Tariffs, Emergency Powers, and the Limits of the Presidency (with Ilya Somin)

Tariffs, Emergency Powers, and the Limits of the Presidency (with Ilya Somin)

It started with a blog post. When the Trump administration invoked emergency powers to impose sweeping tariffs, law professor Ilya Somin suggested in passing that someone ought to challenge it in court — and then found himself co-counsel in the case that reached the Supreme Court. In this episode, Aaron Ross Powell talks with Somin, professor of law at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School and the Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute, about how V.O.S. Selections v. Trump came together, why the Court held that the IEEPA doesn't authorize tariffs at all, and what the major questions and nondelegation doctrines mean for presidential power. They also explore what should count as a genuine "emergency," why the courts alone can't restrain executive overreach, and how litigation and ordinary politics have to work together to keep power in check. Further Reading * Liberty Justice Center and I File Lawsuit Challenging Trump's "Liberation Day" Tariffs [https://reason.com/volokh/2025/04/14/liberty-justice-center-and-i-file-lawsuit-challenging-trumps-liberation-day-tariffs/] — Ilya Somin, The Volokh Conspiracy * Ilya Somin Wins Major Victory Over Unconstitutional Tariffs [https://theihs.org/blog/ilya-somin-wins-major-victory-over-unconstitutional-tariffs/] — Institute for Humane Studies * Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is Smarter [https://www.sup.org/books/law/democracy-and-political-ignorance] — Ilya Somin, Stanford University Press More from Liberalism.org * Liberalism's Uneasy Relationship with Democracy [https://www.liberalism.org/p/liberalism-s-uneasy-relationship-with-democracy] — Ilya Somin * Federal Courts, Local Wrongs: Growing Federal Power Means Less Accountability [https://www.liberalism.org/p/federal-courts-local-wrongs-growing-federal-power-means-less-accountability] — Radley Balko

Freedom, Faith, and the Unfinished Work of Democracy (with Jason Canon and Melvin Rogers)

What kept Black thinkers faithful to American democracy through slavery, Jim Crow, and worse? On this episode of the Liberalism.org [http://Liberalism.org] Show, political theorist Jason Canon talks with Melvin Rogers — the Edna and Richard Salomon Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brown University and author of The Darkened Light of Faith — about the tradition running from David Walker and Frederick Douglass to W. E. B. Du Bois and James Baldwin. They explore why these figures insisted on freedom and equal regard even without evidence it could be won, the difference between democratic "faith" and ordinary hope or optimism, and why Baldwin asks us to measure progress not by redemption but by how honestly we confront a history that never fully leaves us. FURTHER READING * The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought [https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691219134/the-darkened-light-of-faith] — Melvin L. Rogers, Princeton University Press * African American Political Thought: A Collected History [https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo58172054.html] — Melvin L. Rogers & Jack Turner, eds., University of Chicago Press MORE FROM LIBERALISM.ORG [http://Liberalism.org] * Liberalism's Uneasy Relationship with Democracy [https://www.liberalism.org/p/liberalism-s-uneasy-relationship-with-democracy] — Ilya Somin * Civic Education for Liberal Freedom [https://www.liberalism.org/p/civic-education-for-liberal-freedom] — Paul Carrese

The Future and Its Enemies, Revisited (with Virginia Postrel)

Recorded at Flourishing House, the Institute for Humane Studies' gathering at SXSW exploring what people and societies need to thrive, this episode finds host Aaron Ross Powell in conversation with Virginia Postrel — journalist, former Reason editor, and author of The Future and Its Enemies and The Fabric of Civilization. The 1990s now look like a golden age of optimism about the future — but at the time, critics were smashing computers on stage and running "Smash the Internet" cover stories. Powell and Postrel revisit her enduring distinction between dynamism and stasis nearly three decades on: why today's backlash against openness is less about pocketbook economics than discomfort with a diverse, experimental society; why every solution breeds fresh discontents, and why that's a feature rather than a bug; and how liberals can keep making the case for abundance through concrete, everyday stories — from YIMBY housing reform to the surprisingly contentious history of the toothbrush. Further Reading * The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress [https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Future-and-Its-Enemies/Virginia-Postrel/9780684862699] — Virginia Postrel, Free Press * The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World [https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/virginia-postrel/the-fabric-of-civilization/9781541617629/] — Virginia Postrel, Basic Books * Abundance [https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Abundance/Ezra-Klein/9781668023488] — Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson, Avid Reader Press * Virginia Postrel's website [https://www.vpostrel.com/] — home for her columns and books; her new Everyday Abundance podcast with Charles C. Mann is forthcoming (June 2026) * More from Liberalism.org [http://Liberalism.org] * "The Enemy Is Power, Wherever You Find It" [https://www.liberalism.org/p/the-enemy-is-power-wherever-you-find-it] — Matt Zwolinski

Bonus: The Power of Cities (with Jason Canon and Ed Glaeser)

Cities are humanity's greatest invention—not in spite of their density, but because of it. In this bonus episode of the Liberalism.org [http://Liberalism.org] Show, Jason Canon sits down with Harvard urban economist Edward Glaeser, author of Triumph of the City and Survival of the City, to make the case for urban life and to ask why America has stopped building. They discuss how the New York of the 1970s shaped Glaeser's lifelong fascination with cities, why urban poverty is a sign of opportunity rather than failure, how prosperous suburban homeowners turned the Sun Belt's growth machines into engines of stasis, and what the YIMBY movement and comparisons to housing policy in Japan and the UK reveal about the tension between local control and the freedom to build. Further Reading * Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/303439/triumph-of-the-city-by-edward-glaeser/] — Edward Glaeser, Penguin Press * Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/669805/survival-of-the-city-by-edward-glaeser-and-david-cutler/] — Edward Glaeser and David Cutler, Penguin Press * "Why Is There More Crime in Cities?" [https://www.nber.org/papers/w5430] — Edward Glaeser and Bruce Sacerdote, Journal of Political Economy (1999) * Augustine of Hippo: A Biography [https://www.ucpress.edu/books/augustine-of-hippo] — Peter Brown, University of California Press (1967) More from Liberalism.org [http://Liberalism.org] * Liberalism: A Future Worth Wanting [https://www.liberalism.org/p/liberalism-a-future-worth-wanting] — Emily Chamlee-Wright

Why Liberalism Needs the Family with Lauren K. Hall

Liberals have ceded the family to social conservatives for decades — and Lauren K. Hall thinks it's a mistake liberalism can't afford. In this episode, host Aaron Ross Powell talks with Hall, professor of political science and associate dean of academic affairs at the Rochester Institute of Technology, about her Liberalism.org [http://Liberalism.org] essay "Why Liberalism Needs the Family." They discuss why classical liberals have under-theorized this pre-political institution, how siblings, trust, and the wider "village" cultivate the citizens that markets and self-government require, the false binary between total family autonomy and state intervention, and why over-scheduled, over-supervised childhoods may be quietly producing adults more comfortable with authoritarianism. Further Reading: * Why Liberalism Needs the Family [https://www.liberalism.org/p/why-liberalism-needs-the-family] — Lauren K. Hall, Liberalism.org [http://Liberalism.org] * Family and the Politics of Moderation: Private Life, Public Goods, and the Rebirth of Social Individualism [https://www.baylorpress.com/9781481300278/family-and-the-politics-of-moderation/] — Lauren K. Hall, Baylor University Press * The Radical Moderate's Guide to Life [https://radicalmoderate.substack.com/] — Lauren K. Hall's Substack * Let Grow [https://letgrow.org/] — Lenore Skenazy's nonprofit, with the tiered intervention guide Hall recommends More from Liberalism.org [http://Liberalism.org]: * Yours, Mine, or Ours? Liberals Need a Theory of the State [https://www.liberalism.org/p/yours-mine-or-ours-liberals-need-a-theory-of-the-state] — Michael C. Munger