Featured

Texas megachurch pastor Robert Morris is free after 6 months in an Oklahoma jail for child sex abuse | CNN

Robert Morris’ release after just six months in jail highlights how plea deals and old-case legal limits can produce punishments that feel wildly out of proportion to the underlying abuse.

Mar 31, 2026

Featured

Democrats Say FEMA Official Who Has Claimed to Be Teleported Is ‘Unfit’ for Role

A FEMA disaster-response leader skipped a key shutdown hearing as Democrats highlighted his conspiracy talk and violent rhetoric—raising basic questions about competence and accountability during a strained disaster season.

Mar 25, 2026

Buried.News

The stories buried under the noise

Primary focus

Trump fires Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary

A Cabinet secretary was forced out amid contracting and oversight scrutiny, signaling that executive control—not transparent accountability—can dictate leadership of the agency driving mass detention and deportation.

Mar 5, 2026

Featured

Trump Throws Stephen Miller Under the Bus in Surprise Show of Panic

A report suggests Trump wants to hide the optics of “mass deportations,” but the policy machinery and legal end-runs Stephen Miller champions appear to be moving ahead anyway.

Mar 24, 2026

Featured

Supermicro’s co-founder was just accused of smuggling $2.5 billion in GPUs to China | Fortune

Federal prosecutors say a Supermicro co-founder helped run an elaborate transshipment-and-fake-document scheme to divert U.S.-assembled AI servers into China, highlighting how export controls can fail inside complex supply chains.

Mar 24, 2026

Norms Impact

After Supreme Court Loss, Trump Plans to Impose Global Tariffs Using Different Laws

After losing at the Supreme Court, the president moved to reimpose nationwide import taxes by repurposing seldom-used statutory tools to sidestep a judicial check on executive power.

Executive

Feb 20, 2026

Sources

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/us/politics/trump-tariffs-plans.html

Summary

President Trump ordered a new 10 percent tariff on all imports to take effect Feb. 24 after the Supreme Court struck down his prior emergency duties. The presidency is shifting toward treating rarely used trade statutes as a substitute for judicially invalidated emergency powers. The practical consequence is a rapid reimposition of broad import taxes and a widened pathway for additional tariffs through new trade investigations.

Reality Check

This conduct threatens the separation of powers by signaling that a Supreme Court loss will be met not with compliance, but with a rapid pivot to alternative authorities to achieve the same coercive result. On these facts, it is not clearly criminal; the moves described rely on asserted statutory powers under the Trade Act of 1974 rather than bribery or election-related coercion statutes. The danger is institutional: normalizing “workarounds” after judicial invalidation trains the executive branch to treat court review as a speed bump, weakening our ability as citizens to rely on enforceable limits on presidential power.

Detail

President Trump announced Friday that he would reinstate broad tariffs after the Supreme Court invalidated his previously imposed emergency duties. He ordered a 10 percent tariff on all imports, invoking Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act, with the tariff set to begin on Feb. 24. No prior president had used Section 122.

In addition to the across-the-board tariff, Trump said he would use authorities under Section 301 of the same law to open investigations into other countries’ unfair trade practices, a process that would most likely lead to further tariffs. He did not specify which countries would be targeted, and it was not immediately clear whether the administration had commenced the Section 301 investigations.

Trump presented these actions as a substitute for the invalidated emergency duties that had been rolled out at scale during a trade initiative described as “Liberation Day” last spring.

Norms Impact

U.S. to Impose 10% Global Tariff Under Different Authority, Trump Says

After the Supreme Court struck down his tariff authority, the president moved to reimpose a global levy under a different statute, testing whether court limits can be functionally bypassed.

Executive

Sources

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-us-gdp-report-02-20-26/card/trump-says-he-will-impose-10-global-tariff-under-different-authority-kYLJL2wuVAz9XRa2H65x

Summary

President Trump announced the U.S. will impose a 10% global tariff to replace duties the Supreme Court ruled illegal the same morning. The administration is shifting tariff authority from the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 while initiating Section 301 investigations for longer-term measures. The practical consequence is an immediate, time-limited tariff regime followed by a pipeline aimed at reconstituting broad tariffs through different statutory mechanisms.

Reality Check

Circumventing a Supreme Court ruling by rapidly repackaging the same sweeping tariffs under a new legal hook weakens judicial constraint and makes our economic rights contingent on executive improvisation. On these facts alone, this is not clearly criminal, but it squarely raises rule-of-law and separation-of-powers alarms about using statutory workarounds to preserve a policy the Court has declared unlawful under its prior asserted authority. The durable precedent is that court defeats become temporary setbacks, not binding limits, as the executive searches for alternate delegations to achieve the same end. If Congress and the courts do not enforce meaningful boundaries on the use of Section 122 and Section 301, executive power becomes the default tariff legislature.

Detail

President Trump announced Friday that the United States will impose a 10% global tariff to replace many duties the Supreme Court ruled illegal earlier that morning. He said the new tariffs will be imposed under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows the president to impose tariffs for up to 150 days.

Trump also said that during the 150-day period the administration will begin new tariff investigations under Section 301 of the Trade Act, a process that can lead to more permanent tariffs.

The announcement followed a Supreme Court decision issued Friday morning in a 6-3 vote holding that Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose global tariffs was illegal. The move reflects a contingency plan the administration developed in anticipation of the Court’s ruling.