Monthly Archives: February 2026

I’ve been seeing headlines on CNN’s website today: Israel and US Strike Iran, Iran Strikes Back, and the latest:

Trump: Iran’s supreme leader killed in strikes

On one side, we have a leader, if we may stretch a point, who ordered a strike for reasons similar to those used to justify the attack on Iraq back in 2003 in that the claims put forth were widely doubted by experts: that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) of the nuclear variety.

And Trump? He, well, made the same claims about the Iranian government days ago; and now he’s acted on them; indeed, he implicitly repudiated earlier claims of having obliterated Iranian nuclear capabilities when American bombers hit Iranian nuclear sites on 5 June 2025. Add this to his fumbling and vindictiveness and avarice, and it’s difficult to see him on the good side. Is this all about distracting from the Epstein Files? I look forward to reporting over the next few days. It’s certainly not unprecedented for leaders to start wars in order to cover up personal shortcomings; but it remains shameful.

On the other side, we have Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, running an Islamic theocracy which, like most theocracies, has tumbled into the corruption and outright terror necessary to maintain a status quo dependent on theology and divine creatures for which there is scant evidence. Khamenei and those who run the current Iranian government also hardly qualify to be on the side of right. Ah, even as I type:

Iran confirms supreme leader killed in strikes

Until Iran confirmed it, I doubted Khamenei was dead because the initial news came from President Trump, aka The Mendacity Machine.

Back on point, this situation hardly lends clarity to the questions of morality. Then there’s the events involving of Israel, Hamas, and Gaza; between the atrocities Hamas has committed repeatedly against both Israelis and Gazans, all while promising to destroy the state of Israel, and the deaths of many innocents at the hands of the Israelis in vengeance for the atrocity of October 7th, 2023. The American right calls the American left antisemitic for their protests of Israeli actions on American academic campuses; the American left cries genocide and accuses the American right of supporting the same.

And I’m left perplexed as to which side is right and which side is wrong. If I were an American Christian, I’d be wondering if Satan is playing on both sides of the tennis net. I wonder how many moral philosophers are trying to figure out what’s wrong with our shared moral system.

No doubt President Trump will be hooting in a victory celebration tomorrow. This raises a question that will bother a few people:

Why don’t we do this all the time?

The answer is simply this: the leaders of other countries take notice of it. We’ve just proven, as if the kidnapping of President Maduro of Venezuela were not enough, that we’ll use force to impose our will on other countries. The fact that it’s Iran, supplier to terrorist groups and suppressor of their own people, is of little account; international norms, which encourage peace and prosperity and freedom, have been violated.

Trump operates on a model of humanity that is faulty. He will assume that little to nothing will change with other countries. After all, it was evil Iran and he’s a hero in his own mind!

But many leaders will look at this and wonder if they’re next; others, while unworried personally, will note the violation of international norms and shift their trading policies to minimize traffic with the United States, and even terminating military links with the United States, which will increase our daily risk of attack from nations and terror groups. They must find ways to convey their disapproval of Trump, and those two will be popular.

The American right wing will howl, of course. Amateurs often do, imagining they’re somehow experts in a world of dreadful complexity, whether it’s diplomacy or football. Our trading patterns will change, less will come our way – and our prestige will lessen.

I somehow doubt Trump will ever understand.

Countries of the Middle East, aka Arabian Gulf region, seem to have identified artificial intelligence (AI) as the next Big Thing that they want to control, but early observations of this sort is making me uneasy:

Rapid advances in AI are reshaping Gulf law firms, with hiring shifting towards experienced, tech-savvy lawyers as routine junior work is increasingly automated. …

“AI impact has been on tasks rather than roles,” said Maisa Maarouf, head of HR at BSA Law, which is already using AI for legal research, document review, contract analysis and drafting tasks.

“The development of junior lawyers requires extensive training for these tasks, which means firms now need to rethink how they develop talent while ensuring lawyers still gain the judgment and experience that cannot be automated,” Maarouf said. …

Routine, junior-level work that once absorbed a lot of time, such as basic contract review, preliminary research or document comparison, is increasingly handled by legal tech. [Arabian Gulf Business Insight]

Leaders are hardly ever just born; they come up through the ranks, learning the details as well as the big picture as they progress. For comparison, often a failson is just dumped into a leadership position and melts into a puddle of incompetence Because They Don’t Know What To Do. Or worse, they make decisions and think they’re so good that the decisions are also inevitably good.

That’s how the above description sounds, doesn’t it? Rather than using routine work to train future leaders in the myriad details that separate winners from losers, “legal tech” takes care of it, depriving future leaders of that knowledge.

Is this a problem, perhaps future tense, for Western Civ? Will we be seeing Middle Eastern nations suddenly collapsing as leadership becomes ineffective, just days before we do so as well?

The Ellisons have won their bid, as expected:

Netflix on Thursday said it would not submit a higher offer for Warner Bros. Discovery after the company’s board described Paramount Skydance’s latest offer as “superior.” …

Paramount’s bid was for the entire company while Netflix was seeking to acquire only its streaming service, HBO cable channel and film studio business.

“The transaction we negotiated would have created shareholder value with a clear path to regulatory approval,” Netflix said in a statement on Thursday afternoon. “However, we’ve always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance’s latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid.” [NBC News]

If you want a very brief history of Warner Bros, here’s Wikipedia.

Interestingly …

Netflix shares soared as much as 15% in after-hours trading on the news, signaling relief from shareholders who have seen the stock decline by more than 20% since the WBD-Netflix bid was officially announced in December.

Was the worry concerning a bidding war that might hollow out Netflix, or just the wisdom of acquiring a legacy library?

Well, here’s hoping for leaks from the government, probably the DoJ, concerning how much Trump and the gang meddled to ensure buddy Ellison & Son won the day. It sure doesn’t hurt that the family fortune is bloody immense, of course, so maybe they didn’t call in Trump to force the deal their way.

But it does seem likely. How much are they paying? See the link.

Why are leftists and independents periodically worrying about federal interference in voting? Here’s one report:

Pro-Trump activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly previewed a plan to mandate voter ID and ban mail ballots in November’s midterm elections, and the activists expect their draft will figure into Trump’s promised executive order on the issue. The White House declined to elaborate on Trump’s plans.

“Under the Constitution, it’s the legislatures and states that really control how a state conducts its elections, and the president doesn’t have any power to do that,” said Peter Ticktin, a Florida lawyer who is advocating for the draft executive order. Ticktin attended the New York Military Academy with Trump and was part of his legal team that filed an unsuccessful 2022 lawsuit accusing Democrats of conspiring to damage him with allegations that his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia. [WaPo]

This Ticktin fellow claims the President will be able to ban mail-in ballots and voting machines; he doesn’t seem to realize mail-in ballots are of importance to the military and citizens who are overseas, while voting machines, even if they do unsettle me, will delay summations for, in some areas of the country, weeks. In the latter case, reliable Republican voters may feel disenfranchised.

Perhaps he’d be more trustworthy to the far-right if he just appealed, publicly and repeatedly, to the divine, although manipulating the election certainly discredits the divine’s power, now doesn’t it?

So what has the right in a tizzy, as a few generations ago used to say?

Dysbiosis:

Dysbiosis means that you have an imbalance in the different types of microscopic organisms living in your body. If there are too many of some types and not enough of others, they don’t work with you as they should, and they might work against you. In particular, dysbiosis in your gut may have broad effects on your health. [Cleveland Clinic]

Noted in “‘Hidden’ group of gut bacteria may be essential to good health,” Chris Simms, NewScientist (14 February 2026; paywall):

In another part of the study, [Alexandre] Almeida [at the University of Cambridge] and his colleagues investigated which bacterial species were most associated with a healthy mix of gut microbes or an unbalanced one, known as dysbiosis.

I’m not entirely comfortable with that definition. What defines unbalanced?

I have a confession: I did not watch SOTU 2026. I missed Rep Green (D-TX) being expelled, Rep Omar (D-MN) yelling at the Mendacity Machine (MM), I missed Justice Gorsuch missing out on being reprimanded by MM for having the daring of ruling against MM’s conception of his rank’s rank privilege. Justices Roberts and Barrett had to take that beating alone.

Reportedly, claims of the 2020 Elections being stolen were rampant, although wisely MM omitted mention of the Epstein Files, even as a source of exoneration. Thus, the many celebrities tangled up in that mess were omitted as well.

As I told a work colleague, I turned on SOTU, saw MM drinking in the adoration, faux or not, of his party, gratification pouring off his face, and decided there was nothing to learn from this presentation. Then again, I’ve not watched SOTU in years, the repeated applause by the President’s Party, Republican or Democrat, makes what should be a serious event into a game show.

The liberal and lefty opinion writers called it a pack of lies, Republican and allied opinion writers cited it as the home run Trump needed, and one poor bar that had promised free drinks until the first insult from Trump reportedly served more free booze than they had anticipated.

The national decay continues.

One of his more fruitful efforts.

When you’re applauding a tidal wave of lies, you win a nomination for an award!

In case it disappears:

The President delivered a home run State of the Union tonight …

Consummate politician, eh?

For new readers, Earl Landgrebe uttered those immortal words concerning President Nixon…

Don’t confuse me with the facts. I’ve got a closed mind. I will not vote for impeachment. I’m going to stick with my president even if he and I have to be taken out of this building and shot.

The Earl Landgrebe nominations are modeled after Andrew Sullivan’s various nominations on The Daily Dish, and they are celebrating lunatic loyalty, to the point of them being un-American, to President Trump and his kindred.

It’s been nearly three years since my last entry on this topic, but Secretary of Defense Hegseth is making alarming news:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth summoned Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei for a meeting at the Pentagon on Tuesday as the Defense Department attempts to pressure the artificial intelligence company to loosen its restrictions around the use of its technology to spy on Americans and to enable weapons to fire without human involvement. The Defense Department is currently heavily reliant on the AI tool, Claude, and Anthropic’s executives have thus far resisted the pressure campaign. Needless to say, Anthropic acquiescing to Hegseth on this matter would open up the likelihood of yet more powerful AI tools being deployed against people abroad and living within U.S. borders. [Ja’han Jones, MS NOW]

Even if the possibility of faux-AI^[1] systems turning on their keepers is mostly delusional, this is still disturbing as it sounds more like the slaughter of the civilians and safeguarding of power rather than, say, the use of AI to negotiate peaceful relations.

The sad part? The nature of warfare and its weapons does not lead to stable scenarios; escalation is the unfortunate norm, as any historian will attest. And the consequential increase in casualties, both military and civilian. Protests against same, so exciting for the protesters, may lead to results such as invaders winning their objectives, i.e., taking over your peaceful little community.

But these “killer robots” make me very uncomfortable.

Almost as much as the next section at the link above:

Donald Trump’s sons have invested in an Israeli-backed drone company that’s slated to do business with the Trump administration and has boasted about its ability to kill people at low cost.

My bold.

¹ An “AI” system lacking self-agency is not intelligent, it’s just a machine-learning (ML) system, and, as many pundits far better versed in the relevant technologies than I will tell the reader, there’s no evidence of such a system existing, yet. Such systems don’t think, they just followed rules deduced from data fed them by people.

That last sentence is far more important than I can emphasize.

The State of the Union address, or SOTU, for 2026 may be quite predictable, and yet most at variance in the history SOTU presentations. I expect President Trump, who is facing multiple challenges, mostly of his own making, to treat this as a campaign rally rather than a sober status report, because the latter would put him in a very poor light. Wondering about that?

• Tariffs. His loss in Learning Resources was a devastating riposte to his claims of having total freedom to impose tariffs. Don’t take his claims since then that his powers are greater than ever to actually be honest; my read is that he’s desperately trying to patch the leaky dinghy of State, and … he doesn’t know how to patch a dinghy. He’ll address the issue tonight, and it’ll be a repeat of his written claims. SCOTUS blew a hole in his claims and he has no real way to rebut.
• House of Representatives. His slim majority has been shrinking into near-oblivion, and now there’s rumors that Rep Gonzalez (R-TX) may be resigning soon. His policies have led to the GOP House advantage being less than the Senate’s, and if Gonzalez departs then it’ll be temporarily at nothing, though there are upcoming special elections which might help put Speaker Johnson back in the black, so to speak.
• 2020 Election. Will he once again repeat his claims that he won the 2020 Presidential election, “in a landslide!” Sure. It’s part, even the principal glue, binding MAGA to him; its solvent, which he’s desperately fighting, is the Epstein Files. It also may have a function on his religious side, the repetition that prosperity theology uses to get what they want. They think.
• Epstein Files. Bank on hearing how the release of the Epstein Files exonerated him. He’s hoping the great majority of MAGA isn’t going to go through the Epstein Files. He’s not wrong, but contending with those MAGA leaders who will and have gone through them is a major challenge. I’m guessing he’ll spend a good five minutes claiming exoneration.

Don’t tune in to hear how things are going, although when they cast a flattering light on the President, he’ll mention them. Iran may be mentioned, the Gordie Howe bridge, etc.

It’ll all about the President. Not the country.

I haven’t done one of these in a while, but this moon of Saturn is just so cool looking:

Hyperion, moon of Saturn.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

The density of craters is amazing.

When last I checked in on my favorite influencer of the right wing in this thread, Erick Erickson was lamenting the breakdown of American society. Today, he’s sighing over President Trump:

What makes [President Trump’s tariff decisions] particularly tragic is that the damage may outlast the tariffs themselves. Even if a future administration moves quickly to dismantle the policy, the economic disruption — broken supply chains, abandoned trade relationships, shuttered small businesses — will not simply reverse overnight. Trading partners who have spent years diversifying away from American markets will not rush back. Manufacturers who relocated or restructured to survive the tariff regime will not immediately undo those decisions. The economic scar tissue tends to linger long after the wound is closed.

There is also the matter of credibility. The United States built the post-war global trading order largely on the premise that American economic leadership was stable and predictable. Allies and adversaries alike now have fresh evidence that a single administration can upend decades of policy on a whim, and that the courts may not intervene swiftly enough to limit the damage. That credibility, once spent, is extraordinarily difficult to rebuild. Future administrations — Republican or Democrat — will pay that price at the negotiating table for years to come, and American businesses and workers will ultimately bear the cost.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Quite right. Reader, prepare yourself for diminishment. The ejection of the Republican pack of grifters, zealots, and folks marinated in incoherent ideologies doesn’t mean we’ll return to the top of the world; they are inflicting damage that, in many cases, cannot be erased.

The world will be different on the other side of the bridge.

Just to put the nail in this bit of what I’ll call propaganda by announcing he’s sending USNS Mercy to Greenland:

As of late January, the 1,000-bed hospital ship was firmly in drydock at Alabama Shipyard in Mobile, where it has been undergoing scheduled maintenance since July 2025.

The USNS Mercy, commissioned in 1986, departed San Diego last July for a one-year scheduled maintenance period at Alabama Shipyard under an $18.7 million firm-fixed-price contract for a 153-calendar day mid-term availability, including drydocking. The contract, awarded in June 2025, marked the Mercy’s first visit to Mobile. [gCaptain]

What was the purpose of Trump’s ridiculous propaganda, besides distracting from the Epstein Files? I suppose it’s an attempt to drive a wedge between the Greenlanders and the Danes by suggesting inadequate health care is provided by the latter. Since that health care is socialized, this propaganda also serves the purpose of hitting at the great evil bugaboo of the right, socialized health care.

It’s easier to spread evil rumors than to have a civilized conversation. And, yes, there are times I think that applies to both sides.

Trump’s entire announcement looks like foolishness and, to use a word I saw recently from Steve Benen, beclowns the President. He should resign.

The New York Times notes that Cuba is teetering on the edge of collapse, and notes the “this is not a blockade” of Cuba is having an effect.

What I find fascinating is that the Russia / Ukraine pair is not mentioned.

As most folks who were around for at least part of the Cold War remember, Cuba was a client state of the USSR. Fidel Castro depended on the Soviet Union for fuel and other commodities; a blockade of Cuba was promulgated on discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles being shipped to Cuba. The blockade was canceled following Soviet agreement to withdraw the missiles, but it proved Cuba’s claims to self-sufficiency were dubious.

Now, I do not doubt that Russia, USSR’s predecessor and successor nation, continued as Cuba’s patron, if far more quiet about it, as Cuba constitutes an unsinkable aircraft carrier not far from the coast of mainland USA. When President Obama began squeezing Russia’s oil exports, it must have impacted Cuba, and I have to wonder if Obama’s peaceful gestures towards Cuba were attempts to lure it away from a patron exhibiting distress.

And then came Putin’s War, President Putin’s deeply mistaken war against Ukraine. Any war that lasts more than a few weeks becomes a drain on all primary parties involved; this war, in its military phase, has lasted four years, and Ukraine’s military has proven deft in its defense, including … the harassment and possible sinking of oil tankers.

Of even more importance is the depression of Russian influence world-wide. While neighbors in close proximity to Russia are undoubtedly nervous concerning Russia aggression, countries that can only be reached by nuclear missiles feel freer to harass, and even redirect, any commerce approaching Cuba. They know that patron Russia is distracted, has crap for a military due to Ukraine’s heroic defense, and the existence of the current Cuban government may be extinguished without too much tangible backlash from patron Russia.

Because even patron Russia may be in existential danger. Quite possibly, only the hold President Putin has on President Trump, whatever that may be, is keeping the current Russian government from drowning.

Look! Look! Look at my hand!

President Donald Trump said Saturday that he is sending a hospital boat to Greenland, the Danish territory he has sought to acquire, even as the Arctic island says it doesn’t want it.

“Working with the fantastic Governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, we are going to send a great hospital boat to Greenland to take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there. It’s on the way!!!” the president posted on social media alongside an illustration of the naval hospital ship the USNS Mercy. [CNN/Politics]

Everyone in both Denmark and the USA, with the exception of President Trump and, maybe, Governor Landry (R-LA), are rubbing their chins in puzzlement, as Greenland has not reported being a plague island. CNN inquiries yielded finger pointing, with the last link in the chain, the U.S. Navy, refusing to answer.

A first guess might come from this part of the report:

Trump’s post came after Denmark’s Joint Arctic Command said in a statement Saturday it had evacuated a crew member needing urgent medical treatment from a US submarine in Greenlandic waters. The crew member was transferred to the Greenlandic health authorities and a hospital in Nuuk.

If he misread it, maybe.

I’m more inclined to go with the Magician’s Maneuver explanation, aka distracting the audience. From what?

The Epstein Files, of course. Not his tariff loss at SCOTUS, though, as he’s using that an opportunity to paint rhetorical targets on Justices Roberts, Barrett, and Gorsuch, although it’s a risky indulgence. But he doesn’t want anyone thinking about the Epstein Files.

From a month ago:

“My criteria, President Trump’s criteria, is different,” [Kennedy Center President Richard] Grenell said. “We cannot have arts institutions that lose money because you have programming that is woke or not popular. We need popular programming to sustain arts institutions.” [WaPo]

Nonsense. Opera, theater, ballet, all of these art forms and more, when a new specimen happens on the scene, must work to find the proper form to effectively express them. This is not a five minute exercise, but it may be a five production exercise, or even more, because this is difficult and laborious work; to claim otherwise is to demonstrate profound ignorance.

To impose a limitation from another sector of society is to pervert the expression of the art, and that’s just … dumb. Corporate sponsorships are an implicit recognition that we have a society that principally functions in the private sector, that art does not fit that sector’s practices very well, and the sponsorships are attempts to bandage over the unfortunate problem.

A lovely riposte from Governor Pritzker (D-IL) concerning the tariffs:

Although I might have said Pay up or resign!

I know they exist in one to one, but not in this size. It made me laugh.

The tussle over Federal prosecutors is continuing:

The federal judges in the Eastern District of Virginia unanimously appointed longtime litigator James W. Hundley to serve as interim U.S. attorney on Friday, and the Justice Department almost immediately fired him, continuing a clash over control of one of the country’s highest-profile prosecutor’s offices, which is particularly known for handling significant national security cases. [WaPo]

This not even the second incident, but the third, at least; I saw, but did not comment on, the first such incident:

Federal judges in New Jersey declined Tuesday to appoint Alina Habba, President Donald Trump’s pick for U.S. attorney in the state, to continue serving in that role, delivering a resounding rebuke to one of his administration’s most polarizing Justice Department appointees and teeing up a showdownover whowould lead the office.

A panel of the state’s U.S. district court judges made the announcement in a brief order that did not offer any explanation for its decision. The order — signed by Renée Marie Bumb, the chief federal judge in the state — appointed Desiree Leigh Grace, a career prosecutor whom Habba had named as her first assistant, as her replacement.

But within hours, top Justice Department officials announced they had fired Grace and reinstated Habba “pursuant to the president’s authority.” [WaPo]

Until & if Trump goes completely rogue^[1], these clashes are very important, and are becoming a pus-filled wound on the skin of the Administration.

1. The privilege of nominating U.S. attorneys is an executive function; the judiciary, by selecting interim U.S. attorneys, are removing this important privilege from Administration control, making the Administration look weak and confused.
2. But, by not using the privilege, again the Administration looks weak and confused.
3. As I noted in the beginning post of this thread, Trump cannot nominate top-flight attorneys for these positions because they won’t, for the most part, work for him. His reputation as a terrible boss cripples him.
4. As, as noted before I think, Trump demands total loyalty, and he only can get that from third-raters and worse; better attorneys understand they’re working for the USA, not for Trump. I don’t know if he doesn’t understand, or refuses to accept it, but the government is only occasionally a boss/employee situation; more often, especially for top-level positions such as Cabinet-level positions and US Attorneys, the President picks the best available for the job, and then gets out of the way. In the previous point I said top-flight attorneys won’t work for him; it may be more accurate to say they see his interference, such as directives to investigate political rivals, as unacceptable.

But, as the news articles indicate^[2], there are laws permitting the filling of these positions on an interim basis by Federal judges. This is the pinch point for the Administration: accept the loss of this privilege, or nominate acceptable attorneys, if they can find any. Either choice is damaging to an Administration that wants to project absolute power, but instead has projected incompetence and chaos for its entire existence. Such is governance by arrogant amateurs.

The next step, if it’s possible, is for the Federal judges whose appointments were rejected, to appeal the rejection. In the context of Trump’s loss in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, the overturning of tariffs decision, a quick trip to SCOTUS, and a loss at that level for Trump regarding US Attorney interim appointments, would be interpreted by most everyone as Trump losing his grip. We might even see protests outside the White House, with the demand being his resignation.

And, if I might fantasize for just a moment, someone with some chutzpah might challenge Trump v. United States, which is the Presidents get immunity! blunder decision of the conservative activist wing of the Court. Find an incident in which litigation in a Federal court results in the judge citing Trump v. United States for rejecting the suit. Then march it up judicial hierarchy until it reaches SCOTUS, and slyly let them have another go at Presidential immunity. While Thomas and Alito might still think it justified, the balance of the wing may be having second thoughts.

Well, that’s just a fantasy. No one will do that, will they?

¹ By rogue I mean Trump tries to turn the USA into a dictatorship. Trump may have waited too long. MAGA is falling apart as they realize Trump’s name is all over the Epstein Files. The threatened loss of MAGA is why Trump is repeatedly shouting the Epstein Files have exonerated him in news clips, just as he did with the Mueller Report, which it did not. But the Mueller Report also didn’t come with pictures and salacious poems; it was something like twenty pages of passive voice legalese, a real chore for non-lawyers to read. I know because I did. Taking revenge on Governor Walz (D-MN) must have been too tempting and delayed Trump for too long, although he may have thought terrifying folks with his ICE troops was important. All kudos to those Minnesotans on the front lines of the ICE protests!

² I am but a lowly obsolete software engineer, not a lawyer and not prone to looking at Federal law books, so I’ll take the news articles at their word on the matter.

Imposts:

1. ​(chiefly historical) A tax, tariff or duty that is imposed, especially on merchandise.
2. (horse racing, slang) The weight that must be carried by a horse in a race; the handicap. [Wiktionary]

Not something seen much these days, unless you’re a Constitutional scholar, or some legislators; however, back in the day, which would be the late 1700s, it might have been a bit more popular since arbitrary tax imposition was the motivation of the American Revolution.

Noted in “Watching tariffs come down,” Mark Walsh at the delivery of the opinion of the Court in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (Tariffs) on Feb 20, 2026, SCOTUSblog:

[Chief Justice] Roberts continues, referring to Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution setting forth the powers of the legislative branch, including the first clause specifying that “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.”

The decision was 6-3, with Associate Justices Kavanaugh, Alito, and Thomas dissenting. I’ve not read the dissents.

How annoying that no one had the right answer, I presume:

During a rambling rehash of false assertions of voter fraud, President Donald Trump claimed that Republicans will never lose an election “for 50 years” if his allies in Congress pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE) America Act, which critics have called the most restrictive anti-voting law in U.S. history.

“I tell you what, Republicans have to win this one,” Trump said during a speech at a steel facility in Rome, Georgia. “We’ll never lose a race. For 50 years, we won’t lose a race.” [Democracy Docket]

The proper answer would be … America loses every single race!

This is the basis of America, participatory democracy, where we all have some input into the process of governance. If races are rigged, as Trump is implicitly advocating, then the purpose of America, a peaceful selection of legislators and executives, will dissolve the Union into wee little States with varying levels of freedom, and an outsized vulnerability to larger adversaries, such as China.

And America loses.

WaPo answers one or two of my questions:

• Refunds:
  

  As part of its ruling striking down most of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, the Supreme Court’s majority did not make clear whether the Trump administration will have to refund billions in tariffs already collected by the federal government.

  And then

  Within minutes of the Supreme Court’s decision Friday, a group of small businesses made a public appeal for the federal government to swiftly refund the money they had paid in connection with the president’s illegal tariffs.

  Followed by

  Some Democrats have started calling for the Trump administration to issue refunds now that the Supreme Court has struck down most of the president’s sweeping tariffs, although the court’s ruling Friday did not address whether that would happen.

• It was a 6-3 decision. Too bad it wasn’t 9-0. The dissenters were the two most conservative Justices, Alito and Thomas, plus Kavanaugh.
• How is Trump going to feel about this? Here’s what he’s been saying for a year:
  

  “Everybody should pray that the United States Supreme Court has the Wisdom and Genius to allow Tariffs to GUARD our National Security, and our Financial Freedom!” Trump wrote in Truth Social in December.

  His acting skills may allow him to look even-tempered, but when the camera’s are not on him?

  Trump called it a “disgrace,” the governor [unnamed] said, and left shortly after, telling the governors he needed to work on a statement on the ruling.

This will take some pressure off of the economy, although I expect not all of it. Trump will test his supporters, looking for a measure of how much support he retains after being defeated at the Supreme Court, but in such a way that his supporters will be less stressed.

Refunds? I doubt it; SCOTUS dodged a bullet when it didn’t specify refunds, since Trump won’t have to defy SCOTUS on that count. Still, he may defy the ruling denying him authority, as that’s a central blow to his claims. It’s an affirmation to the limits of Executive power, and one that SCOTUS should have affirmed long ago when Trump begged for immunity. Republican soft-headedness, whether by SCOTUS or Senators, has been one of the sources of our current contretemps.

Yes, yes, Democrats make contributions as well.

I see Breaking News on various news sites saying the President has been rebuffed, when it comes to tariffs, by SCOTUS. No details, yet. Questions coming to mind:

• Will currently collected tariffs be refunded? Will the Administration comply?
• Will Trump ignore SCOTUS? Will he denounce SCOTUS? I don’t know if there were dissents or not just yet.
• Will Trump demand Congress pass his tariffs, or even hand him the power he claimed to already have?
• Can Trump even continue to collect tariffs, or is the operation of tariff collection not under his control?

Might this big sign that Trump is not the strongman many want break him? I doubt it; indeed, it may save him as the economy will hopefully stabilize.

Still, there’s a lot of ways this could go, and they’re dependent on a President whose goals are not our goals.

Competency porn:

Competency porn, or competence porn, is a term describing media that portrays competency, qualification, intelligence, and other rigorous, capable qualities. Coined in 2009 by screenwriter John Rogers, it has often been used in coverage regarding television shows like The Pitt and The Diplomat and movies like Apollo 13. [Wikipedia]

Around since 2009, yet I had not encountered it. Shame on me. Noted in this Jennifer Garner interview.