>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made in the Supreme Court's decision on President Trump's tariffs.

The court ruled 6 to 3 against the president and effectively struck down his tariffs.

Two of the three justices appointed by President Trump himself voted against him in this case.

Trump immediately lashed out at the court, calling out the justices by name.

He said that at least the progressive progressive justices on the court are loyal and consistent, and he lamented that the conservative justices don't always just do what he wants.

He then jumped on his social media accounts and started lobbing insults at the court over how it might decide the upcoming issue of birthright citizenship.

One year ago, I sat down with a group of judges who described their concerns about whether the American judiciary could withstand a president who wants total control.

Today, I welcome back one of those judges to see some of what we are learning.

What did the justices say about tariffs and why?

And what does that say about the separation of powers?

What does the president think he can do to wrest that power back?

Richard A. Dollinger is a retired New York Court of Claims judge, and it's always great to have your expertise.

Judge, welcome back to the program.

>> Thanks for having me, Evan.

>> So over the weekend, I wondered if you would take some time to read some of what the justices had to say.

And I think Justice Kavanaugh had the longest I think it's 60, 60 some pages.

>>, three times as long as the opinion for the court by Justice Roberts, the chief judge.

>> Yeah.

And so and as we often see with the court, the justices who even who were aligned, voted how they did for different reasons, the justices who opposed.

And that was Kavanaugh and Alito and Thomas opposed for perhaps different reasons.

I want to just start by listening to one bit of sound from President Trump.

He he calls the six members of the court who voted against him a disgrace.

He questions the loyalty of the justice that he himself appointed.

Here he is taking direct aim at the court.

>> The Supreme Court's ruling on tariffs is deeply disappointing.

And I'm ashamed of certain members of the court.

Absolutely ashamed for not having the courage to do what's right for our country.

I'd like to thank and congratulate Justices Thomas, Alito and Kavanaugh for their strength and wisdom and love of our country.

>> So before we get into the substance of what the justices themselves wrote, what do you make of what the president is doing there.?

>> That is the most in my opinion, disgraceful comment ever made by a president of the United States for the Supreme Court.

What he is, in essence, doing is telling the court that forget the Constitution, do what I tell you and not what the Constitution tells you.

in my judgment that is completely contrary to our rule of law.

the president doesn't get to decide what the Constitution says.

That job in our system is exclusively in the hands of the United States Supreme Court.

And history is.

>> With situations in which the president of the United States has disagreed with the court.

Joe Biden did on.

I can mention three primary occasions where the court struck down his ability to do things.

But the bottom line is this is not something that a president should say about an equal branch of government.

These are article three judges.

They've got the responsibility not to the president of the United States, but to the people who passed and implemented our Constitution.

And I think for the president to do this, it's not only shameful, but it undercuts everybody's faith in government.

what he's in essence saying is you can't trust the third branch of government.

And what's happening in America is, my opinion, is people are losing faith in the Congress.

They're losing faith in the president.

And now the president is encouraging them to lose faith in the judiciary.

I don't know where this chaos goes, but it's very Trump like.

>> Well, I suppose that the justices have heard criticism before and that I suspect they would say they can handle it.

But when the president calls out justices by name and essentially says, I appointed you, I expect a return in the middle of a season in which they've got a lot of cases still to come, including birthright citizenship.

>> We've talked about that before.

>> Is there a concern that the president is trying to influence the court in ways that go out of bounds?

>> Oh, absolutely.

someone used it in a description of me, said they're gaming the referees.

I was a basketball coach for CYO a long time ago, and I worked the referees.

I mean, I was on the sidelines shouting out, that wasn't a foul.

That was a foul.

That's walking.

That's double dribble.

And I was working the referees the whole time.

But I never said to the referee, come on over here, you are a disgrace to your uniform and you never should be doing this.

So I think President Trump has jumped into an uncharted water of personal character assassination of people who are our most revered judges.

Whether you like what they say or not.

Nonetheless, they are in the highest court in this country, and that court has to tell us what our laws are and how we're going to function.

And for the president to treat them like John Gotti would pick out people, or Michael Corleone would pick out people.

is not only a disgrace, but it destroys people's faith in all levels of government.

If people don't have faith in our government, chaos follows.

>> The other piece of sound I want to listen to is how the president views whether he is putting his thumb on the scales.

Trump claims he wants to make sure the Supreme Court is not influenced by outside forces.

He says he could have put more pressure on the court to get this decision right, but he tried to stay out of it.

>> Actuality, I was very modest in my ask of other countries and businesses because I wanted to do, and it's very important.

I want to be very well behaved because I wanted to do anything.

I didn't want to do anything that would affect the decision of the court, because I understand the court.

I understand how they are very easily swayed.

I want to be a good boy.

>> I want to be a good boy, he says.

Because in the president's words, these nine justices are so unprofessional that they are very easily swayed.

What do you make of that, judge?

>> that's Donald Trump's M.O., a man easily swayed by money, easily swayed by influence, easily swayed by outsiders.

He assumes that everyone in Washington, and certainly everyone he's appointed or brought to government, is easily swayed by outside influences.

Whether it's money, whether it's Connections, whether it's other people and other opinions.

these judges took an oath of office not to let any of those factors cloud their judgment.

And they promised the American public that they would do what the law and the facts require them to do.

I believe in this instance, that's what they've done.

I've also pointed out, as I maybe would talk about this in a minute, but the decision in the tariff case is extraordinarily similar to the decision in the three cases where the Supreme Court struck down executive orders by the Biden administration, the OSHA rule that required either a max mask or vaccine, the forgive debt rule and the Clean Power Act, whether they could restrict power plants in all three of those instances in the last five years, the Supreme Court of the United States said that the president did not have the power by executive order to regulate these three areas, or, for that matter, to give substantial loan forgiveness to students who are repaying debts.

He just didn't have the power to do that.

Congress had never given it to him, and the Constitution never gave it to him.

So under those circumstances, this court struck down those exercises of government power by the president alone.

And under those circumstances, this decision is a continuation of that series of opinions that no president has the ability to write the law exclusively in his favor, unless Congress has expressly given him that authority or the Constitution gives him that authority.

>> Do we still have a Congress?

We're going to talk about that coming up here.

>> We do need to talk.

We do.

But I'm ready to talk.

>> About it.

There's a lot to talk about there.

just for a moment, though, juxtapose what you heard from President Trump there saying that, well, this Supreme Court's very easily swayed.

And I wanted to be, in his words, a good boy and not try to sway them.

Hours later, he gets on his truth social account.

And this is what the president says about what's still to come this season with this court.

Again, he had just got done saying, I'm the president of United States.

I'm not trying to influence the court.

>> I'm being a good boy.

>> I'm being a good boy.

He writes, quote, our incompetent Supreme Court did a great job for the wrong people, and for that they should be ashamed of themselves.

The next thing you know, they will rule in favor of China and others who are making an absolute fortune on birthright citizenship by saying the 14th amendment was not written to take care of the babies of slaves, which it is proven by the exact timing of its construction, filing and ratification, which perfectly coincided with the end of the Civil War.

How much better can you do than that?

But this Supreme Court will find a way to come to the wrong conclusion, one that, again, will make China and various other nations happy and rich.

Let our Supreme Court keep making decisions that are so bad and deleterious to the future of our nation.

I have a job to do.

That is what he wrote on Truth Social.

Hours after saying, look, I'm not trying to influence the court, I got to let them do their thing.

Remarkable, isn't it?

>> It's astounding.

if his first comment was the good boy Trump, that's the bad boy Trump.

That's a president of the United States who says, in essence, if they disagree with me on birthright citizenship, they're somehow loyal and traitorous and favoring China.

I mean, this is he's not gaming the referees.

He's calling the referees over for a conference and saying, I want to win this game and you're going to do what I tell you so that I win.

That's different from simply shouting and screaming at the referees or saying you're disappointed with the result.

You think they could have gone in a different direction.

You think it would be better for the country if they had gone in a different direction?

I think that's all permissible.

Comment by a president.

But to stand there and say I'm ashamed of them and they better do what I tell them.

this is an attempt by the president of the United States to take over the independence of our judiciary, and it should not happen.

If that happens, the collapse of our last strong institution will be publicly evident, and people will lose confidence.

I'd point out to you, Evan.

the public's confidence in the Supreme Court has waxed and waned over its history.

I mean, we can go back 150 years to Dred Scott, in which the Supreme Court said that African Americans were not people under the Constitution, setting the stage for the Civil War.

The the country was completely torn apart, with the North drastically upset by this decision written by Roger Taney, who was a Maryland slave owner, and the country was just shattered by that eventually led to a civil war in my lifetime, I can remember as a child driving through Georgia with my father in the late 1950s, and there was a big sign on the side of the road it said, impeach Earl Warren because of Brown against the Board of Education, in which the Supreme Court held that the doctrine of separate but equal would not apply, and that African American children were entitled to go to school with with their white counterparts.

there was a huge outcry against the Supreme Court under those circumstances.

So the court has always been subject to the storms and the sturm and drang.

As you may recall, Franklin Roosevelt threatened to pack the court because he was displeased by conservatives appointed by Republicans who were tossing out the New Deal legislation that he favored.

So the court has always been a subject of controversy.

But Roosevelt was a lawyer, and he knew that that was the final stop in adjudication.

And while he was disappointed, he never went to the extent of saying, you got to do what I tell you to do.

I think he said.

And a number of presidents have said I would like them to do.

>> Or I'm disappointed in this.

>> Disappointed in the decision.

That's all part of public comment.

But the most amazing part about this and the most, from my point of view, the critical fact there are a couple of things.

Let me just talk historically for one minute so I can yeah, tariffs are not new to America.

May not know this, but for the first hundred, almost 150 years of America's existence, tariffs were the primary source of federal government revenue because they supported the emerging industries in the United States.

And as a consequence, throughout the 19th century, the United States was the China of the 19th century.

We were producing lots of goods for an emerging and growing population, largely fed by immigration.

But we we had tariffs in place that funded most of the federal government.

That continued until the 16th amendment to the Constitution, which created an income tax, which shifted the source of federal money away from tariffs, which were impacting our industries to individual income tax.

That's the change that occurred.

But tariffs have always been very much a part of the American past.

And even prior to Trump, we've had tariffs on products forever.

So it's not new.

What happened is Trump came in and shifted the balance of the tariffs and then triggered a tariff war with other countries because we upped our tariffs.

They did as well.

And international trade was affected.

>> And of course sought to do so unilaterally, which we're about to talk about here.

Let me ask you a kind of an overarching question on this decision that you've been reading with the justices wrote.

We're talking to retired Judge Richard Dollinger, who joined us as part of a panel about a year ago.

And I thought you were kind of an optimist a year ago in that you didn't come on this program a year ago and say, it's clear that this president is going to try to circumvent the courts and not just the Supreme Court.

By the way, courts at every level.

And he's going to do it.

You are pretty confident that the system could hold that the system was built to withstand this kind of stress, that the bench would not just buckle to the president.

Congress is another matter, right?

>> We'll talk about that.

>> Which we will which is related here, of course.

>> Absolutely.

>> Yeah.

But here we are now.

And I want to ask you first, as you look at this decision, if anything surprised you, it's A63 decision, three quote, unquote progressive justices, six conservative justices.

The conservative split two out of three Trump appointees go against him.

Where did anything surprise you on this one?

>> No, because if you look at the prior decisions in the mask mandate under President Biden, where he authorized OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, to issue a rule that said, if you're involved in interstate commerce, you either have to have a vaccine or you have to wear a mask.

That was the that was the theory behind that rule.

The court struck it down and said Congress never gave the Office of Safety and Health, never gave them authority to impose a mandate like that.

And it's outside the scope of presidential power.

The same thing was true with the student loan forgiveness, in which the Supreme Court struck down.

>> They told me, you can't do it.

>> Correct.

And and what this case says, and I think Justice Roberts is right on the nose, which is if the president is going to invoke a power that he claims is given to him by Congress, he must be able to point to an explicit grant of that power.

And in this case, while the language in the statute said he can regulate certain forms of international trade, it never said you could actually tax them.

And that's what's important to realize.

The tariff is a form of national sales tax.

That's exactly what it is.

It drives up the cost of goods and you pay it as part of the purchase of goods.

It's no different than the Monroe County sales tax or Ontario County or any of the sales tax.

And one of the things that almost everybody realizes about sales taxes is they are the least onerous form of tax in the public mind, because people get used to paying sales tax at Wegmans, sales tax at you know, Lowe's or sales tax at Home Depot.

It's built into the purchase price.

So the ultimate consumer can never quite figure out they they see it on their receipt.

It's a sales tax, but they don't it doesn't bother them.

The same thing is true with the tariff.

The ultimate consumer doesn't ends up paying the tariff in a higher cost per good.

But it's not as oppressive as filling out your income tax in April of every year.

The bottom line is this the the president was going to use tariffs to generate income to pay the federal debt, to reduce the federal debt that has been scuttled by this decision.

But the bottom line is, I was not surprised because the court and I think Justice Roberts leading the court, said we have to be consistent.

We can't tell a Democratic president you do not have the express power to do this thing, which you may consider to be extremely beneficial, preventing the spread of Covid, reducing student debt, improving clean air.

Those were all public benefits that the Biden administration wanted to bring you.

We told them you couldn't do that because nowhere does it expressly say you can do it.

And that's what they said to President Trump here.

I was not surprised.

>> So let me read a little bit of what Justice Gorsuch wrote.

I thought there's quite a civics lesson here from what Justice Gorsuch is saying about some of what Judge Dellinger is talking about there.

So Gorsuch writes extensively about the Nondelegation doctrine, the principle that Congress cannot grant legislative powers to other branches.

And he writes the following quote for those who think it important for the nation to impose more tariffs, I understand that today's decision will be disappointing.

All I can offer them is that most major decisions affecting the rights and responsibilities of the American people, including the duty to pay taxes and tariffs, are funneled through the legislative process for a reason.

Yes, legislating can be hard and take time.

And yes, it can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises.

But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design.

Through that process, the nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people's elected representatives, not just of one faction or one man.

End quote.

>> That is absolutely the heart of my opinion of this decision.

This decision reaffirms that there are certain prerogatives which the Constitution grants to the president, and there are certain limitations that Congress imposes upon the president.

The legislative branch.

And we can talk about its weakness.

I've done a bunch of research here about the Congress and how it's so split.

The partisanship is split everything.

But I do want to mention one other thing, and it affects something that may happen today or tomorrow or very soon.

And that is the president's attack on Iran.

If you recall, George W Bush, before he invaded Iraq and engaged in, in the Middle East, in Afghanistan, he went to Congress and asked for a congressional authorization because he, in essence, although he didn't refer to it, he, in essence, was declaring war on those two countries.

He was going to put American troops on the ground in both of those countries.

>> We remember Colin Powell presenting the images of what he said were the mobile weapons labs.

>> Correct.

As it turned out, the the evidence to justify the invasion of Iraq was doctored.

The invasion of Afghanistan was occasioned in an unusual set of circumstances, which even to this day, I don't fully understand.

But the bottom line is, George W Bush said, I have to go to Congress to get their authority to use America's military might overseas.

We are about to and may soon be attacking Iran.

The president will not describe it as a declaration of war on Iran, but boy, does it look like war when you start dropping bombs and sending troops in, it seems to me that the congressional authorization to go to war is at the heart of America's democracy, much like the congressional authorization to impose tariffs.

And if you don't go to Congress, you lose the benefit of what Neil Gorsuch said, which is the collective wisdom of Democrats and Republicans elected from around the country who get some input on whether we should be attacking Iran.

Do we have a strategy for how we're going to do it?

Do we have a strategy for what happens after we win or after we walk away disappointed, as we did?

>> But the congressional majority is not asking for this kind of resolution.

>> I I'm astounded by that.

And what it does is it strips Congress of its authority.

And this is one of the things I just wanted to mention.

I understand the incentive for a president in this political climate to use executive orders to accomplish things as, as, you know, President Trump made a whole bunch of promises to the electorate when he ran for office.

He's now in a position where he can't get those things through Congress.

The legislative majority in the House is down to single digits, 3 or 4 votes.

The Senate is teetering.

they certainly are nowhere near the 60 necessary to overcome a filibuster.

So what you have is a Congress that has all this legislative power, whether it's in the declaration of war, whether it's in the assignment of tariffs, whether it's in the taxing power, an incredible wide scope of potential power.

But because of the divides in the country, even Congress can't do it.

They haven't been able to get it done.

That was the frustration that Joe Biden had when he tried to do the student loan forgiveness and the mask mandate.

It's the frustration of President Trump of trying to do the tariffs.

But just remember, I've often said this when I've taught in other instances, what's the greatest legislative accomplishment in the last 25 years in America?

Only one thing survived the filibuster.

One major policy initiative.

>> ACA.

>> The Affordable Care Act.

If you recall the unusual circumstances, Ted Kennedy died while it was pending in the Senate.

They quickly appointed his successor so that they had the 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.

That was the only time the only major initiative.

And we can talk about the taxing power and the budgets, but those all go through the process of reconciliation.

You can avoid a filibuster, but we're in a point where America is so divided, the public is so divided.

Whether it's redistricting or political views or whatever.

The reason is, the country is so divided that the legislative incentive that Neil Gorsuch talked about, in his opinion, which is critically important to America, the legislature isn't doing anything.

No major initiatives from the Congress.

>> Mike Johnson continues to say that part of their job is to make sure that the president's agenda can go forward, as opposed to acting as an equal branch of government.

>> I, I find that a complete, complete negation of two centuries worth of American history.

There was a time when the legislative branch was the power before the days of the supreme presidency, which to some extent comes out of the Lincoln Civil War era and then, of course, jumps into the Roosevelt era, when it's expanded well beyond it and has been continued.

But the legislative branch right now is paralyzed because of the minor political advantage for Republicans in the House and the filibuster in the Senate.

We're not doing anything.

I mean, I think it's that simple.

If somebody can point me to a significant legislative accomplishment in the last 20 years, I don't see it.

>> Well, closing the loop on what Justice Gorsuch wrote, he went on to say in his concurring opinion that it's not just about getting the collective wisdom of elected representatives to weigh in and not just one man.

It's about understanding that if we have policies that are just up to one president, we're going to whipsaw back and forth administration and administration, and that policy and law should be durable, and that should be forged through compromise, that when it is forged through compromise, even if the process is mucky or slow, that tends to yield a more durable policy.

You agree with that?

>> Oh, absolutely.

If you look at it the the effect of the ACA, which again, is a democratic initiative, they were able to slip it through the Senate by one vote.

They got it through the House.

Nonetheless, that is now an enduring part of America's culture.

America's health care system, whether it's funded or not by this administration or not.

But but it's very much a part of it.

Social Security, which at one time was a huge dispute about whether we should have Social Security.

It's now one of the third rails of American politics, because these are the legislatively approved initiatives that go through the process that create dependable legal structures for our culture and our way of life.

And it seems to me that that's what the power of Congress should be.

What's happened is, and I think you see it in the frustration of members of Congress who are leaving in droves that Congress cannot find the will to do its job.

And its job is not to be a rubber stamp for Donald Trump or Joe Biden or Barack Obama or any one of the presidents.

They have an equal say.

And the notion that they're going to simply jump in line with the president and follow him, whatever he says is contrary to the American experience.

>> All right.

Before we get some listener feedback after our break, before we get there, let me just ask you for a little bit more on what you've been reading from these justices.

One other item that I flagged came from Justice Kavanaugh, and Justice Kavanaugh was one of the three justices who voted with the president on tariffs.

He argues that the major questions doctrine has never been applied to a foreign affairs statute.

It should not be applied to tariffs.

And then he warned that if the Supreme Court strikes down the president's tariffs, who's going to handle the tariff refund cases?

It's going to be a mess, he said.

So it's going to just be an absolute mess.

What do you make of those arguments?

>> I think Justice Kavanaugh is jumping into the administration of the tariffs.

My understanding is the tariffs were all collected electronically.

They can be refunded electronically.

All you have to do is push a bunch of buttons.

I'm not saying it's that simple, but anybody who suggests it's going to be a mess is simply saying, oh, it's okay.

The government collected a couple hundred billion dollars in money for which it didn't have the authority to do it, and you don't have to give it back.

One very interesting thing about it.

I've read some commentary.

Evan, that says this is the best thing that could happen to the Republican Party.

>> If the federal government has to refund $200 billion in an election year, it will stimulate economic growth and economic spending that will suddenly make Republicans look like heroes.

And the best part about it is it's kind of the Jesse James approach.

I pointed a gun at you and took all your money, but I'm going to give it all back to you.

You ought to be very thankful.

But the notion that $200 billion in revenue will be kicked back into the economy might be a good thing for Republicans who are trying to show that the economy is actually working.

>> See, I'm not a legal scholar.

I just read that part of Justice Kavanaugh's writing, and I thought, who cares?

It might be a mess.

I suspect there are some parts of this that will be very messy and contested, but that's not a justification for upholding an unconstitutional action.

>> Correct.

And the other thing is if you followed the discourse about the tariffs and the exemptions that have been granted for the tariffs, my understanding, and I think there's solid evidence that shows the administration is handing out exemptions from tariffs to people like Apple and other people, depending on how much money you're willing to commit to the president's political organization.

>> Well.

>> That's being used as a candy jar.

>> Yes.

That is at the start of this.

Historians were saying, you got to really be careful because tariffs can be gamed and they can be used sort of as carrot and stick and political tools.

I items of coercion.

So okay, last thing before we get phone calls I see our phones are ringing.

We've got emails to share with Judge Rick Dollinger as we talk about what we're learning not only from this court but from the tariff decision.

Anything else in the the opinions that you read that stood out to you that you think we should note here?

>> I think the important lesson from this opinion is that the separation of powers that has governed our Constitution is alive and well, and that's critically important that this court has said we are an independent branch of government.

Our job is to interpret the Constitution and decide who has what powers under the Constitution.

The other thing that I think is critically important is that this is a message to federal district court judges across our country that do not be afraid to say to any public official, the president other public officials, state officials, to simply say to them, you're going to do what the law tells you to do.

You do not have the freedom to do whatever you want.

And I think it sends a tremendous message to the federal judiciary.

And I hope to state judges as well, that we still are an independent branch of government.

And we have the requirement consistent with the oath we take to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

That is the linchpin of American democracy.

And the this decision reaffirms that.

>> We're going to take this only break.

Come right back to your phone calls and emails for Judge Rick Dollinger on Connections.

Coming up in our second hour, are you routinely frustrated by seeing people in your life sharing medical information on social media?

And, you know, it's just bunk and you can't believe they're sharing it, or you don't know why they believe it, or you yourself sometimes struggle to distinguish a headline or piece of information that might be fake or real.

We're going to talk about how to distinguish that next hour.

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>> This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson and calling from San Diego.

This is Greg.

Hi, Greg.

Go ahead.

>> Good morning.

I am trying my very best to stay positive about, you know, maintaining democracy.

When I see that the governmental institutions, the Congress, the Supreme Court, and then the economic you know, the barons of big business, the billionaires seem to be all working against the idea of democracy to turn it into a plutocracy or, you know just add centralized power in the hands of Trump.

He's got Stephen Miller behind him, maybe kind of urging him on what to do, how to remain positive, and what the individual citizen can do regardless of state and life.

How do we keep our country?

>> Greg, it's a big one.

And it dovetails with an email I got from Rick.

So I'm going to read Rick's email.

not Rick Dollinger different.

Rick.

but similar sentiment.

Rick writes in to say, Evan, I appreciate your guest's insights and comments.

What I would like to know is how Judge Dollinger believes we can restore faith in our institutions.

It seems to me that unless and until we do that, the lack of trust and extreme partisanship will persist.

I know this is a big and difficult question, but I believe it is necessary.

So Greg and Rick asking similar things.

Judge, what do you think?

>> Well, I understand how the Barons want to deal with a single chief Executive officer when Apple goes into to discuss things with Google, the two CEOs can sit down, shake hands, strike a deal, and everybody will follow along.

That's not true in the United States government.

And I would tell you that the billionaires, the barons are frustrated when it comes to dealing with Congress.

when you have so many voices, so many different voices when there are so many votes that are needed on a particular item to get it through committee or to get it through the House or through the Senate the notion that large numbers of people get input on things is contrary to sort of the the era of American capitalism.

So I understand their frustration.

But how do we restore the faith in government?

The first thing we do is say the Supreme Court got this decision right, and they got the decision right in the Biden cases as well.

They're standing up for the notion that we are still an independent judiciary and that Congress has the power to decide these questions.

Another perfect example would be for Congress to stand up and say, you cannot attack, attack Iran without the jurors, without the approval of the United States Congress.

I don't know whether that's going to happen.

I would hope that it would.

But the bottom line is, until Congress asserts its prerogatives, the notion of executive control, which has expanded over the last 75 years, that until Congress stands up and restricts the executive power, that's what we have to play with.

And the bottom line is this so many of our institutions, whether it's churches or civic clubs or organizations, they have to establish their own credibility.

They have to listen to the public and come up with reasoned, rational approaches to solve some of our pending problems.

I think those solutions are out there, but they're not getting the debate that they deserve.

Part of it is to have a program like this to talk about options and choices and how it works out, but right now the ball is in Congress's court.

The court couldn't the Supreme Court couldn't be clearer.

you have the ball in your hands, figure out how to use it.

You can tell the president what to do, what's what's.

Very interesting.

I just want to remind everybody the international emergency Economic Powers Act, which is what justified the president's initial use of this was passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, so that was the statute that was an example of the legislative and executive powers working together to try to deal with the problem, in this case, of a threat to national security.

No one has ever been able to tell me what Canada, how Canada posed a threat to the national security of the United States or the European Union.

That was the flaw in the use of the IEEPA as a tool to impose these tariffs.

But the bottom line is this until the institutions begin to demonstrate character in their decision making, I think we're going to continue to wallow in this notion.

You can't trust these institutions.

>> Well, I'm going to pick up the word that Judge Dellinger just said there.

And Rick and Greg didn't ask me.

But I'll just say, as I'm observing this, a lot of your answer was about what Congress could do to start restoring the trust of the people.

Part of what Rick is wondering is what can we as individuals, citizens do?

And you have to demand candidates with character.

It cannot just be about the coarsening.

Well, there course we're going to coarsen.

I mean, everything is going to go downhill.

You know, they're going low.

We're going lower.

The lack of character in civic life is at a crisis level that I've never seen in my lifetime.

>> I, I agree with that, Evan.

And it's it's a difficult notion to wrestle with, but we get a candidate who says I'm I'm in favor of this.

I'm in favor of that, and I'm in favor of that vote for me.

Most of what they do in Congress or the state legislature has nothing to do with any of those three issues.

It has to do with trying to figure out solutions to complex problems.

And I certainly know lots of people in public life, Democrat and Republican conservatives, who I would say are character, people of character.

Yes, yes, high character, but too often we tend to look to people who scream and yell hot button issues, and we ignore who they are deep in their hearts.

And that's what America should be looking for.

>> Okay, back to your feedback here.

comment on you.

Watch it on YouTube.

Says if we have any less than three branches, we lose.

And I think what they're saying is three equal branches.

If we don't have three equal branches, we as a society we lose.

You agree with that?

>> Oh, absolutely.

That's why, as I mentioned, the power to declare war.

I think we're about to go to war with Iran.

And we have no congressional authorization for it.

We don't know what the plan is.

We don't know what the strategy is.

We don't know what the end game is.

Those are all things that an engaged Congress would be asking for.

And we don't know.

And frankly we may end up in a situation where despite everyone's best hopes, it could easily become another Afghanistan, another Iraq, or, heaven forbid, another Vietnam.

>> Joe writes in to say he thinks that President Trump should have the authority to impose tariffs because the president is elected.

The Supreme Court members are not elected, and it should be up to elected leaders who have to answer to the people, judge.

>> They actually are elected.

They're appointed by the president, first of all, and then they're elected by 100 people who constitute the United States Senate.

They're not subject to individual voters.

But believe me, the people who vote for them clearly are.

So the notion that they're somehow not elected and that they're immune from that, I would suggest if you've ever watched a hearing for a Supreme Court nominee, they are grilled more extensively than any elected public official I have ever seen.

They're subject to days of questioning by senators on both sides of the aisle in a rigorous, detailed process.

They're extensively vetted by before they're even nominated.

So the notion that somehow they're not elected by the public really sort of my opinion misses the whole point of what the process by which they assume office.

It's a very rigorous process.

Much more rigorous.

And I can say this as someone who ran for legislative office, much more rigorous than the process that I encountered when I ran for the county legislature in the state Senate.

>> Joe, thank you for the email.

Jim writes in to say, while I agree with Rick Dollinger on most of what he's been saying, I strongly disagree with the concept of neutrality of judges.

We only have to look at District Court Judge Cannon in Florida, and her almost absolute loyalty to the president.

And now, in this second term, the judicial nominees are chosen based on loyalty to one person and not to the Constitution.

And yes, the Supreme Court has gotten it wrong so many times that the Dred Scott decision isn't the only bad decision that has been overturned.

That is from Jim.

>> Well the president of the United States has the power to appoint anyone he deems competent to be a member of the federal judiciary.

That's been true since George Washington appointed the first ten judges of the Supreme Court.

And it's up to the United States Senate to aggressively vet those candidates and determine whether they will be consistent with their oath of office or their promise in a private conversation with the president of the United States.

I personally have no doubt that during the screening process for all the judges that Donald Trump appointed, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's true for both Obama appointees, Clinton appointees, that someone asked the question of what do you think about Roe against Wade?

What do you think?

What's your opinion about that?

I have I have a strong sense that at some point someone during the vetting process or the president himself, while interviewing the candidate, said, what do you think?

is that inappropriate for this president of the United States to ask that question?

I don't think so.

I think the president of the United States gets to a point.

It's his choice.

He's responsible for it.

And quite frankly, unless we're willing to tinker with the system, that's the system we've got.

And whether you like what they have to say or not, I've said this a number of times, both on this program and elsewhere as both a judge and as a lawyer.

there were instances in which I completely disagreed with the law.

That didn't mean I didn't have to follow it.

And your oath of office is to follow the law.

That's why we're a country of laws rather than a country of men.

>> Regarding the president's comments about the individual justices, Patrick writes in to say, he says it's mobocracy.

So I'm not sure if I heard that term on your show or on a different newscast, but that's what the president is doing.

It's all those old phrases like, you scratch my back, I scratch yours.

And what's also interesting is he's acting like he's the first one who ever appointed a judge.

So Patrick says that that's not a phrase I've heard.

Patrick, I don't think it's come up on Connections, but he says it's mobocracy this threatening judges.

you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.

What do you see there?

>> when I hear this kind of language I think of two of my favorite characters of all time.

The father, Vito and the son, Michael.

The Corleones.

This was very much a Corleone approach.

And just remember, Donald Trump learned his relationship to the legal system for a man named Roy Cohen, who was a famous New York City lawyer who was known as having no guide rails, no guardrails, did whatever he wanted ran into all kinds of problems.

But Donald Trump was schooled by Roy Cohen, who I'm convinced told Donald Trump, don't worry about the laws.

They're mostly advisory.

They're not really binding.

>> Oh, boy.

well, back to Judge Cannon.

Laura and Victor writes in to say Judge Aileen Cannon barred Jack Smith's report.

What can be done about Judge Cannon thwarting due process in her shutting down Jack Smith and barring the release of his report, can that be appealed right before our eyes, she is doing Trump's bidding.

>> my assumption is this is an order of the federal court.

It can clearly be appealed.

Aileen Cannon was appointed to the bench by President Trump.

There were serious questions about her qualifications, but nonetheless, the United States Senate approved her appointment.

And she sits as a federal judge.

I know that a number of people have raised the question about whether she's just a toady for Donald Trump, but I'm unwilling to accept that.

I just if the oath of office has no meaning to an appointment to the federal bench, then we're we're in big trouble.

And I don't know.

And I'm not willing to buy her her rationale for the decisions that she made.

I think it's subject to great debate, but nonetheless she has held that Jack Smith's report should not be published.

I would hope it's appealed.

And I would hope the circuit court says, of course it should be granted.

But honestly, Evan, I don't know enough about the rules of civil procedure, or for that matter, the the statute under which he was proceeding to tell you whether there's a good ground for appeal or not.

>> Our last couple of minutes I just want to close by asking you to square up the, to me, it looks like you have admiration for this court for what they did in this tariff case.

They knew they were going to take heat from the president.

The justices who he appointed, who went against him.

But they have an an oath here they are explaining in clear language why they think the president was wrong and overstepped.

And it sounds to me like you admire that.

At the same time, this is the court that produced the immunity decision, the presidential immunity decision.

How do you square that up?

>> I don't understand the immunity decision.

I'm what fascinates me about the immunity decision is nowhere in the United States Constitution is the word immunity.

Nowhere.

It's unseen.

And so what happened is this court decided that a president should have a prerogative to be able to evade the laws that apply to everybody else during the period of time that he's the president.

I don't quite understand that.

Now, I will understand one interesting piece of that, and that is, to some extent, the power of impeachment given to Congress is a way to correct the inappropriate conduct or illegal conduct of the president.

But having said that, in my opinion, they cut the immunity decision out of whole cloth, and I still don't quite understand what the rationale was to give the president immunity.

And what's unfortunate, I'm going to make a prediction right now.

Write it down.

The immunity provision will be used to shield the president of the United States from granting pardons to every member of his administration.

There will be at the end of the Trump administration, everyone, everybody who was involved in Trump at all is going to be pardoned, which means that they're all now operating under the notion that they don't have to follow law.

Is he immune from doing that?

I believe he is, because pardons are one of the inherent powers of the president.

>> And we talked about it after President Biden's pardons.

What a disaster those were.

>> You I'll make a prediction right here that the immunity doctrine will be used to shield President Trump from granting wholesale pardons from everybody who worked from him, from, all of his secretaries of cabinet positions, all the way down to the minions, the ice people who were involved in the shooting in Minneapolis.

Don't be surprised if they're pardoned as well.

I just don't buy in this decision.

>> We're going to lose the hour here.

>> But in this decision, the power of Congress and our Constitution has been restored for the time being.

>> Judge, always appreciate your expertise.

Thank you for being here.

Judge Rick Dollinger.

Thank you for your Connections coming up here.

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