Donald Trump just got the biggest smackdown of his second term from the Supreme Court today, as they ruled -- 6 to 3, even! -- that Trump does not have the authority he assumed he had to slap any tariff he felt like, on any country he felt like, for any reason he felt like.

This is a big deal, obviously. Trump has gleefully revelled in doing whatever he felt like to the rest of the world up to this point, using a law that simply was not designed for this purpose. Today the high court ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (or "IEEPA") doesn't allow Trump to slap any tariff he wants -- in willy-nilly fashion -- on any country, for no particular reason. The IEEPA law doesn't even mention the word "tariff" at all, in fact. Here is the meat of the decision against Trump, which was written by Chief Justice John Roberts:

Based on two words separated by 16 others in Section 1702(a)(1)(B) of IEEPA -- "regulate" and "importation" -- the President asserts the independent power to impose tariffs on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time. Those words cannot bear such weight.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, in a concurring opinion, refuted the notion that Trump had "substantial discretion" over tariffs. History, Gorsuch wrote, "does not support the notion that Presidents have traditionally enjoyed so much power. More nearly, history refutes it." He continued:

Americans fought the Revolution in no small part because they believed that only their elected representatives (not the King, not even Parliament) possessed authority to tax them. The framers gave Congress alone "access to the pockets of the people."

Trump, true to form, immediately threw a very public hissy fit, in the form of a press conference where he tried (in vain) to spin it all as some sort of victory for him (more on that in a moment).

One has to wonder what next Tuesday's State Of The Union speech is going to be like. You can bet your bottom dollar that major portions of the speech are now being hastily rewritten, and that Trump will at some point go off script and berate the justices who turn up to hear him speak in person. This is a monumentally stupid thing for him to do, since the Supreme Court has many other high-profile cases involving Trump before it which it has yet to rule on. Being subject to public humiliation from the president might just strengthen the backbone of Roberts and a few others sitting there -- especially if Trump resorts to gutter talk or playground insults (which he is fully capable of doing).

The Supreme Court left one gigantic question completely open, because their ruling does not address whether companies who paid the tariffs up until now will be entitled to a refund. It sure seems like they deserve to get their money back, if the tariffs themselves were unconstitutional from the get-go. The logistics for such refunds would be daunting, but it would also be do-able -- the government assumably has records of every dollar it collected, so even if it would be a huge task for the Treasury, they could indeed refund all the tariffs Trump unconstitutionally collected.

But back to that presser. Trump was in a very petulant mood, and tried to regain face by promising that he's still going to slap tariffs on the rest of the world, by using a different law. He has one law that allows him to do so immediately, but this would only work for 150 days (about five months). During that time, he can do the necessary paperwork to institute tariffs using other laws that would allow them to stay in place beyond the five months. The Supreme Court didn't strike down all the tariffs Trump has instituted -- the ones targeting certain industries such as steel and aluminum (rather than individual countries) will still remain in place. For now, Trump announced a new 10 percent tariff on the rest of the world, as the five-month-clock starts ticking.

Trump didn't really have much of an answer during the presser for what happens now to all the deals he has cut with other countries. The leverage for such deals was the threat of the illegal tariffs. Absent that threat, perhaps some of these other countries will want to renegotiate their deals, or just walk away from them?

In other words, the chaos will continue. Chaos has been the hallmark of the past year of tariffs, as Trump announces them, chickens out, threatens, changes the rates, or announces deals that are never actually made public (sometimes all in the same day). Businesses and other countries had no idea what was coming next, and therefore could not make long-term future plans for any of it. With Trump's ability to make such decisions on a whim curtailed, you'd think the chaos would lessen, but that is probably not going to be the case. With the uncertainty over whether the tariffs will be refunded, Trump now hell-bent on imposing the same tariffs using different laws, and the deals made with other countries also up in the air, nobody has any clue what is going to come next. Except for the near certainty that Trump will (in a fit of pique, and that's putting it mildly) do whatever he possibly can to reinstate his tariffs everywhere.

Trump loves tariffs, please remember. He thinks "tariff" is the "most beautiful word in the dictionary." He cannot be convinced of the economic reality that tariffs are nothing short of a tax that American consumers wind up paying, no matter how many times people much smarter than he is try to explain this basic truth to him.

And also please remember, there are no "adults in the room" anymore with Trump. This week, the head of Trump's National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, tried to curry favor with the Dear Leader by denying reality in a forceful way. Here's the story:

Last week the Federal Reserve Bank of New York posted an analysis of how [Donald] Trump's tariff hikes affected prices in 2025. U.S. border taxes stood at 2.6 percent at the beginning of the year and 13 percent at the end. Who pays them? According to the study, the bulk of the tariff cost -- 86 percent in November -- was borne by U.S. importers. Foreign exporters adjusted their prices only modestly.

Hassett wasn't pleased with the analysis, which was authored by Federal Reserve staff and a Columbia University economics professor. "It's, I think, the worst paper I've ever seen in the history of the Federal Reserve system," he said on CNBC Wednesday. "The people associated with this paper should presumably be disciplined, because what they've done is they've put out a conclusion which has created a lot of news that's highly partisan based on analysis that wouldn't be accepted in a first-semester econ class."

In fact, the finding -- that taxing something raises its cost -- is consistent with not only Econ 101 but other professional research on how tariffs affect prices. Isn't the point of tariffs, after all, to raise the price of foreign goods so Americans will buy domestic goods instead?

Actually, using only that November number makes it sound better than the overall conclusion:

In a post on the NY Fed's Liberty Street Economics blog, the researchers said 90 percent of the economic burden of Trump's tariff regime has fallen on domestic buyers.

Other reputable sources have produced similar findings, including Harvard Business School; Yale's Budget Lab; the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank; and the Congressional Budget Office.

Tariffs were also supposed to usher in a boom in manufacturing jobs, but once again the data says otherwise. Last year America lost 80,000 manufacturing jobs. Which is exactly the opposite of what Trump promised.

Here's some more reality for you. It was actually astonishing that no reporter asked Trump about this today (although Trump refuses to call on reputable reporters, since he prefers rightwing echo-chamber toadies instead). It was just revealed that even with all of Trump's beloved tariffs, the main "problem" he was trying to fix actually got worse last year, and in fact hit a new record:

The U.S. merchandise trade deficit hit a record $1.2 trillion last year, despite President Donald Trump's promise to eliminate it by imposing the highest tariffs in eight decades on foreign-made products.

Got that? Trump's bugaboo about the trade deficit was not "fixed" at all -- in fact, it got worse. You'd think someone would have brought this up and asked him about it, but you'd be wrong.

Trump, of course, is not going to admit any of these realities in his big speech next week. In fact, if a speech he gave this week in Georgia is any indication, Trump is teeing up what might be considered his "Misson Accomplished" moment. Just like George W. Bush prematurely announcing the end of a war he started, Trump is going to prematurely announce the end of economic woes for all Americans. Here is some of what he had to say on the issue:

I have to listen to the fake news talking about affordability. You notice, what word have you not heard over the last two weeks? Affordability. Because I've won. I've won affordability. I had to go out and talk about it.

He also framed the affordability issue as: "we've solved it." Mission accomplished!

This is an awfully risky strategy for Trump, but it is no real surprise, since he's been saying similar things for a while now. "Affordability," according to Trump, "is a Democrat [sic] hoax." And now he's somehow solved the hoax! Hey, presto!

Trump is quite obviously planning on running the Republican midterm election campaign on: "Pay no attention to the prices you pay at the grocery store, because all of your affordability problems have been solved!"

Even some of his MAGA faithful might balk at this obvious gaslighting, one might think. But then to top it all off, the subject of tariffs is going to be front and center for months now, as Trump flails about and tries to levy the same tariffs using different laws (which require investigations and drawn-out processes). Trump will be fighting hard for tariffs even though the public does not support tariffs, by almost a 2-to-1 margin (the most recent poll showed 64 percent of the public opposed tariffs, while only 34 percent supported them). Tariffs are wildly unpopular and people know full well there is indeed an affordability crisis, and Trump is going to kick off his midterm campaign theme by telling people that the crisis doesn't exist and tariffs are wonderful.

One route Trump could take (which admittedly he probably won't) on tariffs would be to ask Congress to pass a new law which gave him unfettered power to slap tariffs on any country for any reason. The Supreme Court reaffirmed in a big way with today's decision that the power to tax -- and tariffs are definitely a tax -- lies with Congress and with Congress alone. Congress can allow presidents to use tariffs, but only by passing a law which essentially abdicates their own constitutional duty in this regard. So they could very easily write a law which says all the things that Trump argued IEEPA says, giving him unlimited power to impose tariffs on any country.

The question is whether they would want to do that or not. They could conceivably do so using budget reconciliation rules which would allow them to pass a bill through the Senate without having to have 60 votes in favor, but even then it's doubtful whether such a bill could actually pass or not. Because it is Republicans in Congress whose jobs will be on the line this November, not Trump. They all have to get re-elected. And running on Trump's: "Ignore reality, reality is what I say it is!" would likely not work out too well for them. Just recently, the House of Representatives actually passed a bill that would end the tariffs on Canada, which they were able to do when six Republicans crossed the aisle and voted with the Democrats. That doesn't bode well for Trump getting a bill through Congress which gave him full and unfettered control over tariffs.

Even if they don't choose the route of passing a new bill to let Trump do what he wants, Republicans in Congress might have to face a vote on the tariffs anyway. The law Trump used today to institute a new 10 percent tariff on the world requires Congress to vote to extend such tariffs beyond 150 days. Five months from now would be the end of the summer -- right when the midterm election campaign should be heating up. Are vulnerable Republicans really going to rush to support tariffs their constituents hate right before an election? Of course, by that deadline Trump may have done all the paperwork to institute tariffs using different laws, which would avoid Congress having to vote, but that's no sure thing. In any case, it seems almost guaranteed that the political fight over tariffs is going to be a lot more prominent in the midterm campaigns than it would have been if the Supreme Court had ruled for Trump today.

Republicans worried about their prospects for re-election might want to take a gander at a new poll out this week, which showed that if the 2024 election were magically held again today, Donald Trump wouldn't win the popular vote by 1.5 points. Instead, Kamala Harris would beat Trump by a whopping eight points. Those are the headwinds Republicans already face, heading into the midterms. And Trump's insistence on making tariffs a whopping big deal for months on end certainly isn't going to help that situation one bit.

And that's just one issue Trump is losing votes on. Republicans in Texas are getting awfully concerned about their chances in this year's elections as well, as Trump's brutality against immigrants is causing his support among Latino voters to crater. The Lone Star state's construction industry is also getting very worried about the situation, for good reason (Trump keeps deporting all the workers they need). The head of the South Texas Builders Association made a trip to Washington last week to urge the White House and Republicans to shift course dramatically or else, as he put it: "South Texas will never be red again."

It was one of those weeks, however, where all our research and notes into all the other things that happened in the political world had to be scrapped at the last minute with the breaking news from the Supreme Court, so we're not even going to try to run down all the rest of it here. But there was one snippet that was so outrageous (and so insulting to members of the military) that we had to close with it. In an article titled: "Trump Wants To Give Himself Medal Of Honor: 'I Was Extremely Brave'," Trump shows his contempt for the military in general as well as every single recipient of the nation's highest military honor in specific. Even for Trump, that's pretty disgusting and repulsive. Here's what Trump had to say about why he deserved this award, after visiting the troops in Iraq for Christmas in 2018 (with the highest possible levels of security in place):

"I flew to Iraq. I was extremely brave. So brave I wanted to give myself the Congressional Medal of Honor," the president said during remarks at a Georgia steel plant.

Trump went on: "I said to my people, 'Am I allowed to give myself the Congressional Medal of Honor?'"

He then acknowledged that Medals of Honor, the military's highest award, typically go to people who have seen battle, and admitted it would be "a stretch" to give one to himself.

"Someday, I'm gonna try. I'm gonna test the law," he said with a smile. "Maybe I'll win in court after everyone sues me."

Anyone who thinks Trump was "just kidding" should remember all the other things we all thought was just a joke to him (see: Greenland, among many, many other flights of fancy turned into sober reality).

In fact, we don't even feel qualified to express how insulting and egotistical Trump was, here. We will defer those comments to people (especially Democrats running for office, hopefully) who have proudly served in this nation's military, who might just have something to say about Trump's "I went to Iraq, therefore I deserve the best medal there is" disrespectful idiocy.

 

California Governor Gavin Newsom certainly knows how to get under Trump's famously-thin skin. He did so once again this week, by charting a different course for California than Trump is charting for the rest of the country. Which annoyed Trump no end, of course. Here's the story:

President Donald Trump on Monday slammed a new clean energy agreement between California and the United Kingdom, deriding Gov. Gavin Newsom and warning British leaders against partnering with the Democratic governor.

"The U.K.'s got enough trouble without getting involved with Gavin Newscum," Trump said in a brief interview with Politico, using his derogatory nickname for Newsom. "Gavin is a loser. Everything he's touched turns to garbage. His state has gone to hell, and his environmental work is a disaster."

Trump added that it was "inappropriate" for Newsom to strike such agreements and "inappropriate for them to be dealing with him."

Trump's remarks came shortly after Newsom signed a memorandum of understanding in London with U.K. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband pledging cooperation on clean energy technologies, including offshore wind. The agreement also aims to expand access for British firms, including Octopus Energy, to California's market and to boost collaboration between research institutions on both sides of the Atlantic.

Not surprisingly, Newsom wore Trump's annoyance as a badge of honor. As his aides gleefully admitted:

After [Gavin] Newsom's latest European jaunt provoked a harsh rebuke from Trump on Monday, advisers to the California governor were privately claiming victory. Goading Trump into an outburst about a new clean energy agreement between California and the United Kingdom -- while not the official motivation for the governor's trip -- was a bonus.

"The more Trump takes the bait, the more attention you get in return," said a Newsom adviser granted anonymity to speak about the political considerations of the trip. "But it's much bigger than that. It's about bringing attention to the fact that what Trump is doing is out of step and it's not normal and it's not the American view. It certainly does not reflect what the American people want."

. . .

"Donald Trump is on his knees for coal and Big Oil, selling out America's future to China," said Izzy Gardon, the governor's spokesperson, in a statement. "Governor Newsom will continue to lead in his absence. Foreign leaders are rejecting Trump and choosing California's vision for the future."

He added, "We thank the President for his attention to this matter."

You just gotta love that last bit of snark.

Snark aside, though, Newsom leading his state forward while Trump tries to drag America backward was pretty impressive. And like his advisors said, provoking Trump's annoyance was just the icing on the cake, really.

For refusing to let Trump's delusions on climate change dictate what the state of California will do, for standing up for science over ignorance, and for getting under Trump's skin, Gavin Newsom is easily the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Congratulate California Governor Gavin Newsom on his official contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]

 

Once again we find ourselves with no real candidate for the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award this week. Which is a good thing, as Martha Stewart would say. So the MDDOTW award will go back on the shelf for another week, we are happy to report.

 

Volume 829 (2/20/26)

First off, we have to note how sad we were to hear the news of the passing of Reverend Jesse Jackson. We wrote about our own personal connection (which was about as minimal as you can get) with Jackson earlier this week, for anyone who is interested. Requiescat In Pace.

Moving along... because of the importance of today's Supreme Court decision, we are going to forego our discrete talking points this week and instead offer up what we would work into the Democrats' response to the State Of The Union speech next Tuesday night. Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger has been chosen to give this response, and we have no idea what she will say, but here is how we would work the subject into such a speech.

Some Democrats were quick off the mark in responding to the news, as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer celebrated:

A victory for the wallets of every American consumer. Trump's illegal tariff tax just collapsed -- He tried to govern by decree and stuck families with the bill. Enough chaos. End the trade war.

Hakeem Jeffries also chimed in, calling the decision "another crushing defeat for the wannabe King." Which is where we'll start our own rant, in fact....

 

No kings!

This year, America will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. This revolutionary document is mostly a long list of grievances the American colonies had with the King of England. And right there in the middle of this list are two that seem especially relevant right now. The Declaration denounces King George III, "For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world" and "For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent."

Think about that for a minute. These were two of the reasons we broke away from being ruled by a king. Remember the slogan we all learned as schoolchildren: "No taxation without representation"?

Donald Trump, beginning last year, has done exactly the same things to the American people as the Declaration denounces. On his own whim, he cut off trade with other countries and imposed taxes -- for tariffs are indeed taxes on American consumers -- upon us without our consent. Why should Trump get to do what we rebelled against King George for doing? Do you really think the Founders really intended that to happen?

I don't. Because unlike Donald Trump I have both read and understand our Constitution. And it clearly says that the power to tax is given to Congress, period. Not to the president. Because they didn't want to be governed by a king -- even an American one.

Donald Trump is not America's king. He just isn't. In fact, last year the biggest protest rallies in American history gathered in the streets of our country nationwide as millions upon millions of Americans stood up for this very basic and foundational idea -- No kings!

No matter how many times Donald Trump denies it, the vast majority of the American public knows full well that tariffs are a tax. And they're not just a tax -- they're a tax that we all have to pay. The tariffs are not paid by foreign countries. They are not magically paid by anyone else. They are paid by hard-working American families, and we can all see the effect on prices Trump's trade war has had every time we have to buy something. Because tariffs are a tax -- that you pay. Period.

Trump's trade war has backfired no matter how you look at it. Even using the metric that Trump based the whole thing on, his trade war has been an utter failure. For some reason (probably because he just doesn't understand basic economics), Trump thinks that running a trade deficit means America is somehow "getting ripped off." So he announced his tariffs to shrink the trade deficit America runs with the rest of the world. His tariffs were supposed to magically solve this imagined problem. But you know what? The trade deficit actually rose last year and hit an all-time high! That is a failure even using Trump's own metric, folks.

Trump's tariffs were also supposed to launch a manufacturing boom. If Trump raised the price of imports by taxing them, then American manufacturers were supposed to benefit, since they wouldn't have to pay the tariffs. So what actually happened? America lost 80,000 manufacturing jobs last year. So much for Trump's "boom," eh? He can lie all he wants about how wonderful everything is, but when you look at the reality of the situation, Trump's trade war has been a gigantic failure.

We heard a lot of sour grapes from Trump tonight, on many subjects. This is because he has the mind of a petulant little child. And he had the gall to berate members of the Supreme Court to their faces, because he didn't like losing on tariffs. But you know what? Trump is not a king. He can't bully the Supreme Court around, or have them jailed or executed on a whim. Because that's what tyrannical leaders do, not American presidents. And we say: "No kings!"

If Trump were smart -- which he isn't, quite obviously -- he would have realized that the Supreme Court threw him a lifeline with their decision. Trump's approval rating has been heading downward pretty much ever since he took office, and the economy is a gigantic reason why. People are still worried about affordability because it is a hard, cold reality. Trump can claim he has "won on affordability" and that it is no longer a problem until he is blue in the face, but it doesn't change the facts for everyone's wallet out there. Trump can stand up and declare "Mission accomplished!" on affordability, but he might want to ask George W. Bush how that all turned out for him.

With the electorate so worried about high prices and the cost of living, if Trump was smart he would have embraced the Supreme Court's ruling and watched as the tariffs were lifted and prices began to do what he promised -- finally come down. He ran on that, remember? Prices on everything were supposed to come way, way down. "On Day One," in fact -- that's what Trump promised us all. Instead, they have gone up on almost everything people have to buy.

Ending all Trump's tariffs would have eased prices on all sorts of things. So if Trump had embraced the Supreme Court's ruling, by the time the midterm election rolls around, people might actually be giving him some credit for easing the affordability crisis. When Trump initially threatened the rest of the world with his trade war tariffs, he called it "Liberation Day." He could have just rebranded the Supreme Court's ruling as "Liberation Day 2.0," as the court liberated everyone from paying the extra tax Trump has slapped on everything.

But Donald Trump is not that smart. He just isn't. Instead of grasping the economic lifeline the high court just threw him, he is now determined to reinstate the taxes he has put on the rest of the world through different tariff laws. He is going to fight tooth and nail to keep his taxes on everything. He is going to fight to make sure that prices stay high, all while telling you everything is peachy-keen and America is enjoying the best economy the world has ever seen.

But you and I know the truth. The truth is what your grocery receipt says, not what Donald Trump says. Tariffs are unpopular because they drive prices up. But Trump is telling all the Republicans to run their midterm election campaigns on the idea that up is down and affordability has been solved. The crisis doesn't exist. You're imagining it.

You know what I have to say to Trump and every Republican stupid enough to try to run on that idea? Good luck. Good luck with that. Because the American people are smarter than you think.

The Republicans who don't run on Trump's fantasy of him "winning" on affordability stand a much better chance of winning their own re-election. Because Trump doesn't really care about them. He certainly doesn't care about you, either. All he cares about is himself. He wants to rename everything in sight after himself, he wants to build a tacky ballroom at the White House, and he was pleased as punch when the Department of Justice put up an enormous image of Trump on their headquarters. These are all things you might expect a king to do -- slap his name and face on everything while ignoring what average people are going through.

But you know what? I agree with the protesters last year, just as I agree with the signers of the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago. Because if there is one unifying bedrock belief that unites Americans both back then and today it is the simple concept of "No kings!"

After all, we fought a whole war over that very idea -- a war which gave us the United States of America. Without a king to rule us, ever.

-- Chris Weigant

 

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Cross-posted at: Democratic Underground