundix will. I mean, it is true because it's going to be corporations that get that money, right? The corporations are not going to turn around and pass it along. The corporations are going to get the money, but they're going to then reduce prices for Americans because they're not going to keep those extra profits. No. Never. Never.

We would never ever see in this free liberal democracy corporations trying to maximize shareholder value rather than setting fair market prices for consumers. That would be unprecedented, I think. I think we should also, we should also, I mean, obviously, it's sort of self-evident that that capitalists are not going to refund money to the American public by way of like, we're going to do a six-month thing where we lower prices or something like, they're not going to do that. No. But also, the fact that these refunds could be securitized because people, Emma just referenced it, we know the Lutnik, sons, Uday and Coussay, purchased the rights to any future refunds from, we don't know how many people, we don't know worth how many hundreds of millions of dollars, but they bought these

rights at 20 cents, 30 cents, 40 cents on the dollar. If there are refunds, it wouldn't go to the corporations. The corporations have already sold off their right to those refunds. So they've all, those corporations have been, you know, they paid, they got paid 20 or 30 cents, kick back to them. Right. The rest of the money would go to Uday and Kusei or people like them. And so, the question of, like, this is going to be resolved.

Kavanaugh said, like, I don't know how we're going to be able to figure this out. But there's going to be millions of dollars behind figuring out how to, uh, because, Because for Uday and Kuse, if they've paid 20 cents for a dollar's worth of refunds, they have every incentive in the world to go out and spend another 50 cents to get, you know, they'll still make 30 cents off of that dollar. Yes. And a relatively small number of lawyers who specialize in suing for tariff refunds are about to buy their third and fourth McMansions off the legal fees they're going to collect

because this has been a specialized area of law, mostly of interest to importers and exporters. And now suddenly it is going to be a $200 billion market. And even just set aside like those who created these very fishy contracts to sort of get these kickbacks in exchange for a corporation betting that it wouldn't get tariff refunds. You know, there are a lot of corporations that are doing kind of political calculus here, too, saying, I don't want to piss off the Trump administration,

even more. I don't want to risk like new tariffs against my industry under these other authorities. Should we just leave the money on the table and not collect it? So, you know, it's going to be messy, but the mess is entirely because the Trump administration pulled the trigger on illegal tariffs before bothering to like really figure out if they were lawful. And that was on purpose, of course. And how this will all shake out in the lower courts is anybody's guess. Some people will get very wealthy. Some people will walk away with nothing. but what we will probably see as this unwinds is that there was a lot of corruption behind the scenes. There were a lot of people who were essentially shorting the tariffs, right, like Uday and Kusei.

And some of those people have direct connections to the administration. And they will, of course, face no political or legal consequences because corruption is now just the way the game is played in American politics. Mark Joseph Stern couldn't have said better of myself. Senior writer covering courts and the Law for Slate co-host of the Amicus podcast. with Dahlia Lithwick. Thanks so much for your time today. We'll put links to both those in the podcast and YouTube description.

Really appreciate it. Thanks so much. Anytime. Thanks, Mark. All right, folks. All wrapped up in a nice little bow. Everybody's going to make money except for all of us.

And see, I'm not the only one who gets energized talking about the major questions doctrine, Brian. I really. You brought that up about six times since I laughed at you for laughing. at that. What's that? The major question? I always say her name wrong.

Elena Kagan. Okay. Well, you know. Her clapback really tickled Emma. And I found it to be one of the dirtiest. I was like, I got a little embarrassed. That's why I keep bringing it up. I keep bringing it up because I got a little embarrassed for being so ridiculously gorky. The thing is, it's very hard. It's, it is hard for for people, I think, to get to wrap their heads around the, the, how this works, because on one hand,

these, these six members of the conservative court are going in and doing whatever they want. They are not bound in any way. They got rid of the first time in the history of this country where an individual right has been rolled back in Roe v. Wade. They seem to have absolutely no guardrails, limiting principles, no restrictions. But they do. It's just wrapped in this sort of very vague mentality of where their social capital exists. Right.

Like they have the job forever until they die. presumably some of them might have the the wherewithal to retire before then, but in most cases, not the case. And we saw that with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. They have all the sinecures that they are going to get. I mean, you know, Harlan Crow has basically rocked Clarence Thomas in his arms

like a little baby and, you know, provided for his mother's, you know, has a house and his step kid or his kid has, you know, went to private school and he goes on all the trips he could ever want on private jets and all this. And so you're like, well, why, like what, why would they not just do whatever they want? Now, some of them do, but some of them also were just like, they're raised as lawyers. Yeah.

And Emma and I both understand this sort of like cultural. dynamic. They think that they're priests in some way. And like the there's a narcissism that that that where they feel like

we're the guardians of the crypt of the of the civil religion and right and the the Lord of the legal world will strike us down. And so they're torn

They're torn by that. And so Roberts, like, why else would Gorsick, you know, feel like we need to get these on board? Now, part of it is because down the road, and again, it could be 50 years where there's a liberal majority, hopefully, you know, there's a bus somewhere or a hurricane or a tornado or a tree limb will speed things up. But down the road, those justices are going to look back at what Kagan writes, KBJ is great in this way. Yes. Because she has been, she knows from jump, her first day, she know that this is probably the only function I'm going to serve on this court. Maybe down the road I'm going to be the elder statesman on this court who's going to be.

able to look back on these writings and use them as justification to change the laws and go back to a more reasonable and, you know, one that has more soundness and more integrity. And I think it's also just so important to point out that this major question's doctrine, as is the case with these other kind of conservative legal fictions, are designed to empower the conservative forces and the right to give themselves. more leeway in these scenarios that are inherently subjective, but they act like priests and as if this is this sort of, you know, this almost science that they're engaging in when they're working backwards from political conclusions and then coming up with things like the major questions doctrine. So it's interesting to see that fight within the legal world and how you have to hold a line to not allow for the replication of certain ideas because like as it originalism is a great example. I was talking about this with Rachel Cohen a little bit. Like, once it is incorporated and built into the case law, there is a compounding effect that legitimizes it.

And it becomes a more well-used tool in the disposal of the conservative legal apparatus. So you have to have warfare in the trenches on this, at least, you know. It's also, I mean, the best thing for this stuff is that it's so, It is a good way to study the way that ideologies get entrenched and the way that ideas grow and have implications because it's, there's a lot more sort of like elements that are controlled when you follow these doctrines. Like the we've talked about this in the past. the doctrine of discovery, which was a papal edict as to why Christians could go and take land from indigenous people. And it made its way into the U.S. law in like the early 1800s and was cited as recently as

2005 by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but not as the doctrine of discovery, but of the, the case law that emanated from it. So it's so far away from the doctrine of discovery, she herself doesn't even have to acknowledge it. Yeah. Probably knew on some level, the history of that probably, but not necessarily, cites that law and it is traveled so far. And that KBJ understands that fundamentally as well.

She understands that very well. And that's, I think, one glimmer of hope here is not using, you know, being conscious about the justifications that you're using, not, you know, because in the future it's going to be important that it's not legitimized by a justice like herself. So, Supreme Court has destroyed this country's democracy with SIDS United case, and it did so in the 1800s with the Dred Scott case. It should not be a co-equal branch. I guess we're stuck with that because of the Constitution, but we should do whatever we can to minimize its role in having to play a role in this. There's certainly a way to minimize the power that nine individuals have, right? Like, you can easily expand the court, just adding four people would increase the,

it would be very consistent with the way that the Supreme Court was designed in the first place. There is no number attached to the Supreme Court in the, Constitution. It was originally the number of people in the court were to represent the different circuits around the circuit courts around the country. There are now 13 circuit courts, so it would make sense to expand it. But yes, it is one more element in our Constitution is anti-democratic. But, you know, reform would be a good thing. I can imagine. It should be the bare minimum that a

100% politician talks about. Anyone thinking that if in 50 years we're still talking about nine justices and they're all chosen by oligarchs, like we'll be in a worse position than we are in 2026 and that should alarm people. Okay, folks, we're going to head

into the fun half. Just a reminder to your support that makes this show possible. You can become a member by going to join the Majority Report.com. When you do, you only get the free show, free of commercials, but you also get the fun half, wherein you can I-M-Us. I had to, a little rusty, I had to think about that, which part do you get if you remember?

Also, just coffee.coop, fair trade, coffee, hot chocolate, use your coupon code, majority, get 10% off. Check it out. Just coffee.comop. Matt, what's happening in the Matt Like media universe. Left Reckoning tomorrow got Daniel Bessner talking about Cold War liberalism.

Also, I did a little solo Left Reckoning Sunday show talking about Karl Marx's writing on the American Civil War. And you'll be interested, leftists will be interested to know that Kyle Marx had the right position on the Civil War, which is that the South was fighting to protect slavery and they should be crushed brutally. And The Economist magazine had the wrong take, which is that it wasn't about slavery. at all. It's just about tariffs and stuff like that. Y'all getting moral about it are wrong. So it's interesting how more stuff changes the more stays

the same. I have a plug as well. If you haven't yet, you're in the L.A. area. You want to see the Bituation Room live featuring me and other people that I'm hearing about. Special guests to be announced. I'm going to be

at Dynasty Typewriter and you want to keep going. Just pick one. March 22nd, Sunday, matinee. Yes. And I'll be there with Francesca Furentine. It's a matinee? Matinee, drinking in the afternoon.

March 22nd Sunday. That's not what I was, okay. That's a real thing. There you go. I mean, Francesca really emphasized that. She's like, we'll still be drinking. All right. Okay.

All right, good to know. I've been hearing about Dynasty Typewriter and all these podcasts all of a sudden. I guess it's a thing. I don't know enough. I don't know enough about it. It's been a long time. Yeah.

And what about the other podcast that you're on? Oh, well, it's not out yet. But I mean, I, sometime this week, my doomscroll episode should be up as well. Okay. All right. All right, folks, see you in the fun half. Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now.

And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now. than it is three months from now. But I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow. What? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second.

Hold on for, hold on for a second. The majority. Emma, welcome to the program. Hey. Fun hat. Matt. What is up, everyone? Fun hack.

No, me. You did it. Fun hack. Let's go brand. Let's go Brandon. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint. Everyone, I'm just a random guy.

It's all the boys today. Fundamentally false. No, I'm sorry. Women's... Stop talking for a second. Let me finish. Where is this coming from, dude? But dude, you want to smoke this?

Seven, eight? Yes. Yes? It's you. I don't hurt me. I think it is you. Who is you? No sound.

Every single freaking day. What's on your mind? Sports. We can discuss. We're going to discuss capitalism. I'm going to guess not what. Libertarians. They're so stupid, though.

Common sense says, of course. Gobbled euk. We fucking nailed him. So what's 79 plus 21? Challenge men. I'm positive and quivering. I believe 96, I want to say. 857.

210. 35. 501. 1⁄2. 380s. 911 for instance. $3,400, $1,900.

$6.5,4, $3 trillion sold. It's a zero-sum game. Actually, you're making think less. But let me say this. Poopie. You're going to call it satire. Sam goes satire.

On top of it all? Yeah. My favorite part about you is just like every day, all day, like everything you do. Without a doubt. Hey, buddy, we've seen you. Obviously. Yeah. Sundow guns out.

I don't know. But you should know. People just don't like to entertain ideas anymore. I have a question. Who cares? Our chat is a lot. I love it. I do love that.

Got a jump. I got to be quick. I get a jump. I'm losing. The clock. We're already late. And the guy's being a dick. So screw him.

Sent to a gulong? Outrage. Like, what is wrong with you? Love you. Love you. Bye-bye.