XPost: or.politics, or.general   
   From: skeeterweed@photonmail.com   
      
   February 20, 2026   
      
   The Supreme Court Delivers Trump a Humiliating Gift   
      
   Finally, a check on the president's tariff powers.   
      
   February 20, 2026, 2:10 PM ET   
      
   In the 1630s, King Charles I tried to tax English people without the   
   consent of their legislature. He lost his head.   
      
   In the 2020s, Donald Trump tried to tax Americans without the consent of   
   Congress. He just lost his case.   
      
   A tariff is a tax. The Trump tariffs imposed in and after April 2025 were   
   projected to raise as much as $2.3 trillion over 10 years. The Constitution   
   assigns authority over taxes, including tariffs, to Congress. It does so   
   for reasons that date back to English constitutional history: An executive   
   who can tax without permission from elected representatives is on his way   
   to becoming a tyrant.   
      
   Conor Friedersdorf: Striking down Trump's tariffs isn't a judicial coup   
      
   President Trump has had lots of ideas for how to spend the money he   
   collected without Congress. He has offered it to farmers. He has mused   
   about direct cash payments to taxpayers. He has speculated about creating a   
   sovereign wealth fund to invest in companies. He has disregarded the   
   fundamental principle that spending, like taxing, is a power the   
   Constitution assigns to Congress, not the president.   
      
   Now we may be on the verge of a regime-changing war against Iran. War-   
   making is also supposed to be a congressional power—but there's no sign   
   that Trump will allow Congress to vote on his war. In the past, the   
   ultimate check on the president's war-making powers was Congress's power   
   over the purse. When President Clinton intervened in the former Yugoslavia   
   in 1999, Congress deadlocked over a vote of authorization, but approved the   
   appropriation to pay for it, an authorization by a different name. But if   
   Trump were allowed to tax without Congress, then he might reasonably   
   conclude that he could fight wars without Congress.   
      
   Trump's tariffs were advertised as a revenue source liberated from the   
   restraints imposed by Article I of the Constitution. Had the Supreme Court   
   upheld the tariffs, it would have wrought a constitutional revolution.   
   Instead, the court quashed Trump's scheme. Like every president before him,   
   if he wants money—for an Iran war or any other purpose—he will have to ask   
   Congress for it.   
      
      
      
   Trump's theory was that an emergency-powers law passed in the 1970s allowed   
   him to impose permanent revenue-raising tariffs on anyone for any reason.   
   This argument was always far-fetched. The law, the International Emergency   
   Economic Powers Act, was part of the post-Watergate reform to reduce   
   presidential emergency powers. The IEEPA reformed the Trading With the   
   Enemy Act passed during World War I. President Franklin Roosevelt had used   
   that law to ban most private ownership of gold bullion in 1933, which even   
   supporters had to concede was a fantastic legal reach. After Watergate,   
   Congress sought to restrain the president by limiting the IEEPA to "unusual   
   and extraordinary" threats to "the national security, foreign policy, or   
   economy of the United States. " The law's powers can be invoked only after   
   a formal declaration of national emergency, and the word tariff appears   
   nowhere among the powers conferred upon the president by the law. To put it   
   another way, a permanent 25 percent tax on Canadian maple-syrup-tapping   
   technology is not what the authors of the IEEPA had in mind.   
      
   Trump gets very impatient when he's asked about "affordability. " You can   
   understand why he squirms. The price increases Americans have felt in 2025   
   and 2026 can be blamed in no small part on Trump's tariffs. Power bill up?   
   Trump imposed a tariff on the equipment used to generate and transmit   
   electricity. Six-pack of beer more expensive? Trump taxed the beer cans.   
   Kids need new shoes? Trump's tariffs raised the cost.   
      
   Jerusalem Demsas: There's no coming back from Trump's tariff disaster   
      
   The ironic political question for 2026 is whether the U. S. Supreme Court   
   acted in time to save Trump from himself. Whether or not it was the   
   justices' intention to help Trump, a generally Trump-friendly Supreme Court   
   has offered the president an exit from one of his most unpopular domestic   
   policies. Will he accept the handout? Acceptance would be smart, but   
   humiliating. Trump holds other legal means to disrupt international trade,   
   some of which he used in his first term. But those powers have tighter   
   legal limits than Trump wants. They don't raise the kind of lawless revenue   
   he plainly hoped for, but they can still cause havoc until their abuse is   
   checked—and the federal courts have thus far flinched on supplying such   
   checks on the president's power. Until and unless a future Congress acts to   
   protect Americans from Trump protectionism, the outlook for U. S.   
   prosperity and security will remain clouded.   
      
   While shadows dim the future, the sun shone today. U. S. stocks surged   
   after Trump's Supreme Court defeat. American consumers may soon feel the   
   benefit. Liberated from this approach to economic warfare, relations with   
   allies may recover some of their former cordiality. And unlike the case of   
   Charles I, all of this was accomplished while allowing America's president   
   to lay his unsevered head on his pillow tonight.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)