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    ‘This isn’t just about Trump’: the Rev William Barber arrested after prayer-protest against Republican-led budget

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    A police officer’s sense of timing seemed to illuminate the Rev William Barber’s moral mission with startling clarity.During a prayer vigil on Monday in the Capitol Rotunda, close to the very heart of US democracy, Barber was lamenting that Congress starts each day with its own prayers to the Almighty even while preying on the poor. A Capitol police captain, John Hersch, serendipitously choose that very moment to intervene.“Your activity right now is taking the form of a demonstration,” Hersch told Barber and an accompanying gathering of clergy. “It is unlawful to demonstrate in the Capitol Rotunda. If you do not cease your demonstration at this time, there is a possibility you will be placed under arrest.”Moments later, after two further warnings, Barber and seven accomplices – standing in front of the portrait of three 19th-century women’s suffrage campaigners – were arrested as police sealed off the Rotunda.The arrests marked the climax of the latest Moral Monday protest organised by Repairers of the Breach, a group founded by Barber that’s trying to derail Donald Trump’s planned tax and spending bill on the grounds that it will slash vital health and social services to lower-income Americans.It was the third Moral Monday Barber had led at the Capitol since April – and the third time he and his cohorts had been arrested.Barber, a social activist and founding director of Yale Divinity School’s centre for public theology, had earlier led a rally outside the US supreme court attended by an estimated 2,000 protesters.As a band belted out gospel songs, demonstrators held signs with slogans such as “Slashing the safety net is moral murder” and “Don’t cut Snap for 40 million poor people.”Wearing a white robe emblazoned with the words “Jesus was a poor man,” Barber – the son of civil rights workers who campaigned for racial desegregation – enjoined demonstrators to crusade against legislation that the US president has termed his “big, beautiful bill” and deemed essential to extending his 2017 tax cuts, which are due to expire this year.The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed the bill last month by a single vote, 215 to 214. It now goes forward to the Senate against a chorus of criticism over its potential impact on the most vulnerable.Passage would result in 13.7 million people losing access to Medicaid and health insurance, Barber said.“This bill represents the worst kind of evil, which is the love of money … the root of all evil,” he said “This isn’t just about Trump. Two hundred and fifteen Republicans in the House voted for this bill – and now every senator is going to decide whether they’re going to vote for the ‘we’re all going to just die’ approach to politics.”Barber was referring to remarks by Joni Ernst, a Republican senator for Iowa, who faced criticism for telling a town hall last week that “we’re all going to die” after a constituent warned that health cuts could result in some people dying.Ernst doubled down by issuing a mock “apology” filmed in a cemetery, saying: “For those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my lord and saviour, Jesus Christ.”Barber compared Ernst’s rhetoric with justifications used by slaveowners.“That’s the same language that slave masters used to tell slaves,” he said in an interview. “They would say: ‘Don’t fight for freedom, but believe in Jesus so that in the eternal life …’“It’s so cynical. What she said was one of the most contradictory misinterpretations of faith I’ve ever heard. It’s theological malpractice.“As Dr [Martin Luther] King once said, we’re not talking about over yonder. We’re talking about over here and people need healthcare over here. People need food over here. For her to bring up religion and bring up Jesus – if Jesus did anything, he provided everybody he met free healthcare. He never charged a leper, or a sick person, or a blind person, for their healing.”The Moral Monday protests have been adapted from similar demonstrations Barber started in North Carolina in 2013, following the election of rightwing Republican Pat McCrory as governor. The protests lasted two years, recalled Barber, resulting in thousands of arrests for civil disobedience but also spurring thousands more to register to vote.As protests against Trump ramp up, Barber is vowing to make Moral Mondays a regular feature of the landscape of dissent.“Moral Monday is not a one-time event,” he said. “If this budget passes the way it is, it will have a negative impact on this country for 10 years. It could possibly not be fully reversed for up to 50 to 60 years. This is serious business.”The protests are likely to expand to encompass a broader pro-democracy agenda. “Our role is not just the budget passing or not passing, but mobilizing poor and low-wage folk. We stand against any attacks on voting rights, on public education, [or] on healthcare,” said Barber.“Poor and low-wage people now represent 30% of the electorate in this country, and in battleground states, over 40%,” he said, making them the largest potential expansion for voting power in the country.In an acknowledgment of Moral Monday’s growing significance, this week’s rally was addressed by Ezra Levin, co-executive director of the progressive Indivisible movement, which spearheaded nationwide Hands Off protests in April that drew millions of participants.Levin praised protesters for having the courage to overcome fear.“People see us organized, and they say, wow, you are fearless,” he said. “Oh no. If you are fearless in this moment, you’re not paying attention. The authoritarians over there, they’re taking over our democracy.”But congressional Republicans, too, felt fear, he said. “They are projecting strength right now. They’re acting as if this is inevitable. They’re acting as if they have the power, you know, passing a bill through the House in the middle of night. [But] that’s not strength, pushing it through before the public can comment on it“The truth is, they’re terrified. They are terrified their voters are going to see what they’re doing. They’re terrified they’re going to lose their majority. And you know what? They should be terrified.” More

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      Elon Musk calls Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ tax bill a ‘disgusting abomination’

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      Elon Musk, the billionaire tech entrepreneur, has opened a new rift with Donald Trump by denouncing the US president’s tax and spending bill as a “disgusting abomination”.Musk’s online outburst could embolden fiscally conservative Republican senators – some of whom have already spoken out – to defy Trump as they continue crucial negotiations on Capitol Hill over the so-called “one big, beautiful bill”.“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk wrote on his X social media platform on Tuesday. “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”Musk, who had previously voiced criticism of the proposed legislation, quipping that it could be big or beautiful but not both, added on X: “It will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!) and burden America citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt.”He continued: “Congress is making America bankrupt.”A top donor to Trump during last year’s election campaign, Musk departed the White House last week after steering its so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) with the stated mission of slashing fraud and abuse within federal departments. He has argued that the Republican bill will undermine Doge’s work and drive the US further into debt.On Tuesday, Musk drew immediate support from Thomas Massie, one of only two Republicans who last month voted against the bill in the House of Representatives. “He’s right,” Massie responded on X.But there was a rebuke from Mike Johnson, the House speaker, who said he had spoken with Musk by phone on Monday for more than 20 minutes, making the case that the bill achieved campaign promises while making permanent massive tax and spending cuts.Johnson told reporters: “With all due respect, my friend Elon is terribly wrong about the One Big Beautiful bill. It’s a very important first start. Elon is missing it … I just deeply regret he’s made this mistake.”John Thune, the Republican majority leader in the Senate, was more diplomatic, saying: “So we have a difference of opinion. He’s entitled to that opinion. We’re going to proceed full speed ahead.”Having narrowly passed the House, the bill is now under consideration in the Senate, which is aiming to pass a revised version by 4 July. Some Republican fiscal conservatives, such as senators Ron Johnson and Rand Paul, share Musk’s concerns about the need for significant spending cuts.Johnson told CNN: “We have enough [holdouts] to stop the process until the president gets serious about spending reduction and reducing the deficit.”Trump has previously dismissed Republican dissenters as “grandstanders” and urged them to get onboard. His influence proved decisive in quelling a potential rebellion in the House. On Monday he wrote on his Truth Social platform: “So many false statements are being made about ‘THE ONE, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL’.”The White House acknowledged Musk’s stance but said it has not changed its position on the bill. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters: “Look, the president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill. It doesn’t change the president’s opinion: this is one big, beautiful bill and he is sticking to it.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe bill extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and includes new spending for border security and the military. Republicans aimed to offset these costs with cuts to programmmes such as Medicaid, food stamps and green-energy tax credits.Projections from the Congressional Budget Office and independent analysts indicate that the bill would add between $2.3tn and $5tn to the deficit over the next 10 years. White House officials contend that the economic growth generated by tax cuts will offset the increased spending.Russ Vought, director of the office of management and budget, told CNN: “This bill doesn’t increase the deficit or hurt the debt. In fact, it lowers it by $1.4tn.”But Democrats have warned that the budget would raise the cost of healthcare for millions of people, and cause millions to lose coverage, in order to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. A new analysis by Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania found that it could lead to more than 51,000 preventable deaths.Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, said in a floor speech on Tuesday: “Donald Trump and his so-called ‘big, beautiful bill’ is ugly to its very core. Behind the smoke and mirrors lies a cruel and draconian truth: tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy paid for by gutting healthcare for millions of Americans.”Later, responding to Musk’s intervention, Schumer commented on X: “I didn’t think it was imaginable but … I AGREE WITH ELON MUSK.”Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, added in a post: “Musk is right: this bill IS a ‘disgusting abomination’. We shouldn’t give $664 billion in tax breaks to the 1%. We shouldn’t throw 13.7 million people off of Medicaid. We shouldn’t cut $290 billion from programs to feed the hungry. Let’s defeat this disgusting abomination.” More

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene criticized for not reading Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ bill

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      Republican firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene has drawn widespread criticism from Democratic colleagues for admitting that not only did she not read Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill before voting for it, but she would have voted against it had she read thoroughly.Greene revealed she was unaware of a provision in Trump’s “one big beautiful bill” (OBBB) that would prevent states from regulating artificial intelligence systems for a decade. The Georgia representative said she would have voted against the entire bill if she had known about the AI language buried on pages 278-279.“Full transparency, I did not know about this section on pages 278-279 of the OBBB that strips states of the right to make laws or regulate AI for 10 years,” Greene wrote on X. “I am adamantly OPPOSED to this and it is a violation of state rights and I would have voted NO if I had known this was in there.”Democratic lawmakers, who all voted against the bill, responded with incredulity of Greene’s admission.“You have one job. To. Read. The. Fucking. Bill,” Representative Eric Swalwell wrote in response.Representative Ted Lieu said he had read the AI provision beforehand and “that’s one reason I voted no on the GOP’s big, ugly bill”, he posted on X. “PRO TIP: It’s helpful to read stuff before voting on it.”Representative Mark Pocan was more forward: “Read the f**king bill instead of clapping for it like a performing monkey. You should have done your job while it was written. You didn’t. You own that vote.”The AI provision was added just two nights before the bill’s markup. It would prohibit state and local governments from pursuing “any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems” for 10 years, unless the purpose is to facilitate deployment of such systems.The language applies broadly to facial recognition systems, generative AI and automated decision-making tools used in hiring, housing and public benefits. Several states have already passed laws creating safeguards around such systems, which could become unenforceable if the bill passes the Senate.It also raises questions about the curious case of Republicans not reading sprawling legislation about provisions in the bill.Representative Mike Flood of Nebraska was booed by voters at a heated town hall last week when he admitted that a provision restricting federal judges’ ability to enforce contempt orders was “unknown” to him when he voted for the same bill. “I am not going to hide the truth: This provision was unknown to me when I voted for that bill,” Flood told the audience, prompting shouts from constituents who responded: “You voted for all of it.”But Greene and Flood aren’t the only unexpected sources to now disapprove of aspects of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill”: the world’s richest man and Trump ally Elon Musk called the legislation a “disgusting abomination” on X Tuesday afternoon.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” Musk wrote, adding that it would “massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion”.Democrats have highlighted that the bill includes significant cuts to healthcare and social programs, with reductions to Medicaid affecting millions of Americans and cuts to food assistance programs.In response to Greene’s admission, representative Yvette Clarke wrote: “Reading is fundamental! Maybe if your colleagues weren’t so hellbent on jamming a bill down our throats in the dead of night, and bending the knee to Trump, you would’ve caught this, Sis!”Representative Delia Ramirez noted that Greene appeared to have missed other provisions affecting her constituents: “Oh, Marjorie! If you had read the bill, you would’ve also seen that 149,705 of your constituents could lose their Medicaid.”The House energy and commerce committee advanced the reconciliation package last Wednesday. Greene has called for the AI provision to be removed in the Senate, warning that “we have no idea what AI will be capable of in the next 10 years”. More

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      Philadelphia paper warns Fetterman to take Senate job seriously – ‘or step away’

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      The Philadelphia Inquirer’s editorial board has issued a sharp rebuke of Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman in a new opinion piece, urging him to take his job “seriously” and writing that “it’s time for Fetterman to serve Pennsylvanians, or step away.”In a strongly worded piece published on Sunday, the editorial board of the Philadelphia Inquirer, which endorsed Fetterman during his 2022 Senate campaign, said the first-term Democrat “has missed more votes than nearly every other senator in the past two years” and “regularly skips committee hearings, cancels meetings, avoids the daily caucus lunches with colleagues, and rarely goes on the Senate floor”.The editorial board also wrote that six former Fetterman staffers told an Inquirer reporter that Fetterman was frequently absent or spent hours alone in his office, avoiding colleagues and meetings.“Being an elected official comes with public scrutiny,” the board wrote. “If Fetterman can’t handle the attention or perform his job, then in the best interest of the country and the nearly 13 million residents of Pennsylvania he represents, he should step aside.”“Being an elected representative is a privilege, not an entitlement,” it added. “Being a US senator is a serious job that requires full-time engagement.”Fetterman responded to the piece and allegations on Monday during a Fox News debate with Republican senator David McCormick.“For me, it’s very clear, it’s just part of like this weird – this weird smear,” Fetterman said. “The more kinds of, left kind of media continues to have these kinds of an attack, and it’s just part of a smear and that’s just not … it’s just not accurate.”He continued: “I’ve always been there, and for me, if I miss some of those votes, I’ve made 90% of them, and we all know those votes that I’ve missed were on Monday. Those are travel days and I have three young kids and … those are throwaway procedural votes that … they were never determined if they were important. That’s a choice that I made.”Fetterman also reportedly claimed senators Bernie Sanders and Patty Murray had missed more votes than he has.“Why aren’t the left media yelling and demanding them and claiming they’re not doing their job?” Fetterman said.In response, a spokesperson for Murray told Politico that most of her missed votes occurred during a vote-a-rama when her husband was hospitalized.A spokesperson for Sanders did not immediately respond to request for comment from Politico, but the outlet pointed out that according to data from GovTrack.us, a government transparency site, Sanders has missed 836 of 6,226 rollcall votes since 1991, or about 13.4%. Murray has missed 290 of 11,106 rollcall votes since 1993, or roughly 2.6%.By comparison, Politico reported that Fetterman has missed 174 of 961 rollcall votes, approximately 18.1%, in his first term, according to GovTrack.us.The editorial on Sunday comes as last month, New York magazine published an article on Fetterman which quoted several former and current Fetterman staffers who expressed concerns about the Senator’s mental and physical health, and his behavior.In response, Fetterman dismissed the piece, calling it “a one-source story, with a couple anonymous sources” and labeling it a “hit piece from a very left publication”. More

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      Trump’s tax bill helps the rich, hurts the poor and adds trillions to the deficit | Katrina vanden Heuvel

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      The blush is off the rose, or, rather, the orange. The erstwhile “First Buddy” and born-again fiscal hawk Elon Musk recently said he was “disappointed” by Donald Trump’s spendthrift budget currently under debate in the US Senate. Squeaking through the House of Representatives thanks to the capitulation of several Republican deficit hardliners, this “big, beautiful bill” certainly increases the federal debt bigly – by nearly $4tn over the next decade.Equally disappointed are those who have been busy burnishing Trump’s populist veneer. Steve Bannon had repeatedly promised higher taxes for millionaires, but he has confessed he’s “very upset”. That’s because the bill would cut taxes by over $600bn for the top 1% of wage-earners, also known as millionaires. It amounts to the largest upward transfer of wealth in American history.Yet this double betrayal will do nothing to impede the sundry Maga apparatchiks’ breathless support for their dear leader. Musk has already tweeted his gratitude to the president for the opportunity to lead Doge (that is, slash funding for cancer research). So this bill has once again proven Republicans’ willingness to relinquish their convictions as long as they can keep their grasp on power. And for Trump, it has reaffirmed that his pledged golden age is really just a windfall for the uber-wealthy like him. Now there can be no mistaking that Republicans’ governing philosophy is neither conservatism nor populism but unabashed hypocrisy.Expecting the self-proclaimed King of Debt to balance the budget – or hoping workers would be protected by the billionaire whose personal motto is “You’re fired” – was always imaginative thinking at best. In his first term, Trump added $8tn to the national deficit. Even excluding Covid relief spending, that’s twice as much debt as Joe Biden racked up during his four years in the White House. Almost $2tn of that tab came from Trump’s vaunted tax cut, which delivered three times more wealth to the top 5% of wage earners than it did to the bottom 60%. Nor did its benefits trickle down, with incomes remaining flat for workers who earn less than $114,000.Trump’s disingenuousness on the deficit continues a hallowed Republican tradition. All four Republican presidents since 1980 have increased the federal debt. By combining reckless militarism with rampant corporatism, George W Bush managed to balloon it by 1,204%. When Bush’s treasury secretary Paul O’Neill expressed concern about that spending, Dick Cheney, the then-vice president, reportedly retorted: “Deficits don’t matter.”Except, of course, when a Democrat occupies the Oval Office. During his campaign for the US Senate in 2022, JD Vance derided Biden’s signature $1tn infrastructure package as a “huge mistake” that would waste money on “really crazy stuff”. Like improving almost 200,000 miles of roads and repairing over 11,000 bridges across the country.Apparently less crazy, but certainly more callous, are the vertiginous cuts to the social safety net proposed in Trump’s current budget bill. Its $1tn evisceration of Medicaid and Snap would leave 8 million Americans uninsured and potentially end food assistance for 11 million people, including 4 million children. When the Democratic Representative Ro Khanna introduced an amendment to maintain coverage for the 38 million kids who receive their healthcare through Medicaid, Republicans blocked it from even receiving a vote.But for all the budget’s austerity, it also provides $20bn in tax credits to establish a national school voucher program. And equally outrageous are its provisions that have nothing to do with the pecuniary, from easing regulations on gun silencers to hamstringing the power of courts to enforce injunctions.Perhaps most breathtaking of all, though, is how shamelessly the bill enriches the already mega-rich. In its first year, its tax breaks will grace Americans in the top 0.1% of the income bracket with an additional $400,000, while decreasing the earnings of people in the bottom 25% by $1,000. In other words, those who can least afford it are financing relief for those who least need it.When the 50% of working class Americans who broke for Trump in last year’s election realize they voted for a pay cut, they might begin to feel a bit disillusioned with the crypto trader-in-chief. They might even feel pulled to the authentically populist vision outlined by the progressives Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on their nationwide Fighting Oligarchy Tour.In the meantime, it is almost an inevitability that Republican senators will wring their hands before pressing the green button to vote “yea.” Josh Hawley has called the budget bill “morally wrong and politically suicidal”, criticism which Trump has previously mocked as “grandstanding”. The insult contains a typically Trumpian flash of psychological insight, because Hawley and his colleagues will no doubt do exactly what their counterparts in the House have already done – cave.Once Trump has scribbled his oversized signature onto the bill, his vision for the US will have become unmistakable. Try as they might, not even the spinmeisters at Fox News will be able to deny that he runs this country the way he ran his Atlantic City casinos, leading working Americans to financial ruin while he emerges all the richer for it.

      Katrina vanden Heuvel is editorial director and publisher of the Nation, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a contributor to the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times More

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      Vought says Trump may not need Congress’s approval to cut federal workforce

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      Russell Vought, the director of the office of management and budget (OMB), on Sunday cast doubt on the constitutional obligation of the White House to ask Congress to sign off on Donald Trump’s massive cuts to the federal workforce spearheaded by Elon Musk.Vought indicated the White House preferred to rely on “executive tools” for all but a “necessary” fraction of the cuts instead of submitting the whole package of jobs and agency slashing that took place via the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), to the congressional branch for its official approval.The White House budget director, in an interview with CNN on Sunday, also defended the widespread future cost-cutting proposed by the US president’s One Big Beautiful Bill act that was passed by the House last week, which covers budget proposals for the next fiscal year starting in October.But, as Dana Bash, CNN’s State of the Union host, pointed out, Doge cut “funding and programs that Congress already passed”. And while those cuts, cited by the departing Musk as being worth $175bn, are tiny compared with the trillion or more he forecast, Vought said OMB was only going to submit about $9.4bn to Congress this week for sign-off. That amount is understood to mostly cover the crushing of the USAID agency and cuts to public broadcasting, which have prompted outrage and lawsuits.Leaders of Congress from both parties have pressed for the Trump administration to send details of all the cuts for its approval. “Will you?” Bash asked Vought.“We might,” Vought said, adding that the rest of the Doge cuts may not need official congressional approval.As one of the architects of Project 2025, the rightwing initiative created to guide the second Trump administration, Vought is on a quest to dismantle the federal workforce and consolidate power for the US president, and to continue the Doge cuts.Vought said that one of the executive tools the administration has is the use of “impoundment”, which involves the White House withholding specific funds allocated by Congress. Since the 1970s, a law has limited the presidency from engaging in impoundment – typically requiring the executive branch to implement what Congress signed into law.Bash said: “I know you don’t believe that that is constitutional, so are you just doing this in order to get the supreme court to rule that unconstitutional?”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionVought said: “We are not in love with the law.” But he also said, in response to criticism from some on Capitol Hill: “We’re not breaking the law.”Meanwhile, on the Big Beautiful bill, the Congressional budget office (CBO) and many experts say it could swell the US deficit by $3.8tn, and business tycoon Musk said it “undermines the work the Doge team is doing”.Vought disagreed. “I love Elon, [but] this bill doesn’t increase the deficit or hurt the debt,” he said.Vought – and later on Sunday, the House speaker Mike Johnson on NBC – argued that critics’ calculations don’t fully account for extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts and slashing regulation.Vought also chipped in that Trump is “the architect, the visionary, the originator of his own agenda”, rather than the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the administration, Project 2025, although he did not deny that the two have dovetailed. More

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      Why Trump does not suffer Congress when it comes to his prized tariffs

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      When it comes to cutting taxes or paying for mass deportations, Donald Trump is happy to work with Congress. But if the issue is his prized and disruptive tariff policy, the president has made clear that he has no time for their legislative wrangling.Trump underscored his sentiment towards Congress after a US trade court this week briefly put a stop to his controversial policy of placing levies on a wide range of countries, before a different court reversed that decision while legal proceedings continue.“The horrific decision stated that I would have to get the approval of Congress for these tariffs. In other words, hundreds of politicians would sit around DC for weeks, and even months, trying to come to a conclusion as to what to charge other Countries that are treating us unfairly. If allowed to stand, this would completely destroy Presidential Power – the Presidency would never be the same!” the president wrote on Truth Social.The statement served to put Congress in its place, even though its Republican leaders have shown Trump great deference since taking office. The Senate has approved just about every official he has nominated, no matter how controversial, while the House of Representatives last week overcame substantial differences among the GOP conference to pass the One Big Beautiful bill containing Trump’s tax and spending priorities.If there’s one place where there is daylight to be found between Trump and his Republican allies, it’s his tariff polices. Even avowed supporters of the president have raised their eyebrows at his on-again, off-again imposition of levies on the countries from which US consumers buy their goods and factories source their inputs, and Republican leaders have gone to great lengths to thwart their attempts to do something about them.Which might be why Trump struck out on his own, and hoped the courts would back him up. So far they have not. The US court of international trade, which ruled to block Trump’s tariffs on Wednesday, was very clear it believed his policies “exceed any authority granted to the president”.The matter may ultimately come down to the views of the supreme court, where Trump appointed half of the six-justice conservative supermajority during his first term. Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor, said the case is likely to present a test of how the supreme court views the “major questions doctrine” (MQD), which argues clear congressional authority is needed for agencies to carry out any regulations of national importance, in light of Trump’s tariffs moves.The doctrine was used to defang regulators last year when the court overturned the Chevron decision, limiting regulators’ powers and arguing they had overstepped their authority.The supreme court may not be minded to accept the major questions doctrine when it comes to the commander in chief, wrote Goldsmith in his newsletter, Executive Function. “It is an open question whether the MQD applies to congressional authorizations to the president. Every Supreme Court decision involving the MQD has involved agency action, and lower courts are split on whether the MQD applies to presidential authorizations,” he said.For Congress’s beleaguered Democrats, this week’s court intervention, however fleeting, provided grist for the case they’ve been trying to make to voters ever since Trump took office, which is that he is trying to act like the sort of monarch America was founded on rejecting.“This is why the Framers gave Congress constitutional power over trade and tariffs,” said Suzan DelBene, a Washington state House Democrat who has proposed one of many bills to block Trump’s tariffs. “The court spoke decisively in defense of our democracy and against a president attempting to be king.” More

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      Trump tariffs derailed by law firm that received money from his richest backers

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      Donald Trump’s tariff policy was derailed by a libertarian public interest law firm that has received money from some of his richest backers.The Liberty Justice Center filed a lawsuit against the US president’s “reciprocal” tariffs on behalf of five small businesses, which it said were harmed by the policy.The center, based in Austin, Texas, describes itself as a libertarian non-profit litigation firm “that seeks to protect economic liberty, private property rights, free speech, and other fundamental rights”.Previous backers of the firm include billionaires Robert Mercer and Richard Uihlein, who were also financial backers of Trump’s presidential campaigns.Mercer, a hedge fund manager, was a key backer of Breitbart News and Cambridge Analytica, pouring millions into both companies. He personally directed Cambridge Analytica to focus on the Leave campaign during the UK’s Brexit referendum in 2016 that led to the UK leaving the European Union.For its lawsuit against Trump’s tariffs, the Liberty Justice Center gathered five small businesses, including a wine company and a fish gear and apparel retailer, and argued that Trump overreached his executive authority and needed Congress’s approval to pass such broad tariffs.The other group who sued the Trump administration over its tariffs was a coalition of 12 Democratic state attorney generals who argued that Trump improperly used a trade law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), when enacting his tariffs.In such a polarized time in US history, it may feel odd to see a decision celebrated by liberal and conservatives. But Trump’s tariffs have proven controversial to members of both parties, particularly after Wall Street seemed to be put on edge by the president’s trade war.The US stock market dipped down at least 5% after Trump announced the harshest of his tariff policies. Recovery was quick after Trump paused many of his harshest tariffs until the end of the summer.Stocks started to rally on Thursday morning after the panel’s ruling. The judges said that the law Trump cited when enacting his tariffs, the IEEPA does not “delegate an unbounded tariff authority onto the president”. The decision is on a temporary hold after the Trump administration appealed.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile the ruling does not impact specific tariffs on industries such as aluminum and steel, it prevents the White House from carrying out broad retaliatory tariffs and its 10% baseline “reciprocal” tariff. The White House is appealing the ruling, which means the case could go up to the US supreme court, should the high court decide to take on the case.Members of both groups who sued the Trump administration celebrated the ruling. Jeffrey Schwab, senior counsel for the Liberty Justice Center, said in a statement that it “affirms that the president must act within the bounds of the law, and it protects American businesses and consumers from the destabilizing effects of volatile, unilaterally imposed tariffs”. Oregon’s Democratic attorney general, Dan Rayfield, who helped the states’ lawsuit, said that it “reaffirms that our laws matter”.In a statement, Victor Schwartz, the founder of VOS Selections, a wine company that was represented by the Liberty Justice Center in the suit, said that the ruling is a “win” for his business.“This is a win for my small business along with small businesses across America – and the world for that matter,” he said. “We are aware of the appeal already filed and we firmly believe in our lawsuit and will see it all the way through the United States Supreme Court.” More

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      A hidden measure in the Republican budget bill would crown Trump king | Robert Reich

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      If enacted, Donald Trump’s Big Ugly Bill as it emerged on Thursday from the House of Representatives would result in the largest redistribution of income and wealth in American history – from the poor and working class to the rich.Hidden within the bill is also a provision that would allow Trump to crown himself king.For months now, Trump has been trying to act like a king by ignoring court rulings against him.The supreme court has told Trump to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Ábrego García, a legal resident of the United States who even the Trump regime admits was erroneously sent to a brutal prison in El Salvador.Trump has done nothing.Lower federal courts have ordered him to stop deporting migrants without giving them a chance to know the charges against them and have the charges and evidence reviewed by a neutral judge or magistrate – the minimum of due process.Again, nothing.Judge James Boasberg, chief judge of the federal district court for the District of Columbia, issued a temporary restraining order preventing the Trump regime from flying individuals to the prison in El Salvador without due process.Judge Boasberg has found that the Trump regime has willfully disregarded his order.Is there anything that the courts can do in response to Trump’s open defiance of judges and justices?They have only one power to make their orders stick. They can hold federal officials in contempt, and enforce such contempt citations by fining or jailing them.It’s a radical remedy, rarely used. But several federal judges are at their wits’ end.Boasberg said that if Trump’s legal team does not give the dozens of Venezuelan men sent to the Sallvadorian prison a chance to legally challenge their removal, he’ll begin contempt proceedings against the administration.In a separate case, the US district court judge Paula Xinis has demanded that the Trump administration explain why it is not complying with the supreme court order to “facilitate” the release of Ábrego García.Xinis has even questioned whether the administration intends to comply with the order at all, citing a statement from the. homeland security chief, Kristi Noem, that Ábrego García “will never be allowed to return to the United States”.According to Xinis, “That sounds to me like an admission. That’s about as clear as it can get.”So what’s the next step? Will the supreme court and lower courts hold the administration in contempt and enforce the contempt citations?Trump and his Republican stooges in Congress apparently anticipated this. Hidden inside their Big Ugly Bill is a provision intended to block the courts from using contempt to enforce its orders. It reads:skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued …”Translated: no federal court may enforce a contempt citation.The measure would make most existing injunctions – in antitrust cases, police reform cases, school desegregation cases and others – unenforceable.Its only purpose is to weaken the power of the federal courts.As Erwin Chemerinsky, UC Berkeley School of Law dean and distinguished professor of law, notes, this provision would eliminate any restraint on Trump.“Without the contempt power, judicial orders are meaningless and can be ignored. There is no way to understand this except as a way to keep the Trump administration from being restrained when it violates the Constitution or otherwise breaks the law …“This would be a stunning restriction on the power of the federal courts. The Supreme Court has long recognized that the contempt power is integral to the authority of the federal courts. Without the ability to enforce judicial orders, they are rendered mere advisory opinions which parties are free to disregard.”In other words, with this single measure, Trump will have crowned himself king.If it is enacted, no Congress and no court could stop him. Even if a future Congress were to try, it could not do so without the power of the courts to enforce their hearings, investigations, subpoenas and laws.The gross unfairness of Trump’s Big Ugly Bill is bad enough. It would worsen the nation’s already near-record inequalities of income and wealth.But the provision inside the bill that neuters the federal courts is even worse. It would remove the last remaining constraint on Trump, and thereby effectively end American democracy.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More