by
Jabin
Botsford
–
Pool/Getty
Images)
What
a
difference
a
year
makes,
huh?
Almost
exactly
a
year
ago,
President
Donald
Trump
rolled
up
on
Chief
Justice
John
Roberts
after
the
State
of
the
Union
address,
to
effusively
tell
the
jurist,
“Thank
you
again.
Thank
you
again.
Won’t
forget
it,”
heaping
praise
on
the
jurist
for
concocting
an
unprecedented
theory
of
presidential
immunity
that
helped
Trump
evade
trial
on
his
way
back
to
the
White
House.
On
Friday,
Trump
called
Roberts
“a
disgrace
to
our
nation,”
“swayed
by
foreign
interests.”
Now
John
Roberts
—
and
Justices
Barrett
and
Gorsuch,
for
that
matter
—
must
watch
the
presidency
of
their
own
creation
mark
them
by
name
for
public,
ritualistic
humiliation.
The
Supreme
Court struck
down
Trump’s
sweeping
IEEPA
tariffs in
a
6-3
decision
Friday,
with
Roberts
writing
for
a
majority
that
included
Gorsuch
and
Barrett
alongside
the
three
Democratic-appointed
justices.
Within
hours,
the
president
held
a
hastily
assembled
press
conference
to
both
showcase
the
tragedy
of
dementia
and
call
the
majority
justices
“fools
and
lapdogs
for
the
RINOs
and
the
radical
left
Democrats,”
for
reaching
an
opinion
urged
by
such
pinko
communists
as
the
U.S.
Chamber
of
Commerce.
Haphazardly
calling
on
journalists
and
then
—
if
they
began
a
remotely
probing
question
—
instantly
declaring
that
he
meant
to
call
on
someone
else,
Trump
raged
and
rambled
about
the
decision,
noting
that
he
was “absolutely
ashamed” of
the
Republican
justices
in
the
majority.
Of
Gorsuch
and
Barrett,
Trump
added
that
they
were “an
embarrassment
to
their
families.”
Trump
followed
up
by
instantly
imposing
a
new
10
percent
tariff
under
a
different
statute
—
Section
122
of
the
Trade
Act
of
1974
—
which
unlike
the
IEEPA
actually
talks
about
tariffs.
But
Section
122
is
explicitly
limited
to
150
days
unless
extended
by
Congress,
a
tall
order
since
many
Republican
legislators
quietly
(or
not-so-quietly)
object
to
the
tariffs
as
directly
counter
to
conservative
economic
principles.
But
no
one
bothered
to
stop
Trump
when
he
violated
the
TikTok
ban
for
months,
so
maybe
the
committed
textualists
on
the
Court
will
find
a
way
to
read
“150
days”
as
“forever.”
The
Section
122
theory
is
also
hamstrung
by
the
Trump
administration’s
own
galaxy
brained
argument
in
this
case
that
they
needed
IEEPA
tariffs
because
Section
122
tariffs,
they
argued,
would
be
illegal
under
the
circumstances.
In
order
to
head
off
any
claim
that
Trump
acted
without
a
hint
of
capriciousness,
he
raised
these
new
tariffs
to
15
percent
the
next
day.
Like
clockwork,
mainstream
legal
analysts
fell
over
themselves
to
frame
the
tariff
decision
as
“The
Supreme
Court’s
Declaration
of
Independence”
or
a
“Turning
Point,”
a
triumph
of
institutional
integrity
shepherded
by
the
Court’s
moderate
voices.
Jonathan
Turley,
who
has
never
met
a
conservative
judicial
overreach
he
couldn’t
launder
into
respectability, crowed that
the
tariff
decision
proves
the
Court
“continues
to
exercise
independent
judgment.”
Anyone
hoping
to
bolt
a
fairy
tale
narrative
onto
the
Supreme
Court
is
fooling
themselves.
Or
at
least
trying
to
fool
you.
Nothing
about
Friday’s
opinion
signals
a
Court
finding
its
backbone.
Real,
dyed-in-the-wool,
Reaganaut
conservatives
hate
tariffs
and
three
of
the
Supreme
Court’s
six
conservatives
chose
the
conservative
movement
over
the
prattling
of
a
president
who
brags
about
being
able
to
identify
a
giraffe
in
a
test
designed
to
track
cognitive
decline.
The
Federalist
Society
didn’t
spend
decades
building
this
Court
so
a
president
could
impose
a
massive
tax
hike
on
imports.
They
weren’t
so
much
rejecting
a
naked
Republican
policy
interest,
as
defending
an
older
one.
We’re
not
sitting
here
watching
the
president
of
the
United
States
have
an
unhinged
meltdown
over
the
Supreme
Court
because
it’s
suddenly
a
nonpartisan
institution.
Trump’s
fury
is
so
pronounced
because
the
Supreme
Court’s
conservatives
are
brazenly
partisan
and
Trump
ran
face
first
into
one
of
the
few
internecine
conflicts
within
the
Republican
Party.
He’s
angry
because
the
Supreme
Court
told
him
they
would
rubberstamp
his
every
desire
—
up
to
and
including
stealing
classified
documents
and
conspiring
to
commit
election
fraud
—
and
he
discovered
right-wing
business
interests
still
outrank
him
in
some
conservative
hearts.
The
Chief
Justice
sold
out
the
institutional
legitimacy
of
the
Supreme
Court
to
help
Donald
Trump
return
to
office
because
the
people
who
guide
his
judgment
wanted
more
tax
cuts
and
fewer
protections
for
marginalized
people.
In
return,
he
gets
publicly
berated
on
national
television.
Maybe
this
is
some
sort
of
“turning
point,”
but
based
on
the
record
as
it
exists
right
now,
this
isn’t
the
beginning
of
the
“John
Roberts:
Principled
Jurist”
redemption
arc,
this
is
just
a
guy
choking
down
his
karmic
vegetables.
Donald
Trump
didn’t
hide
the
ball
during
his
2024
campaign
—
his
few,
but
significant
breaks
with
conservative
conventional
wisdom
were
front
and
center.
Roberts
understood
that
this
day
would
come,
and
it
would
probably
be
humiliating,
and
that
he’d
still
do
it
anyway
because
he
hates
the
Voting
Rights
Act
more
than
he
loves
self-respect.
And
he’ll
willingly
go
through
all
this
again
after
he
fires
off
four
or
five
more
engraved
invitations
for
unconstitutional
executive
overreach,
but
still
won’t
let
Trump
fire
Federal
Reserve
governors.
There’s
no
amount
of
abuse
he
won’t
take
to
achieve
his
desired
political
outcome.
He’s
sat
around
as
Trump
spent
the
next
year
attacking
lower
court
judges
in
terms
that
generated a
327
percent
increase
in
threats against
the
federal
judiciary.
Federal
judges
sounded
the
alarm that
they
feared
for
their
lives,
telling
NBC
News
that
the
Supreme
Court
“doesn’t
have
our
backs.”
One
judge
said
flatly
that
if
nothing
changed,
“somebody
is
going
to
die.”As
the
leader
of
the
judiciary,
Roberts
responded
by
issuing a
year-end
report
about
how
Thomas
Paine
would
probably
yearn
for
a
return
to
the
monarchy
and
collecting
a
funding
boost
for
Supreme
Court
security.
John
Roberts
left
last
year’s
State
of
the
Union
being
publicly
thanked
by
Trump
like
consigliere
getting
praised
by
a
mob
boss.
Now,
according
to
Trump,
Roberts
is
just
“barely
invited”
to
this
year’s
installment.
Quite
a
year.
Joe
Patrice is
a
senior
editor
at
Above
the
Law
and
co-host
of
Thinking
Like
A
Lawyer.
Feel
free
to email
any
tips,
questions,
or
comments.
Follow
him
on Twitter or
Bluesky
if
you’re
interested
in
law,
politics,
and
a
healthy
dose
of
college
sports
news.
Joe
also
serves
as
a
Managing
Director
at
RPN
Executive
Search.