“I want to get these machines and I have the right to do so under the Act,” a reference to the National Emergencies Act, which formalizes emergency presidential powers. FDR had used the act to address the Great Depression, and Truman had tried to use it as a means of countering a steel strike during the Korean War, but the Supreme Court eventually told Truman in a landmark case, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, that a president could not seize the steel mills, or any private property.
