Trump's 'reciprocal' tariffs take effect | The Excerpt
On Wednesday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: President Donald Trump's latest tariffs take effect Wednesday. Paste BN Justice Department Correspondent Aysha Bagchi discusses the Supreme Court's move to halt the reinstatement of fired federal employees. Trump signs an executive order aimed at reviving the U.S. coal industry. Health Secretary RFK Jr. is going after fluoride in tap water. Paste BN National Correspondent Trevor Hughes says President Trump has cancelled hundreds of student visas. Texas surpasses 500 measles cases since January.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning, I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Wednesday, April 9th, 2025. This is The Excerpt. Today, tariffs are here, plus the Supreme Court weighs in on fired federal employees, and the Trump administration has revoked hundreds of international student visas nationwide.
President Donald Trump's reciprocal tariffs on dozens of countries took effect earlier today. That includes massive 104% duties on Chinese goods and a 20% tariff on the European Union. Top Chinese brokerages have pledged to work together to help steady domestic share prices in response to tariff-induced turmoil.
Nearly three-quarters of Americans expect the prices of everyday items to rise in the next six months, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll. And economists have warned that US consumers will likely face higher prices on a range of products.
The Trump administration has scheduled talks with South Korea and Japan, and Italy's prime minister is due to visit next week. The deputy prime minister of Vietnam is set to speak with the US Treasury Secretary later today. Markets around the world continue to get slammed amid tariff news, a sell-off across Asian markets resume today.
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The Supreme Court has blocked a judge's order for the Trump administration to rehire thousands of federal employees. I spoke with Paste BN Justice Department correspondent Aysha Bagchi to put the decision in context. Thanks for hopping on, Aysha.
Aysha Bagchi:
Thanks, Taylor. I'm happy to be here.
Taylor Wilson:
So, the Supreme Court has weighed in here over the reinstatement of fired federal employees. This has seemingly been kind of a saga for weeks now. What did we hear out of the high court yesterday?
Aysha Bagchi:
We heard the high court say something that was pretty narrow, but has big consequences for thousands of federal employees who've been fired. The high court simply said that this lawsuit that had ordered the Trump administration to reinstate about 16,000 federal workers, at least the order in the case that ordered them to be reinstated, needs to be tossed out, because these organizations that brought the lawsuit, they were non-profits, didn't have something called legal standing.
That's a really technical term, but it has to do with the situations in which you can bring a lawsuit to court. You've got to show that you're harmed in a certain kind of way that courts approve of. And the Supreme Court basically said that these non-profits haven't shown that kind of injury. And because of that, the judge down at a trial court had said that, "16,000 workers needed to get their jobs back, and his order has to be thrown out." So big implications for federal employees, but not so clear on what the Supreme Court thinks of whether the Trump administration actually acted lawfully.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah, does the court's decision give us any clarity, Aysha, on whether the administration could ultimately be forced to rehire the workers? What functionally happens next?
Aysha Bagchi:
There's a lot of ambiguity about that situation after the Supreme Court's, ruling because the Supreme Court wasn't saying, in its Tuesday decision, that this was actually lawful. It wasn't ruling on that issue. So you could imagine someone else bringing a lawsuit that comes under the precise circumstances that the Supreme Court thinks means that the person has legal standing, that they can bring this suit. And when that happens, maybe courts will rule that this was actually unlawful and that these workers need to be reinstated. The end effect of what the court decided yesterday is that that reinstatement is not going to happen.
And there's also a bigger picture here, that even when it comes to the lower court's decision saying that these workers needed to get their jobs back, the judge in that case didn't say that there's no way for the Trump administration to fire employees. He simply said that the way that the Trump administration did it here, it fired thousands of federal employees by saying that they had bad work performance, but it seemed to be firing These recently hired employees, they're called probationary employees, en masse.
And he said that that wasn't true, that they all didn't have bad performances, and that this wasn't a lawful way in which to reduce the size of the federal government and the federal bureaucracy. So it's still possible for the Trump administration to achieve some of its goals when it comes to reducing the federal workforce. And maybe even with these 16,000 employees, they might not be able to find a way to bring their lawsuit, but assuming they can, it's still an open question about whether they could be reinstated.
Taylor Wilson:
Aysha, this Tuesday decision really was the latest in a line of, I would say, relative court victories for Trump. Is that fair to say first off? And I guess what else have we seen in recent days out of the courts?
Aysha Bagchi:
It's true that the Trump administration has had some victories at the Supreme Court just in the past week, but I wouldn't read too much into that just at present. We've seen the Supreme Court, for example, say that a lower court's temporary restraining order that had halted the Trump administration from deporting Venezuelan migrants under this 18th century law. It's a really old law that's usually invoked during wartime. It's called the Alien Enemies Act.
The Supreme Court said that this temporary restraining order that would stop the Trump administration from using that law to deport Venezuelan migrants needed to be tossed out. But with that decision, the Supreme Court didn't actually say that what the Trump administration was doing was unlawful. It said, for kind of technical reasons, that the lawsuit was brought in the wrong way. And then there was another case where the Supreme Court halted a lower court's decision that would've forced the Trump administration to bring back a Maryland man who appears to have been wrongfully deported.
So you do see the Supreme Court giving the Trump administration some wins in recent days, but the big caution there is that in these cases, the Supreme Court hasn't said that the Trump administration's actions are actually lawful. It's just kind of pushing the brakes on lower courts moving quickly in these cases, and sometimes imposing technical reasons on why these lawsuits can't go forward.
Now, that could be a big deal in the big scheme of things, like if there's no way to bring a lawsuit, then there's no way to vindicate your rights, even if what an administration official has done is unlawful. But right now, the Supreme Court is kind of holding some of its cards when it comes to what it thinks of the actual lawfulness of these Trump administration actions.
Taylor Wilson:
Aysha Bagchi covers the Justice Department for Paste BN. Aysha, enlightening as always. Thanks so much.
Aysha Bagchi:
Thanks, Taylor.
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Taylor Wilson:
President Trump signed a series of executive orders yesterday aimed at reviving the long declining coal industry. In doing so, he rolled back Democratic efforts to curb coal. Trump's mandates include instructing federal agencies to identify coal resources on federal land, lift barriers to coal mining, and prioritize coal leasing on federal lands.
Additionally, Trump directed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to acknowledge the termination of the dual moratorium, which paused coal leasing on federal lands. He told agencies to rescind policies that seek to transition the US away from coal, and he ordered his administration to ensure coal-fired power plants are part of the nation's electric grid.
Trump's orders are a blow to environmental groups that have worked to slow coal production. In 2022, burning coal accounted for about 20% of the carbon dioxide emissions in the US, and 55% of all emissions from the electric power sector, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
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Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is taking aim at fluoride in public drinking water. A move scientists and dental health organizations have warned would prove disastrous for public health. During a visit to Salt Lake City, earlier this week, Kennedy said that, "Fluoride should not be in our water." He praised Utah for passing a first-ever ban on fluoride in public water, which will go into effect next month.
After the news conference, Kennedy told the Associated Press that he will tell the CDC to stop recommending cities and states add fluoride to public water systems. Adding fluoride to water is not required by law. Kennedy has endorsed claims that fluoride is behind health conditions from ADHD to hypothyroidism to lowering IQ.
Dentists and epidemiologists have hit back at those accusations as scientifically unproven, and have warned that fluoride from water systems could take a serious toll on public health. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.
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The Trump administration has revoked hundreds of international student visas across the country, sending off a scramble for them to leave the US within days. I spoke with Paste BN national correspondent, Trevor Hughes, for the latest. Trevor, thanks for joining me today.
Trevor Hughes:
Hey there.
Taylor Wilson:
So, just starting with this, Trevor, what did the Trump administration move to do here as it pertains to student visas?
Trevor Hughes:
There's no sort of central accounting, but what we are coming to understand is that the Trump administration has revoked hundreds, at least, of visas for international students. We're talking kids in California, in Colorado, in Massachusetts, in Florida, all over the country.
And in many cases, the students are not being told why their visas are being revoked, and in most cases, they're being told they more or less have a very short period of time, days, to leave the country. And some of them are within weeks of graduating college, and so of course, that has administrators scrambling to figure out how they can finish their programs while living in another country.
Taylor Wilson:
Wow. So they're not being told why, Trevor. Do we have any sense on any of the reasons that have been given for why these visas were cut?
Trevor Hughes:
In my reporting, I've heard a couple of different things. First, there are some students who have gotten into minor brushes with the law, maybe a speeding ticket, a fender bender, or a disagreement with a roommate that involved the police in some way. Not convicted mind you, just the police were involved in some way. But as a condition of their visas, being law-abiding is a requirement, and so the administration is apparently citing some of those cases to revoke these visas.
We're also seeing a pattern in which a lot of the folks who have lost their visas were protest leaders or involved with, or somehow became visible as part of the pro-Palestinian protest we saw last spring, about a year ago. You have to remember that the Trump administration has been going after these folks, these protesters, because the president during his campaign promised he would.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, as for the administration, as far as these hundreds of cancellations are concerned, do we hear anything specifically from them? I know Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has had some strong language on this, for instance.
Trevor Hughes:
Yeah, the secretary actually referred to some of these students as lunatics, but there was a widespread concern in conservative circles that these university students are coming from other countries, coming to the United States, and then complaining about how the United States does business. And there's an argument to be made that those students should not be welcomed in this country if all they're going to do is criticize how we operate.
Now, there's an argument on the other side which says, this is America. Everyone should have a First Amendment right to speak their minds, and that's in fact what makes America great. But that's where we are right now in this country. People really see a very divergent view of what it means to be living in America right now.
Taylor Wilson:
What do immigration experts say about these moves and just how unprecedented they might be?
Trevor Hughes:
I talked to one expert, he's been an immigration lawyer for 25 years. He said he's never seen anything like this before. He's seen a couple of revocations over the years for people who've gotten a DUI, right? Someone who has broken the law, been convicted of that, but he's never seen anything like this. And he says, it's hard to look at this and not see this as purely politically motivated.
Taylor Wilson:
As for what this means functionally for some of these students, Trevor, it sounds like some of them are already on planes heading out of the country, already back in their home countries. What's next for them? Are these students all leaving immediately? Are the universities working with them to try to find solutions? And I guess, is there any recourse for these hundreds of students we're talking about?
Trevor Hughes:
Those are all excellent questions to which we really don't have good answers. Because they are students, universities are generally limited in what they can say about those students. On a sort of bigger picture level, we've heard that some have been forced to leave immediately. Here in Colorado, university administrators escorted students to the airport. I don't think they were forcing them to leave, but they brought them there for their safety, is the impression I got.
We just don't really know what it all means at this point. There's no central accounting for who has lost those visas, and I've heard a number of reports of university administrators trying to figure out, "How do we make good on the college education that we provided this student if they've been kicked out of the country just weeks before graduation day?" Right? We're in the spring, graduation ceremonies are coming right up.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah, that's a great point about the timing of all this, Trevor. Trevor Hughes is a national correspondent with Paste BN. Thanks, Trevor.
Trevor Hughes:
You bet.
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Taylor Wilson:
Texas has officially surpassed 500 confirmed cases of measles since the start of the year. The continued climb of measles cases in the state follows the second death of a school aged child from the virus in Texas reported last week. Over the weekend, Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said in an X post that he visited Gaines County, Texas to be with the community in their moment of grief.
As of yesterday, that county remained the highest infected county in the state, with more than 300 reported cases according to Director of Lubbock Public Health, Katherine Wells. The CDC last week reported a total of more than 600 confirmed measles cases nationwide. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been criticized for questioning the effectiveness of vaccines. But after his visit to Texas over the weekend, he took to X to say that, "The measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles."
The virus is one of the most contagious infectious diseases to exist. 90% of unvaccinated people who are exposed end up contracting it. Additionally, one in five of those people end up hospitalized, according to the CDC.
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Microsoft has announced new leaps in quantum computing that might see these futuristic machines coming to a much closer present.
Chetan Nayak:
People have said useful quantum computers are decades away. We believe that they're years away.
Taylor Wilson:
Chetan Nayak is a technical fellow in quantum hardware at Microsoft, and co-author of the study that first presented Microsoft's research in the scientific journal, Nature. He joins my colleague, Dana Taylor, to share the discoveries that might change the face of computing forever. Find that conversation right here today, beginning at 4:00 PM Eastern Time on this feed.
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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, and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.