The courts, the donor class, and foreign interests lined up to kill his tariff program. By the time the ruling hit the wire, Trump had already outmaneuvered all of them.
WASHINGTON — No president in modern memory has fought harder for working Americans than Donald Trump, and no ruling from any court is going to change that.
The Supreme Court handed down its 6-3 ruling in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump this morning, striking down his IEEPA tariff authority and delivering the legal victory foreign interests spent a year buying lawyers to get. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the law’s text “cannot bear such weight.” Trump walked to the White House podium, called the decision “ridiculously incorrect,” told reporters he was “deeply disappointed” and “ashamed” of the justices who lacked the courage to rule correctly, and signed a new executive order before the press finished writing their ledes.
Any other president holds a somber press conference, promises to respect the court’s decision, and moves on. Trump absorbed the ruling, exposed its absurdity for the record, and signed a 10% global tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 while launching Section 301 investigations that carry decades of legal precedent.
The court took away one tool. He picked up three others before lunch.
The people who funded the lawsuits that produced today’s ruling are not ordinary American businesses worried about import costs. Trump identified them plainly: “Sleaze bags. Major sleaze bags. Foreign country centric.”
These are the same interests that spent thirty years telling factory workers in Georgia, Michigan, and Ohio that losing their jobs to China and Mexico was just the price of progress. Trump was the first president to tell them they were wrong, charge their foreign competitors for access to American markets, and mean it.
The results are documented. The Dow crossed 50,000. The S&P broke 7,000. Fentanyl crossing the border is down more than 30 percent.
The steel plant owner Trump visited in Georgia Thursday told him factories all up and down the highway were weeks from bankruptcy before tariffs hit. Now they run double shifts. “Sir, I want to kiss you,” the man told him. That is not a talking point. That is a business owner who thought he was finished telling the president who saved him exactly what he thinks.
The institutional resistance to Trump has been relentless and it has failed every time, and today was no different. The court’s ruling produced a legal absurdity so glaring Trump pointed it out from the podium without notes: a president can embargo a foreign nation entirely and destroy its trade access to the United States, but cannot charge that same nation a dollar in tariffs. “I’m allowed to destroy the [a] country,” he said, “but I can’t charge them a little fee.” Six justices signed their names to that logic.
Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh refused to go along. Kavanaugh’s dissent did something beyond registering disagreement.
He told Trump exactly where to go next, writing that the decision “might not substantially constrain a President’s ability to order tariffs going forward” because Congress authorized that authority through multiple other statutes. Trump quoted it at the podium. He was already using it.
As a combat veteran who took fire at Khobar Towers, I have been around people who perform under pressure my entire life.
The man who walked in had just taken a serious blow from a court that included two of his own appointees. He came in angry, specific, and completely undeterred. He praised the justices who stood with him, eviscerated the ones who didn’t, laid out the legal path forward in enough detail to make clear he had studied it, and signed the order. “We were ripped off by almost every country in the world,” he said. “Our people were stupid, and I blame presidents for it.” No president before him said it. None of them fixed it either.
The foreign interests who funded today’s lawsuit thought they were killing the tariff program. Instead they handed it a stronger legal foundation with better judicial precedent and forced Trump onto authorities that have survived court challenges for decades.
They will figure that out soon enough.
The Supreme Court, the donor class, and every foreign government that wrote a check to stop this man wanted him finished today. The factories in Georgia running double shifts say otherwise.
By Rarchar Tortorello – https://www.citynewsokc.com/opinion/they-threw-everything-they-had-at-donald-trump-he-s-still-standing-america-is-better/article_cbfc787a-f638-4d77-938b-b33e59958043.html











