President Donald Trump is furious after losing his tariff case before the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court ruled that Trump overstepped his authority when he tried to make "emergency" tariff laws in retaliation against countries that weren't nice to him.
Speaking about the matter on Friday, legal analyst and CNN reporter Paula Reid noted that even Trump's own lawyers have been shocked by the Supreme Court granting him so much leeway on the "unitary executive theory."
"So, there's been a question about whether there still is a respect for separation of powers, and I think that's what really matters," Reid said. "That matters so much in the Trump administration right now because I think we're seeing a lot of questions about how he might use his office to take over — he has taken over the Justice Department. Used that to pursue his enemies, use that to try and put his thumb on the scale of the election. Will there be a check on President Trump?"
CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams cited the separation between Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts, wondering if there's an "intellectual fracas" brewing between the two conservatives on the law.
He predicted that over the next few years, there will likely be more conversation about the "Major Questions Doctrine." It is an idea that in order for the president to act, Congress must give him the power to do so under the law.
Kavanaugh and Roberts clashed in the ruling today, where Kavanaugh said that an issue like this is "squarely in the authority of the president," Williams characterized.
"So, I think the next several years of debates between the conservatives over what the reach of conservative jurisprudence ought to be," he added. "We saw the road map for it here."
New York Times White House correspondent Zolan Kanno-Youngs recalled the conversation he had with Trump in the Oval Office, where he was "candid" about "just how disappointed he would be in the justices he helped put on the Supreme Court. It almost seemed like he would personally be insulted by this."
Kanno-Youngs noted that it will cause problems for Trump in other foreign policy because he uses tariffs as a "diplomatic sledgehammer, right? This is what he hangs over nations when they don't do what he wants. It was his threat before Greenland."