“Friday’s blockbuster ruling on tariffs was hardly welcomed by the Trump administration, but it was also widely expected. The Supreme Court clearly established in its 6-3 decision that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not afford presidents authority to issue sweeping, unilateral tariffs like those imposed by President Trump over the last year. The justices fractured on other issues. And they left one issue conspicuously unaddressed: What happens to the hundreds of billions of dollars collected from these tariffs so far?” (02/21/26)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“A tariff, for reasons described in earlier posts, generally makes the country that imposes it poorer. So do other taxes. Does it cost us more to raise a million dollars of revenue from a tariff than from an income tax, a sales tax, or some other alternative? What does that mean, what does a tax cost beyond the money handed over?” (02/21/26)
“There is something unavoidably quaint about the UFO conspiracy theory. The discovery of supposed alien space-craft debris near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, is closer to the time of Jack the Ripper than it is to the present moment. The idea that materials discovered there belong to some advanced interstellar craft that the United States Army Airforces (USAAF) have been reverse-engineering ever since should by all rights have decayed and perished as much as the rubber components implausibly found among them. … Why has it lasted? It may be because, as conspiracy theories go, this one is unusually optimistic. When the truth comes out, it will make things better, more exciting. This is very different from the usual tin-foil-hat fare …” (02/20/26)
“Hey guys, can we admit now that President Donald Trump’s trade agenda is failing, or do we need a little more time? Trump’s toxic mix of tariffs and new trade agreements alienated allies, drove up costs on American consumers and failed to accomplish its stated goals of turning around the U.S. trade deficit and reviving domestic manufacturing. Oh, and most of his tariffs are also illegal. Now would be a perfect time for the Administration to reassess its goals and tactics, especially since the majority of Trump’s tariffs were ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. Hopefully Trump seizes the moment.” (02/20/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Whenever you say anything online opposing the way the US is preparing for war with Iran or strangling Cuba to death with siege warfare, you’ll always get people whose family comes from the nation in question telling you to be silent and support the US war machine. Their family emigrated at some point because they didn’t like the government, so now they spend their time on social media telling everyone to support US operations to topple that government. The correct response to such people is ‘Shut the fuck up.'” (02/22/26)
“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.” (02/20/26)
“The Japanese rampage across Southeast Asia from 1941–42 was a remarkable military feat by any metric, comparable to the early German blitzkrieg campaigns across Western Europe. In four months from the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December, the Japanese had occupied Malaya, Singapore, Borneo, and the Dutch East Indies. The Western colonial powers had been decisively defeated, the humiliation of surrender made all the worse by the ignoble way many of the colonists had fled the advancing Japanese, leaving their Asian subjects to face the invaders’ wrath.” (02/21/26)
“In last week’s column, I argued that while neither major party consistently fights to shrink government and protect civil liberties, the Republican Party is closer than the Democratic Party to practicing such ideals. Meanwhile the actual Libertarian Party, despite existing for over a half-century, has failed to break into the mainstream, rarely making a dent in federal and state elections. These two realities raise a question: should libertarians stop propping up an uninfluential third party and try instead to overtake the GOP?” (02/20/26)
“If Eileen Gu’s mother came to America for a better life, she got it. Yan Gu, the daughter of two Chinese government officials, emigrated to the U.S. in the 1980s, just a few decades after the passage of the Hart-Celler Act, which overhauled immigration policies and prompted a massive increase in arrivals from Asia and Latin America. Educated at Auburn University, Rockefeller University, and eventually Stanford Graduate School of Business, she dabbled as a ski instructor and, apparently, in venture capital. In 2003, she gave birth to a daughter in San Francisco, raising her in an affluent Bay Area neighborhood. What’s known of Eileen Gu’s childhood reads like a caricature of coastal elitism …. Her story would be elevated as a saccharine picture of the neoliberal American dream, if Gu hadn’t decided to ski for China.” (02/20/26)
“As a constitutional matter, the issue before the Supreme Court in the case of President Trump’s tariffs was a relatively easy one. If the Constitution was designed to prevent anything, it was economic rule by one-man decree. Declaring a national emergency due to foreign disputes and making the American people pay stiff import taxes as a consequence, without clear legislative authority — as Trump did last year — was never part of the Founders’ plan. But actually acting on this truth was not so simple, especially for a conservative court majority that faced overt pressure from a president who had appointed three of them.” (02/21/26)
