Supreme Court poised to rule on tariffs, birthright citizenship and more
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.5 • 24.9K Ratings
🗓️ 7 January 2026
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theshmit.org. |
| 0:14.7 | Hi, this is Juliana in Seattle, Washington, and I'm currently on my way to my first day of law school. |
| 0:20.0 | Oh, congratulations. This |
| 0:21.4 | podcast was recorded at 1.22 p.m. on Wednesday the 7th of January. Things may have changed by the time |
| 0:28.7 | you listen to this, but I will still be in the library, nose deep in my massive law books. Enjoy the show. |
| 0:37.0 | There's so much reading in that first year. May the force be with you. Hey there, it's the |
| 0:42.0 | NPR Politics podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the |
| 0:46.5 | Justice Department. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And today on the show, |
| 0:52.2 | we are talking about some of the major decisions expected to come from |
| 0:55.9 | the U.S. Supreme Court in the days, weeks, and months ahead. The court has indicated it could |
| 1:01.8 | release its first opinions of the year as early as Friday. Carry one opinion that we are |
| 1:07.6 | watching for and could get on Friday concerns President Trump's |
| 1:11.4 | tariff's policy. Remind us of the key issue here. Yeah, central part of Trump's agenda, the sweeping |
| 1:18.0 | tariff plan. He put it into place early in his administration, and he's relying on a law from |
| 1:24.6 | the 1970s called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, |
| 1:30.1 | even though that law does not mention the word tariffs and it has not been used for that purpose |
| 1:35.0 | since it was established by Congress. |
| 1:38.2 | And so the big question here is whether that law can carry the weight of all of these tariffs the president has imposed. It's important to note that |
| 1:47.2 | when this case was argued before the Supreme Court, even some of the conservative justices expressed |
| 1:53.2 | concern about it and how much power it gave the executive branch. Of course, Congress is really supposed |
| 1:58.6 | to be in charge of appropriations and things like that. So it's a big question moving forward, how or if this will survive Supreme Court review. Appropriations and taxation. So, yeah, and President Trump is clearly very, very concerned about this case. He has been posting on social media at a very regular |
| 2:19.5 | cadence, including this post from January 2nd, saying, quote, tariffs are an overwhelming |
... |
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