The following is a lightly edited transcript of the April 10 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

President Donald Trump’s tariff chaos has gone off the rails yet again. He just announced the temporary pause in the tariffs that isn’t much of a pause at all. For the next 90 days, the reciprocal tariffs will come down, but a universal 10 percent tariff will remain, and he’s hiking tariffs on China into the stratosphere. Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson just executed a new maneuver designed to prevent the House from voting on whether to rein in Trump’s assertion of unilateral authority to impose the tariffs, which is a clear abuse of power. This, plus the House GOP gearing up to cut Medicaid by hundreds of billions of dollars, gives Democrats clear openings to inflict major political pain on Trump and Republicans. Will Democrats capitalize? Today, we’re talking about all of this with Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives. Leader Jeffries, thank you so much for coming on with us.

Hakeem Jeffries: Great to be with you.

Sargent: We just learned that Trump has changed his tariff policies once again. He’s pausing his tariffs, but apparently keeping in place 10 percent reciprocal tariffs on all countries while hiking tariffs even higher on China. Your reaction, Leader Jeffries?

Jeffries: Well, two things are occurring here. One, Donald Trump continues to crash the American economy in real time. He’s increasing costs when he promised to lower costs on the American people, and that will continue. In fact, Donald Trump and the reckless Republicans in the House of Representatives are actually driving us toward a recession that is going to hurt everyday Americans all across the country.

At the same period of time, what we’ve seen as a result of this so-called pause is that Donald Trump is at least backing down again, which has been a repeated pattern throughout his presidency. The whole flood-the-zone strategy is designed to create the appearance of inevitability—when nothing can be further from the truth. The American people have been rising up consistently, we’re battling him in Congress, battling him in the courts, battling him in terms of pushing back aggressively in community after community after community to win the hearts and minds of the American people. And it works when the American people show up, stand up, and speak up. This is another example.

Sargent: Well, the tariffs are continuing in some sense, as you point out, and there’s a very decent chance that they’ll come back in 90 days because he’s pretty erratic. And now, House Speaker Mike Johnson is using a procedural maneuver to prevent a vote terminating the national emergency that Trump has declared to justify imposing these global tariffs unilaterally. Johnson’s move prevents this vote from being privileged, which would have meant that it has to go to the floor. He doesn’t want that to happen. What’s your reaction to that, Leader Jeffries?

Jeffries: Mike Johnson and the Republicans are afraid of a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives because they know that Democrats—partnering with a handful of more enlightened Republicans on the tariff issue—will vote to reclaim our authority as members of Congress and push back against these out-of-control tariffs that Trump has imposed, and as you pointed out, Greg, will continue to try to impose moving forward. What we’ll need to see happen is just a handful of Republicans to partner with us so that Congress can end these fake emergencies that Trump is using to justify the wild imposition of these tariffs, which are a tax on the American people.

In fact, the Trump tariffs would represent the largest tax increase on the American people since 1968 and will cost the average American family at least $3,800 a year in additional costs. This is why we believe that there are a handful of Republicans who would partner with Democrats in strong opposition to these tariffs—which is why Mike Johnson is now using these procedural gimmicks to try to prevent an up-or-down vote. But we’re not going to relent, and we will get an up-or-down vote. We’ll fight to make sure we get that sooner rather than later so Congress can step in to try to end this mess.

Sargent: Well, I want to ask you about the ways to do that. Democrats have the option to pursue a discharge petition in the face of the GOP refusal to vote on whether to terminate the national emergency. Trump’s fake pause—or whatever you want to call it—should, if anything, whet the appetites of members of Congress to do this even more aggressively now. And there’s an interim period with which to pass something that deprived him of the power to really restart this madness. Will there be a discharge petition if necessary?

Jeffries: It’s my expectation that we will use every tool available, including the possibility in the near future of a discharge petition. Right now, we’re sorting through the different options. We can turn off these fake emergencies that Trump is using to justify his unilateral imposition on tariffs. That’s one legislative approach. We can also require Congress to approve any tariffs that go into effect. That’s another legislative approach, and that has bipartisan support as well. We could also clarify that Trump’s power to declare these national emergencies [doesn’t] generally exist, or severely restrict it. That’s a different, potential third legislative approach. So one of the things that we’re doing over the next few days in conversation with a handful of our Republican colleagues is try to figure out which approach would garner the most significant........

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