Today Trump officially enacted his threatened increase in steel & aluminum tariffs, effectively tomorrow, from 25% to 50%. There is an exemption for the U.K. while the countries continue to try and implement their recently touted trade framework, one intended aspect of which was a reduction in U.S. tariffs on British steel from the 25% rate.

Musk has only been out of government for a few days, but already major cracks are showing in the Trump-Musk alliance. Today Musk called the OBBBA a “disgusting abomination” and then, hours later, posted that “in November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people.”

Senate committees are expected to release their markups of OBBBA in phases this week, with the aim for the full Senate to vote on a bill before the end of June. Encouragingly, Majority Leader Thune today appeared to rule out playing the nuclear card of overruling the Senate Parliamentarian; as such, we can expect there will be some “Byrd droppings” of non-budgetary provisions that snuck into the House’s version of the OBBBA, such as the controversial 10-year moratorium on enforcement of state AI-related laws (a provision that, today, Rep. Taylor-Greene claimed to have known nothing about, saying that said she’d have voted against the bill if she’d realized that was in it), or the controversial provision limiting federal judges’ ability to hold government officials in contempt of court when they disobey court orders.

Trump v. AFGE reached the SCOTUS shadow docket today. I had missed where, late last week, a 9th Circuit panel voted 2-1 to deny the administration’s request for a stay of Judge Illston’s preliminary injunction pending appeal. As such today the administration took its request for a stay to SCOTUS. The circuit justice, in this case Kagan, has given plaintiffs a week to respond to the government’s application.

Finally in political news, one-time Tea Party Republican Congressman Joe Walsh announced today he is joining the Democratic party, five years after he left the Republican party to become an independent. Walsh: “I used to be a conservative Republican. The Republican Party is no longer conservative, it’s authoritarian. I’m still a conservative, so now I’m a conservative Democrat.” The re-sorting of the electorate continues.

We’ve made it to June.

Quiet weekend. On Friday Trump did announce his intention to raise existing tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from 25% to 50%, effective this coming Wednesday (June 4th). This tariff action is unrelated to the broader tariffs that were the subject of the V.O.S. Selections case, but instead is an expansion of action Trump first took in 2018 under authority granted by Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. More recently, the E.U. has indicated it “is prepared to impose countermeasures,” perhaps waiting until mid-July, but perhaps earlier.

Speaking of V.O.S. Selections v. Trump, some of the legal analysis in the wake of the lower court decision has focused on the so-called major questions doctrine, a term of art that has loomed over much of the Roberts Court’s jurisprudence but wasn’t used in a SCOTUS majority opinion until 2022. The general idea behind the doctrine is the belief that, with respect to an issue having “vast economic and political significance,” Congress would need to clearly delegate to a regulatory agency authority to address that issue, as opposed to the regulatory agency being able to claim authority under some more general statutory provision. One distinction between V.O.S. Selections and the major questions doctrine cases is that here, with respect to tariffs, we are talking about the delegation of Congressional authority to the President himself rather than to a regulatory agency. Should that difference matter? Will SCOTUS think it matters? Stay tuned.

In other news, Ukraine successfully launched a coordinated drone attack on air bases throughout Russia, damaging as many as one-third of Russia’s long-range bomber forces. Also, Trump withdrew his nomination for NASA administrator, tech billionaire (and close friend of Elon Musk) Jared Isaacman, citing a “thorough review of prior associations.” This is believed to refer to the fact that Isaacman had previously donated to Democratic Senators Kelly and Casey, although the NYTimes’ reporting asserts that Trump was told about this back in December.