Trade court blocks Trump's tariffs | The Excerpt
On Thursday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: A federal court has ruled President Donald Trump can't use an emergency-powers law to impose tariffs on foreign countries. Elon Musk leaves the Trump administration. Paste BN White House Correspondent Bart Jansen takes a look at the Trump-Vance approach to crypto. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the United States will be "aggressively" revoking visas of Chinese students. Paste BN Government Accountability Reporter Erin Mansfield discusses exclusive findings that chapter leaders allegedly mishandled over $100,000 in a major federal union's funds. The Oklahoma City Thunder are in the NBA Finals.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson. And today is Thursday, May 29th, 2025. This is The Excerpt.
Today, a trade court has blocked Trump's tariffs. Plus, we take a closer look at the administration's approach to crypto. And leaders at a chapter of the second largest union representing federal employees allegedly mishandled union funds.
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A federal court has ruled that President Donald Trump cannot use an emergency powers law to impose tariffs on foreign countries, dealing a blow to his trade agenda. The three-judge panel on the US Court of International Trade unanimously found that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, which Trump invoked to enact duties on foreign goods, does not authorize the tariffs and ordered them halted. The Trump administration filed a notice of appeal minutes after the ruling. Tariffs are a centerpiece of his second-term economic agenda. He's imposed steep levies on goods from foreign countries, igniting international tensions and disrupting the global economy. Trump announced big reciprocal tariffs on a slew of nations last month, and he later paused most of them while he negotiated trade deals.
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Elon Musk has officially left the Trump administration. Musk had already scaled back his role with the Department of Government Efficiency announced his departure in a post on X yesterday. It comes as his designation as a special government employee, which allowed him to stay on the job for 130 calendar days a year, has ended. As the head of DOGE and a senior White House advisor, Musk led a controversial effort to rapidly gut the government of what he called waste and fraud and reduce the federal workforce. DOGE, which is manned by more than a hundred government employees, is set to continue operating without Musk in charge, but it's unclear how much power the group will maintain without its famous leader. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.
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Vice President J.D Vance told 35,000 attendees of the Bitcoin 2025 conference that the Trump administration would support them, building the industry of digital assets, which he said would protect against bad policies and inflation. Vance, at the conference yesterday, vowed the Trump administration would not try to kill the industry through regulation as he alleged the Biden administration had.
I caught up with Paste BN White House correspondent Bart Jansen for more on the Trump administration's stance on crypto. Thanks as always for joining me, Bart.
Bart Jansen:
Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
Vance's speech came days after President Trump's social media business announced it would raise $2.5 billion to invest in cryptocurrency. What can you tell us about this part?
Bart Jansen:
The company that owns Truth Social said that it was going to try to raise $2.5 billion to invest in cryptocurrency. Again, a big support for the industry. I guess they also think that this would be a profitable way to invest funds through that company that up to now had been more of a social media company. So I guess it's unclear to say what they might do with that stockpile if they pull together $2.5 billion worth of Bitcoin, but it at least shows support for the industry by investing in cryptocurrency that would keep the price up, and I'm sure they hope for future growth.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, Trump also had this dinner with crypto investors last week. Did anything surprise you there, Bart? Stand out from that dinner? I mean, what was your big takeaway there?
Bart Jansen:
Well, what's provocative is that he basically rewarded people who invested in his meme coin by holding a dinner with 220 of the top investors. So they got to schmooze and get in close contact with Trump as at least a reward for investing in the coins. They had invested something in the neighborhood of $148 million. So these were affluent folks who got a chance to basically have a private dinner with the president. The White House insisted that this was just a private dinner in his private role, but Trump spoke from behind the presidential seal and he's made no bones about supporting the industry and saying that he doesn't want regulations that would restrict the growth of cryptocurrency.
Ethics, watchdogs contend that it was a horrible conflict of interest, basically rewarding people who had given him money. So it remains an ethical quandary, but he was unapologetic. And the White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that he has shown that he is working just for the purpose of the American public. So any criticism of it is unwarranted.
Taylor Wilson:
Right. I mean, on that conflict of interest point, even before some of this recent news, several Democrats questioned financial regulators last month about how they would oversee what they called an extraordinary conflict of interest. Can you just talk through some of what we heard from Democratic lawmakers last month on this point?
Bart Jansen:
Senator Elizabeth Warren is one of the leaders in that, basically saying if the Trump family is going to be involved in these different crypto options such as meme coins, such as becoming Bitcoin producers and having a platform called World Financial Liberty that offers a stable coin, that how can US financial regulators be thought to be regulating those things with an even eye if they know the president basically is behind several of these opportunities. So they wrote a letter in April to Federal Reserve Vice Chair Michelle Bowman and acting Comptroller of the Currency, Rodney Hood, to ask, "How are you going to do this?" And I don't know if we've heard an answer on that yet.
Taylor Wilson:
But I guess we can read between the lines. But really what is the broader strategy, the broader goals for this administration as it pertains to crypto?
Bart Jansen:
Trump and others have said they want to encourage the growth of the industry. They want the industry basically to be headquartered or to draw its framework and its guidelines in the United States rather than helping foreign countries build what is still just a very young industry. Of course, the problem with trying to rein this in or contain it in any way is that the advantage to cryptocurrency is that it isn't tied to a specific country. It's not like the dollar tied to the United States or the British pound. So the value of it is its independence. And that's what Vance reinforced in his speech on Wednesday, was that if perhaps you have trouble getting financial services through a traditional bank because of your political views, he cited people who support Second Amendment rights, and so if you can't get a bank loan, that perhaps you could get financial services through digital assets and basically still be able to raise money even if you couldn't through a traditional bank.
So it's the independence of the industry that is most intriguing to the Trump administration, but that is also what makes it difficult to basically regulate and make sure that they're not cheating people or running basically a scheme where it's just trying to gather people to contribute money without anything really to show for it. So Trump and Vance are trying to say that the administration would like to shepherd the industry to greater growth, greater benefits through guidelines, and framework that are negotiated with the industry, with the people who would be regulated. And it's a work in progress.
Taylor Wilson:
Great breakdown for us as always. Bart Jansen covers the White House for Paste BN. Thanks, Bart.
Bart Jansen:
Thanks for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
Secretary of State Marco Rubio yesterday announced the US will be aggressively revoking visas of Chinese students. The announcement came days after President Trump demanded the names and countries of international students from Harvard University. Rubio said the State Department will be revising visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People's Republic of China and Hong Kong. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why Chinese students were being targeted, which areas of study were being considered crucial, and how many visas were expected to be revoked.
The Trump administration has paused scheduling new visa interviews for international students at US embassies and consulates worldwide as the State Department prepares to expand social media vetting of foreign students according to an internal cable seen by Reuters earlier this week. The administration had also announced it would revoke visas for all foreign students at Harvard, though that measure was immediately blocked by a judge. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.
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A union representing some 150,000 federal workers faces allegations of financial improprieties. I spoke with Paste BN government accountability reporter Erin Mansfield to learn more about her exclusive findings.
Thanks for joining me, Erin.
Erin Mansfield:
Thank you for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So in terms of the basics here, what is alleged about mishandled funds at this union? Let's start there.
Erin Mansfield:
So there's a union chapter based in San Francisco. It's part of the National Treasury Employees Union. But the title can be confusing because this chapter is mostly employees with Department of Health and Human Services. And what is alleged is the current president, he is saying that over a hundred thousand dollars is unaccounted for from this chapter. And he blames previous leadership. And there were three specific people who he alleges were involved.
Taylor Wilson:
Those folks, who are they?
Erin Mansfield:
So they're the former chapter president, a man named Michael Roberts, former FDA employee, a woman named Betty White, former treasurer, and a gentleman named Randy Plunkett. Full disclosure, we did reach out to them and did not get a response.
The gentleman who's making the allegations, his name is Brandon Bruce. He's a lawyer. He worked for the FDA for a while. And he basically started getting involved in his union in California, was suspicious of some of the practices, and he went out and got an auditing firm to look into problems. They found issues like people signing checks to themselves, three different iPads in a matter of a few years approved for the union president, about $12,000 spent on a storage unit. The checks were made to public storage, including checks that seemed to be made out to someone with the same last name as Betty White, to a company we couldn't find. A lot of different issues here that all come down to money not really being accounted for.
Taylor Wilson:
Erin, you touched on this, but can you just help us understand a little bit more about this union, the National Treasury Employees Union, and just why it's significant?
Erin Mansfield:
Yeah. So in this news cycle, we have heard a lot about federal employees. And the key people going to bat for federal employees are their unions. No doubt about it. The largest is a union called American Federation of Government Employees. And the second largest is the National Treasury Employees Union. They obviously get their title from representing people who work for the Department of Treasury. They represent a lot of IRS agents. They represent a lot of people from Customs and Border Patrol, but they also are the main union for people who work at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Taylor Wilson:
And how is the union approaching this on a national level, Erin?
Erin Mansfield:
I looked at Department of Labor Records because they sent out a report pretty much every year where they show criminal enforcement actions against different chapters. They've had eight, going back to 2001, as far back as I think that web page goes. The National Union declined to comment on an ongoing investigation. But it should be noted that going back to 2001, I was able to find eight cases. The most recent was actually a little less than a year ago, where in upstate New York, police alleged that there was over $56,000 that went missing from a Customs and Border Patrol Union up near the border of Canada.
The union was tipped off about issues about two years ago. In July 2023, Brandon Bruce, he's the gentleman who brought these allegations, he got a response saying, "We've conducted an investigation" and going through his allegations point by point. Among them was the idea that two people were signing checks even though they didn't really have an official position with the union, and they had an actually paid dues in a while.
Taylor Wilson:
As far as how common this is, Erin, can you put this in historical context for us?
Erin Mansfield:
It was really common in the first half of the 20th century really. And in the late '50s, Congress passed a law requiring better financial disclosures. So one of the fun things about this story was learning about these financial disclosures I've never even heard of before. But unions have to file disclosures with the Department of Labor, and this is above and beyond what they file with the Internal Revenue Service. And so the Department of Labor audits them on a pretty regular basis, and you can find those audits on their website. And the Department of Labor audited this chapter. In 2018, they found record keeping violations. Some of the same people involved. They decided to counsel them and they wrote in it how the problem had been solved, but among the issues was payments to officers.
Taylor Wilson:
Folks can go find this full story with a link in today's show notes. Erin Mansfield covers government accountability for Paste BN. More great journalism from you, Erin. Thanks so much.
Erin Mansfield:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
The Oklahoma City Thunder are heading to the NBA Finals for the first time since 2012. They punched their ticket after a dominant win over the Minnesota Timberwolves last night. In the finals, they'll face either the Indiana Pacers or New York Knicks, with the Pacers just one win away. As always, you can follow along with Paste BN Sports.
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A stem cell based therapy initially developed at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center may lead to a new treatment for advanced Parkinson's disease, involving creating neurons. That's according to results from a phase 1 clinical trial reported in nature.
Dr. Lorenz Studer:
You cannot cure Parkinson's disease, but maybe if it worked, ideally you could cure the movement disorder. And so I think that's really what we are trying to develop with this type of cell therapy. And maybe in the future, this'll open up the same approach for all the cell types that might affect all the symptoms as well.
Taylor Wilson:
That was Dr. Lorenz Studer, director of the Center for Stem Cell Biology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He and his colleague, Dr. Viviane Tabar, sat down recently with Paste BN Health Reporter Karen Weintraub to talk through a promising new development in the treatment for advanced Parkinson's disease. You can hear that conversation right here beginning at 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time today.
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And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio. And if you want to email us, you can find us at podcasts@usatoday.com. I'm Taylor Wilson. I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.