Speaker 1: Well whiskey, come and fame, my pain, the money, my way.
Speaker 2: Why think alone when you can drink it all in
Speaker 2: with Ricochet's Three Whiskey Happy Hour. Join your bartenders, Steve Hayward,
Speaker 2: John You, and the International Woman of Mystery, Lucretia where
Speaker 2: the lapped it up?
Speaker 3: And David, ain't you easy on the show? Tap out?
Speaker 3: Agive me and let that wyloone.
Speaker 1: Welcome everybody to a globe spanning, worldwide edition of the
Speaker 1: Three Whiskey Happy Hour. Because we're not just located this
Speaker 1: weekend in California or wherever Lucretia hangs out. But today
Speaker 1: I think we have to inaugurate Steve Hayward's new title,
Speaker 1: the International Man of no Mystery. Because Steve, Steve.
Speaker 2: Where are you? Where are you? You are?
Speaker 1: You might be? This might be the farthest distance any
Speaker 1: member of the Three Whiskey Happy Hour has journeyed from civilization.
Speaker 2: Oh well, that might be right. I'm going to say
Speaker 2: not the farthest away. I mean, we did do several
Speaker 2: episodes from Budapest the last couple of years. I am boy,
Speaker 2: I'm a pretty remote spot though. I am in what
Speaker 2: passes for the highlands of Iceland. I'm in this tiny
Speaker 2: little hamlet that looks like the set of the Icelandic
Speaker 2: version of High Planes Drifter that turns out to be
Speaker 2: the highest settled, little tiny town in all of Iceland.
Speaker 2: It's really it looks ultimately like Mars from the Mars
Speaker 2: Rover or Nevada, except covered with moss and anyway, it's
Speaker 2: pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: And Steve like, isn't this like the second or third
Speaker 1: time you have gone back to visit your Viking slash
Speaker 1: Norwegian Scandinavian four bears? Why do you keep going back
Speaker 1: to these Baronic paces?
Speaker 4: He has no Viking four bears. My maiden name John
Speaker 4: is Norman, as in the Norman Conquest.
Speaker 1: No, I had no idea, Yes, although somebody needs no. Actually,
Speaker 1: that's that's actually a great title, Lucretia the Norman. It's like, right,
Speaker 1: you know, well Barth the Death Dealer or something.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean, by the way, we need to
Speaker 2: tell uh speaking of the Norman conquest, but we need
Speaker 2: to tell King Charles that England rests on the ancestral
Speaker 2: lands of the pre Normans. Whoever they were, right, was
Speaker 2: the Norman conquest England?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: You saw that?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: King Charles went to Canada this week and gave a
Speaker 2: land acknowledgment. I mean, what if you know, someone pointed
Speaker 2: out on Twitter, doesn't King Charles understand that his most
Speaker 2: fervent supporters in America are conservatives who like tradition and monarchy,
Speaker 2: and the people will be most defended by his never mind,
Speaker 2: it's it's I've never thought.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, Lucretia, you as Lucretia the Norman. I bet
Speaker 1: you don't even take credit for King Charles because or
Speaker 1: some carpetbagging German family.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, exactly, anything after you know about ten sixty
Speaker 4: six doesn't count.
Speaker 1: So Lucretia, how are you doing? And what do you
Speaker 1: make of Steve's strange journeys up North north Way North? Well?
Speaker 4: I have to tell you so that this is going
Speaker 4: to be a bit obscure. Forgive me, but I got
Speaker 4: an email from a friend talking about that Atlantic article
Speaker 4: really quick that said the new DEI is conservatism and
Speaker 4: that you know, College's JOHNS Hopkins, I believe it was
Speaker 4: is looking to increase the intellectual diversity of its faculty
Speaker 4: by adding a couple of token conservatives, I guess to
Speaker 4: the faculty.
Speaker 5: So I didn't bother to it is so stupid.
Speaker 4: The whole point of DEI is that it was anything
Speaker 4: but intellectual diversity. But anyway, so this sends it to
Speaker 4: me and says Hopkins, Hopkins.
Speaker 5: Here we come.
Speaker 4: And I sent the quote that Steve had included in
Speaker 4: a sub stect the other day about feminist glaciology, and
Speaker 4: I said, oh, we could go back to this, because
Speaker 4: Steve had a wonderful little piece where he didn't he
Speaker 4: didn't even have to make a joke, he didn't have
Speaker 4: to be critical. He just let the stupidity of feminist
Speaker 4: glaciology speak for itself. Is that true, Steve?
Speaker 2: Yep, that's right. I mean, the worst thing you can
Speaker 2: do to these radical academics is give their work wider
Speaker 2: exposure because it's so absurd. I mean, it makes it
Speaker 2: clear that luna. Our universities are filled with lunatics, and
Speaker 2: they get published and they make the most noise. And
Speaker 2: that's the problem. I maybe we'll get to Harvard John
Speaker 2: but that's the problem. And I did read the whole
Speaker 2: article actually Cretia, but we'll postpone that to another time
Speaker 2: because I know several of the people mentioned in it.
Speaker 2: I've actually known it about the JOHNS Hoppin Initiative, which
Speaker 2: goes back several years. The president Daniels Ron Daniels, I think,
Speaker 2: said Daniels is the name of the president, and supposedly
Speaker 2: he was dismayed. Oh left out of that story is
Speaker 2: as I understand it, He's got a very large contribution,
Speaker 2: like you know, seven figures from somebody who said, look,
Speaker 2: you need more political diversity in your faculty, and Daniels said,
Speaker 2: I agree, and he had meetings apparently, you know, with
Speaker 2: people we know. I'm not going to mention specific names
Speaker 2: right now. A couple are mentioned in the articles, but
Speaker 2: several that we know in respect or not. But that
Speaker 2: was three four years ago and nothing has happened. So
Speaker 2: I think it's all a farce so far, and you know,
Speaker 2: more to be said later.
Speaker 1: Great, So why don't we actually, why don't we dive
Speaker 1: in with the Harvard News first, and then we'll talk
Speaker 1: about what everyone's talking about today, which is tariff's and
Speaker 1: the decision of the Quarter of International Trade to stop
Speaker 1: the Trump tarras. But first, the war with Harvard continues.
Speaker 1: The latest news this week just actually right before we
Speaker 1: started the podcast, news came out that a federal District
Speaker 1: judge in Boston, Massachusetts, has barred the Trump administration from
Speaker 1: its effort to I guess the way you explain it
Speaker 1: is to take away Harvard's right to give out visas
Speaker 1: to cross the border. And I think Harvard actually specifies
Speaker 1: that most of them have to go through Lucretia's backyard
Speaker 1: on the way to Cambridge, Massachusetts. So we'll want to
Speaker 1: hear from her about this. They wouldn't, but just the background.
Speaker 1: Just give the background, because I don't I give you
Speaker 1: for the Yeah, let me give the background, because I
Speaker 1: don't think we uh talked about on the podcast yet.
Speaker 1: But Lucretia probably works on this. I've worked on this
Speaker 1: at Berkeley. But people probably don't know that universities, A
Speaker 1: lot of universities have almost a proxy right from the
Speaker 1: federal government to give out visas to students that his
Speaker 1: visiting researchers. I would say not. The closest review by
Speaker 1: the Department of Homeland Security and the Trump administration took
Speaker 1: this away from Harvard, said Harvard's no longer allowed to
Speaker 1: give out these visas, effectively preventing Harvard from having any
Speaker 1: foreign students and researchers next year. And one of the
Speaker 1: things I was shocked to learn is that something like
Speaker 1: one quarter of the Harvard student body comes from abroad.
Speaker 1: One quarter of the Harvard not undergraduates, all students, a
Speaker 1: lot more a lot of graduate students. So that's one.
Speaker 1: Another thing that happened this week is that President Trump
Speaker 1: tweeted out that he was going to take away all
Speaker 1: of Harvard's grants, which he said were three billion dollars
Speaker 1: in amount, and then he toyed with the idea of
Speaker 1: sending them to vocational schools instead the money, causing a
Speaker 1: lot of discussion this week while Steve's been away. So Lucristiaan,
Speaker 1: let's start with you. What do you think about this
Speaker 1: continuing campaign against Harvard and these two battles, one overgiving
Speaker 1: student visas, one about taking away Harvard's research grants.
Speaker 4: So let me start with the first one, and let
Speaker 4: me say that at one point I was recruited by
Speaker 4: a certain agency to.
Speaker 5: How should I.
Speaker 4: Say this, keeping it very vague, try to discover which
Speaker 4: Chinese students were likely in Chinese graduate students were likely
Speaker 4: to be sending intellectual property, sensitive intellectual property back to China.
Speaker 4: Thinking that you know somebody who is sort of The
Speaker 4: last person you think of that would care do or
Speaker 4: anything about that or care it would be someone like me.
Speaker 4: But anyway, that's been a problem for a long time,
Speaker 4: and you said it yourself, John, they have not been
Speaker 4: nearly as careful or they haven't used any anywhere near
Speaker 4: the care they should about just letting students in. That's obvious,
Speaker 4: and the reaction to the fact that we're saying, hey,
Speaker 4: if you don't like America, if you're gonna come here
Speaker 4: and try to undermine American values, we don't want you here.
Speaker 5: Marco Rubio has been great about.
Speaker 4: That, right, But because there's been no care taken over
Speaker 4: the many years other than let's worry about the Chinese
Speaker 4: stealing our secrets and solve the problem after it's already unsolvable.
Speaker 4: The government's been terrible. Trump is trying to turn that around,
Speaker 4: and of course you know he's starting with Harvard. I
Speaker 4: do want a aside. It has nothing to do with
Speaker 4: the fact that Trump couldn't get into Harvard or Bear
Speaker 4: and couldn't get into Harvard. First of all, you get
Speaker 4: into Harvard if you are a legacy or until you know,
Speaker 4: very recently, if you are the right minority marginalized group.
Speaker 4: You certainly don't get into Harvard if you're a handsome
Speaker 4: Asian guy unless you're at least John's age and that. So,
Speaker 4: you know, there's all this nonsense, all this no right,
Speaker 4: one more little aside. Steve and I went to the
Speaker 4: same graduate school, and I actually left that graduate school
Speaker 4: because it went into essentially went into receivership. And one
Speaker 4: of the things that they were doing, John is they
Speaker 4: were paying for poor students like me with the money
Speaker 4: of the tuition money from rich Saudi Arabian princes and whatnot,
Speaker 4: and bringing in a lot of rich Saudi Arabians.
Speaker 5: Okay, that's great.
Speaker 4: Did get me through graduate school there, and then they
Speaker 4: weren't leaving. That became the first problem. And then it
Speaker 4: turned out that they were actually paying other poor graduate
Speaker 4: students like me. I didn't to write their dissertations because
Speaker 4: of course they were too stupid to do any of that. Anyway,
Speaker 4: the whole thing blew up. They shut the department is
Speaker 4: now gone. It's gone, and so this is not a
Speaker 4: new thing where you know, rich foreigners pay the tuition
Speaker 4: of poor people like me. I think it's great. I
Speaker 4: think it's absolutely wonderful. And I do want to point
Speaker 4: out to you guys before we got on, we talked
Speaker 4: about Alison Burrows, who was the Dutch.
Speaker 2: Judge judge judge the ruling against Harvard against Trump today. Right.
Speaker 4: Yes, she was also the judge who heard the Harvard
Speaker 4: case in the Students for Fair Admissions, uh and and
Speaker 4: of course decided in favor of Harvard.
Speaker 5: But I mentioned these guys.
Speaker 4: That she made a really first dy. It was done
Speaker 4: with no jury trial, but she made a really dumb ruling,
Speaker 4: which was that she wasn't going to allow to be
Speaker 4: put into evidence a number of emails that had gone
Speaker 4: back and forth between like the dean and the enrollment
Speaker 4: counselors whatever, making fun of Asian students, and she she
Speaker 4: didn't allow that to go into evidence in the trial.
Speaker 4: And then she said there's no evidence of discrimination against
Speaker 4: any Asian students at Harvard. And then of course it
Speaker 4: came out on appeal and made her look like an idiot,
Speaker 4: which she obviously is, but it didn't obviously hurt her career.
Speaker 2: Well, everyone knew that a district court judge from Boston,
Speaker 2: based in Boston was going to rule in favor of Harvard. Right,
Speaker 2: that was just a given, just a couple quick facts
Speaker 2: that are interesting to me. And in a speculation, I
Speaker 2: caught a note from Charles Murray who said a Harvard
Speaker 2: class of sixty five I think was Charles, and he
Speaker 2: looked at his entering class in nineteen sixty one or
Speaker 2: sixty whatever it was. He said it was ninety eight
Speaker 2: percent American in less than two percent foreign students. And
Speaker 2: as recently I saw somewhere else as nineteen ninety the
Speaker 2: student body at Harvard was only about ten percent foreign.
Speaker 2: So the fact that it's now twenty five percent for
Speaker 2: foreign and I think, by the way you hint, John,
Speaker 2: that this is probably skewed to the graduate program. So
Speaker 2: maybe it may be in some of those programs, you know,
Speaker 2: fifty percent foreign or more. I mentioned this once before
Speaker 2: in another context, but I think we may find it here.
Speaker 2: I think what you'll find is a lot of those
Speaker 2: people admitted are for you know, the bean counting purposes.
Speaker 2: People of color. They may be quite able, you know,
Speaker 2: Indians and you know, I mentioned once before, I think
Speaker 2: that I had a research assistant from Ghana. Young lady
Speaker 2: had been to Middlebury and she was really good. She
Speaker 2: ended up going on to Princeton for graduate school. And
Speaker 2: it turned out she was from a rich gun In family.
Speaker 2: She'd gone to you know, fancy boarding schools in Switzerland, right,
Speaker 2: so she's probably very able to do high level college
Speaker 2: work in America. And guess what that's that those universities
Speaker 2: gets to count them as black for their quota purposes.
Speaker 2: And some undergraduate colleges like Middlebury and Williams and elsewhere,
Speaker 2: this has become a complaint for the Black Lives Matters crowd.
Speaker 2: And of course the politicians do don't want to come
Speaker 2: anywhere near this controversy. But if you actually disaggregated the
Speaker 2: foreign students and compared them to the American student in
Speaker 2: Midies and so forth, I'll bet it would be yet
Speaker 2: one more embarrassment for our elite colleges.
Speaker 1: Christian, let me fill up on the second point. What
Speaker 1: do you think about President Trump cutting off all grants
Speaker 1: to Harvard? Can he do that? Is this actually a
Speaker 1: good idea? So Harvard's response and they hired two very
Speaker 1: well known Republican lawyers to represent them, including one Robert Hurr.
Speaker 2: Actually very clever, oh very clever.
Speaker 1: Very clever of Harvard to do that. You know, they
Speaker 1: say in the president of Harvard sent out blast emails saying,
Speaker 1: this is going to ruin our ability to do medical research.
Speaker 1: Look at all the amazing discoveries by Harvard that have
Speaker 1: lengthened human life spans and done such good for the world. Chretia,
Speaker 1: what do you think about So.
Speaker 4: That's a really interesting question, John, and kind of a
Speaker 4: bigger question. I was hoping we might get to discuss
Speaker 4: this week because I've seen it over and over Trump
Speaker 4: cutting off funds to NPR. We talked about it briefly
Speaker 4: when we talked about Trump deciding not to Trump's war
Speaker 4: on the law firms that had participated in prosecuting him
Speaker 4: before he became president. Again, I believe that you, if
Speaker 4: you're the president making those kinds of decisions, that you
Speaker 4: have to do so in a way that's fair. You
Speaker 4: couldn't just discriminate against Harvard for no reason and say
Speaker 4: my kid didn't get in, so you're not getting any money,
Speaker 4: but to say that you have that Harvard discriminates against Jews,
Speaker 4: et cetera, and has not taken steps as they've been
Speaker 4: asked to do to curb anti Semitism at Harvard. And
Speaker 4: if you don't do that, we will stop, we will
Speaker 4: stop federal money going to you in research grants. That's
Speaker 4: been done before. It just went the other way, right,
Speaker 4: it went the other way. Nobody questioned that the court could,
Speaker 4: for instance, excuse me, that the president could, for instance,
Speaker 4: an administration could say to I'll say Bob Jones University,
Speaker 4: but make up what they didn't do, which was if
Speaker 4: they discriminate against blacks and say we don't want any
Speaker 4: blacks in our university. Nobody would have even blinked an
Speaker 4: I if the administration at the time it said you're
Speaker 4: not getting any federal grants from us, then I mean
Speaker 4: they went.
Speaker 5: Much much further.
Speaker 4: No pelgrants, no student loans, etc. So what Trump is
Speaker 4: doing from a purely legal point of view is absolutely fine.
Speaker 4: It's the political fight that matters, right, and how he
Speaker 4: comes down on.
Speaker 2: That well stee So I think there's a great irony
Speaker 2: at work here if you go back in the record,
Speaker 2: as they say, to the late forties and early fifties,
Speaker 2: when you know Van ver Bush first set out our
Speaker 2: science strategy for the federal government and the involved spending
Speaker 2: research dollars through universities for science research right technical research,
Speaker 2: and then again with the Secondary Education Act whatever it
Speaker 2: was in nineteen five fifty eight, after the spot Nick crisis, Right,
Speaker 2: we need more scientists. Around those years, the almost all
Speaker 2: of the presidents of Ivy League colleges said, we're not
Speaker 2: sure this is a good idea because federal funding will
Speaker 2: come with federal strings and maybe political domination from Washington,
Speaker 2: so we're not sure that. But on the other hand,
Speaker 2: the money was just too lucrative and the purpose was
Speaker 2: seemed so straightforward and sensible, right, more scientists, more scientific research,
Speaker 2: that they succummed and went with it. So now all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, look where we are. I'll add one
Speaker 2: more thing here to bolster Lucreatia's point. Stephen Pinker, who
Speaker 2: is You know, he's some interesting guy. He's actually kind
Speaker 2: of a liberal, but he's descended from the left and
Speaker 2: resisted the left at Harvard. He had an article in
Speaker 2: The New York Times a few days ago saying this
Speaker 2: is terrible what Trump is doing. But then he spent
Speaker 2: like three or four paragraphs saying, but I want to
Speaker 2: remind you, over the last six seven years, I've been
Speaker 2: fighting wokeriy at Harvard, and I've been saying we need
Speaker 2: more intellectual diversity. I've been fighting against quotas, this, this,
Speaker 2: and this, And when he got to the end of
Speaker 2: his litany about how Harvard's imperfect, I thought, and yes,
Speaker 2: what good has all that done? What changes have been made? None?
Speaker 2: Harvard still gets an f from the Foundation for Individual
Speaker 2: Rights and Expression for being the worst campus in the
Speaker 2: country for free speech. And so the point is is
Speaker 2: that nothing is going to change until the universities get
Speaker 2: the metaphysical metaphorical equivalent of a two by four across
Speaker 2: the head. And that's what Trump is doing. I'm sure
Speaker 2: they're going to affect some useful medical research and other
Speaker 2: scientific research. I'm sure if this spreads. By the way, John,
Speaker 2: you know, some of the best students that I've met
Speaker 2: at Berkeley Law have been some of these Raeli students
Speaker 2: who come over in the LLLM program, right, And they're
Speaker 2: usually really good and really sensible and sound, and it'd
Speaker 2: be a shame if they're excluded from our universities. But
Speaker 2: things are so bad with the universities that I agree
Speaker 2: completely little Cretia that you know, the time for maximum
Speaker 2: pressure has arrived. And again the fact that the universities
Speaker 2: are fine the federal pressure when they agree with what
Speaker 2: the federal government wants him to do, so they really
Speaker 2: don't have much of a leg to stand on to complain. Now,
Speaker 2: it seems to me.
Speaker 1: So quick in question before we move on to Tariff's
Speaker 1: Lucretia's favorite subject, mind you, but what else could Trump do?
Speaker 1: So I both of you say this is part of
Speaker 1: a almost like a cultural fight between Trump and the
Speaker 1: groups in society he represents and higher education inc. Right,
Speaker 1: what else could Trump? Do? You know that Trump does
Speaker 1: seem to have Harvard and other universities on the back foot,
Speaker 1: but they are fighting. They are Harvard is fighting back, right,
Speaker 1: They've launched lawsuits, they've launched a I'm sure they're spending
Speaker 1: a lot of money on a big PR campaign. You're
Speaker 1: seeing Steve saying, you're seeing the effects and various you
Speaker 1: know where other students gonna go tapped me to Israeli students.
Speaker 1: What could Trump do next, Lucretia.
Speaker 4: Well, remember that he's gotten Congress to increase the tax
Speaker 4: on endowments or potentially, I mean, he's not doing that
Speaker 4: on his own, but Congress would have never have decided
Speaker 4: to do such a thing had Trump not pushed this
Speaker 4: taxing tuition I mean, it's really all a matter of
Speaker 4: going after going after Harvard from the point of view
Speaker 4: of legitimate exercises of federal power, not all presidential power.
Speaker 4: But you know, again getting Congress to do some of
Speaker 4: these things too. But Trump leading the way means that Congress,
Speaker 4: if Congress goes along with it, that does actually change
Speaker 4: the dynamic a little bit. I think that that Harvard
Speaker 4: will keep fighting. I saw on an article this morning,
Speaker 4: I think it was by Turley, Jonathan Turley, who said
Speaker 4: that this is a This is Trump is Grant and
Speaker 4: Harvard is the Confederacy, and basically Trump is likely even
Speaker 4: though he's likely to lose some just like Grant did.
Speaker 4: This is a war of attrition, and from that point
Speaker 4: of view, Trump has considerably more resources at his disposal
Speaker 4: than Harvard does.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Indeed, I mean, what about what other what are errors
Speaker 1: are in the Trump quiver waiting to be well?
Speaker 2: I think, well, something that he's already doing apparently, but
Speaker 2: I think should be broadened is Trump has said we
Speaker 2: want to put a limit of fifteen percent on overhead
Speaker 2: for federal grants, which seems like reasonable fee to me,
Speaker 2: and so we know some are much higher than that.
Speaker 2: But I think it should be broadened and make an
Speaker 2: explicit war on administrative bloat. And I don't know what
Speaker 2: the legal grounds for that would be. I mean, my
Speaker 2: other thought is you price controls on tuition increases. I
Speaker 2: don't think the president has authority to do that, and
Speaker 2: it would require an Act of Congress. But I still
Speaker 2: think that again, some threats about the absolutely undisplicant and
Speaker 2: profligate spending of the universities ought to be a major target.
Speaker 2: And by the way, there is a tribute to the
Speaker 2: middle class. You know, it used to be that you
Speaker 2: could even you know, private university forty fifty years ago,
Speaker 2: if you worked hard at a summer job, you could
Speaker 2: pretty much pay your full year's tuition and room and board.
Speaker 2: Now it's not even remotely possible for someone who wants
Speaker 2: to do that, even with some financial aid. And that's
Speaker 2: the fault of the universities and the federal government subsidizing
Speaker 2: your student loans and things like that. So I think
Speaker 2: maximum pressure on the university is to cut their straight
Speaker 2: bloat and cut their costs. But Mitch Daniels has proved
Speaker 2: it's not hard to do. You know, Purdue froze their
Speaker 2: tuition what fifteen years ago now and hasn't raised it once.
Speaker 2: It's not hard to do, it's just the other collologists
Speaker 2: won't do it, so make them do it.
Speaker 4: Well, I would never underestimate the amount of money that
Speaker 4: is spent on administrative bloat, not all of which is DEI,
Speaker 4: but much of it is. And I just want to
Speaker 4: tell you that I was meeting with my university CFO.
Speaker 4: And of course, you know, my college has had lots
Speaker 4: of money. The universities now two hundred and seventy million
Speaker 4: dollars in debt, two hundred and seventy million dollars.
Speaker 5: Because they're just the idiots.
Speaker 4: But anyway, so I said, well, because this is a
Speaker 4: few months ago, I said, you know the fact that
Speaker 4: you have to fire all of those DEI pro vice
Speaker 4: provos and assistant provos and assistant deans and this and that.
Speaker 4: I said, I want to save you a lot of money,
Speaker 4: shouldn't it. You know, no, no answer. And then, of course,
Speaker 4: because what's happened except in my college, is that all
Speaker 4: of those all of those people got new jobs that
Speaker 4: are belonging in community oriented instead of they don't have
Speaker 4: DEI because those are the buzzwords that they search for
Speaker 4: on web pages and so on. But you know, they
Speaker 4: didn't get rid of any of those people when they
Speaker 4: could have, And so I don't feel sorry for him.
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 5: You know, it's ridiculous. I don't.
Speaker 1: Okay, So Trump's going to continue you heard it here. First,
Speaker 1: Trump will continue hitting universities in the pocketbook, which is
Speaker 1: where they really really live. So let's move to an
Speaker 1: their pocketbook issue, which is tariffs. So just late yesterday,
Speaker 1: the Court of International Trade. Let me explain a very
Speaker 1: obscure but still federal court that exists to essentially rule
Speaker 1: only on trade issues. So, for example, if you think
Speaker 1: some country is cheating you in their imports and should
Speaker 1: get some kind of extra duty put on their products,
Speaker 1: you go to the Court of a national Trader. You
Speaker 1: think your product's been misclassified and is in the wrong
Speaker 1: tariff schedule, you go to the Court of in National Trade.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why it's even a court. I don't
Speaker 1: know why you need a court for this. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure why it's an Article three court. Why these are
Speaker 1: lifetime federal judicial appointments.
Speaker 2: Wait, John, are they lifetime appointments or are they That's.
Speaker 1: Another weird thing that's another weird thing. These are Article
Speaker 1: three federal judges. You would have thought these people would
Speaker 1: be more like immigration judges or something.
Speaker 2: Well, let me ask a question here, just for information purposes,
Speaker 2: because I mean, I thought under Article three that the
Speaker 2: clause that Congress and create inferior courts, Man, there could
Speaker 2: be courts that weren't, you know, Article three lifetime tenures,
Speaker 2: for example, the court.
Speaker 1: Of Yeah, that's a different power.
Speaker 2: Well is that okay?
Speaker 1: And it's a good conservative, Steve, it's a good conservative.
Speaker 1: Your instinct is right that why are there any of
Speaker 1: these non lifetime court federal courts at all? They seem unconstitutional?
Speaker 2: Well, I think i'm.
Speaker 4: They're generally Article one courts, right, is what they are.
Speaker 1: Generally Article what we call Article one courts, and conservatives
Speaker 1: have long thought these things were unconstitutional.
Speaker 2: Just another quick question is that the Court of Federal Claims,
Speaker 2: which is where you go most of the time, it's
Speaker 2: for contract disbuse with the federal government. If you have
Speaker 2: a contract with the federal government, you take it there.
Speaker 2: But it has been a quarter over the years that
Speaker 2: heard some takings claims back in the eighties that you know,
Speaker 2: under Lauren Smith when he was the chief judge. Is
Speaker 2: that an Article one court or an Article three court?
Speaker 1: Yes, this is the weird thing. If you have a
Speaker 1: case where the government breaks a contract with you or
Speaker 1: takes your property, you go to a non Article three court,
Speaker 1: But if you have stupid trade dispute you go to
Speaker 1: an Article three court. It makes no sense. Okay, John, Before,
Speaker 1: can I just explain the larger constitution. This is a
Speaker 1: really interesting constitutional question that conservatives in general don't like
Speaker 1: what Congress has done, although some like Renquists do. Actually,
Speaker 1: this might be a positivist versus natural law thing now
Speaker 1: they think about it. I never thought of it that way.
Speaker 1: So you could Steve point to the right power. The
Speaker 1: Constitution says Congress can create inferior tribunals. A conservative would say, then,
Speaker 1: I think, well, every time Congress creates one that's a
Speaker 1: federal court and gets the judge gets lifetime protection. Can
Speaker 1: only be repoved through impeachment if they if they don't
Speaker 1: engage in you know, you say, they engage in un
Speaker 1: good behavior and bad behavior.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: But in the late nineteenth century, this is a progressive
Speaker 1: era thing. Congress started creating courts, but they didn't give
Speaker 1: them the protections of Article three. These judges, So today
Speaker 1: the biggest one is immigration courts, but you also mentioned
Speaker 1: one to Steve, the Court of Federal Claims.
Speaker 2: So they're maritime course.
Speaker 1: No, they're not maritime court. There's a thing called maritime jurisdiction.
Speaker 1: But they're not special like they're prize There used to
Speaker 1: be prize courts, right. But so conservatives have long struggled
Speaker 1: with this. They've said, like, how can Congress create judges
Speaker 1: and courts but doesn't give them lifetime tenure like the
Speaker 1: Court of Federal Claims. Those judges have a set term
Speaker 1: of years, and so doesn't that mean those judges can
Speaker 1: be pressured and controlled by Congress and the president. Why
Speaker 1: do they get to be called judges at all? So
Speaker 1: that's one thing. On the other hand, there are people
Speaker 1: like Renkquists who used to say, ah, this is great,
Speaker 1: because otherwise how would we process He said, every social
Speaker 1: security case right, every change in social security benefits is
Speaker 1: a federal right. And he said they'd be impossible to
Speaker 1: have enough federal judges to do that.
Speaker 5: Sorry, so it's a kay.
Speaker 4: No, I wasn't trying to interrupt.
Speaker 5: I'm just trying to understand.
Speaker 4: So the Article one power in Article one, Section eight
Speaker 4: is to constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court. The
Speaker 4: Article three power is the judicial power of the United States.
Speaker 4: The judicial power of the United States shall be in
Speaker 4: vested in one Supreme Court and in such inferior courts
Speaker 4: as the Congress may from time to time ordain and established.
Speaker 4: So I think what you were saying is is that
Speaker 4: you shouldn't consider those two separate powers. That the definition
Speaker 4: of the judicial power is any any court that exercises
Speaker 4: judicial power would come under Article three. And it just
Speaker 4: makes it clear that it's Congress that is the one
Speaker 4: who creates those It says it twice basically, right.
Speaker 1: As I say, Conservatives think about it is legal concerns
Speaker 1: would say, well, it's just like the executive power. Congress
Speaker 1: can create agencies, but once they're agencies, then the President
Speaker 1: controls them when they become executive in nature, and they
Speaker 1: have to run along the same they run in the
Speaker 1: same way, same with the provision Steve mentioned. Congress can
Speaker 1: create courts, but once they're courts, they have to operate
Speaker 1: under Article three. And because of the progressive era, we
Speaker 1: have these bizarre courts, but they don't operate within Article
Speaker 1: three they operate, just however Congress chooses to tell them
Speaker 1: to operate.
Speaker 4: Well, let's go back to your trade court for just
Speaker 4: a minute. Then I'm going to play Devil's advocate here.
Speaker 4: If that's the case, then a your trade court, what's
Speaker 4: it called again? International court?
Speaker 1: What's it called Order of International Trade?
Speaker 5: The cit see ida.
Speaker 4: Then in fact it should be an Article three court.
Speaker 4: And isn't Congress's power over the anything below the Supreme
Speaker 4: Court plenary in the sense that as long as it
Speaker 4: is in fact a so what the judicial power extends
Speaker 4: to an Article three which is in section two, all
Speaker 4: of those different descriptions of the kinds of cases the
Speaker 4: court is allowed to hear, it's your courts are allowed
Speaker 4: to hear. Then then Congress can do pretty much what
Speaker 4: it wants to. It's not necessarily held, for instance, to
Speaker 4: the judicial system created and the Judiciaryict of seventeen eighty
Speaker 4: nine and eighteen oh one, and on and on and on.
Speaker 4: Is that an unfair way of looking at it?
Speaker 1: No, I mean, I think you're about to be hired
Speaker 1: as a clerk on the Court of International Trade. Not
Speaker 1: necessarily a good idea.
Speaker 5: I'm just saying, I'm just kids.
Speaker 1: No. The judges on the Federal Court of a nature
Speaker 1: often teased about this because I know one or two
Speaker 1: of them, and I always say to them, I don't
Speaker 1: understand why you're a court. I agree with you, Lucretia.
Speaker 1: If you're going to be a court, you should have
Speaker 1: lifetime tenure. You should be a federal court. Why do
Speaker 1: we need a court to adjust tariff schedules is beyond me,
Speaker 1: That's what I mean. There's no real federal rights at
Speaker 1: issue here.
Speaker 2: It's not well, we seem to be.
Speaker 1: We seem to be at the point.
Speaker 2: Sorry, we've seing to be at the point where I
Speaker 2: expect any day now the judge Wattner, the People's Court
Speaker 2: is going to hand down a ruling against Trump.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's that's the next point. But then let me
Speaker 4: go one step for last time we talked about this,
Speaker 4: and Steve actually almost cut the whole thing, but we
Speaker 4: didn't really get to finish. If if Congress has plenary
Speaker 4: power over the district courts and the appellate courts, even
Speaker 4: though we have long traditions of them operating a certain
Speaker 4: way and being organized in a certain way, could not
Speaker 4: Congress pass a law completely or redefining a case in
Speaker 4: controversy and parties before the court. In other words, couldn't
Speaker 4: Congress quite easily pass a law forbidding universal injunctions by
Speaker 4: district courts? I mean that is within their power?
Speaker 5: Correct?
Speaker 1: I would think so, But there is a whole court.
Speaker 1: I mean Lucretia's usual asks a very simple sounds like
Speaker 1: a very simple question, but it is not. There's a
Speaker 1: whole course on this question in law school called federal courts,
Speaker 1: because what they actually the harder issue is, suppose Congress
Speaker 1: just said the lower courts can't hear immigration cases. Right,
Speaker 1: We're gonna write, you know, how far could Congress go in?
Speaker 1: And could they do that to the Supreme Court too?
Speaker 1: Could they do it by saying there will be no
Speaker 1: appeals to the Supreme Court right in immigration cases? There's
Speaker 1: literally a whole course about this subject about how far
Speaker 1: can Congress go and its control of the courts. I
Speaker 1: tend to be a congress can like you said, the
Speaker 1: creature has pleundary power of those courts, and so they
Speaker 1: can say you can issue certain kinds of injunctions but
Speaker 1: not others. You can hear certain kinds of cases but
Speaker 1: not others. I would tell you ninety five I think percent.
Speaker 1: I would bet of constitutional law professors believe, however, that
Speaker 1: there is something they call the essential functions thesis, that
Speaker 1: there's some essential function of the federal course that cannot
Speaker 1: be taken way by Congress. Congress can create the court,
Speaker 1: but there's some right, some nub that Congress can't go
Speaker 1: and changing their central function. Now where that comes from
Speaker 1: and what it is is totally seems like, you know whatever,
Speaker 1: I the beholder, go ahead, the creature, then we'll get
Speaker 1: to this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know, I'm sorry, I'm really taking this.
Speaker 1: This is far. Let me tell listeners, this is far
Speaker 1: more interesting than the decision, believe me, But go ahead.
Speaker 4: So the other day there was an article Steve and
Speaker 4: I discussed it briefly before you came on by Mark
Speaker 4: Mark Halprin in the Wall Street Journal, and one of
Speaker 4: the things he said, I wish I had the article
Speaker 4: in front of me. He said something really dumb, which
Speaker 4: was that after you know that, then all these universal injunctions, Yeah,
Speaker 4: maybe they weren't such a great idea.
Speaker 5: The left.
Speaker 4: The left is guilty of ignoring the Constitution. The right
Speaker 4: is guilty of ignoring the Constitution.
Speaker 5: But then he.
Speaker 4: Chastised, I'm not exactly sure whom I guess the right
Speaker 4: in general for talking about impeaching these federal judges who
Speaker 4: were issuing universal injunctions against the Trump administration even though
Speaker 4: the things were popular, etcetera, etcetera. And he made this
Speaker 4: really stupid argument, talking about impeaching and other kinds of
Speaker 4: ways of fighting back against the court instead of just
Speaker 4: upholding the Constitution and gracefully taking the loss. Something along
Speaker 4: those lines. What a stupid thing to say. And it
Speaker 4: reminds me of the discussion you and I had about
Speaker 4: the exceptions clause. You may not want judges to be
Speaker 4: impeached every time they make an unpopular decision, but there's
Speaker 4: nothing in the Constitution that prevents that. It is a
Speaker 4: perfectly legitimate exercise of Congress, the power of Congress to
Speaker 4: impeach and convict a judge. We're not even sure why
Speaker 4: for bad behavior.
Speaker 5: You know, that was the.
Speaker 4: Whole debate way back in the early eighteen hundreds about
Speaker 4: whether you had to impeach a judge for high crimes
Speaker 4: and misdemeanors.
Speaker 5: Or you could just do it because you didn't like
Speaker 5: his rulings.
Speaker 4: And they decided I guess sort of in the favor
Speaker 4: of a more exacting standard, but it's not clear if
Speaker 4: the Constitution requires that. Impeachment seems to be one of
Speaker 4: those very important checks on the court that our founding
Speaker 4: fathers established, along with the exceptions clause, neither of which
Speaker 4: are used to check the court in any way, shape
Speaker 4: or form.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's fair that the idea we
Speaker 1: don't impeach judges because we disagree with the decisions is
Speaker 1: not in the Constitution as much as it's just something
Speaker 1: that we've had since the Jefferson impeachments failed. And you know,
Speaker 1: that's more political norm than you know, claim the Constitution
Speaker 1: prohibits it. And there are people who've said, why doesn't
Speaker 1: bad behavior include the idea of getting something deliberately wrong
Speaker 1: or really wrong or abusing your powers. So there's a
Speaker 1: difference between you know, getting a hard question of law
Speaker 1: right and a judge, you know, seizing legislative power. Well,
Speaker 1: it's executive power, perfectly fair, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: But look, it all goes back to that Wiley John Marshall.
Speaker 2: If he had found and and issued a rid of
Speaker 2: man damus for Jefferson to deliver the commission that will
Speaker 2: be in myberry. Maybe he would have been impeached and
Speaker 2: the president wouldn't have been respect for judicial complete juditional independence.
Speaker 2: But maybe we'd be impeaching judges left and right since.
Speaker 4: The Remember Marshall was so concerned about the possibility of
Speaker 4: setting the precedent of using impeachment to get rid of
Speaker 4: judges for political reasons that he was ready to give
Speaker 4: up entirely the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.
Speaker 2: I don't remember that part, but I do know our
Speaker 2: late friend Michael Yulman, our late friend Michael Uman Yulman
Speaker 2: used to say, you know, marshall worship is out of
Speaker 2: hand or there's a contrary case to be made about him,
Speaker 2: and he liked to do that sort of thing. But
Speaker 2: I but, but, John, I mean.
Speaker 1: I think it's more question of what's good government. And
Speaker 1: I think it is good that we don't impeach judges
Speaker 1: for bad decisions. Just it's good. Then the Federal I
Speaker 1: just think it's good the Federal Reserve Board is independent
Speaker 1: of political control, even though I don't think constitutionally it is.
Speaker 1: It's a yeah, but away, let me let's get to
Speaker 1: the substant decision.
Speaker 4: We get interesting.
Speaker 1: Issue, right, Yeah, you know, I am the og Neo
Speaker 1: kan as you said, and I was at the Neo
Speaker 1: con conclave. As Steve said, it's the only voting member left.
Speaker 2: I think they're at the conclave.
Speaker 1: So but let's let me let's let me describe the
Speaker 1: substance of the decision and get your thoughts because if
Speaker 1: you were I actually have to say, if you were
Speaker 1: a supporter of Trump, this is not such a bad
Speaker 1: decision because it's so badly done that his chances on
Speaker 1: appeal actually really could I'm very surprised by how, you know,
Speaker 1: weak this decision is. So the decision, says uh, And
Speaker 1: it goes back to Nixon, Steve's favorite president. For a
Speaker 1: law that will not be named, but basically sad there
Speaker 1: was a law called the Trading with the Enemy Act
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventeen, classic Woodrow Wilson progressive law. It said
Speaker 1: basically that the president can impose almost any economic sanction
Speaker 1: or any economic measure in the event of war national emergency.
Speaker 2: And what note that was the law years go ahead, Well,
Speaker 2: Roosevelt from Roosevelt invoked that law to do the bank
Speaker 2: holiday in nineteen thirty three.
Speaker 1: What yes, so, yeah, presidents started saying national emergency. I
Speaker 1: can yes, go off the gold standard. See this was well,
Speaker 1: I was heavily abused by FDR when he took office.
Speaker 1: And so Nixon basically tried to impose tariffs under this
Speaker 1: law called the TUIA. It's called and so after and
Speaker 1: this is one of the Watergate reforms, the Congress passed
Speaker 1: the IEPA law, and that's the law it's issued today,
Speaker 1: the International Economic Emergency Powers Act AIPA of nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 1: Oh you know, that was going to be my sixth
Speaker 1: law of jurisprudence that we'd get to is that any
Speaker 1: law passed in the nineteen seventies is a bad laws.
Speaker 1: Just like yah, yeah, set it's too easy, Yeah, too easy,
Speaker 1: too easy. But you know, so this court held. So
Speaker 1: President Trump said, triggered, he said there's a national emergency
Speaker 1: because of these. He actually issued two that irrelevant. One
Speaker 1: was the trafficking infentanyl and drugs and drug cartels and
Speaker 1: illegal aliens across our northern and southern borders through Canada, Mexico,
Speaker 1: and because of China. So that's one set of tariffs
Speaker 1: and then another set and those parts were just named
Speaker 1: a Canada Mexico and China. Then there was another set
Speaker 1: of tariffs, which the court calls worldwide tariffs, where right
Speaker 1: Trump triggered a national emergency. Said it was because of
Speaker 1: the trade deficit. And if you remember, put tariffs on
Speaker 1: every country in the world, and you know, with different variations.
Speaker 1: So the court yesterday struck them both down and said,
Speaker 1: and here's the weird logic of it. It said, Uh,
Speaker 1: the ip A law could not possibly give Trump or
Speaker 1: any president this power, because it did, it would be
Speaker 1: too broad a power. And if it's this broad of power,
Speaker 1: we don't think Congress would have done that. We don't
Speaker 1: think even though the law says the president is allowed
Speaker 1: to regulate any international transaction with a country that he
Speaker 1: specifies an event of an international emergency that he declares,
Speaker 1: so this is this is so that's what. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then the second thing, and it gets even worse. So
Speaker 1: the law says that the president's allowed to issue these
Speaker 1: kinds of orders in order to deal with an international emergency.
Speaker 1: The court says, tariffs don't deal with the trade deficit.
Speaker 1: And I'm sorry, let me freeze that. Tariffs don't deal
Speaker 1: with the trafficking issues. Tariffs aren't going to reduce fentanyl.
Speaker 1: Tariffs aren't going to reduce the movement by drug cartels
Speaker 1: and terrorist groups across our borders. So the court actually
Speaker 1: said deals with an international emergency is not met here.
Speaker 1: This is the most bit. I actually think this is
Speaker 1: such a weak opinion when you when you hear the
Speaker 1: actual logic of the court. And so that's another reason
Speaker 1: I was teasing when lucushe is saying, why are you
Speaker 1: saying these are bof of course, I was like, here's
Speaker 1: a good example. These are judges who spend all their
Speaker 1: dial time saying is this important? All like an educational product?
Speaker 1: Are they under the rife tariff schedules? They can't deal
Speaker 1: with these questions of fundamental importance?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: This is a fundamental question of And Steve mentioned this
Speaker 1: when we were talking about this case earlier. Steve said,
Speaker 1: is this a non delegation doctrine case?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Is this like Scheckter and the sick Chicken case? It is,
Speaker 1: but this court totally missed it, and they totally there's
Speaker 1: and one last thing I'll shut up is the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court is set in a case called Curtis right that
Speaker 1: the non delegation doctrine does not apply in foreign affairs.
Speaker 1: This case is not mentioned in the decision at all.
Speaker 1: So that's why when I was starting this whole out
Speaker 1: thing out the Crucia, I was like, why is this
Speaker 1: thing a court? Who are these people who are on
Speaker 1: this court? Why do we have judges, you know, looking
Speaker 1: at dolls and tariff schedules, hearing the most important constitutional
Speaker 1: questions of the day. Anyway, So Steve, why don't you
Speaker 1: go ahead? Since you, I think are going to be
Speaker 1: under AEPA sanctions soon and not allowed back into the country.
Speaker 1: But we're obviously an agent for some Norwegian Scandinavian power
Speaker 1: crossing our borders at will.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to illegally import puffins. You know you
Speaker 2: can actually gets here and.
Speaker 1: Actually, Steve, since you're there, Steve, since you're there, I
Speaker 1: got I got a trivic question. I'm curious what is
Speaker 1: Iceland's number one export to the United States?
Speaker 2: I have no idea. Do you know what it is?
Speaker 1: Really? No, you don't know. No, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I'll find out in a second.
Speaker 5: Okase, really cool?
Speaker 2: Probably fish, I don't know it's the.
Speaker 1: Export here, You're gonna laugh. The top export is aluminum.
Speaker 2: Oh that that does not surprise me.
Speaker 1: Number two, Number two, Number two, you're right, fish file
Speaker 1: at Yeah, and then number three this one. I really
Speaker 1: don't get this orthopedic appliances.
Speaker 2: I don't get that either. Uh. The aluminum, so you know,
Speaker 2: they have tons of electricity here from geothermal and hydro.
Speaker 2: It's very cheap. And because aluminum needs so much electricity
Speaker 2: to smelt, this is one of the dominant producers. And
Speaker 2: I've drove driven by a couple of enormous aluminum factories,
Speaker 2: so that that that's boring stuff.
Speaker 1: Look my first and I just one one one cemiment.
Speaker 1: Last year fish filets did overtake aluminum. So last year
Speaker 1: fish filets.
Speaker 5: Were which kind of fish they like?
Speaker 2: Atlantic char is very popular here.
Speaker 1: I find I find fish and effeminate food to eat,
Speaker 1: so I don't eat it.
Speaker 4: So I don't distinguish between the kinds of fish.
Speaker 5: John, So, did you knowallops?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean yeah, the McDonald's fish fillet is not
Speaker 1: so bad.
Speaker 2: Well, see, while we're digressing, John, Uh, there are no
Speaker 2: McDonald's in Iceland. What I don't we invade.
Speaker 1: We're ready to invade, because we don't invade countries that
Speaker 1: have McDonald's.
Speaker 5: Right, and there's there's a rule number six.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's the there are no mosquitos here either,
Speaker 2: which I think is also kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: So uh okay, So Steve, what do you think you
Speaker 1: think you don't have to get into these decisions if
Speaker 1: you don't want to. What do you think about the
Speaker 1: tariff fish altogether? Too?
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, I mean, I don't care for tariffs,
Speaker 2: although I'm, again like other people, willing to give Trump
Speaker 2: some leeway on this because it's just interesting.
Speaker 4: Because he's winning on it.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that I think there's a chance that
Speaker 2: we will never I won't get off on this general
Speaker 2: field theory I have these days. But my thought is,
Speaker 2: ironically this make it may make it more likely that
Speaker 2: Trump's tariff powers survive, because this is such a crazy
Speaker 2: opinion from this obscure court. Because I think, if you know,
Speaker 2: our friend fil Hamburger's group has brought a suit through
Speaker 2: regular federal court saying this is an improper delegation of power.
Speaker 2: And I think if a a federal court or even
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court said yeah, Congress can't delegate those kind
Speaker 2: of broad powers of regulating foreign commerce, and I first
Speaker 2: thought of immediately without getting into you know, the filings
Speaker 2: and all the rest of that, or that opinion that
Speaker 2: this is Curtis right and Scheckter all over again. And
Speaker 2: I think it is too broad a power for a
Speaker 2: president to have if we want massive tariffs or some
Speaker 2: sort of schedule to try and shake things up. I
Speaker 2: do think, you know, Congress, that's an Article one, section
Speaker 2: eight power. It can't be handed to the president. And
Speaker 2: I think, you know, Congress should work harder on this,
Speaker 2: and I think they they don't don't like it to
Speaker 2: but I think now if it gets to a federal
Speaker 2: district court, they're gonna say no, that power's fine, and
Speaker 2: Trump wins, and I think they've just set themselves up
Speaker 2: for a real thumping, which I like.
Speaker 4: So I want to go back to something John said
Speaker 4: about the court deciding that this was not an appropriate
Speaker 4: exercise of executive power. For Trump to be not a delegation,
Speaker 4: but for Trump to be deciding that terrorists were the
Speaker 4: way to handle fentanyl and the other the other bad
Speaker 4: things that happened when you have an unlimited immigration You
Speaker 4: made a comment, So I was telling Steve before he
Speaker 4: came on. I've been listening to some of our old
Speaker 4: podcasts I'm actually listening for something specific, but you in
Speaker 4: December tenth, I believe it was. You came on back
Speaker 4: in the day before it was the genuine three whiskey
Speaker 4: happy hour, and one of the arguments you made was
Speaker 4: a very good one, was that there are lots of
Speaker 4: things that the court, in this case, the Supreme Court
Speaker 4: decides that they just simply do not have the expertise
Speaker 4: to be deciding, and that generally speaking political issues, that's
Speaker 4: not their round. They shouldn't be deciding this. And this
Speaker 4: seems to me very much along the same lines as
Speaker 4: what does the Trade Court, the Trade Court know about
Speaker 4: the dangers of fentanel crossing the border due to illegal immigration,
Speaker 4: and whether or not that is something that Trump has
Speaker 4: the judgment to be able to say, yeah, I consider
Speaker 4: this an emergency. That would seem to me to be
Speaker 4: also an area of criticism.
Speaker 5: For the court.
Speaker 4: Then that's not their area of expertise.
Speaker 5: Right Am? I making any sense?
Speaker 4: John?
Speaker 1: No? I think that's the major reason why courts have
Speaker 1: been so reluctant to ever interfere in foreign affairs questions,
Speaker 1: And again you see very little respect for that in
Speaker 1: this judicial decision. How is the court supposed to know
Speaker 1: what's a threat to national security and what's not. How
Speaker 1: do they get well, but even the second question is
Speaker 1: how does a court know? This is what the court
Speaker 1: really hung its it's decision on how does the court
Speaker 1: know what we'll deal with quote unquote the national security problem?
Speaker 1: Is it tariff's I mean, does a court say, no,
Speaker 1: you have to send people to the border with guns?
Speaker 1: That would mean when we would believe you. So that's
Speaker 1: the other question is how does a court know not
Speaker 1: just what's the threat, but the proper way to deal
Speaker 1: with it. Let's go ahead, see start.
Speaker 2: Well, look, I mean, you know Alexander Hamilton and Marshall
Speaker 2: would Bill snort at this opinion for just that reason.
Speaker 2: I mean, what's the Hamilton's great lines in the Federalists
Speaker 2: and elsewhere about. You know, when you have a legitimate end,
Speaker 2: then the means follow to it. And so to say, well,
Speaker 2: you know you can declare that fentanyls a national emergency
Speaker 2: seems to me a court can't say no, it's not,
Speaker 2: but they said instead was. But tariffs aren't the effective
Speaker 2: means for dealing with that. That is not a decision
Speaker 2: under the purview of a court. If we're going to
Speaker 2: say the president can determine a national emergency, then I
Speaker 2: think any means available, a lawful means to the president,
Speaker 2: no court can get in the way of It's the
Speaker 2: separate question, I think is whether tariffs as an economic
Speaker 2: policy or as a regulation of commercial policy, can be
Speaker 2: delegated to the president. And I'm not sure I think
Speaker 2: about that. I mean, Curtis Right and Scheckter are kind
Speaker 2: of separate questions. They both involve commerce. Curtis Right for
Speaker 2: listeners who don't know it, and I always have to
Speaker 2: refresh my memory. Involved an embargo that Congress enacted but
Speaker 2: delegated discretion to the president about how to enforce an
Speaker 2: arms embargo against Uruguay or somebody who's having a war,
Speaker 2: and Curtis Right sued saying Congress can't delegate that kind
Speaker 2: of commercial regulatory power to president. The court said, oh,
Speaker 2: yes you can, because the president is, that famous phrase,
Speaker 2: the sole organ of foreign policy. So let's take it
Speaker 2: back and restate it. If tariffs are a matter of
Speaker 2: foreign policy, then I think Trump's on very solid ground.
Speaker 2: If it's a matter of economic policy and purely trade policy,
Speaker 2: I think less so. But I think this decision as
Speaker 2: bad as this has made it likely that Trump's going
Speaker 2: to win the legal battle over this ago. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure I would have said that.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you both before we turn to our
Speaker 1: last subject, which is a special treat for listeners, which
Speaker 1: is going to theory at all? Oh, we ran out
Speaker 1: of time. I ask you both. Is this a winning
Speaker 1: is this still? Does this still continue? I mean continue
Speaker 1: might be the wrong word. Is this a winning issue
Speaker 1: for Trump? This whole tariff war? Because one thing people
Speaker 1: uh so already the stories are appearing saying, oh this
Speaker 1: actually this decision gives Trump a back door out of
Speaker 1: a losing political battle. Because I think one thing that
Speaker 1: decision would say, and I actually I think people could
Speaker 1: not complain about this from either side, is if you said,
Speaker 1: at the very least, I allows to allows you to
Speaker 1: target a single country, and so what if this all
Speaker 1: turns into a tariff war with China? Right? And that?
Speaker 1: And that's really something you can do in Darie. But
Speaker 1: Trump could say, Okay, well, I'm just going to keep
Speaker 1: tariffs on China high, and keep them high on the
Speaker 1: European Union, and I have to drop them on everybody else,
Speaker 1: you know, Senegal and the Puffins in Iceland or whatever.
Speaker 1: Find theo's aren't that important?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: Hasn't that been the point all along? Is if there
Speaker 4: is a grand strategy behind this, it's not necessarily to
Speaker 4: punish every ally and sub ally or whatever you want
Speaker 4: to call it across the world, but actually to get
Speaker 4: everybody on the same page regarding China. And you know,
Speaker 4: I mean, I actually think that Trump has been doing
Speaker 4: pretty well in this whole tariff thing lately, that they're
Speaker 4: coming closer and closer. So the stock market fell drastically
Speaker 4: on Liberation excuse me, Liberation Day, and then every time Trump,
Speaker 4: even somebody from the Trump administration even talks to a
Speaker 4: European ally or something like that about easing the tariffs,
Speaker 4: the stock market goes crazy. So you know, it's I
Speaker 4: don't see Trump ever having lost anything on this whole
Speaker 4: tariff matter. I think he's going to come out on
Speaker 4: top regardless. But I think his goal is China.
Speaker 2: I think it's high risk but high reward. Let's sort
Speaker 2: of step back a man. And by the way, I
Speaker 2: think there's a parallel here with our first topic about
Speaker 2: Harvard trying to play nice on trade for what the
Speaker 2: last forty to fifty years hasn't worked very well. We
Speaker 2: try to play nice and we make very little progress
Speaker 2: on it. And so Trump is doing to the world
Speaker 2: trading system what he's doing to Harvard a two by
Speaker 2: four across the head. Now, I say it's high risk,
Speaker 2: and it's creating a lot of volatility. Volatility is usually bad.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, here again, I'm going to go
Speaker 2: back to one of my grand historical analogies just to
Speaker 2: annoy Lucretia. You know, if you go back to Roosevelt
Speaker 2: the New Deal, a lot of his measures are struck down.
Speaker 2: We've already mentioned the Checkter case with a National Recovery
Speaker 2: Act and other cases like that, and his policies were inconsistent, incoherent, unstable, unsound,
Speaker 2: counterproductive by the way, right, I mean, I think the
Speaker 2: increasing opinion of economic historians that most of the New
Speaker 2: Deal lengthened the depression. On the other hand, what was
Speaker 2: the result of that, The New Deal Coalition was more
Speaker 2: popular than ever and was cemented in place for years.
Speaker 2: That's where I'm sitting here, thinking that, you know, Trump
Speaker 2: may be onto something here. It may be a roller
Speaker 2: coaster ride, but at the end of all this, I
Speaker 2: think he may succeed in reshaping the political economy of
Speaker 2: our own country in the world. China's just one part
Speaker 2: of that, I think, Lucretia, I think it's a I
Speaker 2: think there's a broader game of foot here that's actually
Speaker 2: more coherent, although unorthodox and unpredictable. And by the way,
Speaker 2: that's why I also think to put a political point
Speaker 2: that Republicans may not pay a price in the elections
Speaker 2: next year, just as Roosevelt in nineteen thirty four, the
Speaker 2: Democrats had big gains in the off year election, one
Speaker 2: of the rare times that's ever happened, and that's because
Speaker 2: people said, well, we don't know what's going on, but
Speaker 2: there's something different here, and we kind of like the
Speaker 2: looks of things and that vibe, a vibe shift. I
Speaker 2: love the way we sail that right. More can we
Speaker 2: said about all that? But we're we're getting close to
Speaker 2: the end of our time.
Speaker 1: I think, yes, I listen, loyal listeners, if you made
Speaker 1: it to the end, I'm sorry. Our actual original game plans,
Speaker 1: we were going to spend half the episode talking about
Speaker 1: Steve and Lucretia's view that there's no such thing as
Speaker 1: political theory, which I would love to talk about. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about next episode or one of
Speaker 1: our summer episodes, but for now we have actually hit
Speaker 1: an hour just talking about beating up on Harvard and
Speaker 1: beating up on China. I mean, we could spend hours
Speaker 1: at that, or or testing Steve's knowledge of exports to
Speaker 1: the United States from other obscure, tiny, you know, North
Speaker 1: Atlantic countries.
Speaker 4: We didn't even talk about how the Democratic Party is
Speaker 4: going to woo you masculine men, you too, I know, yes,
Speaker 4: by this incredibly big fat Mexican lesbian, bisexual, asexual woman
Speaker 4: is leading the charge.
Speaker 5: She knows men.
Speaker 2: It's worse than that, John, I can't believe I missed
Speaker 2: the story. Save it for next week.
Speaker 5: We'll save it.
Speaker 4: But when it does, allow me to make a few
Speaker 4: Babylon be headlines.
Speaker 1: Yes, go ahead, the creature Babylon b headlines.
Speaker 4: So California unveil's massive new escape room called California.
Speaker 5: You gotta like that one. We didn't talk about this either.
Speaker 4: Biden Macrone team up to form support group for battered
Speaker 4: and abused world leaders didn't.
Speaker 1: I did not get that until I looked up what
Speaker 1: I was talking about and I saw that video. Of
Speaker 1: his wife punching him in the face. That was unbelievable.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, who knows that whole relationship, That whole
Speaker 4: thing is just as weird as it comes. I'm sorry,
Speaker 4: she's what twenty five years older.
Speaker 2: Than he is.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's that sposed to have a
Speaker 1: good right jab Yeah, yeah, this.
Speaker 5: One's for you.
Speaker 4: John, South African president says skulls of murdered white farmers
Speaker 4: just Halloween decorations.
Speaker 1: The Christian I have been having an exchange the South
Speaker 1: African ambush. We should post it maybe, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's been fun.
Speaker 4: If we got a little more serious about it, it
Speaker 4: might be fun. Okay, I almost done. American students unsure
Speaker 4: who to cheat off of after Trump revokes Chinese student visas.
Speaker 2: I love that's pretty good.
Speaker 4: I thought you wouldn't so I could use that since
Speaker 4: I brought it up. It's a picture of Pete Booty
Speaker 4: whatever his name is, uh with a beard, and it
Speaker 4: says DEM's unveiled plan to win back men by having
Speaker 4: gay guy grow a beard. Finally, how how Swarming House
Speaker 4: because Steve loves these how Swarming Party kicks off with
Speaker 4: land acknowledgement for the Johnson's who had lived there since
Speaker 4: twenty nineteen. Oh yeah, you have to think that one through. Sorry, Okay,
Speaker 4: I'm done.
Speaker 1: Great, Well, let me close the show with always Drink
Speaker 1: your Whiskey, Meat and Steve, what is the latest Ai
Speaker 1: hallucinogenic home Haikou?
Speaker 2: Well? I asked Ai first because of where I am
Speaker 2: for some Norse epic poetry versions, and boy did I
Speaker 2: get some great ones. So here's just one stanza of
Speaker 2: what it's going to be weeks of great material, and
Speaker 2: it goes as follows, harken ye hall dwellers, to horns
Speaker 2: filled with fire, as I sing of three warriors, bold
Speaker 2: in desire, not for blood, not for blade, nor for
Speaker 2: Odin's dread mte, but for whiskey and laughter and podcasting.
Speaker 3: Right, that was pretty that.
Speaker 2: Ricochet join the conversation