Administration Risks Being In Contempt, Homegrowns Are Next, Tariffs And Spending

Summary

Up First from NPR – April 17, 2025

NPR’s Up First delivers a comprehensive overview of the day’s most pressing news, diving deep into the Trump administration’s legal challenges, controversial immigration strategies, and the economic turbulence caused by new tariffs. Here’s a detailed summary of the episode titled "Administration Risks Being In Contempt, Homegrowns Are Next, Tariffs And Spending."

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1. Administration in Contempt: Judicial Orders Ignored

Key Points: The Trump administration is under intense scrutiny for allegedly disregarding judicial orders. A significant case involves a ruling where U.S. District Judge James Boasberg declared that the administration's refusal to turn around two planes carrying Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador constitutes criminal contempt.

Notable Quotes:

• Judge James Boasberg [00:32]: "The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders."
• Adrian Florido [05:11]: "We've seen the government act in blatant disregard for the judiciary, treating court orders as if they are optional."
• Sky Perryman [04:35]: "Boasberg wants the names of the specific government officials who ignored his order."

Discussion: On March 15, President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to expedite the deportation of Venezuelan gang members without due hearings. This action led to the loading of men onto two planes destined for El Salvador. The ACLU intervened, leading to an emergency hearing where Judge Boasberg ordered the return of the planes. The administration’s failure to comply has sparked debates on the limits of executive power and the integrity of judicial authority.

Implications: Judge Boasberg has given the administration until the following week to comply by either reasserting custody of the deported individuals or providing names of officials responsible for the defiance. Failure to comply may result in criminal prosecution of these officials, potentially leading to fines or imprisonment. This case marks a pivotal moment in the ongoing struggle between the Trump administration and federal judiciary, highlighting concerns over the erosion of checks and balances.

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2. Deportation of U.S. Citizens: "Homegrowns Are Next"

Key Points: President Trump has proposed a controversial plan to detain U.S. citizens abroad, specifically targeting violent criminals. This initiative involves the construction of additional prisons in El Salvador and possibly other countries to house these individuals.

Notable Quotes:

• James Boasberg [06:26]: "The White House says this is something President Trump keeps bringing up in public and in private meetings."
• Lauren Brooke Eisen [07:56]: "This policy would be illegal and morally wrong."
• Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor [09:06]: "Deport and incarcerate any person, including US Citizens."

Discussion: In a press conference, President Trump announced plans to explore legal avenues for deporting American criminals to be detained in foreign prisons. This follows the administration’s recent actions that have already strained relations with the judiciary. Legal experts widely condemn the proposal as unconstitutional, emphasizing that incarcerating U.S. citizens overseas violates fundamental legal protections.

Implications: The initiative raises profound ethical and legal questions about the treatment of American citizens and the sovereignty of U.S. judicial processes. With no significant support from conservative legal scholars or GOP leaders, the proposal may face significant legal battles. Justice Sotomayor’s recent opinion underscores the judiciary’s resistance to such measures, potentially leading to a constitutional crisis if the administration proceeds.

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3. Economic Impacts: Tariffs and Consumer Spending

Key Points: The introduction of new tariffs by the Trump administration has led to a mixed economic response. While retail sales surged as consumers rushed to purchase goods before price hikes, overall consumer sentiment has declined sharply, reflecting fears of a slowing economy and increased living costs.

Notable Quotes:

• Scott Horsley [10:11]: "The trade war has battered hopes for a soft landing, with forecasters now projecting a possible double whammy of both higher prices and slower growth."
• Adrian Florido [12:54]: "Buckle up. This is going to get really bumpy for us."

Discussion: The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted nearly 700 points, marking an 11.25% drop, indicative of investor anxiety. Despite this, consumer spending saw a notable increase in March, driven primarily by automotive sales and purchases in home and garden sectors. This surge is attributed to consumers attempting to avoid the impact of newly implemented tariffs, which could significantly raise the cost of imported goods.

Implications: While immediate consumer spending remains robust, economic experts warn of a forthcoming decline as the initial surge wanes. Projections indicate a potential 10% drop in incoming cargo in the latter half of the year, coupled with rising prices and reduced business investments due to heightened uncertainty. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has acknowledged these risks, emphasizing that persistent tariffs could derail economic recovery efforts and lead to a challenging economic environment reminiscent of the Great Depression era.

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Conclusion

The April 17, 2025 episode of Up First from NPR paints a complex picture of an administration grappling with legal challenges and economic repercussions. The Trump administration's alleged contempt of court orders and its controversial plans to detain U.S. citizens abroad signal significant tensions within the U.S. political and legal landscape. Concurrently, the imposition of new tariffs is creating a precarious economic situation, balancing immediate consumer spending boosts against long-term fears of inflation and reduced economic growth. As these stories unfold, NPR continues to provide in-depth analysis and reporting to keep listeners informed of the rapidly evolving national landscape.

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Stay Informed: Subscribe to Up First for daily updates and support your local NPR station at donate.npr.org.

Transcript

[Michelle Martin]

Good morning. A hello. How are you?

[Adrian Florido]

Okie dokie.

[Michelle Martin]

I'm ready whenever you are. Actually, I lied. Okay. I just need to get that. Okay. Okay. Now I'm ready. Hadn't loaded yet. Here I am. Okay. A judge says the Trump administration ignored his orders to turn around two planes carrying alleged gang members to detention centers in El Salvador, treating court orders as.

[Adrian Florido]

As if they are optional, will there be any consequences?

[Michelle Martin]

I'm Michelle Martin. That's a. Martinez. And this is up first from NPR News. President Trump says he would like to find a legal way to lock up Americans abroad.

[Sky Perryman]

That's the real fear that we have.

[Lauren Brooke Eisen]

Now is that he is going to.

[Sky Perryman]

Try to evade judicial review of deportations of US Citizens.

[Michelle Martin]

Can the US Government actually do that?

[Adrian Florido]

And forecasters say consumers may soon start to feel the effects of new tariffs. Prices for us will go up markedly.

[Scott Horsley]

Buckle up.

[Sky Perryman]

This is going to get really bumpy for us.

[Adrian Florido]

And stay with us. We'll give you all the news you need to start your day.

[Brian Mann]

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[Lauren Brooke Eisen]

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[Brian Mann]

Bluehost can make building a great website easy and offers a 30 day money back guarantee. Customize and launch your site in minutes with AI, then optimize with built in search engine tools. Get your great [e-mail] the Trump administration.

[Adrian Florido]

Demonstrated, quote, willful disregard for a court's order and is likely in criminal contempt.

[Michelle Martin]

That's what U.S. district Judge James Boasberg ruled yesterday. He said the government ignored his order last month to turn back two planes carrying Venezuelan migrants to a prison in El Salvador. It's just one of the high profile cases in which Federal judges are trying to hold the Trump administration accountable for flouting judicial orders.

[Adrian Florido]

NPR's Adrian Florido joins us now. So tell us what the judge said in this ruling.

[Sky Perryman]

Well, Judge Boasberg said that government officials could have obeyed his order to turn those planes around, but chose not to. A little context A. On March 15, President Trump said he'd invoked the wartime Alien enemies Act of 1798 so he could quickly deport members of the Venezuelan gang Trend Aragua without hearings. That same day, officials in Texas loaded dozens of men onto two airplanes. The aclu, though, found out what was happening and sued because it said these men needed to be allowed to challenge their deportations. During an emergency hearing in D.C. that evening, Judge Boasberg told the government lawyers that if those planes had already left, they needed to turn them around. That didn't happen, though. The planes landed in El Salvador, and the country's president locked the men up. Boasberg, in his ruling yesterday, said the government could have returned the planes because they took off during his hearing. And he wrote that, quote, the Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders.

[Adrian Florido]

Okay, so then what does the ruling mean now for the Trump administration?

[Sky Perryman]

Well, Boasberg gave the government till next week to do one of two things. He said it could, in his words, reassert custody of the men it deported so they can challenge their deportations in federal courts. They are still in that Salvadoran prison, and many of their families have denied that they are gang members. If the government chooses not to do that, though, Boasberg said then he wants the names of the specific government officials who. Who ignored his order. He said he will force them to testify, and if necessary, he will appoint a lawyer to criminally prosecute them for contempt, and they could face fines or prison.

[Adrian Florido]

Okay, well, so how is the White House responding?

[Sky Perryman]

Well, the Justice Department called the ruling a judicial power grab and has appealed. A White House spokesman said the president is committed to ensuring that, quote, criminal illegal migrants are no longer a threat to Americans. On the other side of this case, the ACLU and Democracy Forward, the two groups who brought it, are celebrating the ruling. This is Sky Perryman of Democracy Forward this ruling.

[Adrian Florido]

It's clear that we've seen the government has acted in blatant disregard for the judiciary, treating court orders as if they are optional. And that's not how our systems of checks and balances works.

[Sky Perryman]

She said her team will continue moving the case forward in court to ensure that everyone in the U.S. including immigrants, gets due process.

[Adrian Florido]

Yeah, and this is not the only case where judges are trying to force the Trump administration to obey court orders. A judge in Maryland also demanded an explanation for why it's ignoring her order to help bring back a man mistakenly sent to El Salvador despite having legal status. So what's the big picture here, Adrian?

[Sky Perryman]

Well, members of the Trump administration have said that they are not going to let courts get in their way of carrying out the president's priorities. Yesterday's ruling by Judge Boasberg, though, is the first time a judge has clearly said that that government officials will be punished for not obeying the courts if they still refuse. That is where legal experts say that we will have a full blown constitutional crisis.

[Adrian Florido]

That's NPR's Adrian Florido. Thanks a lot.

[Sky Perryman]

Thank you.

[Adrian Florido]

President Trump says his administration is exploring how to use prisons in El Salvador to detain U.S. citizens who commit crimes.

[Michelle Martin]

Some legal experts told NPR they fear the White House is preparing to move ahead with that plan, even though they say jailing Americans overseas is unconstitutional.

[Adrian Florido]

NPR's Brian Mann. Is this. Brian, I've seen the video. And you're about to play it. I mean, it sounds like the president is serious about locking up American citizens abroad.

[James Boasberg]

Yeah. The White House says this is something President Trump keeps bringing up in public and in private meetings. As far back as February, Trump said he would do it in a heartbeat. That's a quote. If a legal way can be found. And then appearing on Monday with El Salvador's leader, the president could be heard on tape predicting this will happen.

[Scott Horsley]

Homegrown next. The homegrowns built. You got to build about five more. Yeah, that's better. All right.

[James Boasberg]

Homegrowns are next. Trump says they're referring to US Citizens. He then suggests El Salvador needs to build more prisons to house Americans. Later in that press conference, the president said he had ordered Attorney General Pam Bonnie to search for legal pathway to deport Americans in this fashion. And also he suggested he's negotiating with other countries, which he didn't name, that might also be willing to imprison Americans overseas.

[Adrian Florido]

And you've been speaking with legal and constitutional experts. I mean, do they think this is something the US Government can actually do?

[James Boasberg]

You know, the Trump administration keeps pushing boundaries. El Salvador is already holding hundreds of people in a maximum security prison. As we've been hearing, they were detained in the US for allegedly lacking legal status or having gang affiliations. But there are big legal questions about that, including yesterday's contempt finding. All the experts I spoke to say taking this next step, deporting American citizens would cross another line. Lauren Brooke Eisen is with the Brenn Center's Justice Program, that's a progressive think tank at New York University. She said this policy would be illegal and morally wrong.

[Michelle Martin]

There are profound ethical questions that this.

[Lauren Brooke Eisen]

Would signal about how we treat human.

[Michelle Martin]

Beings who are U.S. citizens.

[James Boasberg]

Now, NPR reached out to three prominent conservative legal scholars and also contacted three leading conservative legal think tanks. All declined to comment on this policy idea or they didn't respond. And we could also find no instances of GOP leaders in the House or Senate commenting publicly on this proposal to deport Americans. We reached out to them for comment and got no response.

[Brian Mann]

Okay.

[Adrian Florido]

So, Brian, if the Trump administration moves forward with this idea, I mean, do we know what the deportation of American citizens would look like?

[James Boasberg]

We don't. President Trump and Attorney General Bondi have said this would only include violent criminals, but we don't have details. One concern raised by David Beer, he's at the libertarian Cato Institute, is that Trump could move forward with this without offering a lot of clarity, even if courts and judges object.

[Sky Perryman]

That's the real fear that we have now is that he is going to try to evade judicial review of deportations of US Citizens.

[James Boasberg]

One more thing. A Supreme Court justice, Sonia Sotomayor, published an opinion last week saying recent legal arguments made by the Trump administration suggest the federal government already believes it can, and I'm quoting the justice here, deport and incarcerate any person, including US Citizens. So we'll be watching this to see where it goes.

[Adrian Florido]

All right. That's NPR's Brian Mann. Brian, thanks.

[James Boasberg]

Thank you. A.

[Adrian Florido]

Americans are feeling gloomier about the economy, and that's reflected in the stock market.

[Michelle Martin]

The Dow Jones industrial average fell nearly 700 points yesterday, or 11 1/4 percent. So far, though, a sour mood has not stopped people from spending money. Retail sales jumped sharply last month as people raced to buy stuff before steep new tariffs kicked in.

[Adrian Florido]

NPR's Scott Horsley joins us now. Scott, I'm looking at a pair of sneakers that I'm also looking to buy as soon as possible before they cost more than I can afford. Scott, public opinion surveys have been pretty bleak on this. What's behind that?

[Scott Horsley]

Yeah, a lot of it does seem to be the trade war. The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index, for example, fell for the fourth month in a row month. It's now tumbled more than 30% since the end of last year. Republicans, Democrats and Independents are all feeling less bullish about their personal finances, about the business environment, about inflation and even though unemployment's still really low, people are also worried about the job market, more worried than at any time since 2009, back when we were shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs every month. Now, the sentiment survey was conducted right around the time that President Trump was announcing those big new import taxes on goods from around the and even though some of those tariffs have since been rolled back, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell says the remaining import taxes are still the highest we've seen since the Great Depression.

[Adrian Florido]

The Smoot Hawley tariffs were actually not this large, and they were 95 years ago. So there isn't a modern experience of.

[Sky Perryman]

How to think about this. And businesses and households are saying in.

[Adrian Florido]

Surveys that they are experiencing incredibly high.

[Scott Horsley]

Uncertainty, powell told the Economic Club of Chicago this week. When businesses feel uncertain about what's ahead, they tend to pull back on investment. And when families are uncertain, they dial back on spending. In both cases, it usually leads to slower economic growth.

[Adrian Florido]

And yet spending was up last month. So what's that about?

[Scott Horsley]

Yeah, a lot of the extra spending last month was at car dealers. Auto sales jumped almost 6% in March. And a lot of that does seem to have been driven by people trying to get ahead of the tariffs, and for good reason. The center for Automotive Research says these new import taxes, which took effect early this month, will add between 4,000 and $9,000 to the price of an average new car. Even domestic cars typically contain a lot of imported parts, so they're going to get more expensive as well, just like those sneakers you want. You know, car dealers are not the only places that shoppers were opening their wallets last month. We also saw increased spending at home and garden stores as the weather got warmer and people spent more on restaurant meals, which are not typically affected by tariffs. Eating out is the kind of discretionary spending that we usually associate with people feeling good about the economy. But right now, the surveys are telling a very different story.

[Adrian Florido]

Yeah. So what else should we look for to see the effects of these tariffs?

[Scott Horsley]

Well, if people splurged in March to get ahead of the tariffs, we're going to likely see a payback with reduced spending in the months to come. Gene Soroka, who heads the Port of Los Angeles, is projecting at least a 10% drop in incoming cargo in the second half of this year.

[Adrian Florido]

Global trade will slow, which will hit the economy worldwide because of these policies. And of course, prices for us will go up markedly.

[Scott Horsley]

Buckle up.

[Adrian Florido]

This is going to get really bumpy for us.

[Scott Horsley]

Before these tariffs took effect, we were starting to see some progress on prices. Core inflation last month was actually the lowest it's been in four years. But I'm afraid hopes for a soft landing have really been battered by the president's trade war, and forecasters are now projecting a possible double whammy of both higher prices and slower growth.

[Adrian Florido]

I always buckle up before I talk to Scott Horsley about the economy. That's NPR. Scott Horsley. Scott, thanks.

[Scott Horsley]

You're welcome.

[Adrian Florido]

And that's up first for Thursday, April 17, Amy Martinez, and I'm Michelle Martin.

[Michelle Martin]

The NPR app lets you keep public radio in your pocket. You'll find a mix of local, national and international news, plus the best podcast from the NPR network. Download the NPR app in your App store.

[Adrian Florido]

Today's episode of up first was edited by Jerry Holmes, Eric Westervelt, Rafael Naam, Mohamed El Bardisi and Janaya Williams. It was produced by Ziad Butch, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Nisha Hynes, and our technical director is David Greenberg. Join us again tomorrow.

[Lauren Brooke Eisen]

This message comes from Warby Parker. What makes a great pair of glasses at Warby Parker? It's all the invisible extras without the extra cost, like free adjustments for life. Find your [e-mail] or visit one of their hundreds of stores around the country.

[Brian Mann]

This message comes from NPR sponsor Rosetta Stone, an expert in language learning for 30 years. Right now, NPR listeners can get Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership to 25 different languages for 50% off. Learn [e-mail] NPR.