Six to Three and Two to One 😱 ✡️🌻😱 ⛸️❄️☃️

Tariffs, Tariffs, the Economy:  On Friday, the Commerce Department estimated that the economy grew at an annualized rate of only 1.4% during the fourth quarter and that prices are now growing at an annual rate of 3%. Combined with last year’s anemic job growth, and the growing US deficit, those two indicators provide further evidence that despite Trump’s claims to the contrary the country’s economic picture is far from rosy.  Naturally, Trump blamed the economic news on Biden, Democrats, and Fed Chair Jerome Powell.  In fact, he started playing the blame game even before the numbers were officially released. Then the proverbial 💩 hit the fan.  The Supreme Court finally weighed in on Trump’s tariffs, essentially ruling 6 to 3 that Trump’s tariffs are taxes and that they exceed the powers given to presidents by Congress under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the Act that Trump used to justify imposing most of them.  IEEPA provides the authority for presidents to regulate commerce during national emergencies created by foreign threats but does not allow presidents to impose tariffs just because they have a pathological fixation on them, believe they are a cure all for everything, and are pissed at leaders who failed to kiss his ring.  The SCOTUS majority included the usual three liberal judges plus Chief Justice John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, and Neil Gorsuch.  The naysayers included Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh. Roberts wrote the majority opinion but it was Gorsuch who put it best in his concurring opinion by saying that the decision to impose taxes and tariffs are to be made through the legislative process and while that process can be “hard” and “time consuming,” the “deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design.”  Though the make-up of the majority was a bit unexpected, the decision wasn’t, though Justice Kavanaugh’s dissent was.  Not only did he disagree with the majority opinion, but his opinion was more or less a cribbed regurgitation of Trump’s lawyers’ argument, a key feature of which was that because it would be difficult to refund the tariff payments, illegal or not, they shouldn’t be revoked.  Kavanaugh also provided Trump with a list of other laws he could use to act out his tariff fantasy. 

Ketchup on the Wall:  Given the state of the economy, for a brief nanosecond some economic and business pundits and a few wishful, swing state Republican politicians thought that Trump would use SCOTUS’s rebuke of his tariffs to his advantage by giving up on his tariff fantasy and letting the economy soar.  Of course, given Trump’s tariff obsession, that was delusional. Barely missing a beat, the irate orange one reacted to the decision by taking to his podium to issue a nasty screed that included a full-on trashing of SCOTUS as well as a threat to the Coney Barrett and Gorsuch’s families.  He also said that he is allowed to destroy the country because he’s allowed to do anything he wants.  He then said that he would reimpose tariffs under one of the other laws that Kavanaugh had dutifully pointed out allow presidents to impose temporary ones.  He started by imposing a 10% tariff and then upping it to 15% over the weekend leaving the tariff situation a bit murky.  A number of corporations and states, including Illinois, have already started suing to get their tariff payments refunded and several foreign entities, including the EU, have started freezing the trade deals they agreed to under duress. It’s not clear what will happen to the rest of us who on average have already paid more than $1000 for Trump’s tariffs as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pretty much said yesterday that we should just suck it up. It’s also not clear whether Justices Roberts, Coney Barret and maybe even Gorsuch are starting to realize that ruling that Trump is a king with almost total immunity was not such a good idea.

Weirder💩:  Trump who had a large banner of his face added Kim Jung un style to the outside of the Department of Justice last week, retracted his endorsement of Colorado Republican Jeff Hurd who has a primary opponent.  Hurd’s unimaginable crime, voting with Democrats to pass a resolution repealing Trump's tariffs on Canada. Trump is sending a message to other Republicans that they cross him at their own risk, a strategy that will lose its potency once primary season ends. In a truly weird move even for Trump, he took to Truth Social to announce that he’s sending two US hospital ships to Greenland.  It’s thought that his announcement was motivated by reports that Denmark quite graciously airlifted a sick American off of a US submarine that had been submerged in the neighboring seas.  Putting aside that a normal leader would have thanked Denmark for helping out, the citizens of Greenland, like all the citizens of Denmark enjoy universal health care coverage so they do not need our ships.  Moreover, our two hospital ships are currently in dry dock undergoing work and as such are not available to sail anywhere right now.  Saying “no thanks” Denmark’s Prime Minister turned down the ship offer and probably said a few other unreportable things.  Anyone know how to say FU in Danish?

MAHA Not:  Unlike Denmark, we do not have universal health care coverage and as a result of the Big Ugly Bill, $1 billion is being sucked away from our health care system which makes the Washinton Post’s report that officials are struggling to figure out how to increase military spending by $500 billion that much more outrageous. As to our health care guru, Rolling Stone reports that the CDC funded study that was designed to deprive some African babies in Guinea Bissau from receiving Hepatitis B vaccine shots at birth was rushed through the CDC approval process despite its Tuskegee syphilis study like unethical violations because RFK wanted to cite the study to justify the decision he had already made to eliminate Hep B vaccines for infants in the US.  RFK is now also claiming that his trembling voice, which is caused by spasmodic dysphonia, in his case due to a genetic condition that also affects a few other members of his family, is really the result of all the flu shots he got in his youth. Perhaps that’s just another reason that he tried to put the kibosh on Moderna’s mRNA flu shot.  The damage he’s doing by standing in the way of new vaccines and spreading further doubt about existing life-saving ones is immeasurable. Lastly, it turns out promoting cancer causing chemical glyphosate isn’t the only non-MAHA thing that Trump did last week.  Under his direction, the FDA is retreating from its plans to ban artificial food dyes.  The MAHA moms who thought that RFK was their savior but should have known better are not happy with the way things are going. Makes you wonder what they think about snorting coke off toilet seats.

Fog:  There are ominous signs, as in loud war drums, on the Iran front. Parts of Mexico are up in flames, a response by the drug cartels to the assassination of a leading drug lord by Mexican forces with some help from Washington. More keeps coming out of the Epstein files, all of it awful.  The State of the Union address takes place on Tuesday night.  It will likely be off the charts nuts because the guy delivering it is.

Congrats to all the Men and Women US hockey players!