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   From: leroysoetoro@americans-first.com   
      
   Tariff Ruling Rips Open Trump's Relationship With the Roberts Court   
   The decision was the president's biggest high-court defeat, and he took it   
   personally   
      
      
   By   
   James Romoser   
   Feb. 20, 2026 9:00 pm ET   
      
      
   The Supreme Court struck down President Trump's global tariffs, ruling he   
   overstepped his authority without clear congressional permission.   
   President Trump called the justices who ruled against him "fools" and "lap   
   dogs.   
    "   
   In the next few months, the court will rule on another one of Trump's   
   assertions of power: his bid to remake the Fed by firing one of its   
   governors.   
      
      
   The Supreme Court struck down President Trump's global tariffs, ruling he   
   overstepped his authority without clear congressional permission.   
   View more   
      
   WASHINGTON—For nearly a decade, President Trump has viewed the Supreme Court   
   as his ally, counting on the court's conservative majority to side with him   
   in both his personal legal troubles and his policy goals.   
   That sense of harmony shattered Friday.   
   The decision striking down Trump's global tariffs was the most resounding   
   brushback the court has ever delivered to him. It sent an unmistakable signal   
   that, even for a highly conservative court that has tried to avoid an all-out   
   conflict with an unpredictable president, there are some red lines that Trump   
   cannot cross.   
   Trump responded with his signature pugnacity. He called the justices who   
   ruled against him—including two of his own appointees—unpatriotic "fools" and   
   "lap dogs" who were bowing to foreign interests. And he said that his days of   
   being a "good boy" in how he talks about the court are over.   
   Seeking to steer the court through the morass is Chief Justice John Roberts,   
   whose desire to stay above the political fray has been tested time and again   
   by Trump.   
   Two years ago, Roberts wrote the decision granting Trump broad immunity from   
   criminal prosecution, helping smooth the path toward his return to the White   
   House. And a year ago, after an address to a joint session of Congress, Trump   
   shook Roberts's hand, patted him on the shoulder and thanked him.   
   On Friday, it was Roberts who wrote the court's decision declaring that Trump   
   had overstepped his authority by enacting sweeping tariffs without clear   
   permission from Congress. His reasoning hinged on the bedrock constitutional   
   principle that the taxing power—which includes the power to levy   
   tariffs—belongs to the legislature, not the president.   
   Donald Trump speaks at a podium   
   Trump responded to the tariff ruling with his signature pugnacity. Kyle   
   Mazza, Kyle Mazza/Kyle Mazza/TheNEWS2/ZUMA Press   
   Yet in some ways, his 21-page opinion rejecting the administration's claims   
   of broad emergency powers was a departure from his lengthy record of   
   endorsing robust executive authority in other areas, including in other Trump   
   cases.   
   "It's almost Greek tragedy that Roberts, who has often endorsed expansive   
   presidential power, including in the immunity opinion, is confronted by a   
   president who is not only happy to take that to the far extreme, but doesn't   
   accept any constraints, " said Carolyn Shapiro, a professor at Chicago-Kent   
   College of Law.   
   Other tests loom for the relationship between the president and the chief.   
   The two men will likely come face to face next Tuesday, when Trump delivers   
   the State of the Union and is likely to continue railing against the court.   
   Asked at a press conference Friday whether the justices who ruled against him   
   are still welcome to attend the speech, Trump said: "They're barely invited.   
   Honestly, I couldn't care less if they come. "   
   In the next few months, the court will rule on another one of Trump's   
   assertions of power: his bid to remake the Federal Reserve by firing one of   
   its governors. And it will also soon take up a cornerstone of Trump's   
   immigration agenda, his attempt to eliminate automatic birthright   
   citizenship.   
   Those disputes will be the next milestones in a decadelong string of Trump   
   controversies that have largely defined the Roberts court. During Trump's   
   first term in the White House, the court's three most significant rulings on   
   his policies involved his travel ban, his attempt to add a citizenship   
   question to the U. S. census and his effort to strip protections from   
   immigrants who were brought to the U. S. as children.   
   Roberts wrote all three of those decisions. Trump won the first and lost the   
   other two—but none of them were as central to his agenda as his tariffs are.   
   "This was an important case to me, " Trump said Friday, with clear   
   disappointment in his voice.   
   U. S. Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and retired   
   Justice Anthony Kennedy in robes.   
   Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett and retired Justice Anthony   
   Kennedy attended Trump's address to Congress last year. win mcnamee/Reuters   
   After the 2020 election, the Supreme Court summarily rejected attempts by   
   Trump and his allies to overturn his loss to Joe Biden. But during the four   
   years he was out of office, the court issued the landmark immunity decision,   
   as well as a decision blocking states from barring him from the 2024 ballot   
   because of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.   
   Since Trump returned to the White House, the court has considered a series of   
   emergency appeals from the administration on issues like his firings of   
   independent regulators, his cuts to the federal workforce and his moves to   
   quickly deport immigrants. In nearly all of those cases, he won preliminary   
   rulings from the Supreme Court allowing his policies to take effect,   
   notwithstanding lower-court injunctions that had blocked them.   
   The president's record so far of second-term success at the high court made   
   the tariffs defeat even more jarring. But in some ways, the defeat—for all   
   its symbolic weight in the dynamic between two branches of government—wasn't   
   total.   
   After all, the decision left the door open for Trump to try to re-enact his   
   tariffs through other legal authorities. ("We do not speculate" on whether he   
   could do so, Roberts wrote in a footnote. )   
   And in a noteworthy omission, Roberts didn't address the momentous question   
   of whether the government must pay back the tens of billions of dollars in   
   tariff revenue it has already collected from U. S. companies importing goods.   
   Ordering refunds, as some observers expected the court to do, would have   
   exacerbated the blow to Trump. Instead, Roberts left the refund question to   
   be sorted out in the lower courts.   
   Michael Nelson, a political scientist at Penn State whose research focuses on   
   the power of courts, said the tariff ruling may prove to be only a stumbling   
   block in Trump's mission to remake U. S. trade. Its larger significance, he   
      
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