A week ago today, VP Vance led the U.S. delegation for 21 hours of direct talks with Iran, in the Pakistani city of Islamabad. Those talks were not particularly fruitful. Right now we’re nearing the end of the original two-week ceasefire, and things remain fragile. Although, for some reason the U.S. stock market has been strong over the past 3 weeks, and is now back in the black for 2026.

Paul Krugman had an article today that I think nicely summarizes the state of the war:

“It’s been clear for a while that the United States has basically lost this war. The goal was to achieve regime change, possibly to take Iran’s uranium. Neither of those is going to happen. The Iranian regime is harder line than it was before. Iran has ended up strengthened because it has demonstrated its ability to shut off traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. No way the United States, even under current management, is going to commit ground troops to attempt to really do in Iran’s nuclear program on a sustained basis.

So the indicated strategy was essentially to give up, but claim that something wonderful was accomplished, and that’s certainly something that Trump is good at doing. But he hasn’t been able to pull it off, I think because he is incapable of facing reality. … [T]he U.S. just found out the limits to its power, and they turn out to be closer to our goal than they are to the Iranians’ goal. So we basically have to cut our losses by making a deal that leaves the Iranians with some stuff that they didn’t have before.

He can’t seem to do that. … [W]e are led by people who not only can’t plan a war right, they can’t even successfully execute a surrender. And that’s a really bad omen, not just for the Iran conflict, but for everything else.”

There was a by-election this week in Governor Sherrill’s old seat, the New Jersey 11th. This is a moderate suburban district that Harris won 53-44 in 2024 and in which Sherrill had won re-election 57-41 in 2024. However the victor in the recent open Democratic primary was Analilia Mejia, from the progressive wing of the party. As such many were interested in seeing whether Mejia would be able to continue the recent trend of Democratic margin expansion in by-elections, or whether instead the pendulum would swing back the other way due to her being “too progressive” for her district. She won 60-40, which is being viewed in some circles as a sign that the Democrats can afford to nominate progressives in a broader array of districts.

Two Congressmen resigned this week over sex scandals. The scandal involving Tony Gonzales (R-TX) had been percolating for a long time, so much so that he lost his primary several weeks ago over it. By contrast, the scandal involving Eric Swalwell (D-CA) only broke into the public eye mere days before he fell on his sword. With these resignations, once Mejia is seated the Republican majority will be 218-214.

However the larger impact of Swalwell’s sudden implosion is on the upcoming California gubernatorial race. With Governor Newsom term-limited and Kamala Harris having declined to run, the jungle primary scheduled for early June is wide open. Swalwell had been one of the leading Democratic candidates in a field featuring billionaire and 2020 Presidential gadfly Tom Steyer, former Congresswoman and failed 2024 Senate primary candidate Katie Porter, former HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, former L.A. mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and other minor players. Swalwell’s departure from that race may make it more likely that one candidate from each party will advance to the general; based on recent polling, there was increasing concern among Democrats that without consolidation of the field, the top two vote-getters in the primary could be the two main Republican candidates, even if as a whole the Democratic candidates were to receive as much as 60% of the primary vote.

In world politics, last Sunday Hungarian PM Orban decisively lost the election and is out of power after 16 years; encouragingly, he conceded the evening of the election. Earlier in the week VP Vance had been in Hungary, campaigning for Orban. Open American intervention in another country’s election is unusual enough, but even moreso when it’s in support of the candidate also supported by Russia. It will be very interesting to see the extent to which new Hungarian PM Magyar, a former member of Orban’s party who created his own opposition movement, will encounter difficulties in undoing the damage to institutions wrought by Orban’s authoritarian tendencies. Closer to home, Canadian PM Carney finally has a majority government to work with, after winning three by-elections last week in the wake of having convinced a handful of MPs from parties to both his left and right to cross the floor and join the Liberals.

The Court of International Trade recently had its oral arguments in the Section 122 tariffs case, Oregon v. Trump. From what I have read, the judges seriously engaged with plaintiffs’ arguments on the obsolescence of Section 122 in a world with floating exchange rates. While the invocation of Section 122 tariffs is by law limited to 150 days, I hope that the judges do not use that as an excuse to run out the clock here, but instead provide clear guidance on the meaning of the law. In other tariff news, on Monday the federal government will launch its new system under which importers of record can request refunds of the IEEPA tariffs that were deemed illegal in Learning Resources v. Trump.

TACO Tuesday arrived less than an hour after my last post, with the announcement of a two-week ceasefire between Iran and the U.S., mediated by Pakistan, to be accompanied by the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

The markets loved that news. The price of a barrel of Brent Crude, around $110 prior to the announcement, immediately dipped below $95. U.S. stock markets were up almost 3% today, and emerging markets were generally up more than that.

But, what exactly is the present situation? More than 24 hours later, the Strait does not appear to be open and, as Bloomberg put it, “a series of conflicting statements — and actions — since the announcement suggests fundamental differences remain, making the truce even more fragile.” VP Vance is currently expected to lead the U.S. side of negotiations with the Iranians this weekend in Pakistan.

And while the last 36 hours obviously could have gone far worse, are we in a good place? Former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger doesn’t think so:

“if this ceasefire holds, the United States lost. Not “didn’t fully win.” Not “achieved mixed results.” Lost. And the victory laps being run out of the White House today — the Truth Social posts, Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon podium declaring “Operation Epic Fury” a “historic victory” — are the kind of performance that would embarrass any serious military strategist, and that should embarrass every American who’s been paying attention.”

Or, as a headline in The Atlantic put it: “Trump’s Iran Deal Gives Him Nothing He Wanted”, with the sub-head “U.S. declarations of victory ring hollow”.

In other news, the result in last night’s runoff by-election in the safe Republican seat of the Georgia 14th was a 56-44 victory for the Trump-endorsed candidate. By comparison: a few weeks ago in the jungle Democrats collectively got 40% of the vote; a year-and-a-half ago the same Democratic candidate lost to MTG, 64-36; and in that same election, Trump beat Harris 68-31.

There was also a Wisconsin Supreme Court election last night, the third such election in the past three years. The previous two elections were national news, as in both cases the winning side would garner a 4-3 majority. This election attracted much less attention and spending, however, as majority control of the court was not in play. Nonetheless, after winning the 2023 election 55-44 and winning the 2025 election 55-45, last night the “Democratic” candidate (technically these elections are non-partisan) won 60-40. As such, both the Georgia and Wisconsin results last night suggest a strengthening wind at the Democrats’ back going into this fall.

On the legal front, yesterday plaintiffs filed their reply brief with the Court of International Trade in the Section 122 tariffs case, Oregon v. Trump, with respect to their request for summary judgment. Today a bipartisan group of economists with history in government service filed an amicus brief supporting plaintiffs. I find the plaintiffs’ arguments extremely compelling, to be honest. Oral argument at the CIT is on Friday.

Finally, several days ago it was announced that the administration had issued a legal opinion to the effect that the Presidential Records Act — the focal point of the Mar-a-Lago documents case — is unconstitutional, notwithstanding the 1977 SCOTUS decision in Nixon v. GSA. This week the American Historical Association filed suit in federal court, so AHA v. Trump will be another fun one to watch.

These are tenuous times, warranting a brief unscheduled post.

I’m writing this around dinner hour on a Tuesday, two days after Easter. As the country woke up on the morning of Easter Sunday, the following unbelievable social media post from President Trump was in the news:

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Yesterday he set 8pm Eastern Time today as the deadline for Iran to comply, although this afternoon there has been talk that Pakistan is attempting to broker a two-week extension. Today Trump reiterated that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” in the absence of a deal.

Assuming he goes through with it, rather than giving us another TACO Tuesday, we would appear to be talking about something on the spectrum of war crimes (attacking civilian infrastructure) to wholesale genocide, possibly with the use of tactical nukes sprinkled in. Fun times.

Congress remains out of session. There have been calls today from dozens of prominent Democrats that the Cabinet needs to invoke the 25th Amendment. But not just Democrats: former Trump-aligned types such as ex-Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Anthony Scaramucci, Candace Owens have talked about the 25th Amendment today.

Speaking of MTG, today is the runoff by-election for her old seat between a Trump-endorsed Republican and a Democrat, the two survivors from a recent jungle by-election. Collectively the Republicans outpolled the Democracts 60-40 in the jungle, but it will be interesting to see what happens today. The Democratic candidate, Shawn Harris, is a Black retired general who lost 64-36 to MTG in 2024.

Yesterday Trump became the first sitting President to ever attend a SCOTUS oral argument, sitting through Solicitor General Sauer’s defense of the birthright citizenship executive order in Trump v. Barbara. The general consensus is that the arguments went better than expected for the administration, but not well enough to lead to a win. It is possible that SG Sauer created enough doubt on the constitutional issues that the Court will decide it doesn’t need to reach those issues and instead resolve the case against on statutory grounds; that would leave the door open for potential future legislative and/or executive action to modify the long-standing conception of when and how citizenship attaches.

One interesting thing about this case is that it has inverted the usual political views on textualism versus living constitutionalism. Concepts like illegal immigration and birth tourism were unthinkable in the 1860s, so there is something to be said for the notion that the 14th Amendment should be interpreted in a manner that produces reasonable results applied to more modern fact patterns, rather than slavishly focusing on the original meaning of the words used at the time. But it’s pretty funny to see Justice Alito pounding the drum the loudest in favor of a living constitution argument, and the ACLU leading the argument in favor of a purely textualist analysis. But, as Chief Justice Roberts said, to laughter: “Well, it’s a new world, [but] it’s the same Constitution.”

Trump’s address to the nation last night, his first live address on the Iran war (he had released a taped video message on the first day of the war), lasted 19 minutes but covered no meaningful ground. Representative headlines this morning included The Atlantic’s “Maybe Trump Should Not Have Given This Speech,” Politico’s “‘What The Hell Did He Just Say?’ GOP Iran Worries Build After Trump Speech”, and the L.A. Times’ “Trump Speech on Iran War and Recent Remarks on Oil, NATO, Daycare Costs Land With a Thud.” The price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate, which was at $67 when the war started, went from $98 before the speech to $112 as I write this, 24 hours later.

In Nate Silver’s approval rating poll average, Trump has just fallen below 40% for the first time in his second term.

Speaker Johnson now seems willing to entertain the Senate-passed compromise to fund the less controversial parts of DHS, although Republicans are now talking about a two-track approach in which the Senate would start working on trying to use budget reconciliation to fund ICE and CBP rather than engage meaningfully with Democratic demands for ICE reforms.

Finally, the big news of the day is that Trump has fired Attorney General Bondi, after trial balloons to that effect were widely floated yesterday. The left loathed her for treating the DOJ like Trump’s personal law firm, while the right ripped into her over how she has managed the Epstein files. While Todd Blanche has been named interim AG, the rumor is that Trump is considering nominating his EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin, as Bondi’s permanent replacement.

Three-and-a-half weeks since my last post, which is so long that I have trouble knowing what to write about. However I wanted to get a quick post in before tomorrow, which promises to be a big day for two reasons: The oral arguments at SCOTUS in the birthright citizenship cases; and Trump’s first presidential address on Iran in the evening.

Iran, Iran, Iran… The news shifts from day to day, sometimes dramatically within a day. At this point hostilities continue, with U.S. action limited for now to air force and naval missions. However, Marines and Special Operations forces have recently been moved into the theatre of war, potentially for the purposes of invading Kharg Island, through which most of Iran’s oil exports pass. Today Trump said the war would end in “two to three weeks”, which led to a significant stock market rally.

Even with today’s rally, however, the S&P 500 is still down 4.6% for the quarter, basically all of which occurred since the war started. The average price of a gallon of gas in the U.S. now stands at $4.02, up from $2.98 before the war started; a gallon of diesel is $5.45, up from $3.76.

The war has been estimated to be costing at least $1 billion per day, and the Pentagon has floated the idea of submitting a request for $200 billion in supplemental military appropriations. It seems remote that there would be 60 Senate votes for such a bill, however, raising the spectre that the budget reconciliation process might need to be invoked to pass the military appropriations.

Is the U.S. even winning the war in Iran? That’s not exactly clear, partly because our war aims have not been consistently and clearly articulated. Many have suggested that Trump thought he could decapitate the Ayatollah and Iran would immediately install pliant new leadership, following the Maduro/Venezuela model. Instead, a defiant Iranian regime has threatened the global economy by closing the Strait of Hormuz, and America’s traditional allies have declined to get involved in assisting the U.S. military in re-opening the Strait. We are also seeing firsthand, as the Russians observed in Ukraine, the limitations of traditional military hardware against cheaper, plentiful drone technology. Trump may be inclined to declare victory and move on, but it is not clear that he can actually do that.

Returning to domestic matters, the DHS standoff remains unresolved. Last week the Senate caved in to Democratic demands and passed a clean fill to fund the TSA and other uncontroversial DHS-subagencies, before immediately adjourning for Easter break. However the next day Speaker Johnson refused to take that bill up, instead passing yet another bill to fully fund all of DHS, which is a non-starter in the Senate, who remained on break. Meanwhile, as TSA agents have started to miss multiple paychecks, airport security delays have started to become headline news, particularly at Houston’s Bush airport where security lines were 4 hours long a few days back. This prompted Trump to issue an executive order authorizing pay for TSA agents, which (a) he doesn’t have any apparent authority to do, plus (b) if he did have this authority then why did he wait a month to exercise it?

Trump’s single-minded domestic focus remains passage of the voting “reforms” in the SAVE (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility) Act, and he has threatened to not sign any other bills until it is passed. Debate on the bill has begun in the Senate, but that motion to commence debate only passed 51-48 (with Murkowski opposed). As such it is hard to imagine 60 votes could be garnered for it, and Majority Leader Thune seems unwilling to nuke the filibuster for good over this.

There were additional primary elections in certain states this month, most notably my former state of Illinois, where in most seats the primaries are more important that the general. In the Illinois 7th, where my 17-year-old kids were able to cast their first-ever votes in the primary (since they’ll turn 18 by the general), Danny Davis’ retirement after 30 years created a wide open primary, won narrowly by the candidate he endorsed, LaShawn Ford. I was also interested in the primary up where I once lived in the Illinois 9th, where Jan Schakowsky’s replacement after 30 years will be Evanston mayor and former University of Chicago mathematician (!) Daniel Biss. In the Illinois 4th, where I had lived the last time I voted in Illinois (although in the last redistricting my former condo was moved into the 3rd), there was also a retiring incumbent, but no competitive primary. This was a result of the timing of when Rep. Chuy Garcia announced his intention to not run for re-election, thus ensuring that only his chief-of-staff, Patty Garcia, actually filed to run in the Democratic primary. (Senator Daines in Montana did this exact same trick a few weeks ago, on the other side of the aisle.)

Elsewhere, Trump did not carry through with his threat to endorse one of Cornyn and Paxton for the Texas Senate primary runoff election and implore the other to drop out, and as a result both candidates remain on the ballot for the runoff. Also, the Democrats recently won a by-election for the Florida House seat that includes Mar-A-Lago (an election in which the President voted by mail, despite his strong rhetoric against mail-in voting) as well as a Florida Senate by-election, with both districts having previously been soundly Republican. This makes a total of 30 state legislative seats that have flipped from Republican to Democratic since the 2024 elections, with none having flipped the other way.

What else to discuss… The Administration continues to receive some legal setbacks, so let’s work through a few of those:

• Today, a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction in National Trust for Historical Prevention v. National Park Service, preventing the administration from continuing with the White House ballroom construction project until Congress provides authorization, noting that “no statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have.”
• Also today, a federal judge ruled in the consolidated cases NPR v. Trump and PBS v. Trump, regarding an executive order from May 2025 aimed at defunding NPR and PBS. With the Corporation for Public Broadcasting having since been dissolved, much of the relief that NPR and PBS had sought is now, sadly, moot. However, the portion of the executive order stating that “the heads of all agencies shall identify and terminate, to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law, any direct or indirect funding of NPR and PBS” has been ruled to be unconstitutional. Quoting from the opinion: “The Federal Defendants fail to cite a single case in which a court has ever upheld a statute or executive action that bars a particular person or entity from participating in any federally funded activity based on that person or entity’s past speech. Perhaps that is because neither Congress nor any prior Administration has ever attempted something so extreme…”
• Last week, a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction in Anthropic v. Department of War, a case about the administration’s controversial decision to characterize U.S.-based AI company Anthropic as a “supply chain risk”, which as a practical matter could be a death sentence for the company. The opinion notes that “nothing in the governing statute supports the Orwellian notion that an American company may be branded a potential adversary and saboteur of the U.S. for expressing disagreement with the government.” (However, separate litigation on that subject is also pending with the D.C. Circuit.)
• Three weeks ago, a federal judge ruled that Kari Lake’s appointment in early 2025 as head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media was in violation of the Vacancies Act, and hence actions she took in that role were invalid. A week later, he ruled in Abramovitz v. Lake that Voice of America employees who had been placed on leave should be brought back to work. However today an appellate panel agreed to stay that order pending appeal.
• A week and a half ago, a federal judge ruled in New York Times v. Department of Defense that recent Pentagon actions to restrict news outlets violated the 1st Amendment.
• Finally, in two cases that came up through the SCOTUS shadow docket, the Court did not grant the administration a stay pending appeal of lower court decisions preventing the administration from revoking Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Syrians. Instead SCOTUS set the cases for oral argument in late April, as the final cases it will hear this term. With Secretary Noem’s departure and the successful installation this month (on a 54-45 vote) of former Senator Mullin to be DHS Secretary, the Syrian case will now be styled Mullin v. Doe, while the Haitian case remains Trump v. Diot.

Finally, the third in the series of “No Kings” rallies took place on Saturday, without incident. Organizers claim over 8 million participants in over 3000 locations, up from a claim of 5 million participants in each of the two previous events (in June and October 2025). The attendees at the St. Paul rally included Bruce Springsteen (singing “Streets of Minneapolis”), Joan Baez, Jane Fonda, Senator Sanders, and Governor Walz. We probably should have gone, but we didn’t.

It has, as ever, been an eventful two weeks since my last post. A lot to catch up on:

State of the Union. I didn’t see any of this year’s SOTU speech (which is probably good for my mental health), since on that evening I was taking a long-time coworker out to dinner to celebrate his impending retirement. At 1 hour and 47 minutes, it was the longest SOTU address in at least the past 60 years. From what I read, it was an address aimed largely at his base, while Democrats felt it was largely full of lies.

Iran. When I last wrote, there was a lot of saber-rattling going on about the possibility of war with Iran, with a noteworthy concentration of U.S. military might in that part of the world. Two days after the SOTU there were talks going on between the U.S. and Iran in Geneva. Apparently those talks did not go well, because two days after that – seven days ago today – the U.S. initiated a bombing campaign in Iran. Demonstrating the effectiveness of both our intelligence and our military might, on the first day the U.S. killed Iran’s supreme leader, the 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

So: Are we at war with Iran? Under whose authority? What are our aims? Do we have any allies in this effort, apart from Israel? How long is this expected to last? Will ground troops be involved? How do the American people feel about this?

These are good, and obvious, questions. The answers coming out of the administration to these questions are muddled and amorphous.

Certainly, Congress did not approve the attack in advance. This week, Democrats advanced War Powers Resolutions in both houses that called for an immediate end to hostilities, but they failed (47-53 in the Senate, with Sen. Paul joining the Democrats but Sen. Fetterman joining the Republicans; and 212-219 in the House, with Rep. Massie and one other Republican joining the Democrats but Rep. Golden and three other Democrats joining the Republicans). After the votes Speaker Johnson said “we’re not at war”, which feels like splitting hairs at best and disingenuous at worst.

A poll taken earlier this week, after the news of Khamenei’s death, indicates that Americans are opposed to military action in Iran by a margin of 44-56, and that only 36% of Americans approve of how Trump is dealing with Iran. That strikes me as remarkably low numbers for a poll taken within days of the start of military action, and with a major success on the first day and little in the way of U.S. casualties (there have been 6 soldiers reported dead so far). If Trump thought military action in Iran would bring him a polling bump – something he repeatedly accused Obama of considering when his poll numbers were low – it’s not happening so far.

One other thing we do know is that the price of oil went up 35% this week. In recent weeks Trump has talked frequently about how gasoline prices have been coming down, although his rhetoric on that subject – including in the SOTU – has been exaggerated; now gas prices are up 14% this week, and likely headed up further.

Unlike Venezuela – where after Maduro’s extraction the remainder of the government has seemingly decided to play ball with the U.S. to avoid further turmoil – the Iranian regime shows no signs of rolling over after its leader’s demise, and as a result we may be talking about Iran for a long time.

Epstein Transparency. I haven’t been talking much about the aftermath of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, but information has been coming out in recent weeks and months, at perhaps a slightly slower pace than what the law literally required, and with many unexplained redactions and omissions. Both the corporate world and foreign governments have been taking actions against people as their presence in what many are now calling the “Epstein class” has been revealed more broadly. Most notably, the former Prince Andrew, now styled Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, has been arrested and may lose his place in the line of succession. It has become fashionable in certain circles to view everything Trump now does, including the attack in Iran, through the lens of “trying to distract from the Epstein files”.

The House saw fit to subpoena a former President and First Lady recently to discuss their ties to Epstein, but their targets were not the Trumps but rather the Clintons. Democratic members noted that at least this set a precedent under which the Trumps could be subpoenaed to provide similar testimony somewhere down the line.

It became apparent that the DOJ had withheld certain FBI files relating to their interviews with a woman who had claimed, during the first Trump term, that while a minor she had been sexually assaulted by Trump after being introduced to him by Epstein. Those files were belatedly released late this week.

DHS. Things remain at a standstill in Congress with respect to the partial government shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. Two days again the Senate voted 51-45 to fund DHS, but 60 votes were required; Sen. Fetterman was the only Democrat to support the measure.

However, there was some important DHS-related news this week: Trump removed DHS Secretary Noem, shuffling her to a newly created position as Special Envoy to the Shield of the Americas, a brand new transnational organization involving the U.S. and selected Central and South American countries. His intended replacement as DHS Secretary is Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), who is cut from a similar political cloth as Noem.

What prompted Trump to finally fire a cabinet member? Pundit Charlie Sykes:

“Noem was not fired for (1) killing her puppy, (2) the cinematic brutality of ICE, (3) her cosplaying at migrant gulags, (4) the murder of two Americans in Minneapolis, or even for (5) her special assistant sidepiece, Corey Lewandowski. Nor was she fired because she lied so often and so easily — including about her victims, like Alex Pretti. As we know, lying is not a disqualification in the Era of Trump. Kristi’s problem that she lied badly and about the wrong things, and because she made Donald Trump look bad. During her incandescently awful Senate testimony, she said that Trump had approved her $200 million self-stroking ad campaign. Trump, reportedly, was displeased.”

ProPublica had done some reporting into the cronyism-cum-corruption behind this ad campaign 3 months ago, which did not go through normal government procurement efforts; but it was Sen. Kennedy (R-LA)’s questioning of Noem about it this week that reportedly was the final straw for Trump.

Primaries. Tuesday was primary night in Texas, which featured competitive and extremely expensive Senate primaries in both parties. Texas is one of the states where, should no candidate garner 50%+1 of the vote in the primary, there is a later runoff election with the top two candidates. Each party’s primary featured two leading candidates and potential spoilers.

On the Democratic side, the two main candidates were Jasmine Crockett, a 44-year-old Black woman in her second term in the U.S House after having served one term in the Texas House, and James Talarico, a 36-year-old white (non-Latino) man in his fourth term in the Texas House. (The third candidate was extremely minor and only garnered 1.3% of the vote.) The Crockett vs. Talarico matchup was an interesting litmus test for the Democratic party, even though both candidates are similar from a policy standpoint: Crockett was seen as a firebrand who could energize the base, while Talarico was seen as someone who might be able to appeal to a broader audience, particularly given his frequent references to his religious faith. Polling had been close but slightly favored Talarico, who won, 52.4 – 46.2.

On the Republican side, four-term incumbent John Cornyn faced two candidates to his right, controversial Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Congressman Wesley Hunt, one of four Black Republicans in the House. The Cornyn-Paxton race was the most expensive Senate primary in history, even though it seemed almost certain that Hunt would attract enough support to prevent either candidate from avoiding a runoff. And so it transpired, although contrary to most polling it was Cornyn who came out slightly on top, 41.9 – 40.7 – 13.5 (there were five other minor candidates splitting the rest of the vote).

With most of Hunt’s vote expected to more naturally flow to Paxton than Cornyn, Tuesday’s results raised the possibility of a Paxton v. Talarico general election matchup, albeit not until an expensive and bloody Republican runoff campaign. Of the four possible outcomes, Paxton v. Talarico is the one that many believe could actually put the Texas Senate seat in play this fall. Trump has stated this week that he intends to make an endorsement in the runoff soon – which most believe would be Cornyn – and that he expects the unendorsed candidate to drop out. Paxton’s willingness to play ball is unclear.

But perhaps the most interesting takeaway from the Texas primaries is the turnout. With extremely visible primaries in both parties, there were more votes cast in the Democratic Senate race than in the Republican Senate race, by a ratio of about 51.5-48.5. In Texas. Six years ago, when Cornyn faced only minimal primary opposition while there was a completely wide-open field on the Democratic side (with 5 candidates getting between 10% and 23% of the vote), the corresponding ratio was 49-51, and that was without a compelling Republican race. A major theme of the Biden era was the shift of Latino voters in the Texas border counties, who were previously reliably Democratic, to the Republicans. Hidalgo County, the 9th-largest county in Texas and one whose population is over 90% Latino, voted 70-29 for Obama in 2012, but went 51-48 for Trump in 2024; last week, the ratio of Democratic votes to Republican votes in the Senate primary in Hidalgo County was 77-23.

Tariffs. The recent SCOTUS decision in Learning Resources left unresolved the question of what actually happens next, with respect to the $166 billion or so of illegal IEEPA tariffs that have been collected. Judge Eaton of the Court of International Trade issued an order on Wednesday in a case called Atmus Filtration v. U.S. ruling that “all importers of record whose entries were subject to IEEPA duties are entitled to the benefit of the Learning Resources decision,” distinguishing this situation from the “no universal injunctions” concept from Trump v. CASA on the grounds that the CIT already has national geographic jurisdiction and exclusive subject matter jurisdiction on this matter.

As such, Eaton ordered CBP to stop collecting IEEPA tariffs and start refunding tariffs already collected, without importers needing to file suit. On Friday, CBP responded with a seemingly earnest explanation of why it couldn’t immediately do that, but committing to developing a new capability within 45 days to allow it to issue the refunds.

Meanwhile, Trump’s new post-Learning Resources tariffs, imposed under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, are the subject of a new lawsuit in the CIT brought by 24 states, with Oregon as the lead plaintiff. Oregon v. Trump makes the interesting argument that while the never-used Section 122 authorizes the temporary imposition of tariffs to combat “large and serious balance-of-payments deficits”, those balance-of-payment deficits were only possible under the fixed-rate exchange system that was in effect when the bill was passed but was ended in 1976. As a result, per plaintiffs’ theory, the tariff authority granted to the President in Section 122 is now illusory, because the precondition to use that authority can no longer be met in a world where the U.S. dollar is not pegged to the price of gold or other foreign currencies.

Finally, we end by staying in the legal world, on a somewhat more frivolous note:

The War on Big Law. Recall that last year, Trump had issued executive orders singling out several law firms, some of which caved in to the President’s extortive tactics, and others of which sued. Rulings in four different similar suits had all gone against the government at the lower court level and are being consolidated on appeal to the D.C. Circuit. The government’s opening brief in the appeals was due yesterday.

Four days earlier, on Monday, the government filed a notice that it was voluntarily dropping the appeals, with the consent of the four law firms. This seemed to reflect the widely held belief that the government really has no case here. However… the next day, the government filed another notice that it was withdrawing the previously day’s abandonment of the appeals and would be preceding with the case. (One imagines Trump heard about this and was not pleased.) The law firms’ response was, okay fine, but we oppose any delay in the deadline for filing the government’s opening brief. So far I haven’t heard whether the government got its brief filed yesterday or not.

Today we are two days away from the end of the Winter Olympics, which means that from my perspective we’re finally getting to the interesting part. Yesterday was the women’s hockey gold medal game and the men’s curling semifinals, while today we had the men’s hockey semifinals and the women’s curling semifinals. Add on the top of that the fact that annual actuarial opinions are due in a week, and I have a lot on my mind right now.

So, naturally, today was when SCOTUS finally released its opinions in the IEEPA tariffs cases…

Recall that two different cases from lower courts that were consolidated for argument at the Supreme Court. The case I had been following more was V.O.S. Selections v. Trump, which came through the Court of International Trade and then the Federal Circuit. In that case, the plaintiffs were arguing that two different families of tariffs that Trump promulgated by executive order in 2025, citing the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) as his source of statutory authority to do so, were not lawful under that act. Whereas in the other case on which the D.C. Circuit had yet to take action, Learning Resources v. Trump, plaintiffs argued that IEEPA does not provide the President with a source of authority to enact tariffs, period.

History will, somewhat randomly, refer to today’s SCOTUS holding as Learning Resources rather than V.O.S. Selections. This is both appropriate and ironic. The ironic part comes from the fact that SCOTUS actually ordered today for the original lawsuit filed by Learning Resources and its fellow plaintiffs to be dismissed, on the grounds that it was filed in the wrong jurisdiction. The appropriate part comes from the fact that, by a 6-3 margin, SCOTUS has adopted the argument advanced by the Learning Resources plaintiffs, as opposed to that advanced by the V.O.S. Selections plaintiffs: namely, IEEPA does not provide the President with any authority to enact tariffs.

The outcome and voting lineup were just as I (along with many others) had predicted coming out of November’s oral argument: 6-3 to strike down the tariffs, with the dissenters being Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh. Roberts had the main opinion, which is relatively brief at 21 pages, although the three liberals declined to join the portion of his opinion that invokes Roberts’ major questions doctrine. Kavanaugh’s principal dissent, joined by the two arch-conservatives, is three times as long, at 63 pages. There is also a 46-page Gorsuch concurrence whose main purpose appears to be to throw shade at the judgment of every other justice on the Court except for Roberts; a 4-page Barrett concurrence that seemingly exists solely to rebut what Gorsuch said about her in his concurrence; and a 7-page Kagan concurrence (joined by the other two liberals) explaining why there was no need to invoke the major questions doctrine to arrive at the majority’s result. Finally, at the ideological far ends of the Court, there is also an 18-page Thomas dissent articulating his view that it would not be unconstitutional (as many have argued) for Congress to delegate unfettered tariff authority to the President; and there is a 5-page Jackson concurrence pointing out that this is actually a very easy case to resolve, assuming that one is willing to place weight on legislative history, which has become extremely unfashionable in the 21st century as a technique of statutory interpretation.

With all that, it has become more clear why it took three-and-a-half months for the Court to produce its opinions, even though the case was of the highest possible national interest.

Trump did not take the news well, referring to the justices who voted with the majority–two of whom he appointed–as “fools and lap dogs”, and saying specifically of his appointees Gorsuch and Barrett that they were “an embarrassment to their families.” This prompted retired Judge Luttig, once on the shortlist for the SCOTUS seats that went to Roberts and Alito, to say that today marked “the president’s most spectacular display yet of his utter disrespect for the Constitution and his contempt for the Supreme Court of the United States.”

So, what happens now?

It would appear that a whole host of tariffs already collected by the U.S. government are unlawful, and refunds are owed. This may be a long and complicated process. Per an article from September in Lawfare:

“If the IEEPA tariffs are ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court, importers will not receive refund checks automatically; they must affirmatively request refunds through the proper channels. The likely pathways are (a) [Post Summary Corrections] for unliquidated entries; (b) protests for liquidated entries; and, if necessary, (c) litigation at the [Court for International Trade] to enforce refund rights.”

And to the extent importers receive refunds, will those funds ultimately flow to the consumers who, per recent academic research, bore the brunt of the tariffs? Probably not, prompting the NYTimes to write tonight that “the lack of refunds for consumers is likely to be another political liability for the Trump administration”.

Looking forward rather than backwards, Trump remains unrepentant about his tariff-centric economic policies. Today he issued a new executive order, applying authority granted to the President (but never previously used) under the Trade Act of 1974, imposing a uniform 10% tariff on imports from all countries, with some exclusions (such as goods covered under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement). However, unlike his attempted IEEPA tariffs, Trade Act tariffs require explicit Congressional approval in order to persist beyond 150 days. This new global tariff will take effect on Tuesday, which is also the date of Trump’s State of the Union address; that should be an interesting evening.

What was it Ford said when Nixon resigned, “our long national nightmare is over”? Well, today “our long Minnesota nightmare” may be over: Tom Homan announced at a press conference the impending end of Operation Metro Surge.

However, D.C. remains at loggerheads over DHS funding. Last week House Democrats prepared a 10-point list of demands, but it wasn’t until last night that the White House made an offer, which Democrats said was inadequate. Today the Senate took up a vote to pass the DHS funding bill that had previously passed the house, but Democrats remained united (save for Fetterman) and the bill failed. As such funding for the TSA, FEMA, and other arms of the DHS will expire on Saturday, although ICE and the CBP will continue thanks to funding previously provided within the OBBBA.

Earlier in the week Speaker Johnson found himself unable, with his reduced legislative margin, to continue playing fast and loose with House rules in order to prevent any votes on Trump’s IEEPA tariffs. As such, there was a House vote this week to cancel Trump’s 25% tariff on Canada, and it passed, 219-211, with six Republicans defecting. The Senate had previously passed a similar measure three months ago, but one imagines Trump will veto it. Still, it is a sign of a crack in the Republicans’ Trumpist unity.

This week the House passed an election reform bill known as the SAVE Act, along largely partisan lines (218-213). The bill would require proof of U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote; based on experience from a similar law in Kansas, the number of U.S. citizens that would likely be prevented from voting under this requirement is orders of magnitude greater than the number of non-U.S. citizens currently on the voter rolls. The bill faces a likely filibuster in the Senate.

Turning to judicial news, this week a federal grand jury in D.C. refused to return an indictment against 6 sitting members of Congress, veterans all, who had released a video in November reminding military troops that they do not need to follow illegal orders. Trump had reacted very badly to the video, referring to it as “seditious behavior” potentially punishable by death. Separately, Defense Secretary Hegseth had sought to reduce the retirement rank and pay of the most prominent of the six, Senator Kelly (D-AZ), in reaction to the video; but today a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction to the senator in his lawsuit (Kelly v. Hegseth) to prevent Hegseth from taking these actions, on the grounds that they violated Kelly’s 1st Amendment rights.

This week Trump threatened to block the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge, the new road connection between Detroit and Windsor paid for by the Canadian government. It turns out that shortly before making that threat, his Commerce Secretary was actively lobbied by the billionaire who owns the existing bridge linking the two cities, the Ambassador Bridge.

But believe it or not, that was neither the worst nor most corrupt Trump action of late in the world of transportation. Trump has frozen $16 billion in federal funding for the Hudson River train tunnel connecting New Jersey and New York; however, per reporting, he told Senator Schumer he would un-freeze the funds if both Dulles International Airport and New York’s Penn Station were to be renamed after Donald J. Trump. Last week a federal judge ordered that funding be restored, but stayed that ruling until today; and today the 2nd Circuit declined to issue an emergency stay, putting the court ruling into force.

On Saturday there was a by-election in Houston to fill the Congressional seat in the 18th, a safely Democratic district that once belonged to President Matt Santos. Thanks to first Texas Republican intransigence, and then a failure of any candidate to garner 50% of the vote in a jungle general, this seat had been vacant for about 11 months. This weekend’s runoff election involved two Democratic candidates, with the winner seated yesterday. That makes the House currently 218-214 Republican, with 3 open seats: Governor Sherrill’s old seat (to be filled in April), MTG’s old seat (to be filled in March), and a seemingly safe Republican seat (under the old map, not the post-Proposition 50 map) in the extreme NE corner of California (to be filled in August).

Today the latest, brief, government shutdown ended, a day later than originally expected. While Trump had endorsed the compromise passed last week by the Senate and urged its swift enactment, it took Speaker Johnson an extra day to get his ducks in a row. The bill passed, 217-214, which looks deceptively like the Republicans’ current House margin. However looks are a little misleading here: 21 Democrats, mostly moderates (e.g., the retiring Jared Golden) and appropriators (e.g., the retiring Steny Hoyer), supported the bill while 21 Republicans, mostly Freedom Caucus types (e.g., Biggs, Boebert, and Massie), opposed the bill. Now the hard work begins, of trying to negotiate a compromise on DHS funding in a post-Minneapolis world in which the Democratic base is increasingly supportive of the previously radical position of defunding ICE.

Returning to Saturday, there was a very interesting election result out of Texas, in a by-election for a State Senate seat in Tarrant County. Tarrant, home to Fort Worth, is a rare example of a county that is both urban and staunchly Republican. In 2022, this State Senate seat went 60-40 to the Republican incumbent. That incumbent resigned in 2025 to become the Acting Comptroller in Texas, so there was a by-election in November which attracted 2 Republican and 1 Democratic candidates. The 2 Republicans together outpolled the Democrat, 52.6 – 47.4; however, neither Republican garnered a majority, so a runoff was scheduled for this past weekend. In that runoff, the Democrat won 57.2 – 42.8, despite reportedly being out-spent 7 to 1 and despite Trump having thrice posted on social media in support of the Republican. I keep seeing reporting that Trump won this State Senate district by 17 points in 2024, so roughly 58-41, although I have not been able to verify that myself; Tarrant County as a whole went to Trump but by a much smaller margin. Quite a result for the Democrats.

Finally, today a federal lawsuit (AAUP vs. DHS) was filed, asserting that Trump’s Gold Card immigration visa program is illegal. What I didn’t realize until the reading the lawsuit is that the way the Trump administration has implemented his Gold Card concept is by “treating a payment to [the] Commerce Department as evidence of statutory eligibility for EB-1 [extraordinary ability] and EB-2 [exceptional ability] visas, and expediting consideration of applications from individuals who make the payment.” As such, plaintiffs argue that “the Gold Card program overrides Congress’s choices—both as to who qualifies for employment-based immigration and how and under what conditions agencies may collect revenue… [and] does so at the expense of qualified EB-1 and EB-2 applicants, who are effectively crowded out of limited annual visa allotments as visas are steered to Gold Card recipients.”

The actual temperature in Minneapolis has gotten slightly warmer from the weekend’s lows (with Friday having been the first sub-minus-20 Fahrenheit day here in almost 7 years), while the rhetorical temperature has cooled a little. Greg Bovino, the controversial Border Patrol executive who was leading Operation Metro Surge here in the Twin Cities after having led Operation Midway Blitz last fall in Chicago, has been replaced by Trump “border czar”, Tom Homan. Homan suggested today that ICE plans to draw down the number of agents deployed in the Twin Cities.

Yesterday Bruce Springsteen dropped a new single, “Streets of Minneapolis”, that he wrote on Saturday after the killing of Alex Pretti. The lyrics reference both Pretti and Renee Good by name, and also name drop “King Trump and his private army from the DHS” and “Miller and Noem’s dirty lies”.

Also yesterday, 7 Senate Republicans joined all of the Democrats to oppose the omnibus funding bill previously passed by the House, putting a government shutdown this weekend in play. Today a compromise has apparently been reached, under which all of the non-DHS components of the House Bill remain intact and DHS funding is provided for an additional 2 weeks only, thus allowing further opportunity for debate. The Senate is expected to vote on the compromise later tonight and Trump has urged its passage. The House may not return from its break early enough to prevent a technical government shutdown, but it will be back on Monday.

Today Senator Klobuchar officially announced her run for Minnesota Governor to replace Tim Walz, who said today that he is done with elective office, ending speculation that he might seek to appoint himself to the Senate to replace Klobuchar. Speaking of the gubernatorial race, earlier this week one of the announced Republican primary candidates, Chris Kabel, announced he was dropping out on the grounds he could no longer in good conscience support the Republican party in the wake of the ICE occupation of Minnesota.

Finally, today Trump filed a lawsuit against the IRS and the Treasury Department, seeking $10 billion as compensation for the fact that in 2020 a Treasury contractor obtained and leaked Trump’s tax returns. It will be interesting, and perhaps depressing, to see how the government responds to this lawsuit.