Hello, and welcome back to the David Fromm Show. I'm David Fromm, a staff writer at the Atlantic.

My guest this week will be Kiko Toro. Kiko was the founder and remains the editor of a website

called the Caracas Chronicles, which is the best English language source of information on

goings on in Venezuela. And as the United States seems to be moving toward a war in the Caribbean

against Venezuela, I thought it was indispensable to talk to Kiko about what is happening.

Why is the United States on the verge of war, apparently with Venezuela, apparently about to carry out air strikes on the South American mainland? How did we get here and what does it mean? Kiko will be the man to enlighten us. My book this week will be a novel written in 1933 by a writer called Leon Fogbanger and the novels, The Oppermans,

a Family Saga of a German Jewish Family, destroyed by the rise of the Nazis. But before I get

to these two subjects, let me open with some preliminary thoughts about something quite different,

which is the soon-to-be-heard oral argument in the Supreme Court about President Trump's

use of tariff powers.

Specifically, the court is going to consider whether Donald Trump has exceeded the authority

delegated to him by Congress by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977.

As I hope we all know, the Constitution of the United States vests power over tariffs and trade

in Congress.

But over the year since 1934, Congress has delegated more and more of that power to the president.

President Trump has chosen to interpret the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which I'll

call AIPA, which is what most people do from here on, as a delegation of broad authority over tariffs to him,

allow him to create a one-man tariff show all of his own for almost any reason, and the Supreme

Court is going to hear and decide what that is valid. The key word in the act is the word

emergency. That is, these are powers that the president would not normally have,

normally the power to create tariffs rests in Congress. He would not normally have these powers.

But in an emergency, the president can use them. That's what Congress wrote in 1977 when they

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