Trump is publicly raging at Barrett and Gorsuch — two justices he personally appointed — because they had the audacity to rule that the president can’t just make up taxes whenever he feels like it. The man hand-picked judges to rubber-stamp his agenda and is genuinely shocked that two of them decided to read the Constitution instead. Meanwhile Kavanaugh, Alito, and Thomas voted to let him keep the money. Three out of five ain’t bad when you’re trying to build an authoritarian judiciary, I guess.
The fallout is spectacular. Over 2,000 companies including Costco and FedEx are now suing for their cut of $130 billion in illegal tariff refunds, and the White House is scrambling to find $1.6 trillion in revenue to replace what the court just wiped out — money they were counting on to pay for tax cuts for the rich. So the plan was always: tax every import, pass the cost to regular people at checkout, then hand the money to billionaires and call it economic policy. The average household was paying an extra $600 a year for this grift. At least now we know what “America First” actually meant: American families first in line to get fleeced.