Month: September 2025

Setting the stage for a major ruling on presidential power, the Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to decide whether a 1977 federal law giving the president certain emergency powers allowed President Donald Trump to levy tariffs on nearly all goods imported into the United States through a series of executive orders.

In a brief order issued by the court’s Public Information Office on Tuesday afternoon, the court announced that it had granted review in two cases: Learning Resources v. Trump, in which two small businesses had asked the justices to weigh in on Trump’s power to impose the tariffs without waiting for a federal appeals court to rule on the Trump administration’s appeal; and Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, in which the Trump administration had asked the court to review a ruling by a different federal appeals court striking down the tariffs. The court will fast-track the two cases, which will be argued together, and hold oral arguments in early November.

In a series of executive orders, Trump imposed tariffs that fall into two categories, which collectively cover a wide range of products from U.S. trading partners. The first category, known as the “trafficking tariffs,” apply to goods from Canada, China, and Mexico, which in Trump’s view have not done enough to halt the flow of fentanyl into the United States. The second category, known as the “reciprocal tariffs,” impose a minimum tariff of 10% (which can escalate up to 50%) on products from virtually all countries.

The law at the center of the case is the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a 1977 law that allows the president to take action to “deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States” if he declares a national emergency “with respect to such threat.” When he imposed the tariffs, Trump relied on IEEPA, and in particular on a provision of the law that authorizes the president, in times of national emergencies, to “regulate . . . importation” of “property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest.”

The Supreme Court instructed the Trump administration to file its opening brief on September 19, with the challengers’ briefs to follow on October 20. “The cases will be set for argument in the first week of the November 2025 argument session,” which begins on November 3.

Wholesale prices surprisingly fell slightly in August, providing breathing room for the Federal Reserve to approve an interest rate cut at its meeting this month, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report Wednesday.

The producer price index, which measures input costs across a broad array of goods and services, dropped 0.1% for the month, after a downwardly revised 0.7% increase in July. On a 12-month basis, the headline PPI saw a 2.6% gain.

The core PPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, also was off 0.1%. Excluding food, energy and trade, the PPI posted a 0.3% gain and was up 2.8% from a year ago.

Services prices, a key metric for the Fed when evaluating the stance of monetary policy, posted a 0.2% drop, helping drive wholesale inflation lower. A 1.7% slide in prices for trade services was the primary impetus, with margins for machinery and vehicle wholesaling tumbling 3.9%.

Goods prices did increase, but just 0.1% as core prices rose 0.3%. While final demand food costs were up 0.1%, energy was off 0.4%.

Last Thursday, the Trump Administration today announced its Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions, including nearly 150 proposals under the U.S. Department of Labor’s jurisdiction.

The department advanced a set of high-priority actions designed to reduce unnecessary burdens on employers and employees, with proposals addressing issues surrounding pharmacy benefit managers, independent contractors, joint employers, and others, including:

• Improving Transparency into Pharmacy Benefit Manager Fee Disclosure: Pursuant to President Trump’s April 15 Executive Order, “Lowering Drug Prices by Once Again Putting Americans First,” the department will look at ways to improve transparency around the direct and indirect compensation PBMs receive from employer-sponsored health plans.
• Transparency in Coverage: The department will examine ways it can improve market transparency in pricing and cost-sharing information for consumers.
• Prudence and Loyalty in Selecting Retirement Plan Investments and Exercising Shareholder Rights: The department will consider the extent to which fiduciaries may prioritize environmental, social, and governance factors in investment decisions.
• Heat Injury and Illness Prevention in Outdoor and Indoor Work Settings: The department is continuing to examine how to establish standards specifically related to heat-related injury and illness prevention.
• Joint Employer Status under the Fair Labor Standards Act: The department will look at the circumstances under which a business can be held liable as a joint employer.
• Employee or Independent Contractor Classification under the FLSA: The department will examine the circumstances under which a worker should be classified as an employee or independent contractor for the purpose of federal wage and hour requirements.
• Defining and Delimiting Exemptions for Executive, Administrative, Professional, Outside Sales, and Computer Employees: The department will determine whether certain salaried employees are exempt from FLSA minimum wage and overtime requirements.
• Adverse Effect Wage Rate Methodology for the Temporary Employment of H-2A Nonimmigrants in Non-Range Occupations in the U.S.: The department will consider updates to the methodology used to calculate the prevailing wage for H-2A workers.
• H-2A Temporary Agricultural Employment of Foreign Workers in Nonimmigrant Status: The department proposes to rescind certain burdensome requirements adopted under the Biden administration, many of which are currently enjoined as unlawful, for growers using the H-2A program for agricultural labor.

Today the Federal Trade Commission launched a public inquiry to better understand the scope, prevalence, and effects of employer noncompete agreements, as well as to gather information to inform possible future enforcement actions.

A noncompete agreement is a contractual term between an employer and a worker that typically blocks the worker from working for a competing employer or starting a competing business after the end of the worker’s employment. While noncompete agreements can serve valid purposes in some circumstances, available evidence indicates that they are often subject to abuse.

Members of the public including current and former employees restricted by noncompete agreements, and employers facing hiring difficulties due to a rival’s noncompete agreements, are encouraged to share information about the use of noncompete agreements.

The public will have 60 days to submit comments at Regulations.gov, no later than November 3, 2025. Once submitted, comments will be posted to Regulations.gov. Individuals wishing to submit confidential, non-public comments should reference the alternative submission guidelines in the RFI.

A federal judge has ordered Wisconsin to give back pay to disabled workers who were denied unemployment over the past decade.

The case also found that a “blanket denial” of unemployment payments to Wisconsinite receiving Social Security disability payments violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The August order from federal Western District Court Judge William Conley requires the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development to create a process for potentially thousands of residents who were denied unemployment between September 7, 2015 and July 30, 2025.

The exclusion in the state’s unemployment law dates back to laws passed in 2013 and 2015 that were signed by former Gov. Scott Walker. The 2013 law dictated that residents can’t simultaneously collect both Social Security Disability Insurance benefits, known as SSDI, and Unemployment Insurance benefits, or UI. The 2015 law added slight modifications, specifying that disabled individuals couldn’t get unemployment benefits in any week in which they also received Social Security payments.

In a statement, DWD Communications Director Haley McCoy said the agency has begun processing new unemployment claims from people who are receiving disability payments through Social Security since July of this year, when Judge Conley issued an injunction.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley will not seek reelection next spring, saying the best path in her “fight for liberty is not as a minority member of the Court.”

In a statement sent to WisPolitics, Bradley said she is seeking to “rebuild the conservative movement.”

“For years I have warned that under the control of judicial activists, the court will make itself more powerful than the legislature, more powerful than the governor,” she said. “That warning went unheeded, and Wisconsin has seen only the beginning of what is an alarming shift from thoughtful, principled judicial service toward bitter partisanship, personal attacks, and political gamesmanship that have no place in court.”

“The conservative movement needs to take stock of its failures, identify the problem, and fix it,” she added.

The decision leaves Court of Appeals Judge Chris Taylor of Madison, who is a former Democratic member of the state Assembly, without a declared opponent for the April election.

Bradley’s announcement leaves no clear contender to replace her, although conservatives have a strong bench of jurists, including Waukesha-based Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar, whose name has been floated in past elections.

In a statement posted to social media on Friday, Lazar said she is “seriously considering a run,” and will make her decision in the coming weeks.

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that President Donald Trump improperly used a law to impose his sweeping retaliatory tariffs on countries around the world.

However, while an en banc panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the basis of the Court of International Trade’s ruling against the tariffs, the judges rejected a portion of the CIT decision that would have immediately stopped the duties, giving the Trump administration an opportunity to appeal the 7-4 decision to the Supreme Court.

At issue is Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose his global tariffs.

“The Executive’s use of tariffs qualifies as a decision of vast economic and political significance, so the Government must ‘point to clear congressional authorization’ for its interpretation of IEEPA. … [W]e discern no clear congressional authorization by IEEPA for tariffs of the magnitude of the Reciprocal Tariffs and Trafficking Tariffs,” the appeals court said.

The court noted that there are “numerous statutes that do delegate to the President the power to impose tariffs; in each of these statutes that we have identified, Congress has used clear and precise terms to delegate tariff power, reciting the term ‘duties’ or one of its synonyms. In contrast, none of these statutes uses the broad term ‘regulate’ without also separately and explicitly granting the President the authority to impose tariffs.

“The absence of any such tariff language in IEEPA contrasts with statutes where Congress has affirmatively granted such power and included clear limits on that power.”

The ruling also rejected the administration’s argument that the power to “regulate” gave it the power to impose tariffs. “The power to ‘regulate’ has long been understood to be distinct from the power to ‘tax.’ In fact, the Constitution vests these authorities in Congress separately.”

The plaintiffs are a group of small businesses and states and the states of Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York and Vermont.