The court rulings on Trump's tariffs.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today’s read: 13 minutes.

Thank you.

Of all the feedback I got to Friday’s piece on leaving Zionism (or Zionism leaving me), it was a text message from a media executive that stood out most: “Comments are admirably measured so far — started a useful dialogue about a hard thing to discuss. That must feel good.” This, to me, is a testament to the Tangle community, and the space we’ve created together to tackle even the most difficult of topics. So first, thank you to (basically) everyone for engaging in thoughtful, respectful ways, even in disagreement.

Speaking of feedback and conversation, one of the most consistent requests we got on Friday’s piece was to drop the paywall so it could be read and shared more widely. We’ve now done that, so anyone can go read the piece here. I’m still thinking about how to process and respond to the many, many thought-provoking comments, but rest assured we’ll do a follow up — either by running a reader feedback edition, publishing a response essay to my piece, or addressing the feedback on the Tangle podcast. So stay tuned — and thank you all again for reading and engaging.

Quick hits.

1. Eight people were injured after an attack in Boulder, Colorado, against members of a Jewish community group advocating for the release of hostages in Gaza. Police arrested a suspect, who is accused of using a makeshift flamethrower and was heard screaming “Free Palestine,” according to the FBI. (The attack)
2. Ukraine carried out a series of drone strikes on Russian warplanes in an operation that reportedly took 18 months to execute. Ukraine claims it struck 34% of Russia’s strategic bombers, though the extent of the damage has not been confirmed. (The operation) Separately, Russian and Ukrainian officials held a second round of direct peace talks in Istanbul on Monday. The talks ended after just one hour. (The talks)
3. President Donald Trump announced he would increase tariffs on steel imports from 25% to 50%. (The announcement)
4. At least 31 people were killed and 170 wounded in a shooting near a food distribution site in southern Gaza. While some witnesses claimed that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers opened fire on the gathering, the IDF denied these claims. (The shooting)
5. The Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration can terminate the protected status of approximately 500,000 Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan immigrants while a legal challenge to the cancelations plays out. (The ruling)

Today’s topic.

The tariff rulings. On Wednesday, the United States Court of International Trade (CIT) blocked President Donald Trump’s global tariffs from enforcement, ruling that the president lacked the authority to impose the duties unilaterally. However, the Trump administration appealed the decision to a federal appeals court, and on Thursday that court paused the CIT decision while it considers its ruling. The CIT’s summary judgment was issued on two separate cases and is the first major legal challenge to President Trump’s tariffs, which he announced on April 2. 

Back up: The CIT is a specialized federal court that considers disputes over customs duties and trade restrictions. In April, the Liberty Justice Center filed a challenge to the tariffs on behalf of five small businesses that import goods from countries targeted by the duties. The suit argues that President Trump improperly invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose the tariffs, as “the Administration’s justification — a trade deficit in goods — is neither an emergency nor an unusual or extraordinary threat.” Additionally, a group of 12 state attorneys general — led by Oregon — filed a separate challenge to the tariffs; the Court of International Trade addressed both cases in a summary judgment. 

“Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariff Orders exceed any authority granted to the President by IEEPA to regulate importation by means of tariffs. The Trafficking Tariffs fail because they do not deal with the threats set forth in those orders… The challenged Tariff Orders will be vacated and their operation permanently enjoined,” the CIT panel wrote. In addition to pausing Trump’s tariffs, the judges also blocked the administration from modifying them in the future. 

In its Thursday ruling, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit granted the administration’s request for a stay on the tariff block and gave the plaintiffs until June 5 to respond. Separately, on Thursday, a federal judge blocked the government from collecting tariffs on a pair of Illinois toy importers while the case is litigated. The order applies only to the two companies challenging the tariffs.

White House officials suggested the administration will find alternative ways to impose the tariffs if the appeals court — or the Supreme Court — upholds the CIT ruling. “Even if we lose, we will do it another way,” trade advisor Peter Navarro said on Thursday. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also suggested that the president was not planning to extend his 90-day pause on some tariffs, which are slated to expire in July. 

Today, we’ll explore the tariff rulings, with views from the left and right. Then, my take.

What the left is saying.

• The left praises the CIT’s ruling, and many say Congress should also seek to rein in Trump’s tariff power.
• Some suggest the administration still has ways to impose tariffs if the court rules against them. 
• Others push back on the notion that the CIT overstepped in its decision. 

The Guardian editorial board wrote “the courts have drawn a line. So must Congress.”

“If one thing is more challenging to the rule of law than a genuine emergency, it is the invention of a phoney one. Since returning to the White House in January, President Donald Trump has upended global trade and international relations, wiping billions off the stock market in the process, by imposing tariffs that he claims are a necessary response to an emergency. Yet that emergency does not really exist, except in the manner that Mr Trump himself has created it,” the board said. “Congress, which normally has the responsibility to decide US trade policy, was thus wholly ignored. Statutory consultative arrangements, traditionally an essential preliminary, went out of the window too.”

“The good news is that the president’s plans to impose tariffs on almost every country on the planet will now be subjected to something approaching the legal and constitutional scrutiny that they should have had in the first place. The rule of law, thankfully, has struck back, at least for now,” the board wrote. “The bad news is that Congress still shows no sign of reining Mr Trump in, as it should. Ironically, the IEEPA was originally a Jimmy Carter-era legislative attempt to boost congressional oversight of presidential emergency powers. Under Mr Trump, that role has been trashed.”

In The Washington Post, Gary Winslett said “Trump’s trade war isn’t over yet.”

“The court noted that Trump’s imposition of these tariffs actually ‘responds to an imbalance in trade,’ and therefore they fall under the narrower balance-of-payments authorities outlined in Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. This is bureaucratic legalese for saying Trump was using emergency powers to address routine trade deficits, which are what Section 122 was designed to handle,” Winslett wrote. “Under the IEEPA, Trump could wake up on a random Tuesday, declare a trade emergency for some random reason and impose 50 percent tariffs that day. This ruling says that behavior was always outside the bounds of the law.”

“The Trump administration has three options from here: defy the court, pivot or take the gift. Trump could simply ignore the ruling, which top aide Stephen Miller called ‘a judicial coup,’ and continue collecting tariffs, daring someone to stop him… The Trump administration’s second option is still bad from a trade policy perspective but does at least avoid the constitutional crisis of the first: pivot to Congress, SCOTUS and Section 232/122,” Winslett said. “Finally, there’s a third option that might appeal to Trump’s political instincts: embrace victimhood while privately celebrating the outcome.”

In The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf argued “striking down Trump’s tariffs isn’t a judicial coup.”

“Administration officials quickly challenged the ruling’s legitimacy. ‘It is not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency,’ White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement… But their objections are dubious, not because the judiciary never overreaches, but because at least three features of this dispute make the argument for judicial overreach here especially weak,” Friedersdorf wrote. “First, the Constitution is clear: Article I delegates the tariff power to Congress, and Article II fails to vest that power in the presidency. So the Trump administration begins from a weak position.”

“Second, the plaintiffs in this particular lawsuit include the states of Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, and Vermont––all democratically accountable entities in a federal system where states are meant to act as a check on unlawful exercises of federal power,” Friedersdorf said. “Third, when Congress created the Court of International Trade and later defined its jurisdiction, its precise intent was to create an arm of the judiciary that would exercise authority over trade disputes… That [the administration] seeks to delegitimize even this ruling suggests contempt for any check on the power of the presidency, not principled opposition to judicial overreach.”

What the right is saying.

• The right is mixed on the CIT’s ruling, with many arguing the court advanced a flawed understanding of the IEEPA. 
• Some praise the decision as a well reasoned explanation of why Trump overstepped his authority.
• Others say Congress should move to clarify the president’s tariff power.

In The Wall Street Journal, George E. Bogden wrote about “where the trade court’s tariff decision went wrong.”

“Mr. Trump’s policy of using reciprocal tariffs to advance U.S. interests isn’t a new or radical idea, and it’s a necessary one. The U.S. Court of International Trade was wrong to rule on Wednesday that the administration had exceeded its authority in imposing these tariffs,” Bogden said. “The ruling overlooked history, statute, precedent and national interest. It was a misreading of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, and a misinterpretation of America’s bipartisan tradition of using trade policy to defend national economic resilience.”

“The trade court’s reading of IEEPA contradicts the statute’s text and history. IEEPA’s independent emergency authority allows the president to regulate, prevent or prohibit the importation of property in which foreign countries or nationals have an interest. The language mirrors that of the earlier Trading with the Enemy Act, which President Richard Nixon used to impose a universal 10% tariff in 1971,” Bogden wrote. “Further, the court errs in implicitly inviting itself to review the sufficiency of the president’s emergency declaration. IEEPA requires only that the president declare a national emergency ‘to deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat’ arising outside the U.S., which is exactly what the executive order does.”

In The Atlantic, Ilya Somin called the CIT’s ruling “a victory for separation of powers.”

“The IEEPA doesn’t even mention tariffs as one of the emergency powers it grants the president. No previous president ever used it to impose them. In addition, the law can be invoked only to address a ‘national emergency’ that amounts to an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat’ to America’s economy or national security. The administration claimed that the president has unlimited discretion to decide what qualifies as an ‘emergency’ and an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat,’” Somin said. “Thus, the Liberation Day tariffs were supposedly justified by the existence of trade deficits with various countries, even though such deficits have persisted for decades.”

“The court ruling also cites the ‘major-questions doctrine,’ which requires Congress to ‘speak clearly’ when authorizing the executive to make ‘decisions of vast economic and political significance.’ According to the major-questions doctrine, if the law isn’t clear, courts must reject the executive’s assertions of power. If Trump’s sweeping use of the IEEPA is not a major question, nothing is,” Somin wrote. “The legal fight over the IEEPA tariffs will continue. But these decisions make me guardedly optimistic… Americans across the political spectrum have an interest in preventing the president from wielding monarchical powers, undermining the Constitution, and starting ruinous trade wars.”

In The New York Post, Jonathan Turley said “Trump needs Congress to save his tariffs, and his trade strategy.”

“Rejecting Trump’s authority under IEEPA does not mean he lacks all authority for tariffs. The administration is correct in arguing that Congress has repeatedly deferred to presidents on tariffs, granting them sweeping authority. For example, the ruling does not affect Trump’s ‘sector tariffs’ under the Trade Expansion Act, which impose 25% levies on steel, aluminum, and auto imports,” Turley wrote. “Likewise, the court acknowledged that Trump has the authority under Section 122 of the Trade Act to impose tariffs of up to 15% for 150 days to address ‘fundamental international payment problems,’ including trade deficits.”

“But Congress may have to act if it wants to allow the Trump administration to continue to use tariffs as a trade strategy. A court just removed the stick Trump used to force other nations to the negotiating table,” Turley said. “Absent congressional action, it may even be possible for companies to seek reimbursement for past payments under the Trump tariffs. Both the suspension of tariffs and the risk of reimbursement could exacerbate the current deficit… Congress will need to demonstrate that it is nimble enough to operate effectively in this fast-paced market. It will also have to decide whether it wants to give Trump time to close his deals.”

My take.

Reminder: “My take” is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• In retrospect, the constitutional issues with Trump’s tariffs are obvious.
• Trump’s second term has been plagued by big actions and poor execution.
• The tariffs will continue to face pushback in and out of court, but the “Liberation Day” tariffs now appear doomed.

I have to say I am a little embarrassed. 

In retrospect, looking back on our tariff coverage, I should have centered the constitutional issues with tariffs a lot more. I mentioned this on our Sunday podcast, but Bloomberg’s Matt Levine summed it up perfectly: 

The legal problem with President Donald Trump’s tariffs is that the United States has a Constitution, and the Constitution says that Congress has the power to impose tariffs and the president doesn’t.

And, well, yeah. That’s right. For all the time we dedicated to explaining and predicting the on-again-off-again chaos of tariffs — how global levies would impact inflation, what reciprocal tariffs even meant, the way our relationship with Canada was changing — we never wrote in plain terms “this is illegal and will probably be struck down by the courts.”

That outcome seems obvious in retrospect, but for now it’s still a narrow and temporary resolution; Trump has options. Most obviously, he can continue his trade war while the appeals court hears these cases and the CIT’s order is on pause. And although this summary judgment does undermine his negotiating position internationally, the Trump administration could still pursue new justifications for imposing tariffs, like those found in Section 232 or 301 of the 1962 and 1974 Trade Acts, respectively. He could also ask Congress to authorize tariffs — though the fact the administration hasn’t even tried is a strong signal that not enough Republican senators would want to put their names on a new tax hike.

Before trying any of those options, however, the Trump administration will probably fight this case out, and I think one way or another it will head to the Supreme Court. Once there, I think Trump is very likely to lose, because, again, Congress gets to impose tariffs, the president doesn’t, and Trump can’t just invoke an “emergency” to do whatever he wants. Remember, Trump justified the tariffs by claiming that our trade deficits — the sum total of pretty much every trade deal we have — amount to a national emergency. These deficits reflect decades of intentional trade policy that, as a country, we have sought out and made the norm, including Trump himself in his first term. Now, Trump will have to prove this is an “unusual and extraordinary threat,” which seems obviously untrue. Farcically so.

It is worth pausing here to contextualize a few aspects of this case. First, this unanimous ruling came from a three-judge panel of Reagan, Obama and Trump appointees, so it’s hard to credibly accuse them of liberal bias. Instead, the ruling provides a reminder that Trump is breaking the law with his attempts to exercise never-before-seen levels of executive power. Conservatives should be happy about this in the long term, since any authority granted to the president here would also be granted to future Democrats. As the Wall Street Journal editorial board put it, “This means a future Democratic President can’t declare a climate emergency and wield tariffs to punish countries for CO2 emissions. Conservatives ought to cheer this restraint on one-man rule.”

Second, the Trump administration continues to lose in court. Judicial pushback to Trump has been bipartisan: his administration has lost in 72% of rulings issued by Republican-appointed judges and 80% of rulings by Democrat-appointed judges. In May alone, federal district courts ruled against the Trump administration in 26 of 27 cases — a 96% loss rate. The law firms that fought back against Trump’s targeted executive actions rather than bend the knee are now 3-0 against him in court. The immigration attorneys who refused to accept abandoning due process have scored major victories. The universities singled out and targeted by the administration have been granted reprieves from some of the most aggressive actions of the administration. Even in the instances where I agree with Trump’s grievances, I’ve been happy to see boundaries of his power being drawn in bright bold lines — it is not a good thing for our country if the already great executive power is expanded any further. 

As I said in the early days of the administration, Trump 2.0 looks to me a lot more like Trump 1.0 in ways that a lot of people don’t account for. That is, Trump did not return to the White House with adequate plans to move major legislation through Congress, or navigate the web of federal courts that act as a check on his power, or to exercise his powers in ways that were more subtle or calculated. Trump 2.0 is much more emboldened than Trump 1.0, and the issues he is focusing on are different, but the failure of a comprehensive strategy looks pretty much the same to me: Move fast, flood the zone, break things. 

This tactic can be effective at disrupting decades of institutional atrophy, but not as much at creating lasting change. A lot of Trump 2.0’s results so far have been the same as Trump 1.0, too: Court rulings slow him down, he imposes half measures, or he fails to institute lasting change through legislation. The whole DOGE saga provides the perfect example: Blustery new initiatives are defeated by the quiet consistency of bureaucracy and the reliability of the rule of law. Rock beats scissors, and “move fast and break things” loses to “go slow and don’t break.”

And now, the tariff saga is telling a similar story, where Trump’s weak-kneed (and court-blocked) approach has gotten so predictable it's earned an acronym: TACO, which stands for Trump Always Chickens Out. This now-common sequitur originated with a Financial Times columnist, but has become ubiquitous among Wall Street bettors who are using it as a north star to profit on the dips or disruptions caused by tariff threats that dissipate when Trump doesn’t follow through. 

We’ll see if that changes now that Trump has learned about the acronym, but I wouldn’t expect it to. The reality is that Trump is pursuing a very risky policy push without the legal authority to do so. If negative political sentiment doesn’t stop him, and market reactions and economic indicators don’t continue to make people “yippy,” he now faces a formidable new obstacle with these legal challenges. Time will tell how all that plays out with future tariff orders, but I think the broad-based, majorly disruptive “Liberation Day” promises became a plan now on its death bed. 

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Your questions, answered.

Q: Can you please dedicate a newsletter on the Trump administration’s assault on science? I feel you’ve barely covered this and the long term damage to our country will be something that affects everyone

— Anonymous from California

Tangle: Defining a concrete “Trump administration vs. Science” storyline that we might dedicate a single newsletter to is difficult. However, we have covered — and will continue to cover — the three stories that speak most to the administration's posture toward science and research more broadly.

First, the Trump administration has pulled its funding for elite institutions like Columbia and Harvard, which we covered here and here. We also published a reader essay about how this funding is distributed on Sunday. While critics paint these actions as the government undermining science, the administration purports to be punishing these schools for a failure to combat antisemitism.

Second, President Trump’s management of the executive branch could be called “anti-science”: Trump appointed Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — a person with more than a few questionable scientific positions — as head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and it has slashed funding for federal departments, including layoffs at Kennedy’s HHS. The Trump administration calls these efforts part of a broader reform to “Make America Healthy Again,” pointing to poor health outcomes and high costs as reasons for reform.

Third, Trump is deporting holders of student visas, which critics argue will have a chilling effect on attracting international talent to the United States to conduct research. We covered former Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil’s deportation here and other deportations here; but the administration continued its push this week, ordering Harvard not to accept international students and targeting a group of Chinese scholars for deportation. The government says these deportations are pursuant to national security.

So, we wouldn’t say we haven’t covered these stories, just that we haven’t put them under one “anti-science” umbrella. What’s more, these are only the stories that highlight one side of the narrative — the administration has encouraged more scientific innovation in the private sector in some areas, pushing for investments into artificial intelligence and cutting regulations for building nuclear power plants.

Want to have a question answered in the newsletter? You can reply to this email (it goes straight to our inbox) or fill out this form.

Under the radar.

On Thursday, a Defense Intelligence Agency employee was arrested and charged with attempting to pass classified intelligence to a foreign government. The employee, Nathan Vilas Laatsch, allegedly offered to share classified information because he disagreed with the Trump administration’s policies and was arrested after a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent posing as a foreign handler corresponded with him for weeks. “The recent actions of the current administration are extremely disturbing to me,” Laatsch wrote in a March email. “I don’t agree or align with the values of this administration and intend to act to support the values that the United States at one time stood for.” The Wall Street Journal has the story.

Numbers.

• 61. The number of days since President Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs.
• 9. The number of seats on the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT).
• 1980. The year Congress established the CIT in its current form. 
• 7. The current number of court challenges to President Trump's tariff policies. 
• 12. The number of states that have filed challenges to Trump’s tariff policies. 
• 61% and 39%. The percentage of U.S. adults who favor and oppose, respectively, a proposal for Congress to vote to approve all tariffs, according to a May 2025 Marquette Law School poll. 
• 58% and 32%. The percentage of U.S. adults who say tariffs hurt and help the U.S. economy, respectively. 
• +11%. The change in the percentage of Republicans who say tariffs help the U.S. economy between March 2025 (52%) and May 2025 (63%). 

The extras.

• One year ago today we had just covered Trump’s guilty verdict in the hush money trial.
• The most clicked link in Thursday’s newsletter was the troll-y Tuesday night movie quiz.
• Nothing to do with politics: We learned that the creator of that quiz, Blake Levy, is a Tangle reader, and he has an actual movie recommendation newsletter.
• Thursday’s survey: 2,794 readers answered our survey on student loan repayments with 43% supporting the timing but opposing the management. “The fundamental problem is that these loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, which incentivizes poor lending practices,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

A Dutch nursing home had a creative idea to help its residents… and college students: offering free rent to students in exchange for thirty hours a month of their companionship. Intergenerational friendships have been shown to have positive mental health benefits for older populations, and during a shortage in student housing, the solution seemed like a win-win. The director of the nursing home said the program is “so simple, but the impact is so big.” Good Good Good has the story.

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