In a twist that wouldn’t be believed in the worst TV movie, the surviving Koch Brother and Supreme Court shadow boss Leonard Leo are moving to crush Trump and his tariffs.
It’s more than surprising that these men, long considered as candidates for the worst people on earth, would be riding to the rescue. We have no idea what the world will look like when Trump gets slapped down on his all-consuming major initiative, but we now know it is coming.
The U.S. Constitution gives control over tariffs to Congress. It doesn’t hint it, imply it, or suggest it. It just says it.
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises ...
Trump has launched his tariff scheme through executive order and false bravado. Like a fourth grader trying to prove to the teacher he was right, Trump is making his arguments based on old and unrelated laws that do not give the president the opportunity to create tariffs.
So Koch and Leo have filed suit against the Trump tariffs, picking as a plaintiff a stationery shop that will be ruined if it has to pay tariffs on imported goods.
Koch has been a main villain in support of rightwing causes for many years. Leo is the puppet master of the Supreme Court, showering Clarence Thomas in particular with everything he could want and much more.
In a press release, the New Civil Liberties Alliance, as reported by The New Republic, says:
“Congress has sole authority to control tariffs, which it has done by passing detailed tariff statutes. The President cannot bypass those statutes by invoking ‘emergency’ authority in another statute that does not mention tariffs,” the group continued. “His attempt to use the IEEPA [an old law] this way not only violates the law as written, but it also invites application of the Supreme Court’s Major Questions Doctrine, which tells courts not to discern policies of ‘vast economic and political significance’ in a law without explicit congressional authorization.”
newrepublic.com/...
The court loves them the “major questions” doctrine. Throwing the entire economy of the world into chaos is undoubtedly a major question.
By the way, here is another link to a writeup on this issue.
www.msn.com/...
Just a thought on how bad Trump’s stock market crash is. If you took $500 bills and Scotch-taped them end-to-end, you could create a chain that stretched to the moon. It would not equal the amount of money Trump has destroyed this week.
By the way, Show Low, AZ, a pretty conservative town in eastern Arizona, had 251 anti-Trump demonstrators Saturday. There were three MAGAs who turned out.
