Political Pistachio
By Douglas V. Gibbs
The Supreme Court’s recent decision striking down President Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose his Liberation Day tariffs has triggered a wave of confusion, celebration, and among Trump’s opponents premature victory laps. The ruling is far narrower than the headlines suggest. Tariffs are not going away. In fact, the Court may have unintentionally strengthened the legal foundation for Trump’s broader trade strategy.
In a 6–3 decision led by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Court held that the Constitution assigns tariff authority to Congress, and that the IEEPA, which was designed for national emergencies, was never intended to give presidents unilateral power to levy taxes on imports. As the majority wrote, “Had Congress intended to convey the distinct and extraordinary power to impose tariffs, it would have done so expressly.”
The ruling emphasized that in nearly 50 years of the statute’s existence, no president has ever used the IEEPA to impose tariffs (despite the fact that there is a long list of tariffs imposed without prior permission from Congress throughout U.S. History), and that Trump’s sweeping measures represented a “transformative expansion” of executive authority. The Court applied the major questions doctrine, concluding that Congress does not delegate such sweeping economic power through vague language.
But the Court’s decision applies only to the IEEPA. It does not invalidate Trump’s tariffs themselves, nor does it prevent him from imposing new ones under other laws Congress has already enacted. Roberts’ opinion rested partly on the idea that the IEEPA is a wartime statute, and “we are not at war with every nation in the world.”
Trump retains multiple statutory avenues for imposing tariffs. These include:
- The Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (Section 232), which allows tariffs on imports that threaten national security.
- The Trade Act of 1974, which gives presidents broad authority to respond to unfair foreign trade practices.
- The Tariff Act of 1930 (Smoot-Hawley), still on the books, allowing product‑specific tariffs when imports are subsidized.
- The Fordney‑McCumber Act of 1922, largely superseded but historically relevant to presidential tariff authority.
Justice Kavanaugh’s dissent underscored this point directly: “The decision might not substantially constrain a President’s ability to order tariffs going forward… numerous other federal statutes authorize the President to impose tariffs and might justify most (if not all) of the tariffs at issue.”
Justice Clarence Thomas went further, arguing that the IEEPA itself did authorize Trump’s actions and that the majority misapplied both statutory text and constitutional history. His dissent emphasized that Congress has long delegated tariff‑related powers to the executive, especially in foreign affairs.
One major question remains unresolved: the billions of dollars in tariff revenue collected under the IEEPA framework. The Court offered no guidance on refunds, leaving the issue to the U.S. Court of International Trade. Hundreds of refund lawsuits are already pending.
Justice Kavanaugh warned the aftermath “is likely to be a mess,” with importers potentially seeking retroactive relief.
Trump called the ruling a “disgrace,” but immediately announced a backup plan. Within hours, he invoked the Trade Act of 1974 to impose a new 10 percent global tariff, signaling that the White House had anticipated this outcome.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reinforced the message:
- “The Court did not rule against President Trump’s tariffs.”
- “Six justices simply ruled that IEEPA authorities cannot be used to raise even $1 of revenue.”
- “We will be leveraging Section 232 and Section 301 tariff authorities… validated through thousands of legal challenges.”
In other words, the ruling changes the legal pathway, not the policy outcome.
Even CNN’s legal analysts acknowledged that Trump can still impose sweeping tariffs under other statutes. George Washington University Law School professor and legal scholar Jonathan Turley echoed that reality, stating the administration can still impose tariffs through other statutes. “There’s plenty of runway for the Trump White House in this area of economic policy.”
Senator Bernie Moreno (R‑OH) is urging Congress to codify Trump’s tariffs through a reconciliation bill, which requires only 51 Senate votes and cannot be filibustered. But the path is uncertain. Several Republican senators oppose tariffs, and the House majority is narrow.
Still, reconciliation remains a viable option to reverse the Court’s ruling legislatively.
The stock market rose slightly after the decision, with the Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq all ticking upward.
The ruling may influence future uses of emergency powers, create short‑term market unpredictability, and open the door to refund litigation. But Trump and his economic team insist that trade agreements will remain stable and that tariffs will continue uninterrupted.
Trump has long called “tariff” the most beautiful word in the dictionary, echoing President William McKinley, who championed protective tariffs as a pillar of American prosperity.
As I have written before, Trump’s tariffs have been remarkably effective and constitutional. The U.S. trade deficit has fallen to nearly half of what it was when the Liberation Day tariffs were announced in March. Manufacturing is returning to American soil as companies relocate production to avoid tariff penalties. That means more jobs, higher GDP, and lower long‑term costs of doing business.
With the midterms approaching, affordability is central to voters. People vote with their wallets. Democrats know this, and their opposition to Trump’s tariff strategy reflects a political calculation as much as an economic one.
The Supreme Court did not kill tariffs. It merely closed one door while leaving several others wide open. Trump has already walked through them.
The administration is moving “full‑steam ahead,” armed with statutes Congress itself enacted.
The only thing the Court’s ruling accomplished was accelerating the pace.
Tariffs are not going anywhere. If anything, the fight has only just begun, and the ruling has made President Trump more determined to do what he needs to do to continue to Make America Great Again.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
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By Douglas V. Gibbs
Late‑night host Stephen Colbert opened the week with a dramatic accusation: CBS, he claimed, had barred him from airing an interview with Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico. The reason, according to Colbert, was fear of scrutiny from the Federal Communications Commission under the equal‑time rule. He went further, suggesting the Trump administration was using the FCC to silence critics on television.
It was a bold charge. It was also, according to both CBS and the FCC, false.
FCC Chair Brendan Carr told FOX News that Colbert’s version of events bore no resemblance to reality. “CBS was very clear that Colbert could run the interview that he wanted,” Carr said. The only caveat was the standard legal reminder that airing one candidate in a primary triggers equal‑time obligations for the others. “Instead of doing that,” Carr added, “they claimed that they were victims.”
CBS backed up Carr’s account. In a statement, the network said plainly: “The Late Show was not prohibited by CBS from broadcasting the interview.” The network’s lawyers simply advised that airing Talarico would require equal opportunities for two other Democratic candidates, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett. CBS even presented options for how the show could meet those obligations.
That is the equal‑time rule in a nutshell. It does not censor. It does not silence. It does not prohibit interviews. It merely requires broadcasters using public airwaves to avoid giving one candidate an advantage over another. The rule exists to prevent media outlets from picking winners and losers in elections. I’m not one to believe it is a constitutionally allowed rule, but the rule exists, and Colbert claimed it was being used for nefarious reasons by the Trump administration and it was an outright lie.
Carr suggested the uproar may have been less about censorship and more about publicity. “This was all about a political candidate trying to get attention and clicks,” he said, noting that the equal‑time rule is designed to prevent exactly that kind of manufactured imbalance.
Yet Colbert framed the situation as presidential interference. “Donald Trump’s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV,” he told his audience. That narrative spread quickly, even as the underlying facts pointed in the opposite direction.
The episode is a reminder of how easily a claim made by a celebrity host can harden into a media storyline. It also highlights how regulatory processes, especially obscure ones like equal‑time, can be misrepresented for political effect. In this case, both CBS and the FCC say the censorship Colbert described simply did not occur.
The facts are straightforward. The narrative was not.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
In a constitutional republic, law enforcement is supposed to stand above the political fray. The badge is not meant to be red or blue. That is why newly surfaced January 6 planning memos combined with a quietly released Government Accountability Office report should alarm every American who still believes in equal justice under law.
According to reporting from Just the News, the FBI ran a tabletop exercise in Boston in August 2020, five months before January 6. The scenario they rehearsed was not a natural disaster or foreign threat, but a “hanging” or contested presidential election and the political unrest that might follow. Before a single ballot was cast, federal law enforcement was gaming out how to respond to Americans’ reaction to a disputed outcome.
Contingency planning is not inherently sinister. But the details matter. The memos reportedly outlined two key strategies:
- Embed informants inside groups where political agitation was expected.
- Pursue mass prosecutions, even for minor offenses, once unrest occurred.
If that sounds familiar, it should. After January 6, the country watched a flood of charges, including for non‑violent conduct that in other contexts would have been handled with citations or local misdemeanors. We also learned that federal informants and assets were present in or around several groups in Washington that day. The memos suggest this was not improvisation. It was the execution of a plan conceived months earlier.
The most explosive allegation is not that the FBI planned for unrest, but that the strategy was applied asymmetrically. It was aimed at conservatives, not liberals. The memos anticipated unrest from one direction: Trump supporters contesting the election. There is no indication of a parallel plan to infiltrate or mass‑prosecute left‑wing groups if they rejected the result or returned to the tactics that had already burned American cities in the summer of 2020.
That asymmetry is the heart of the problem.
In 2020, federal and local authorities watched as courthouses were attacked, police precincts were besieged, and entire city blocks were claimed as “autonomous zones.” Many of those incidents involved organized groups and repeat offenders. Yet the prosecutorial posture was often lenient: dropped charges, plea deals, and political leaders eager to describe the unrest as “mostly peaceful.”
Contrast that with January 6. Whatever one calls that day (riot, breach, or insurrection) it has been treated as a singular, almost sacred event in the eyes of the federal government. Defendants have faced aggressive charges, pre‑trial detention, and sentences far exceeding what many violent offenders receive in ordinary cases. If the 2020 memo framed unrest from the right as a national‑security event while unrest from the left was treated as a political inconvenience, that is not law enforcement. That is partisanship with a badge.
And I cannot ignore the human cost of this shift, because I know several people who were in Washington that day… not as rioters, but as citizens who traveled to hear the President speak. One of them, Derek Kinnison, served as the security lead at my church. Derek and three friends arrived at the Capitol well after the initial breach. They had stopped at their hotel to use the restroom and grabbed a quick bite, and like thousands of others, they were still making their way from the Ellipse when the first reports of unrest began circulating.
By the time they reached the Capitol’s lawn, the main confrontation was already over. What did they do when they arrived? They prayed.
I have seen the video myself: four men standing in a circle with arms over each other’s shoulders on the grass, heads bowed, praying for peace and clarity. They never entered the building. They never confronted law enforcement. They never engaged in violence. They spoke with people on the grounds about what had happened and then left.
Yet all four of their homes were later raided by the FBI. All four were prosecuted. All four were convicted and sent to federal prison – only to be released after President Trump issued pardons after he took office in 2025.
Their experience is not unique. At least half a dozen people I know personally tell the same story: the violence began before they even arrived and there was word that agitators had been shipped in by bus. The breach occurred around 1:10 p.m., roughly when President Trump finished speaking. For most attendees, it took thirty to forty minutes to walk from the Ellipse to the Capitol due to the size of the crowd. Many arrived to find the confrontation already over; yet they, not the instigators, became the focus of federal prosecution.
This is where the GAO’s January 2026 report becomes essential. The report documented that the FBI opened 127,000 “assessments” between 2018 and 2024: investigative probes that require no factual predicate and can employ techniques such as informants and physical surveillance. As the report states, these assessments “require an authorized purpose but not any particular factual predication,” and can be launched even when no crime is suspected.
Among these were 1,200 “Sensitive Investigative Matters” targeting politicians, journalists, religious leaders, academics, and political organizations. The GAO found that over 500 targeted public officials, over 150 targeted religious organizations, and over 50 targeted journalists. And the report confirmed that the FBI had, in some cases, opened assessments “based solely on the exercise of First Amendment‑protected activities.” A clear constitutional violation.
The review was triggered by a bipartisan request from Rep. Jamie Raskin and Rep. Nancy Mace, who warned that assessments “operate as de facto investigations that can be launched without a factual predicate of criminal wrongdoing” and may result in “improper monitoring of protected First Amendment activity.” The GAO confirmed their fears.
When you place this report beside the January 6 planning memos, a troubling picture emerges: a federal law‑enforcement culture increasingly comfortable treating political dissent as a national‑security threat, and increasingly willing to use tools of surveillance and prosecution without the constitutional guardrails that once defined American justice.
A government that can investigate without cause can prosecute without restraint. A government that can surveil political opponents can silence them. A government that can treat prayer on a lawn as a federal offense can treat any dissent as a threat.
The issue is not January 6. The issue is not left versus right. The issue is whether the most powerful law‑enforcement agency in the country has slipped the leash of constitutional limits, and did so knowingly as a part of a deep state infiltration that exists for partisan reasons and operates for partisan outcomes.
If we allow this to stand and if we shrug at assessments without evidence, surveillance without cause, prosecutions without equal protection, and cruel and excessive punishments for crimes committed by planted infiltrators and FBI assets, then the question is no longer whether the FBI planned for January 6 and carried out one of the greatest false flags in American History…The question then becomes what the FBI, or any other part of the hard-left’s deep state, is planning for all of us.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
At the Munich Security Conference, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was asked a direct, uncomplicated question by Bloomberg Television’s Francine Lacqua: “Should the U.S. commit troops to defend Taiwan if China were to move?”
AOC could not answer it. Instead, she offered a meandering string of platitudes before retreating to the vague claim that U.S. policy is “longstanding” without explaining what that policy is.
Meanwhile, the facts are straightforward. Taiwan is a self-governing island with its own military, currency, and independent government. China insists it owns Taiwan and regularly conducts military drills near the island, prompting concerns about a potential invasion. Beijing has also loudly objected to the Trump administration’s approval of an $11 billion arms package for Taiwan.
On the surface, AOC’s evasiveness looked like simple unpreparedness; an awkward moment for someone rumored to be testing the waters for a 2028 presidential run. But her inability to answer revealed something deeper than a lack of foreign-policy fluency.
AOC is a product of an ideological movement that views America as the problem and global collectivism as the solution. Her political formation is rooted in a worldview that seeks to fundamentally transform the United States into something the Founders never intended. That worldview does not allow her to articulate a clear defense of American interests abroad, because doing so would contradict the ideological framework she embraces.
She wasn’t the only one struggling. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer also stumbled when asked about Ukraine, offering a similarly vague and uncertain response.
What ties these moments together is not mere inexperience. It is the hollowness of the progressive foreign-policy worldview. Its advocates speak in abstractions: “social justice,” “multiculturalism,” “equity” – but they avoid acknowledging the ideological engine behind those terms. They will not admit that these concepts are rooted in cultural Marxism, so they rename and repackage them.
When pressed on real-world geopolitical threats, the façade cracks. Why did AOC and Whitmer sound lost? Because their true answers would be unacceptable to most Americans. Their worldview does not operate in the realm of strategic reality or common sense. It operates in the realm of oppressor-versus-oppressed narratives, where any nation aligned with Marxist ideology must be handled gently and any assertion of American strength is suspect.
Had AOC spoken plainly, her answer would likely have been: “No, the U.S. should not intervene. Taiwan belongs to China.” But saying that openly would expose the ideological commitments she works hard to obscure. So she stalled, hedged, and searched for language that would neither sound like Donald Trump nor reveal her own radical leanings.
Contrast that with the clarity of a more traditional American approach: apply economic pressure first, pursue diplomacy second, and reserve consequences as a final step. That is a coherent strategy rooted in national interest. It is also something AOC and Whitmer could not articulate, because it does not fit within their ideological frame.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
Today, the inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace marked a seismic shift in international diplomacy, a bold declaration by a coalition of nations led by President Donald Trump to forge a new path forward. This ambitious initiative is a brilliant strategic maneuver, designed to counteract a paralyzed United Nations, compromised by Chinese influence and a moral relativism that coddles terrorist groups like Hamas under the guise of championing the Palestinian cause.
The Board of Peace was established with a clear mission: to project a united, firm hand against aggressor nations and marshal the financial resources to rebuild war-torn regions, beginning with Gaza. The foundational principle, as articulated by its architects, is a stark departure from the globalist status quo. It is a direct challenge to nations that seek war and an unambiguous signal of unwavering support for Israel, a cornerstone of Trump’s foreign policy legacy.
The coalition’s composition is telling. It is not a random assortment of nations but a strategic alliance of countries united by shared threats and a common desire for a more assertive global posture. The membership includes Middle Eastern nations like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan, and Egypt, all of whom stand in firm opposition to Iran’s regional belligerence and have grown weary of international inaction. They are joined by Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia and others who are increasingly alarmed by China’s relentless expansion and economic coercion.
Further solidifying the anti-authoritarian bloc are nations aligned with Trump’s hardline stance against the Maduro regime in Venezuela. The presence of countries like Argentina and El Salvador underscores a broader coalition in the Western Hemisphere committed to resisting socialist dictatorships. This diverse group is bound by a common thread: a refusal to be passive subjects in a world order they view as skewed against their interests and security.
The mechanics of the Board are as decisive as its mission. To secure permanent membership, a nation must pledge a substantial $1 billion contribution, a commitment that has already seen over $5 billion pledged specifically for the reconstruction of Gaza. This financial firepower is designed to bypass the bureaucratic quagmire of traditional international aid, ensuring that funds are deployed effectively to rebuild, not to be siphoned off by corruption or diverted to fuel further conflict.
Today’s first meeting was more than a ceremonial gathering; it was the operational launch of this new power bloc. Under the charter, the Board is structured to be nimble and decisive, with the chairman holding significant authority to shape its direction. This stands in stark contrast to the consensus-driven gridlock that often paralyzes the UN Security Council, where China and Russia routinely wield their veto power to protect their own interests and those of their proxies.
Critics may decry the Board of Peace as a challenge to the established international order, but proponents see it as a necessary correction. For decades, global institutions have allowed a narrative to take root that equates Israel’s self-defense with oppression, while providing cover for terrorist organizations committed to its destruction. This new alliance, backed by significant financial and political capital, aims to rewrite that narrative by demonstrating that peace and prosperity can be achieved through strength, clear-eyed moral judgment, and a willingness to stand with allies, not with terrorists.
As the Board of Peace moves from its inaugural session to concrete action, the world is watching. It represents a clear fork in the road: one leading down the familiar path of endless debate and moral equivalence, the other toward a new paradigm of decisive action and financial commitment to rebuilding what war has destroyed. For the member states, the choice is clear. They are betting that a firm hand, backed by a united front and real money, is the only way to secure a lasting peace in a world increasingly threatened by tyrants and terrorists.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary