If the word 'tariffs'' confuses you, this excellent article should answer your questions.

 

Tariff Decision: Setback or Boon?

This week, Punch the monkey made some new friends. And oh yeah... the Supreme Court came out with something about tariffs. 

Clarice Feldman | February 22, 2026 www.americanthinker.com

Will this week’s Supreme Court decision limit the use of tariffs as a foreign policy tool of presidents, or did it set up a firewall against future leftist chief executives while allowing this president to continue to utilize other means to the same end? Is the decision momentous or of little consequence?

A lot of attention this week was focused on Alysia Liu’s stunning Olympic performance and the tale of a baby monkey in a Japanese zoo (name Anglicized to “Punch”). Punch was abandoned by his mother, had been raised and bonded to his caretakers, who needed to integrate him into the monkey troop, which rejected him. Noticing his distress and the bullying he was receiving, the keepers gifted him a large orangutan doll, which he hugged and carried everywhere. Finally, he found a foster mom to hug and playmates, and all is well at the zoo.

In the meantime, the Supreme Court, after months of consideration, resolved 6-3 against the Administration in one of the two consolidated cases: Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump and Trump v. V.O.S. Solutions. In the first case, the Court denied that the federal district court had jurisdiction, ruling that the Court of International Trade had exclusive jurisdiction of tariff disputes. 

The main and dissenting opinions are very lengthy, but the case, at a minimum, holds that the IEEPA (International Emergency Economic Powers Act), which was the basis for the challenge in the V.O.S. case, cannot be used to raise revenue.

Justice Clarence Thomas strongly objected: “It’s the same basic statutory construction that Nixon used in his day to levy tariffs. And nobody at the time questioned the meaning of those words. So again, the Supreme Court is torturing the plain meaning of the statute. It’s a shameful thing.”

But except for constitutional scholars, most of us are more curious about the impact of the ruling, and for many, it is inconsequential and may even strengthen Trump’s hand.

Plan B

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent quickly announced that the administration was prepared for this eventuality and was acting to continue the tariffs:

“This administration will invoke alternative legal authorities to replace the IEEPA tariffs. We will be leveraging Section 232 and Section 301 tariff authorities that have been validated through thousands of legal challenges. Treasury’s estimates show that the use of Section 122 authority combined with potentially enhanced Section 232 and Section 301 tariffs will result in virtually unchanged tariff revenue in 2026.”

Stephen Miller confirmed this:

STEPHEN MILLER UNLEASHES: "As horrendous as the Supreme Court ruling was, as poorly as it reflects on John Roberts' court and the continued TORTURING of our statutes and our constitution, here's the good news!"

"The court also affirmed the president has the authority under section 301, section 232, section 122, section 338, and many other provisions of federal law, that the president can levy tariffs on foreign nations."

"So his program will not only be fully reconstituted, but it will be EXPANDED." 

"The Supreme Court also affirmed that under IEEPA, the president has authority to restrict, impede, deny, license, or even fully embargo any foreign trade."

"So the net result of all this is we're going to keep and grow the tariffs to bring back American manufacturing, which keeps prices low by incentivizing products to be made here in America."

"But it also means that President Trump has even more tools when it comes to dealing with foreign countries that undermine our security." @StephenM

The IEEPA was obviously chosen by the Administration as it was a fast way to impose tariffs. By contrast, Section 232 requires a prior Commerce Department investigation. It should come as no surprise to those who marvel at the competence of the Administration that during the long delay between the filing in the Supreme Court and the decision this week, Commerce did conduct such an investigation.

Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 empowers the U.S. President to impose tariffs, quotas, or other trade restrictions on imports deemed to threaten national security.

Following a Department of Commerce investigation (maximum 270 days), the President has broad discretion to determine what constitutes a "national security" threat and to act, with no legal cap on the tariff rate. 

Key Aspects of Section 232 Powers:

• Broad Scope: The term "national security" is not strictly defined by the statute, allowing for expansive interpretation to cover various sectors.
• Trigger Mechanism: Requires an investigation by the Secretary of Commerce into whether specific imports impair national security.
• Actions Authorized: The President may impose tariffs (no upper limit), quotas, or negotiate agreements to limit imports.
• Application: These measures are applied by sector, not as a universal import tax, and can be used to protect industries like steel, aluminum, automobiles, and minerals.

Buzz Patterson

Trump is brilliant. Anticipating all along that the initial tariffs wouldn’t stand eventual scrutiny, the Department of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, started the required review on day one and the 270 day review has been satisfied. It’s a done deal. Go home, Gavin. And take your ball. @GavinNewsom

The decision really does seem inconsequential as it affects trade and revenue:

Given that the mess of a Supreme Court opinion rejecting Trump’s IEEPA tariffs nonetheless leaves the door wide open for Trump to immediately re-implement the tariffs by different means and under different authorities, I think MacBeth has the best description of the Roberts decision: A walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Rebates

Well, you might ask, will the $200 billion in tariffs paid under a mistaken interpretation of law be refunded, to whom, and how? I assume this matter will have to be decided by the Court of International Trade, which, as SCOTUS just announced, has jurisdiction of the case. The Hill has some ideas:

Justice Brett Kavanaugh dealt with the problem directly in his forceful dissent. He criticized the majority for its silence on whether or how such refunds would be made. Most pointedly, Kavanaugh noted that the federal government “may be required to refund billions of dollars to importers who paid the… tariffs, even though some importers may have already passed on costs to consumers or others.”

In other words, importers could be double-compensated if they are repaid, since, in many cases, the public paid for the tariffs in the form of higher prices. That is precisely what Democrats have been arguing for months, claiming that prices were raised to cover the added cost of the tariffs.

Trump could therefore further force the issue by offering to pay the money directly to taxpayers as a tariff bonus as part of legislation that would ratify the tariffs. Would Democrats vote against such checks for average citizens? 

Even if Congress does nothing, this will take years to sort out. In the meantime, the administration has already utilized the other tariff powers recognized by the court.

But as it affects future executives, it is very consequential.

Jeff Childers contends the president’s fury at the decision was a performative display. In fact, he got everything he could have hoped for:

When Gorsuch asked him about the peril of future presidents, the DOJ’s lawyer -- Trump’s lawyer-- agreed. If IEEPA allows Trump tariffing, then a future Democrat president could also use it, for whatever insane progressive agenda they felt like, just by declaring a “state of emergency…”

The Firewall. And that, as they say, was that. The ambiguously worded statute was a disaster waiting to happen [snip] When they stripped tariffs from IEEPA, Justices Gorsuch, Roberts, and Barrett weren’t betraying Trump. They were protecting America from the next Democrat president -- a Warren or Newsom -- declaring a climate emergency and using IEEPA to impose the Green New Deal by fiat.

So they built a firewall.

And so here’s where we are: while the Court slowly considered it, it let President Trump use IEEPA for almost 8 months to get his Tariff Dashboard up and humming. [snip] Trump got to do it since he launched Liberation Day. But now the IEEPA store is closed, and nobody else can ever use it like Trump did. According to a quick Yale calculation by yesterday’s close of business, after Trump’s new executive order, the average tariff only dropped from 16.9% to 15.4%.

In other words, Trump was ready. The SCOTUS decision barely registered on the needle. That was just the first disappointment Democrats haven’t yet grappled with. There were more. [snip] 

The Shield for Trump. The three rock-ribbed conservatives, Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh, wrote spirited dissents pre-empting Democrats from complaining that Trump’s use of IEEPA was ‘totally illegal’ and unconstitutional. [snip]

Instead of a weaponized decision rebuking Trump as an out-of-control dictator, Democrats got a 6-3 split with a 40-page dissent explaining exactly why the 2025-26 tariffs could have -- in good faith -- been considered legal. Womp womp.

The dissenters handed Trump an ironclad rhetorical shield to deflect Democratic criticism over his first eight months of IEEPA tariffs.

[snip]

The Machete. The majority’s legal reason for chopping out IEEPA’s tariff power was actually another gift to conservatives -- a sharpened machete. Since 2022 or so, the Court has been sharpening a legal rule called the “Major Questions Doctrine” (MQD), which basically says the Executive Branch can’t just ‘read between the lines’ or ‘fill in the gaps’ of statutes, even if they are badly written or ambiguous.

MQD is widely considered a revolutionary tool that could finally clear the ungovernable wilderness of the administrative state -- a goal conservatives have longed for since the FDR days.

Even sharper after yesterday’s decision, MQD provides that if a statute doesn’t say something, executive agencies like the EPA or CDC can’t regulate into existence what are essentially new laws. [snip]

In short, Major Questions says federal agencies can’t just claim jurisdiction over the water in your backyard bird feeder and call it law. Revolutionary, I know.

Had yesterday’s decision swung the other way, had SCOTUS let Trump extrapolate tariffs from IEEPA, it would have undermined the terrific MQD machete, which is one of the Roberts Court’s most important restrictions on future Democrat presidents. After this decision, the MQD is even stronger. Swing away, boys.

All in all, not a bad week. Alysia Liu won the gold, Punch was adopted by another monkey and accepted by the troop, Trump gets his tariffs, and future presidents and their executive agencies can no longer manufacture jurisdiction over matters Congress never granted them.

Related Topics: Supreme Court, Trump, Tariffs

 

True statement: "Deportation is not a crime. It is the result of one.

 

Enforcement Without Efficiency Is Not Enforcement

Immigration enforcement is not strengthened by turning one contested case — like that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia — into a national spectacle.

gory Lyakhov  patriotpost.us 2-21-26

A federal judge ruled this week that Kilmar Abrego Garcia cannot be re-detained by immigration authorities because the statutory 90-day removal period has expired and the government lacks a realistic path to deport him. The decision ends, at least for now, a prolonged legal effort to remove a man whose case has consumed extraordinary federal time and resources.

Garcia entered the United States illegally as a teenager and later lived in Maryland. In 2019, an immigration judge determined that he could not be deported to El Salvador because he faced credible danger from gang violence there. Despite that protection, his immigration status remained unlawful. He was later charged in Tennessee with human smuggling, adding a criminal dimension to an already complicated case.

Last year, Garcia was deported before being returned to the United States. The Department of Homeland Security then attempted to deport him again, reportedly exploring removal options to several African countries. That second effort has now collapsed under judicial scrutiny. The court made clear that immigration detention cannot continue indefinitely when removal is not reasonably foreseeable.

None of these facts makes Garcia sympathetic. Entering the country illegally violates federal law. Human smuggling allegations are even more serious. But the broader policy question is not whether Garcia is admirable or an innocent “Maryland dad,” as The New York Times previously described him. The real question is whether dedicating substantial federal resources to a single, highly litigated deportation battle advances the stated goal of large-scale immigration enforcement.

The Trump administration has emphasized mass deportations and border control as central policy priorities. Achieving those objectives requires scale, efficiency, and legal sustainability. Immigration courts already face massive backlogs. Federal detention space is limited. Enforcement agencies operate under budgetary constraints. In that environment, strategic allocation of resources is essential.

Garcia’s case required an extraordinary amount of taxpayer funding. Taxpayers covered the cost of federal prosecutors and, through court-appointed counsel, his defense attorneys. They paid for the immigration officers who carried out the deportation, the transportation costs associated with removing him, and the additional expenses required to return and process him again. They financed the full scope of legal proceedings, including hearings, filings, and administrative reviews, as well as the cost of detention. In effect, the public paid for every stage of the process — from prosecution to deportation to renewed litigation — twice.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of individuals with final orders of removal remain in the country. Many of those cases involve no complex diplomatic barriers or contested country-of-origin protections.

Immigration law provides broad authority to detain and remove individuals who are unlawfully present, especially those accused or convicted of crimes. At the same time, statutory limits exist. The Supreme Court has held that immigration detention cannot become indefinite when deportation is not reasonably foreseeable. When the government pushes against those limits, courts intervene.

In reality, the Garcia case has become symbolic. For Democrats, it represents federal overreach. For supporters of aggressive deportation policy, it has become a test case. That symbolism, however, has distorted priorities. Immigration enforcement is not strengthened by turning one contested case into a national spectacle.

Garcia is one individual in a system involving millions. His case does not determine whether immigration law is enforced nationwide. Devoting disproportionate attention to his deportation has not meaningfully advanced broader enforcement objectives.

If policymakers are serious about restoring credibility to the immigration system, they must focus on scalable solutions. Immigration enforcement succeeds through consistent application of the law across thousands of cases, not through protracted battles over one legally complicated removal. Strategy, not spectacle, will determine whether immigration policy achieves its stated goals.

 

This post is a clear description of the destruction of the UK by mass immigration. It can and will happen here IF we do not take heed immediately!

 

A video that’s a metaphor for the decline of the UK and the West

There’s almost no context for the video, but it’s sufficiently clear that there won’t always be an England—and it’s not about race; it’s about culture.

Andrea Widburg | February 20, 2026 www.americanthinker.com

A very short video has emerged of an older white woman in England trying to get off a bus, only to be utterly defeated by a surge of black people—happy, not aggressive—streaming onto the bus. We don’t know where in England the video was taken, nor the circumstances (perhaps it was after a football match or concert), but it’s a perfect metaphor of how the West has changed with unlimited, unassimilated immigration. View video on X

Two data points are necessary to understand the video’s metaphoric weight. First, while the UK is still a majority-white country, that majority is dropping steadily. At the beginning of the 1950s, the UK was almost 100% British. When the 1960s began, 95.1% of the UK population identified as White British. When the 1970s began, the white population had dropped to 97.5%. By the beginning of the 1980s, it was at 95%.

At the start of the 1990s, and this is a pivotal date because it was before Tony Blair took power, the white population in the UK was still a relatively high 94.5%. Everything started to change very rapidly, though, once Blair opened the borders, a policy that remained under conservative leadership and consistently accelerated under Labour leadership.

In 2001, after a decade of Blair-ist policies, the white population had dropped to 89.7 percent. A decade later, it was 82.8% percent, and the official number as of 2021 was 76.8%.

As of 2024, the number of UK residents identifying as White British was only 73%-- which was a decline of over 25% in sixty years. The assumption is that, within 40 years, Britain, which has been a white nation since prehistoric times, will be a majority minority country, with whites estimated at 34% of the population by 2100.

In the major urban areas, the future is now:

In 2022, it was revealed that London and Birmingham have become minority white British.

A 2023 ONS report stated 46 per cent of Londoners were from black and minority ethnic groups.

A census from the Birmingham City Observatory noted in 2021 that the percentage of white people had declined from 57.9 per cent to 48.6 per cent between 2011 and 2021.

But skin color is an external factor. What creates a nation isn’t color, it’s culture, which leads me to the second data point. Paired with the white skin in Britain were cultural expectations: stiff upper lips, good manners, public decorum, honesty in one’s dealings, etc. It was all “keep calm and carry on.” That was the perception the world had of Britain and that the Brits had of themselves.

That’s still the Britain I knew when I lived there in the early 1980s. Back then, the stereotype of British people politely standing in line for things (or “queuing,” as they called it) was true. Whether at banks or bus stops, public conduct was ordered and polite.

However, the immigrant population in the UK doesn’t come from ordered and polite societies. It comes from African, Middle Eastern, and Indian subcontinent cultures that are utterly chaotic when it comes to public conduct. And that’s how you get this video of a lone white woman trying desperately to get off a British bus in the face of an onrush of people of African descent (or even directly from Africa):

When America experienced a massive influx of immigrants in the last decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, assimilation was the name of the game. America’s institutions—schools, governments, entertainment, and general culture—expected the new immigrants to embrace American norms: law-abiding, orderly, hard-working, and patriotic. In schools, you saluted the flag and, later, said the pledge of allegiance, something that was still the norm when I was in elementary school.

Now, though, it’s considered “racist” to expect recent immigrants to conform to their new country’s values. So, the country is expected to conform to the recent immigrants’ values.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Singapore imposes its values on immigrants, and the immigrants comply. The result is an exceptionally high-functioning, livable country.

The reality is that humans are the most adaptable species on the planet—and the more powerful humans will always force the weaker to adapt. Unless the West starts flexing its cultural power, it’s done for.