Why Trump Moved Leonard Leo From the Short List to the Sh*t List

Moreover, the Trump appointee, Timothy Reif, is—as Trump appointees go—unusually well qualified, having previously served as general counsel in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, or USTR, in the executive office of the president and then senior counselor to the USTR.

The panel, including Reif, held that the IEEPA—the text of which doesn’t even contain the word emergency—could not support Trump’s outlandish and all-too-familiar claims that the sky is falling. At the same time, the court noted the possibility of statutory sources of authority other than the one Trump invoked.

In response to the administration’s predictable motion for emergency relief, the Federal Circuit, the court of appeals for the specialized Court of International Trade, has imposed an administrative stay that tells us nothing about whether it will affirm the lower court on the merits.