'It's a one-way ratchet': Conservative Justice Gorsuch suggests Trump tariffs are overreach
Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Donald Trump appointee, appeared to voice sharp criticism of the administration's arguments about emergency powers.
Gorsuch noted that, because of the president's power to veto congressional legislation, Congress doesn't have much power to rein in the president with new legislation, once Congress has given more power to the president. (Congress needs a two-thirds vote to override a presidential veto.)
That, Gorsuch suggested, is a reason to be skeptical of the administration's position that Congress has ceded over to the executive branch the type of broad emergency powers the president is now invoking.
"What happens when the president simply vetoes legislation to try to take these powers back?" Gorsuch asked. "Congress, as a practical matter in the real world, it can never get that power back."
"It's a one-way ratchet toward the gradual but continual accretion of power in the executive branch and away from the people's elected representatives," Gorsuch added.
"I disagree with that," Trump administration lawyer John Sauer adamantly responded. He said there was a recent example of Congress terminating the COVID-19 emergency.
Gorsuch responded that the president had agreed to that move from Congress.
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