Trump rages against tariff decision, says he has “a backup plan”
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President Donald Trump called a Supreme Court ruling that struck down his tariffs “a disgrace” while hosting the White House breakfast with governors this morning, according to two people familiar with his remarks.
He told those gathered that he has a backup plan in mind, according to one of those people. Another person familiar with his remarks said Trump became enraged at the breakfast and started attacking the court — at one point saying “these f***ing courts.”
Trump ended the governors breakfast earlier than expected after learning of the decision, according to a person familiar with the matter. One of the people familiar said he told governors he was leaving early to make a statement on the ruling.
Officials inside the Trump administration had been bracing for a loss at the Supreme Court, assuring the president that if the court struck down his tariffs there would be other ways to implement them.
The president has angrily complained in private in recent weeks that the Supreme Court was taking too long to make a decision, according to several people familiar with his venting. He’s also gone back and forth on speculating how the court would rule, a source familiar told CNN, saying at one point that he didn’t think the Supreme Court would rule against the tariffs given how much was on the line, referring to the billions of dollars that had already been collected, another source told CNN.
I suspect the backup plan will bear a strong resemblance to Andrew Jackson’s backup plan in Worcester v. Georgia.
The relationship between law and politics — two terms that in this sort of context should pretty much always have scare quotes around them — is always going to be a complex thing in cases in which radically different legal and political ideologies collide. Trump’s ideology is that he’s basically king of the United States, and he and his minions have been busily transforming the Department of Justice to reflect this belief:
When leaders of all 93 US attorneys’ offices met for their weekly video chat last month, the 33-year-old Justice Department aide who presided had a blunt message.
President Donald Trump is their “chief client” and anyone uncomfortable with advancing his administration’s directives must step aside for willing replacements, Aakash Singh warned the US attorneys and their criminal heads, said three people briefed on the meeting.
Participants were taken aback by Singh’s comments, which some interpreted as a clear reference to the Minneapolis prosecutors resigning that week after DOJ’s orders to investigate protesters and state Democrats. Singh had closely coordinated those efforts, said two people with knowledge of his role.
As an associate deputy attorney general, Singh has positioned himself as the Trump Justice Department’s brashest enforcer when it comes to clamping down on US attorneys’ autonomy.
Singh is both in your face and more affable than other Trump appointees, drawing on his time as a gang prosecutor to relate to those in the field and navigate one of the toughest jobs in the building. He’s brought an unprecedented move-fast-and-break-things approach to steering contentious cases that have drawn rebukes from judges and juries and alarmed top prosecutors.
Singh, who served five years as an assistant US attorney, relishes telling chief federal prosecutors to get in line with Trump’s agenda and prosecute top administration targets such as Kilmar Abrego Garcia, James Comey, and Don Lemon.
It’s won him fans in Trump’s orbit, while exasperating those in US attorneys’ offices on the receiving end of his dictates and data requests that have them scrambling late into the night, Bloomberg Law found in interviews with more than two dozen lawyers. Most spoke anonymously out of fear of retaliation or because they’re not authorized to speak with the press.
Another charter member of the Jews, South Asians, and Latinos Who Think They’re Actually White Association.
Meanwhile, the Department of Justice’s new look isn’t going for subtlety:
