Several top officials from the Trump administration appeared at a Supreme Court hearing that may not go in the president’s favor.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court justices gathered to decide whether President Donald Trump, 79, legally used emergency powers to impose tariffs on imports from more than 100 countries.
Present at the hearing were Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who dismissed suggestions that his presence could intimidate the justices, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
According to The New York Times, the three men were seated at the front of the public gallery alongside Republican Senator Mike Lee and Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar and Ed Markey. Comedian and former Saturday Night Live writer John Mulaney also showed up to listen to the arguments.
Despite the court being considered one of the most conservative in modern U.S. history—and having repeatedly sided with the Trump administration—it appeared during the hearing that even the president’s own appointees were skeptical of the legality of Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to set his tariffs. The 1977 law gives the president the power to regulate international transactions upon declaring a national emergency.
“It turns out we’re in emergencies… all the time,” said Justice Elena Kagan at the hearing, referring to Trump’s invocation of the IEEPA under the declaration that drug trafficking and the U.S. trade deficit constitute national emergencies.
Trump’s allies watched as the president’s first Supreme Court appointee, Justice Neil Gorsuch, launched a series of skeptical questions at D. John Sauer, once Trump’s personal lawyer and now the solicitor general.
The justice pressed Sauer on the separation of powers, arguing that the Constitution grants tariff authority to Congress, not the president. He warned that if the Court sided with the president’s arguments on tariffs, there might be no limit to the powers Congress could “hand off” to the president—including the power to declare war.
During the nearly three-hour hearing, another Trump appointee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who has maintained that she is “nobody’s justice” and has previously sided with the liberal bloc of the Supreme Court, also questioned Sauer’s arguments and appeared unsatisfied with his answers.
Chief Justice John Roberts, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, said that tariffs are a form of taxation, which the justice called a “core power of Congress,” and questioned why Trump had the authority to impose tariffs under a law that has never been used for that purpose.
The day before the hearing, Trump took to Truth Social to express his concerns about the Supreme Court decision that could limit the power he has exercised so far in his presidency.
“Tomorrow’s United States Supreme Court case is, literally, LIFE OR DEATH for our Country,” the president wrote on Truth Social Tuesday.
According to reports, the White House is preparing Plan B options in case the Supreme Court decision does not go their way. The court usually takes months to issue a ruling, but it is unclear whether this case might be decided more quickly.
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