yazzy

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.”

Are you new here? Get free emails to your inbox daily. Would you rather listen? You can find our podcast here.

Today’s read: 14 minutes.

🏦

Trump's appeal of a lower court's decision is unsuccessful. Plus, could Trump's anti-union actions hurt his support among workers?

“We are broken.”

On Friday, we republished an essay that Executive Editor Isaac Saul wrote after the school shooting in Uvalde, TX. Given the recent shooting in Minneapolis, MN, we felt the original place was once again relevant — so relevant, sadly, that it merited us running it again in full. The piece drove a great deal of discussion in our comments section, and you can read it here.

Staff dissent.

Tangle readers rarely get to see the diversity of thought among our staff. Today, we are launching a new blurb at the end of the “My take” section called “Staff dissent.” We’re going to use this blurb to feature a few sentences from a staff member who disagrees with Isaac on a particular element of his take. Because of space constraints, we won’t do this every day, but we hope to make it a regular feature to highlight the viewpoint diversity on our team (and to articulate criticisms from our audience that are often argued internally, but never seen).

Quick hits.

1. President Donald Trump said pharmaceutical companies must “justify the success” of their Covid-19 vaccines and release more information about their efficacy. The comments followed a slew of resignations at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after the Trump administration fired the agency's director. (The comments)
2. A federal judge temporarily blocked the deportation of unaccompanied minors from Guatemala who aren’t subject to a finalized removal order. The Justice Department later confirmed that 76 children had been returned, or would be returned soon, to Office of Refugee Resettlement custody. (The order)
3. A 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan, killing at least 1,411 people and injuring more than 3,000 others, according to the Taliban-run government. ()
4. An Israeli airstrike in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, killed the prime minister of Yemen’s Houthi government and several other top officials. (The strike)
5. President Trump revoked former Vice President Kamala Harris’s Secret Service protection, rescinding a memorandum signed by former President Joe Biden before leaving office that extended Harris’s protection for an additional year beyond the six months that former vice presidents typically receive. (The revocation)

Today’s topic.

The Trump tariffs ruling. On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in a 7–4 decision that President Donald Trump had overstepped his authority in imposing tariffs unilaterally, upholding a lower court decision. The appeals court’s decision the tariffs Trump justified by declaring a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), including the “reciprocal tariffs” Trump imposed on all U.S. trading partners, but does not apply to the industry-specific duties that the president invoked under a different authority. Additionally, the court did not rule on whether the IEEPA justified any presidential tariffs. The Trump administration plans to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

Back up: In April, President Trump invoked the IEEPA when issuing his “Liberation Day” tariffs against most U.S. trading partners, claiming that their trading practices posed “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States.” The law allows a president to take a range of economic actions in response to “any unusual and extraordinary threat” related to “the national security, foreign policy or economy” of the United States. In May, the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that Trump did not have the authority under the IEEPA to impose the tariffs; the administration appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals, which heard arguments in July.

We covered the initial Court of International Trade ruling here.

The appellate court’s majority wrote that the IEEPA “bestows significant authority on the President to undertake a number of actions in response to a declared national emergency, but none of these actions explicitly include the power to impose tariffs, duties, or the like, or the power to tax.” Furthermore, they said tariffs “are unbounded in scope, amount, and duration… and, thus, beyond the authority delegated to the President by IEEPA.”

The four dissenting judges argued the “IEEPA’s language, as confirmed by its history, authorizes tariffs to regulate importation,” adding, “IEEPA embodies an eyes-open congressional grant of broad emergency authority in this foreign-affairs realm, which unsurprisingly extends beyond authorities available under non-emergency laws.”

President Trump criticized the decision in a post on Truth Social, writing, “A Highly Partisan Appeals Court incorrectly said that our Tariffs should be removed, but they know the United States of America will win in the end. If these Tariffs ever went away, it would be a total disaster for the Country.” In a separate statement, the White House said the tariffs remain in effect and that it “look[s] forward to ultimate victory on this matter.”

Today, we’ll explore reactions to the court’s ruling from the left and right. Then, my take.

What the left is saying.

• The left agrees with the ruling, arguing the court properly checked Trump’s power to impose tariffs through executive action alone.
• Some suggest the saga is far from over.
• Others say Trump brought this outcome on himself.

The Washington Post editorial board argued Trump must go through Congress if he wants his tariffs to remain in place.

“The Supreme Court will sooner or later decide whether President Donald Trump has the power to set tariffs for every country in the world on his own. With a legal victory far from guaranteed, why doesn’t the administration just ask the compliant, Republican-controlled Congress to endorse boundless authority for the president to impose taxes on imports?” the board wrote. “In April, Trump unilaterally reset tariff rates on virtually every country in the world, and the move was immediately met with legal challenges. Late Friday, a third federal court ruled that Trump — like all other presidents — lacks the power to single-handedly dictate tariff rates. The Supreme Court is the next and final stop in this legal saga.”

“Trump has warned that if his power is limited here, it will ‘literally destroy the United States of America.’ If the stakes are that high, he can make the case to the institution that has explicit authority over tariffs: Congress,” the board said. “Tax rates can be changed on a party-line vote. It is telling that the Republican Party’s most dominant figure in a generation is taking his chances at the high court rather than working to win over senators and congressmen who have so far shown nothing but loyalty to this president’s agenda.”

In The Financial Times, Mohamed El-Erian explored “the real significance of the US court ruling on tariffs.”

“I suspect that, ultimately, this ruling will not fundamentally alter the administration’s propensity to use tariffs to pursue multiple objectives. The approach is integral to the efforts to rewire the international trading system and also the domestic economy,” El-Erian wrote. “Already, tariffs are raising budgetary revenues, enticing some manufacturers to consider returning to the US, and pressuring those countries and companies that refuse to agree to ‘deals’. As far as the administration is concerned, the approach is working and warrants a multi-faceted defence that not only challenges directly the appeals court’s decision but also seeks workarounds.”

“This is not to say that tariffs will have no detrimental effects on the American economy. Over time, they will distort the efficient allocation of resources and undermine the efficient operation of parts of the US economy. Their price effects, while contained thus far, could increase sequentially and unevenly,” El-Erian said. “The key question is how much the courts will serve as a lasting check on an administration committed to materially reshaping the domestic and international economic orders. This issue is likely to be tested many times in the coming months and years, with an answer that has significant consequences for many around the world and remains uncertain.”

In his Substack, Paul Krugman wrote about the “tariff mess.”

“The court didn’t say that tariffs per se are illegal. It said that the procedure Trump used to impose tariffs — declaring an economic emergency, then setting tariff rates without so much as consulting Congress, let alone passing legislation — is illegal. If Trump wants to pass a tariff bill, the same way he passed his One Big Beautiful Bill, OK. (I mean, terrible policy, but legal.) But just saying ‘I am the Tariff Man, and here are my tariffs’ isn’t OK,” Krugman said. “Trump himself keeps saying that the economy is in wonderful shape, booming without inflation, and any claims to the contrary are fake news. So how can things both be terrific and an emergency calling for drastic action?”

“Trump is facing a completely self-inflicted disaster here. He probably could have gotten Republicans in Congress to vote for insane trade policy. But he was impatient, and wanted to start ruling as a dictator right away,” Krugman wrote. “I see that Scott Bessent is saying that ruling that Trump’s illegal tariffs are, in fact, illegal will embarrass the United States. I’m not a lawyer, but last I heard you weren’t allowed to act illegally if obeying the law would be embarrassing. Anyway, let’s be clear: It won’t embarrass America. It will embarrass Trump and Bessent.”

What the right is saying.

• The right is mixed on ruling, with some questioning the majority’s logic for striking down the tariffs.
• Others argue the court correctly found that Trump’s rationale was insufficient to justify the duties.
• Still others say the Supreme Court may side with the Trump administration based on recent precedent.

In Townhall, Rachel Alexander criticized the “rogue federal appeals court” for its decision.

“The ruling upheld an earlier decision by the U.S. Court of International Trade, but went further. The lower court held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) gave Trump some authority over tariffs, but stated it was not unlimited. While previous presidents have not invoked the IEEPA to implement tariffs, they have used it to issue sanctions,” Alexander wrote. “The majority took a tortured, twisted interpretation of the IEEPA to come to its decision. The court said that since the IEEPA did not use the precise word tariff, or a similar word, that the law could not be interpreted to include them.

“The IEEPA grants the president authority to ‘regulate … importation … of … any property’ under specified conditions,” Alexander said. “A previous version of the U.S. Court of International Trade held that the President was authorized to ‘impos[e] an import duty surcharge’ because ‘impos[ing] duties can be to “regulate”’ the importation of the items on which duties are imposed,” Alexander wrote. “In Federal Energy Administration v. Algonquin SNG, Inc., the nation’s highest court held, ‘[L]imiting the President to the use of quotas would effectively and artificially prohibit him from directly dealing with some of the very problems against which [the statute] is directed.”

In National Review, Dan McLaughlin said the court “[got] it right.”

“Trump supporters have argued that Congress has delegated broad authorities to the president to set tariffs under a variety of statutes. But each such delegation has different conditions and limitations; what matters is that these tariffs have been justified and defended in court as national emergencies under IEEPA,” McLaughlin wrote. “The courts have been unpersuaded that we live in a state of permanent national emergency that is global in scope and decades-long in duration, requiring swift executive action on the theory that Congress could never assemble in time to address the issue.”

“Nearly half of the 127-page length of the opinion was taken up with the views of the four dissenters, who agreed that the court could properly hear the case but vigorously disagreed with its view of the legality of the tariffs. The dissenters argued that the tariffs ‘meet the preconditions IEEPA sets for the exercise of the presidential authorities that IEEPA grants,’” McLaughlin said. “The dissent is a grab bag of justifications that will deserve more extended discussion another day, but it is grasping at straws to justify an open-ended ‘national emergency’ power of the sort that should be disfavored in our laws unless it is granted in terms far more explicit than these.”

In The Wall Street Journal, Jonathan H. Adler suggested “the Supreme Court could uphold Trump’s tariffs.”

“ V.O.S. Selections would seem a textbook case for applying the ‘major questions doctrine,’ which provides that policies addressing questions of ‘vast economic and political significance’ require clear authorization from Congress. Thus in Biden v. Nebraska (2023), the Supreme Court concluded the power to ‘waive or modify’ regulations governing student debt didn’t encompass the power to forgive such loans altogether. By this logic, the power to ‘regulate’ imports shouldn’t include the power to tax them. While Congress has often delegated authority to set or revise tariffs, it typically does so explicitly,” Adler wrote. “This argument is strong, but it isn’t a slam dunk.”

“Were the justices writing on a clean slate, one would expect them to draw clear constraints on presidential authority. But the slate is far from clean. Congress has been delegating tariff authority to the president since the 18th century, and the Supreme Court has long held that delegation concerns are less constraining in the foreign-affairs and national-security context,” Adler said. “Legislative abdication creates a vacuum that the executive branch inevitably seeks to fill. The court has seen fit to force Congress’s hand in the domestic sphere, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will do so here.”

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.

• Regardless of the policy itself, there is no emergency that can support Trump’s tariffs.
• Even if there were an emergency, the law Trump cites does not give him this authority.
• We’d be having a different conversation if Trump were taking this policy through Congress.

I’ve always had a hard time buying the argument that these tariffs are legal — and reading about this ruling, and the commentary surrounding it, only reinforces my skepticism.

When we first wrote about the United States Court of International Trade’s decision to block the global tariff enforcement in June, I admitted a little embarrassment that we hadn’t yet explicitly said these “emergency tariffs" were illegal — because, in retrospect, they obviously are. The law allows the president to dictate some tariff policy, but Congress’s authority over taxation has always been far broader, more explicit, and constitutionally foundational.

The central question of this ruling is what the president can claim to be a national emergency. Remember: Trump is using this declaration to impose the broad, sweeping tariffs under the IEEPA that he could not impose otherwise. This has been Trump’s go-to method to exercise power: He has claimed an emergency over 30 times in his first seven months, roughly four times more than Biden had over his first seven months. Trump has used those emergency declarations to unilaterally enact immigration policy, foreign policy, environmental policy, energy policy, economic policy, and more. To get an idea of how personal — and powerful — these declarations can be, consider that Trump imposed a 50% tariff on Brazil by declaring its prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro, its former president and an ally of Trump’s, constituted a threat to U.S. national security.

This is antithetical to the role of the executive branch as described by the Constitution, and it’s also pretty novel. Most presidents would try to sell Congress on this tariff plan: The House majority leader would whip votes to pass a comprehensive bill into law, the Senate would rewrite the bill to pass with support from some members of the opposition party, and then that bill would go back to the House for final revisions. It’s not that hard to imagine Democrats rallying around a cohesive tariff policy, given that many are supportive of more restricted global trade.

During his first presidency, Trump threatened to impose a few tariffs that led to negotiations, and he enacted some large but specific tariffs without an emergency declaration. But this time around, the president is simply ignoring Congress (and the authorities it has explicitly granted him), opting instead to impose his tariff power as broadly as possible and then fighting it out in the courts.

There is no national emergency on trade. To me, this story is as simple as that. Our trade policy is the product of decades of Congressionally approved decisions made by a succession of past presidents (including Trump!) from both sides of the aisle. While it’s fair to question if these policies have hollowed out American manufacturing, made us more reliant on foreign countries for essential goods or offshored jobs, saying the current state of affairs — the strongest economy in the world — constitutes a “national emergency” is absurd. Full stop.

I stand by my prediction from a few months ago: If this ends up before the Supreme Court, Trump will lose. I do not see how the court could possibly decide a president has the unilateral power to tariff hundreds of nations without Congress, after this same court has ruled that presidents cannot unilaterally cancel student loans or regulate greenhouse gas emissions (as it did under Biden). And, for what it’s worth, I think it’s a good thing for the courts to reject all of these executive power grabs.

If you need any more convincing, consider this: In 1952, during the Korean War, President Truman issued an executive order to seize and operate the country’s steel mills. The Court held that even in times of war (a genuine, objective emergency) the president cannot grant himself powers that are not explicitly granted by Congress or the Constitution. This bedrock principle has been reinforced in the decades of jurisprudence since. Now, Trump is trying to seize the emergency power granted by the IEEPA to regulate the import of “any property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest by any person.”

Even if Trump could legitimately claim a national emergency, he may still not have the power he’s attempting to exercise. The power to regulate is different from the power to tax, which is why the Constitution distinguishes between the two. Perhaps more to the point, Congress has passed specific statutes limiting the tariff authority of presidents. Trump’s argument is that this broad emergency statute, which never mentions tariffs, allows him to tax imports from any country to any degree he desires for an indefinite amount of time without congressional approval. It is self-evidently outlandish — and the Supreme Court should say so.

But again: No such emergency exists.

None of this is a judgment on the policy itself. I’ve , and my position remains the same: Time will tell. I thought the negative impacts of tariffs would be far more obvious by now, and tariffs not triggering a quicker spike in inflation was one of the five things I said I got wrong about Trump so far. The good news is that the government is raising substantial revenue from the new tariffs (not as much as Trump says, but a lot), plenty of countries are coming to the table for new trade deals, and some companies have already announced they will reshore jobs. The bad news is that some prices are starting to spike, and policy uncertainty has already crushed many small businesses who can’t operate in a world where import taxes are either a) rising or b) unpredictable.

You can love or hate the tariffs themselves — that isn’t the issue here. The narrower point I’m making is that this ruling is correct: Trump doesn’t have the legal authority to do any of this. The powers granted to the president in the rare instances of genuine national emergency do not cover what he says they do, and he does not have any cause to declare an emergency now. And I expect the Supreme Court to affirm that.

Take the survey: How do you think the Supreme Court will respond to the administration’s appeal? Let us know!

Disagree? That's okay. My opinion is just one of many. Write in and let us know why, and we'll consider publishing your feedback.

Your questions, answered.

Q: How will President Trump's recent executive orders on banning certain unions and union activities impact his blue collar base?

— Drew from Lancaster, PA

Tangle: Honestly, probably pretty well. The orders Trump signed don't directly impact workers in blue-collar industries; instead, they stripped collective bargaining rights away from a good deal of public sector unions.

Here’s what happened: On March 27, President Trump signed an executive order stating that many federal agencies or subdivisions have roles vital to national security and as such are not required to respect collective bargaining agreements (and ordered them not to). This order affected the Departments of State, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs (VA) as well subdivisions within other departments like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration, and the Coast Guard. Labor unions representing government employees challenged that order, winning a temporary injunction; in August, however, an appeals court lifted that injunction. Then, on August 28, Trump extended the order to apply to other agencies including the International Trade Administration, the National Weather Service, and NASA.

After the order was originally appealed, a union representing public employees estimated that Trump’s order would apply to 950,000 government employees. At the VA alone, the order impacts the previously negotiated benefits of 395,000 workers, reducing their guaranteed 16 weeks of parental leave to 12 weeks.

Obviously, none of that sounds like something pro-union voters would support. However, the order only affects government employees, and does not affect the two largest public-sector unions: teachers and police. According to the Department of Labor, roughly half of all union employees work in the public sector, something that even President Franklin Delano Roosevelt decried.

Yes, public support for unions is very high, but that polling doesn’t specify sentiments on federal white-collar employee unions — which subjectively feel very different from teamster or pipe-fitter unions. And, given that Trump continues to enjoy popular support among his working-class base, I believe that many of those same supporters approve of this action.

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.

The Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law on July 4 creates a new tax deduction for workers who receive tips as part of their wages, also known as “no tax on tips.” On Monday, Axios shared the 68 jobs that the Treasury Department has reportedly specified will qualify for the deduction. The jobs fall under eight categories: beverage & food service, entertainment & events, hospitality & guest services, home services, personal services, personal appearance & wellness, recreation & instruction, and transportation & delivery. Jobs within those categories include bartenders, musicians, concierges, home electricians, pet caretakers, makeup artists, golf caddies, and valets. The list will be made official after the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service publish it in the Federal Register. Axios has the story.

Numbers.

• 6 and 1. The number of judges in the majority of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s decision who were appointed by Democratic and Republican presidents, respectively.
• 2 and 2. The number of judges in the minority who were appointed by Democratic and Republican presidents, respectively.
• 42. The number of days until October 14, the deadline for either side to appeal the court’s decision to the Supreme Court.
• $159 billion. The amount of gross tariff (and certain other excise tax) revenue brought in by the United States in 2025, as of August 28, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.
• $63.7 billion. The amount of gross tariff (and certain other excise tax) revenue brought in by the United States in the same period in 2024.
• 69%. The estimated percentage of U.S. goods imports affected by President Trump’s second-term tariffs, according to the Tax Foundation.
• 16%. The estimated percentage of U.S. goods imports affected by President Trump’s second-term tariffs if the duties levied under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act are struck down.
• 38% and 61%. The percentage of U.S. adults who approve and disapprove, respectively, of the Trump administration substantially increasing tariffs on goods imported from most U.S. trading partners, according to an August 2025 Pew Research poll.

The extras.

• One year ago today we had just published a reader mailbag edition.
• The most clicked link in Thursday’s newsletter was the ad in the free version to enter the National Park Foundation getaway sweepstakes.
• Nothing to do with politics: Could this autumnal morning brew dethrone the pumpkin spice latte?
• Thursday’s survey: 3,212 readers responded to our survey on flag burning with 58% saying it should be legal in all cases. “It's not the burning of the flag at issue, but the other actions taken by those burning the flag,” one respondent asked.

Have a nice day.

When the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021, they placed a ban on education for women beyond sixth grade. As a consequence, 24-year-old pharmacology student Sodaba — one of approximately 2.5 million school-aged Afghan girls as of 2023 — was forced to go online to learn. There, she found a coding course taught by an Afghan refugee living in Greece in her language, Dari. Sodaba, who has begun learning computer programming and website development, said she “believe[s] a person should not be (bowed) by circumstance, but should grow and get their dreams through every possible way.” The Associated Press has the story.

Don’t forget...

🎉 Want to reach 400,000+ people? Schedule a meeting to advertise with us.

📫 Forward this to a friend and tell them to subscribe (hint: it's here).