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Oct. 24, 2025, 11:24 AM EDTBy Lawrence HurleyWASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s strategy to persuade the Supreme Court to uphold his sweeping tariffs is not subtle.To some opponents of his tariffs, Trump’s frequent use of apocalyptic rhetoric about his signature policy ahead of the Nov. 5 oral argument is an obvious attempt to influence the court by focusing on the potential consequences of a ruling against him.“I will tell you that’s one of the most important cases in the history of our country because if we don’t win that case, we will be a weakened, troubled, financial mess for many, many years to come,” Trump said at the White House on Oct. 15, in just one example of his repeated comments on the subject.Trump, who has a long history of harshly criticizing judges who rule against him, has even suggested he might attend the Supreme Court in person for the oral argument Nov. 5. There is no official record of any sitting president ever attending a Supreme Court argument, according to the court and the nonprofit Supreme Court Historical Society.The White House did not respond to a request seeking comment about Trump’s remarks, whether he intends to influence the court or if he will attend the oral argument.Trump threatens new tariffs on China02:33It is not the first time a president has used his bully pulpit to lean on the Supreme Court in a case crucial to his agenda. In 2012, President Barack Obama faced criticism when he said it would be an “unprecedented, extraordinary step” if the Supreme Court struck down the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.The court later that year narrowly upheld the law, which was Obama’s signature domestic achievement.Trump is known to take a keen interest in cases in which he is personally involved, including criminal and civil cases that were brought against him after he completed his first term as president. He frequently appeared in court for hearings in those cases, even when not required to.Last year, during his criminal trial in New York over “hush money” payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, the judge refused to allow Trump permission to attend Supreme Court oral arguments in April in the separate election interference case regarding the scope of presidential immunity. Trump secured a major win in that case.This time around, the court, with a 6-3 conservative majority including three justices Trump appointed, will be considering whether Trump had the power to unilaterally impose the tariffs under a law reserved for use in times of emergency called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.Although the court has ruled in Trump’s favor on numerous occasions in the first few months of his term, experts believe the tariffs case is a closer call.Trump’s remarks over the course of this year reflect a consistent theme: In his view, the tariffs are raising so much revenue and are so important to the country that a court ruling saying that he does not have the authority to impose them would be cataclysmic.”If we win the tariff case, which hopefully we will, it’s vital to the interests of our country. We’re the wealthiest country there is. If we don’t, we’ll be struggling for years to come,” Trump said on the Fox News show “Sunday Morning Futures” on Oct 19.He has also weighed in on the litigation via his Truth Social feed.On Aug. 8, he said there would be a “Great Depression” if the tariffs were not upheld. Later that month, he said that it would be a “total disaster for the country” if they were struck down.Trump is also quick to accuse others of seeking to put pressure on the justices. On Thursday night, he posted that he was ending trade negotiations with Canada because he thought the country was trying to influence the Supreme Court to rule against him on tariffs via an ad sponsored by the province of Ontario.“They only did this to interfere with the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, and other courts,” Trump wrote.Tariff revenues for the year have raised $174.04 billion, according to the most recent Treasury Department numbers. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, on Sept. 7, told “Meet the Press” that the government would have to issue refunds for about half the tariff revenues it has collected if the administration loses at the Supreme Court.To some lawyers who oppose the tariffs, Trump’s remarks are easy to label.”It’s partial intimidation, it’s mostly trying to scare them in terms of consequences,” said Thomas Berry, a lawyer at the libertarian Cato Institute.”Presumably he hopes these statements will influence the Supreme Court,” said Elizabeth Goitein, a lawyer at the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice.Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, a Democrat who, along with other state attorneys general and some small businesses, challenged the tariffs in court, said in a statement that Trump was only “right about one thing” in his public statements: It is a significant case on the scope of presidential power.”We can’t normalize this behavior. We have to draw a line in the sand and hold him accountable,” Rayfield added.Trump’s characterization of how bad the consequences would be if he loses the case is massively overstated, according to Maury Obstfeld, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a nonpartisan think tank.”The rhetoric and hyperbole have no basis in fact,” he said. “Large swaths of the economy and all consumers would benefit if tariffs were lowered.”Goldman Sachs recently said that American consumers are bearing more than half the cost of tariffs, while companies have warned prices will start to increase as the impact of the tariffs are felt.Major companies like General Motors and Mattel have said they expect to take financial hits as a result of tariffs, while the impact on small businesses is even greater.The administration has both overestimated potential revenue from tariffs and used those projections to claim that Trump’s signature legislative victory, the “big, beautiful bill,” is largely revenue neutral, Obstfeld added.”The job of the courts is to interpret the law, not to save the government from the consequences of its own bad decisions,” he said.Trump’s focus on the potentially drastic consequences of a loss are echoed in court papers filed by Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who was previously one of the president’s personal lawyersThe opening paragraphs of the brief he filed outlining the government’s arguments use language that is just as colorful as Trump’s and sometimes quotes the president.His tone departs from the usual dry style of the Justice Department, which traditionally focuses on the technical legal arguments rather than colorful rhetoric.The tariffs, Sauer wrote, are “necessary to rectify America’s country-killing trade deficits” and limit the distribution of illegal drugs across the border by targeting countries including Mexico and Canada that, the administration alleges, have failed to stem trafficking. Sauer’s filing included a quotation from Trump saying that before he imposed the tariffs, the United States was “a dead country” but is now booming.”To the president, these cases present a stark choice,” Sauer wrote. “With tariffs, we are a rich nation; without tariffs, we are a poor nation.”Lawrence HurleyLawrence Hurley is a senior Supreme Court reporter for NBC News. Steve Kopack and Katherine Doyle contributed.

- Latest News - October 24, 2025

President Donald Trump’s strategy to persuade the Supreme Court to uphold his sweeping tariffs is not subtle.

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Oct. 24, 2025, 9:41 AM EDT / Updated Oct. 24, 2025, 10:15 AM EDTBy Alexandra Marquez and Dan De LuceDefense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday that the U.S. struck a boat allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean Sea, marking at least the third time this week that the U.S. has attacked a vessel it says was involved in drug trafficking.“The vessel was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics,” Hegseth wrote in a post on X. “Six male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessel during the strike, which was conducted in international waters—and was the first strike at night. All six terrorists were killed and no U.S. forces were harmed in this strike.”Hegseth said that this vessel belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang, which the Trump administration has named a designated terrorist organization, and was hit in the Caribbean.Earlier this week, Hegseth said he had launched a lethal strike against vessels allegedly carrying drugs to the U.S. in the eastern Pacific Ocean. In that military action, the Defense Secretary said, three male “narco-terrorists” were killed.A video posted by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on X reportedly shows U.S. military forces conducting a strike Thursday on a vessel in the Caribbean Sea. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth via AFP – Getty ImagesIn his post announcing that strike, he used similar language to Friday’s post, comparing the alleged drug traffickers to the terror group Al Qaeda.President Donald Trump has been supportive of the military strikes in recent weeks, claiming that every boat that “we knock out” is saving American lives.“Every boat that we knock out we save 25,000 American lives so every time you see a boat and you feel badly you say, ‘Wow, that’s rough;’ It is rough, but if you lose three people and save 25,000 people,” Trump said in a press conference at the White House last week. While fentanyl is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths every year in the United States, it is primarily smuggled in hard-to-detect amounts over the U.S.-Mexico border by land through legal ports of entry, according to experts and government reports, including the bipartisan Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking.During a roundtable event with Cabinet secretaries at the White House on Thursday, Trump and Hegseth each touted the success of the recent strikes, with Hegseth promising more. “We will find you, we will map your networks, we will hunt you down, and we will kill you,” Hegseth said at the event. “And you’ve seen that evidence in the maritime domain, whether it’s in the Caribbean or in the Pacific with the last two strikes. We know exactly who these people are. We know what networks they work with, what foreign terrorist organizations they’re a part of; we know where they’re going, where they originated from, what they’re carrying.”The president also spoke about the strikes on vessels at the event, explaining why his administration isn’t just capturing the alleged drug traffickers on board and seizing the product they’re carrying.“But we’ve been capturing these boats for years, and they get back into the system, they do it again and again and again, and they don’t fear that, they have no fear,” he told reporters.Asked whether Trump would go to Congress to ask for a declaration of war to authorize the ongoing strikes against boats, the president declined to do so.“Well, I don’t think we’re going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war,” he said. “I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country.”“We’re going to kill them,” Trump added. “They’re going to be, like, dead.”Cracking down on drug smuggling and reducing deaths from fentanyl overdoses was a key campaign promise for Trump last year.He also promised to carry out mass deportations, beginning with what he deemed “the worst of the worst” migrants in the U.S. illegally.Earlier this month, his administration also claimed to be in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, which he has repeatedly claimed are responsible for thousands of deaths in the U.S. every year.Alexandra MarquezAlexandra Marquez is a politics reporter for NBC News.Dan De LuceDan De Luce is a reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit. 

- Latest News - October 24, 2025

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday that the U.S. struck a boat allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean Sea, marking at least the third time this week that the U.S..

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