Trump defends tariffs amid market mayhem | The Excerpt
On Monday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: What's next for the market response to tariffs? Paste BN Justice Department Correspondent Aysha Bagchi discusses why Trump's moves to punish law firms are causing alarm. The Justice Department has suspended a lawyer who criticized the Trump administration in the deportation case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Paste BN Senior National Political Correspondent Sarah D. Wire talks about the potential implications of cuts for local libraries. UConn defeats South Carolina for the women's college basketball championship. In our latest edition of 'Kind Time,' An MTA agent spreads kindness on the New York City subway.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning, I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Monday, April 7th, 2025. This is The Excerpt.
Today, what's next for the markets after tariffs? Plus how Trump's moves to punish law firms are causing alarm. And we discuss what many librarians are worried about amid cuts.
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All eyes will be on the markets this week after President Donald Trump's tariff announcement last week sent stocks tumbling. A sell-off erased over $5 trillion in market value in the S&P 500 for the two trading days after Trump announced the tariffs. Economists have warned that Trump's tariffs have heightened the likelihood of a recession, with one forecaster predicting it entirely. Trump meanwhile, last night defended his massive tariffs that have rattled investors, telling reporters, quote, "Sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something," unquote. You can stay with usatoday.com and The Excerpt throughout the week for ongoing coverage of the tariff response.
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President Donald Trump's moves to punish law firms are causing alarm. I spoke with Paste BN Justice Department correspondent Aysha Bagchi for more. Aysha, thanks for hopping on.
Aysha Bagchi:
Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So Aysha, what have we seen with Trump going after law firms that challenge him? I know he has kind of done so in a variety of ways, is that correct?
Aysha Bagchi:
Yes. Trump has issued a series of executive orders targeting different law firms. He also issued a memorandum that more generally talks about sanctioning law firms that bring what he calls frivolous or vexatious litigation. But it's especially the executive orders targeting specific law firms that have so far drawn the biggest attention, in part because they've really gotten a lot of big law firms to come to the table with the administration and enter into agreements that are making a lot of people in the legal community fear that big law firms are going to get out of the way when it comes to challenging the lawfulness of executive actions coming from the Trump administration and letting courts decide what's lawful and what isn't.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, let's get into that just in terms of the variety of firm responses. How have some firms pushed back and then how are others, as you mentioned, apparently I guess playing ball with this administration?
Aysha Bagchi:
We've seen three firms file lawsuits. And it's probably important to highlight why these executive orders are such a big deal to the firms. They're really designed to be implemented in a way that could be devastating to a firm's business. They instruct government agencies to pull the security clearances from lawyers. That means that the lawyers might not be able to access sensitive government information that they might need in order to represent certain clients. But probably even a bigger deal is they instruct government agencies to pull the contracts, the government contracts that these firms have, and also to look into the contracts of the firm's clients. And in that way, even clients might be scared to work with these firms. So they really might be devastating orders.
And we've seen three firms file lawsuits trying to challenge this, saying that this is unconstitutional. One of those firms has a conservative superstar, legal superstar, Paul Clement, representing them. And that's really noteworthy because Paul Clement was the Solicitor General, which is basically the top lawyer who argues before the Supreme Court, for George W. Bush, and he's the one putting his name on the table to say that this is unconstitutional.
But then you've seen a handful of other firms say, "We do not want to get into a fight with the administration. We want to settle this in a way that keeps us clear of the executive order so that clients don't get scared and run away." That seems to be the motivation. The first firm to do that was a firm named Paul Weiss. Paul Weiss was actually hit with an executive order and Trump has now rescinded it because Paul Weiss promised to do $40 million worth of pro bono work, free legal services, to causes that the firm and Trump agree upon. And since then you've seen hundreds of millions of dollars more in pledged legal work from other firms that came to the table with Trump in order to get deals made that would avert an executive order targeting them too.
So you've really seen a division in the legal community. Some people call this a collective action problem basically, where people aren't working together in an organized way to combat this. You really see different firms taking different approaches.
Taylor Wilson:
Aysha, you touched on some of these issues, but why are people really so concerned about all this more broadly, and would you help us understand the role of law firms functionally in this court system we have?
Aysha Bagchi:
The law firms we're talking about right now are firms that really mostly represent well-heeled clients, really clients that can pay really hefty legal fees, so it can kind of seem like an issue that is divorced from more mainstream issues that Americans are going to be thinking about.
But a lot of experts told me that that's really the wrong way to think about it, for a couple of reasons. One is that these firms have significant pro bono practices. Those are the practices where they do a lot of free legal work. And when those firms take on these cases for free, they bring the same high-powered attorneys, they bring the same tremendous resources to litigating those cases that they bring to the stuff they do for high-end clients. So they really do play a very important role in the litigation system.
And the broader point is that to the degree that you see law firms responding to these executive orders by coming to agreements with the Trump administration, there are a lot of people in the legal community who fear that this is only going to embolden the president to go further. That this is proving to be an effective strategy that might discourage people from bringing lawsuits against the administration for fear of being hit with their own executive order. And in that way, you've got a good handful of law firms right now and it can only expand further and further if the president finds that regardless of what happens in court around these executive orders, these firms just don't want to deal with the executive orders in the first place. They worry that even if they could win in court, even if they think they would win in court, that clients would still be scared off because the clients would get the message that this is a firm that the presidential administration doesn't like and the presidential administration is not going to want to do business with this firm.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, excellent explainer as always. Folks can find this full piece with a link in today's show notes. Aysha Bagchi covers the Justice Department for Paste BN. Thanks, Aysha.
Aysha Bagchi:
Thanks for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
The Department of Justice over the weekend placed on leave one of its top immigration lawyers after he questioned in court the Trump administration's handling of the deportation of a Maryland man to El Salvador that was carried out in error. Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed in a statement the suspension of Erez Reuveni, who represented the government Friday when a federal judge ruled the Trump administration acted illegally by mistakenly deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The U.S. district judge ordered Abrego Garcia must be returned to the United States. The judge gave the administration until 11:59 p.m. tonight to remove him from an El Salvador prison where he is being held and return him to U.S. soil. The Trump administration appealed the judge's decision.
During Friday's hearing in a Maryland federal court, Reuveni expressed exasperation with the unwillingness of the Trump administration, his client, to respond to some of his inquiries and told the judge he had questioned why the government could not bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.
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Librarians and states say cuts will decimate local libraries. Feds say they will eliminate bloat. I spoke with Paste BN senior national political correspondent Sarah D. Wire to learn more about what might be at stake. Hello, Sarah.
Sarah D. Wire:
Hi.
Taylor Wilson:
Thanks for hopping on. Great story here. So libraries across the country have been informed, as you write, that grants approved last year are being terminated. What are they hearing?
Sarah D. Wire:
So far it's been in about a handful of states. We're hearing from California, Connecticut, and Washington State that their grants have been terminated six months into the year. These grants cover a variety of things. Some are reading programs, bookmobiles, e-books even in some places. And so there are things that people are going to notice immediately.
Taylor Wilson:
As for the Trump administration, why do they want these cuts there? Is this just kind of a similar talking point to what we've heard amid other cuts in recent weeks?
Sarah D. Wire:
They said in the termination letter that it was because the grants were no longer within the priorities of the administration, and that they were also in violation of Trump's most recent executive order, which reduced the agency that hands out these grants down to its statutory minimum.
Taylor Wilson:
And how vital are these grants actually for libraries to operate?
Sarah D. Wire:
It depends on the size of the library, honestly. Really big libraries in, say, Chicago and Los Angeles aren't going to feel it nearly as much as tiny, tiny libraries in suburban and rural communities, where this might be how they pay salaries. This might be the source of a lot of the books that they are able to access because they're able to trade books with other libraries and keep a smaller number of books on hand. Sometimes it's the databases that they're able to offer people, the free internet they can offer, which is so important in rural communities, or even just access to online databases and print newspapers.
Taylor Wilson:
Sarah, tell us a little about Mount Airy library in Maryland and the folks you spoke with for this piece.
Sarah D. Wire:
This library was delightfully busy. It was a Wednesday morning. There were moms walking in with their kids to go to story time. The knitting club was meeting and everybody wanted to talk to me about it. I spoke to a man, he goes there every day to apply for a job because it's one of the few places that he can go to for free to access the internet. And everyone there really spoke about it as a community hub. This is a community of about 9,000 people, and there's not a lot of places to go and gather the way they can at this library.
Taylor Wilson:
And elsewhere, did you hear similar things about libraries in rural Arkansas, for instance?
Sarah D. Wire:
Down in Arkansas, the library director was telling me that without this money, they just couldn't provide services to a community that already has a high rate of poverty, a high rate of adult illiteracy, and reading scores that are just not up where they should be. And he's really worried about what it's going to mean for the community if they're not able to provide access to these things that the state buys and allows every library to access using this federal funding.
Taylor Wilson:
The public and members of Congress are pushing back in various ways, Sarah. What recourse do they actually have?
Sarah D. Wire:
The only one who can really push back on Trump is Congress when it comes to this. There's a question about whether the executive branch has the authority to cut off this funding, which was approved by Congress, and these grants that were directly approved by Congress. There's two members of the Democratic caucus who are pushing in the House for a letter asking Trump to reconsider these cuts. And that was only signed by Democrats. Republicans didn't sign on. And that does raise eyebrows on the future of the agency, which has to be reauthorized in the fall to even continue existing.
Taylor Wilson:
And you spoke with someone who said that libraries are part of our national culture, Sarah. Can you talk through what that means and why are libraries such cultural institutions for so many people?
Sarah D. Wire:
That person spoke about Ben Franklin and creating the first libraries and how important the free exchange of information and the access to education and knowledge is to the idea of America, that everyone has the right to be informed and educated. And he really said that to him, it would be such a devastating loss to the idea of American culture.
One quote that didn't make it into the piece was a librarian saying, "If you tried today, you could never recreate libraries in America." Because the idea that the federal government and local government was going to pay to provide free books and internet access to anyone just probably wouldn't fly. And he was very worried that once services are diminished, once libraries close, they won't come back.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, folks should go check out this piece from Sarah with a link in today's show notes. Sarah D. Wire covers national politics for Paste BN. Thank you, Sarah.
Sarah D. Wire:
Thanks for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
And now here's our second installment of Kind Time, a special segment on the first Monday of each month to start you off on the right foot. For today's piece, we're going to tell you about Rodney Smith, a man who is on a mission to spread love. The 71-year-old works as a customer service agent for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York City. His job is to help the thousands of passengers who pass through the East 86th Street, Second Avenue subway station every day. But as Terry Baddoo of Paste BN's good news brand, Humankind, found out, he offers commuters so much more, meeting and greeting them like old friends.
Rodney Smith:
Happy spring everybody. Have an awesome day too, while we're at it. Awesome day. Good morning.
I started being a station agent in 2017. Before that, I was a bus operator and a train operator, and then I came over here to stations, and this is like the perfect job for me because I've always been a people person and always liked to just make the best of it and enjoy myself while I'm at work and spread positive vibes in the morning when people are going to work.
Top of the morning to you. Have an awesome day, everybody. Good morning.
Commuter:
Rodney is just the spirit of joy and happiness every morning for everybody on this station. And in a world with everybody is insisting to be serious, he is deciding to be happy, and I love that.
Rodney Smith:
Good morning. That's right. One week to opening day. All right. That's right. Yankees.
Commuter:
He's always friendly. He gives us a motivation in the morning time going to work. And it's cool. It's a good vibe. It's good to start the morning with a smile, especially in the subway, right?
Rodney Smith:
I wish that everyone'd just be kind, all right? Be kind. Sprinkle that stuff all over. Kindness is free. That's what I believe, and that's how I live my life. Happy spring. Bye. All right.
Taylor Wilson:
You can watch this story and find more inspirational stories on humankind at usatoday.com. We have a link in today's show notes.
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The Yukon Huskies are women's basketball champions. They took down South Carolina in the College National Championship game yesterday 82 to 59, after moving through the tournament as a two seed. Today, the men will crown their champion as Florida take on Houston. Tip-off is set for 8:50 p.m. Eastern Time.
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Later today, we'll have another episode of Forum. This week, the opinion team took a step back to describe how they envision this project.
Casey Blake:
The initial goal really was to create a space where readers could hear each other out in their own words, in a format that sounded like their own words, and especially those who they disagree with.
Taylor Wilson:
You can hear that full interview today on this feed beginning at 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time.
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And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio. And if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson. I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.