On Friday, the conservative-activist Supreme Court made a rare move to rein in Donald Trump. Too little, too fascist! SCOTUS ruled in a 6-to-3 decision that Trump has no authority to levy tariffs without oversight or congressional approval. The ruling effectively struck down Trump’s dumbass tariffs, tariffs which few people have even bothered to keep track of because Trump Always Chickens Out (TACO). Every level of this is effectively busywork from all sides – Trump is going to do what he wants, SCOTUS has no authority over the fascist they empowered, and Congressional Republicans are going to continue to sit back and do nothing. Still, the decision rattled Trump. He came out for a press conference and he was clearly shaky, panicked and demented. Over the course of 24 hours, he announced an across-the-board 10% tariff on all imports, then upped it to 15%.
A Supreme Court decision on Friday striking down President Trump’s sweeping global tariffs dealt a major blow to his economic agenda and brought new uncertainty to global markets struggling to adapt to his whipsawing trade policies that was compounded when he announced that he was imposing a new across-the-board 10 percent tariff.
The court, in a 6-to-3 decision written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., ruled that Mr. Trump had exceeded his authority when he imposed tariffs on nearly every U.S. trading partner last year. The ruling prompted a defiant response from the president: In a news conference at the White House, Mr. Trump excoriated the justices who had ruled against him as “fools and lap dogs” and foreshadowed the new tariffs he announced within hours, to begin on Tuesday.
The court’s ruling threw into doubt a series of trade deals with countries around the world that the administration struck in recent months, and left unclear whether U.S. companies or consumers would be able to reclaim some of the more than $200 billion in fees the federal government has collected since the start of last year. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh warned in a dissent that any refund process could be a substantial “mess.”
The ruling also appeared to create a trillion-dollar hole in the federal budget because the tariffs that were upended had helped fill the gap caused by his income tax cut.
Mr. Trump was the first president to claim that the 1977 IEEPA emergency statute, which does not mention the word “tariffs,” allowed him to unilaterally impose the duties without congressional approval. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts said that statute did not. The court’s ruling, backed by justices from across the ideological spectrum, was a rare and significant example of the Supreme Court pushing back on Mr. Trump’s agenda.
One of the funniest – I guess?? – parts of this is that Trump is now at war with several conservative justices, including John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett. Brett Kavanaugh didn’t vote with the majority opinion, he’s still backing his sexual-predator benefactor. You know what would be hilarious? If Trump suddenly became a proponent of expanding the court, which is something Democrats have wanted for years (he actually riffed about this on Friday too). Anyway, Trump is trying to assume a vibe of “who gonna check me boo?” but it’s coming across as “unhinged temper tantrum,” which is interesting. If he’s this shaky about his bullsh-t tariffs, it doesn’t bode well for everything else, you know?
Trump: "I can do anything I want to do to them … I'm allowed to destroy the country."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) February 20, 2026 at 1:37 PM
Trump threatens us with a good time: "They'd like to pack the court. They want to put on 21 people. Pack the Supreme Court. Maybe they should do it. Maybe we would be better off if they did it."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) February 20, 2026 at 1:40 PM
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
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- President Donald Trump holds a press briefing on the US Supreme Court decision to block the use of an emergency law to unilaterally impose sweeping tariffs on most U.S. trading partners Featuring: President Donald Trump Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 20 Feb 2026 Credit: POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com
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- President Donald Trump holds a press briefing on the US Supreme Court decision to block the use of an emergency law to unilaterally impose sweeping tariffs on most U.S. trading partners Featuring: President Donald Trump Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 20 Feb 2026 Credit: POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com
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- President Donald Trump holds a press briefing on the US Supreme Court decision to block the use of an emergency law to unilaterally impose sweeping tariffs on most U.S. trading partners Featuring: President Donald Trump Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 20 Feb 2026 Credit: POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com
Every day I wake up in hopes that this is over.
Oh gods, you and me both.
There are many people like you all over the world. MANY…
Like the ‘joke’ currently making its way across the internet says, I’m only waiting for one headline.
Rick Flair is at it again. Nobody cares anymore, it just goes in an ear straight out on the other side. What a joke. Junior Prez
We live in a level of hell I would love to wake up from… the rage I feel over what is being allowed to happen is a constant companion nowadays.
100%
I have to step away from the news quite often these days. With the daily horrors of the Epstein files and the Orange Man’s demented rants, I need to give my anger a rest.
Has he ever been as committed to anything else in his wretched life as he is to raising prices for American consumers? I mean, he never even mentions his stupid wall any more. Governor Pritzger sent hm an invoice for the refunds due to the citizens of Illinois. It’s obviously not going to happen but I’d like to see more governors put him on the hook publicly too, and make everyone aware that WE paid that money, not the Canadian government or the Official Bank of China or wherever Donald’s syphyllitic little nutbrain thought the money came from.
Literally every dumbass MAGA cultist I’ve met thinks believes that tariffs are basically like Viking tribute, and they will not be convinced otherwise. They’re proud of being this f–king stupid.
May he doze off at another meeting today and never wake up.
LMFAO! The auto captions have no idea what he’s saying. Poor AI wasn’t built for this.
We should record all his statements. In the future, they may be useful in “killing” the rebellious AI. And that will be this orange scum’s only success. The only war he will actually end.
Follow the money. Howard Lutnik, who is behind the entire tariff fiasco, purchased the refund rights through his bank at 25 cents on the dollar LAST YEAR. So Lutnik gambled that his policy would not work and this would be overturned. As a result of this gamble (is it really gambling when you know the outcome) he will make over a billion dollars. You can’t make this up. You really can’t.
It’s almost as if DT and the entire administration are a crime wave fleecing the country…
Yes, it’s been obvious since Enron that a lot of these types of “investments” are literally just gambling. I say Enron because I remember they were starting to offer weather futures. We need to rein in Wall Street, they’ve started to trade in water futures. We need to end them or they will end us.
Lutnik, and his sons who helped committ this scheme, belong in jail. This is ultimate insider trading, or worse. I don’t even know what to call it.
Most of them should go to prison, but I doubt anyone will. They’ll live in luxury for the rest of their lives.
My dad (85 next week) and my FIL (81) are both the kind of old-school guys who spent most of their lives stubbornly insisting that virtually nothing was worth going to the doctor. Unsurprisingly, they’ve both been diagnosed with serious heart problems that have required stents for my dad and bypass surgery for my FIL. Afterwards, we were dreading the inevitable ordeal of getting them to stick to their new diets and exercise regimens, and fully expected that a lot of nagging would be necessary. Nope. They’ve both said their motivation is that they’re determined that this barely sentient piece of shit isn’t going to outlive them. I think that’s literally the only positive thing that’s ever come of Trump’s entire shitty existence.
I don’t want Trump to be president when we lose Joe Biden. He would probably try to keep honors from being made for a former President.
Oh lord, I hadn’t even thought about that. Truly one of the worst things about this administration is the constant realization of how many facets of the presidency there are and how many ways the hideousness of their existence can infect each one.
Yesterday I learned that the family of Rev Jesse Jackson requested that Rev Jackson “lie in honor” in the Capitol Rotunda. The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, denied the family’s request. While I hope that a lot of the hatred, partisanship, and pettiness that Trump has fomented will crumble when he does, there are all-too-frequent reminders that there’s a lot of hideousness out there that goes way beyond that rippling out directly from Trump.
All our hard work, all ancestors hard work, swept away by lunacy and cowardice. Every day I am disappointed by the selfishness of the people in charge of this country, CEOs and politicians.
The only thing keeping me sane in the midst of this year of absolute I-told-you-so (remember Absolut vodka’s epic ad campaign?) is the Celebitchy comments section.
SAME! I read the BBC headlines, then buzz straight over to Celebitchy, no intermediate step. And anytime someone shows (misplaced?!) support for the various fools Kaiser tells us about, my first thought is, ‘read the room, commenter, read the room’.
So nice not to feel isolated, isn’t it?
I pray every night before my restless few hours of sleep that I wake up to Ground News giving this country and the world the news we’ve all been eagerly anticipating for over a year now.