The same answer twice

Recently: How are the new authoritarians doing?

Today: Why do the Trump administration’s tariffs keep failing in court? … After attacking the pope, his secretary of state goes to the Vatican. … &c.

For members: Can you really switch off? Sara Robin on the growing resistance to addictive technology. … + Why do some security services stay loyal—and others turn? Christian Gläßel and Adam Scharpf’s Making a Career in Dictatorship.

+ New music from Boards of Canada …

Two laws, two losses

On Thursday in New York, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled 2-1 that President Donald Trump’s 10 percent global tariffs are “invalid” and “unauthorized by law.” It’s the second federal court loss for Trump’s signature economic policy in three months. In February, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down his earlier sweeping tariffs—imposed under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act—6-3. Trump replaced them within days, invoking Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. The trade court has now ruled those out, too. The administration plans to refund more than US$166 billion in earlier tariff payments. It will appeal, sending the case back toward the Supreme Court.

Legal analysts will parse all the commonalities across these decisions, but the starkest of them may be a single idea the president and his team oppose, explicitly and implicitly: that there are clear boundaries on presidential power here.

Congress gave presidents tariff authority, but it bounded the authority every time. IEEPA authorizes tariffs in genuine emergencies. Section 122 authorizes them for “large and persistent” balance-of-payments deficits. The Supreme Court ruled the first didn’t fit the situation. The trade court ruled the second doesn’t either—the U.S. has a trade deficit, not a balance-of-payments deficit, which is a different thing. Both courts asked the same question: Did Congress authorize this? Both answered no. The administration will certainly have more statutes to try—but it’s no more likely to find unlimited presidential power there than it did here.

Meanwhile

• ‘One big glow.’ Three U.S. destroyers came under Iranian missile and drone fire in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday; U.S. Central Command struck back at sites in Bandar Abbas, Qeshm, and Minab. Trump said the ceasefire holds—“they trifled with us today; we blew them away”—and warned of a “big glow” if Tehran doesn’t make a deal. Iran called the truce “nominal.”
• Forty-five minutes at the Vatican. On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Pope Leo XIV at the Apostolic Palace—the first meeting in nearly a year between Trump’s cabinet and the first American pope. Trump has called the pope “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy” over his criticism of the Iran war. The Vatican said the two discussed “countries marked by war.” The pope gave Rubio an olive-wood pen.
• An early galaxy takes its time. Greece’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, proposes a constitutional amendment requiring AI to “serve the freedom of the individual.” … A South Korean appeals court cut ex-prime minister Han Duck-soo’s prison sentence to 15 years for his role in former president Yoon Suk-yeol’s 2024 attempt to impose martial law. … Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam calls high-level talks with Israel “premature.” … Jonathan Pollard, the American jailed 30 years in the U.S. for spying for Israel, announces a run for the Israeli parliament. … & The James Webb Space Telescope captures light from a galaxy in the early universe rotating more slowly—and in a different direction—than models predicted.

Feature

‘When the culture changes …’

Can you really switch off? Sara Robin on the growing resistance to addictive technology.

You’ve opened an app on your phone—Instagram, X—and realized it’s the fifth time in the last hour. As Gloria Mark has explored here in The Signal, being constantly surrounded by screens has changed everything. Twenty years ago, people had an average attention span of about two and a half minutes; today, it’s 48 seconds. Plenty of research, Mark says, now shows that “reliance on digital searches for information is correlated with reduced activity in brain regions involved in memory processes.”

So plenty of people want to spend less time on screens, smartphones, and social media. But it’s not always easy to leave the phone at home. If you’re traveling, your ticket might be on it. If you’re meeting someone, you might need to share your location. In some countries, your boss expects to reach you at any hour—or you’re out of a job.

Sara Robin is the director and producer of the new documentary Your Attention Please. Smartphones with social media—now pervasive across almost every population in the world—are truly addictive, and, Robin says, reducing your use of them isn’t easy. But it’s easier than you might think—and the rewards might surprise you, too. After a few weeks of cutting back, the compulsion to check your phone constantly is gone; your attention comes back; and what your brain started telling you was boredom starts to become room to think and feel. At the individual level, it’s all manageable. Most people can cut back.

But not everyone will be in a position to. Addictive technology is a social problem, so addressing it requires social responses—and conspicuously, there are more of them all the time: Parents and teachers have come together to ban smartphones from schools; some countries restrict social media for children; and a range of businesses—cafes, concert venues, comedy clubs—have started going offline. On its own, any one of these initiatives is debatable; but altogether, Robin says, they’re the start of a cultural revolution …

Books

The most eager henchmen

Why do some security services stay loyal—and others turn? Christian Gläßel and Adam Scharpf’s Making a Career in Dictatorship.

At the end of December, Iranians took to the streets to protest their government. “Death to Khamenei!” they shouted. Police initially met them with batons and pellet guns, but by early January, Iran’s security forces—including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Basij militia—began firing real bullets, killing thousands—possibly tens of thousands. Even by the standards of the regime’s previous crackdowns, the ferocity was extraordinary.

The regime blacked out the internet, but footage has since emerged anyway. Some of it shows the security services themselves coming under fire by bands of masked men. The Iranian government claims some 200 of its security personnel were killed—and that the United States equipped these men, either to overthrow the Islamic Republic or to furnish the pretext for intervention.

So far, no one’s verified the identities of the masked men.

Were they rebel outsiders, or renegade insiders?

New music

‘Introit / Prophecy at 1420 MHz’

Scotland’s Boards of Canada are back, sounding a lot like Boards of Canada—which is to say, not much like anyone else: electric guitars and distinctive, layered, processed vocals that recall Tomorrow’s Harvest from 2013. Inferno, the new album, drops at the end of the month.