S2 Ep146: Supreme Court Slams Door on Trump’s Tariff Power Grab (w/ Andrew Weissmann) | Illegal News
The Illegal News with Sarah Longwell
The Bulwark
4.9 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 21 February 2026
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Supreme Court struck down Trump’s sweeping tariffs in a 6–3 decision—including votes from two of his own appointees. Sarah Longwell and Andrew Weissmann explain why the Court said Congress, not the president, controls the power to tax, what the “major questions” fight was really about, and why Chief Justice Roberts appeared to take direct aim at Kavanaugh’s dissent.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, everyone, and welcome to the illegal news. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bullwork, |
| 0:04.4 | and I have just rolled out of bed to talk to Andrew Weissman because he had to come back. |
| 0:11.0 | Andrew's back. I keep wanting to do like, back again. I'm sorry. I don't know why I insist on |
| 0:15.4 | singing on the podcast sometimes. I hope this is a morning thing. I'm sorry. |
| 0:22.9 | You didn't tell me. |
| 0:26.5 | I feel like I feel like this is like false pretenses. |
| 0:27.4 | I know. |
| 0:40.2 | I dragged you in here on a early Saturday morning because I needed to understand the Supreme Court tariff decision through the lens, not of the economy, which we've been covering at the bulwark, but from the lens of the legality of it. You spend more than 20 years as a DOJ |
| 0:46.0 | prosecutor under very administrations. You're now a professor at NYU Law, your host of the |
| 0:50.0 | main justice podcast with fellow DOJ alum Mary McCord. So you are well versed in these things. |
| 0:56.6 | We've been waiting for the court to drop this opinion. And so I appreciate you getting together |
| 1:02.3 | so quickly because it has big implications. But the headline is that the Supreme Court struck down |
| 1:08.2 | Trump's tariffs. And so can you just do the overview reasoning? What did they, why did they do that? |
| 1:14.1 | You know, I've really been thinking long and hard and I can give you sort of my takes on sort of, I think there are two conversations going on. |
| 1:24.7 | One that you might be interested in one that you're going to be like, really? |
| 1:29.3 | Like, how nerdy do you think we all are? |
| 1:31.8 | I will sit here and close my eyes and you tell everybody the nerdiest thing you can. |
| 1:36.5 | You're going to, you're going to be like, I'm going to be going off and like fixing my hair, |
| 1:41.0 | having coffee, and then I'll just come back. |
| 1:44.6 | Yes, Andrew got on. |
| 1:45.8 | Andrew got on while I was trying to fix my bedhead before going on camera. |
| 1:50.2 | This has been a long time coming. |
... |
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