After a fun mailbag episode, I had made my mood low for a week composing On Joe’s Age, my reflection on Jake Tapper’s insufferable book Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.
So it was with great pleasure that I was interrupted from my binge of King of the Hill in advance of its revival (I only recently learned the show was not “MAGA Simpsons,” as I had stereotyped it) by a NYT headline that Mr. Trump had overstepped his authority, and his disastrous trade policies (frequently compared to economic cock-and-ball-torture) were illegitimate. (“The President’s assertion of tariff-making authority…, unbounded as it is by any limitation in duration or scope, exceeds any tariff authority delegated to the President.”)
Most Americans of basic education already recognized that taxation authority is vested in the legislative branch, not the executive, and that tariffs are taxes, but the Congress has been bitches and refused to reclaim those powers for themselves. Thank God for the United States Court of International Trade.
In other good news, Elon Musk has been kicked to the curb like dog and will no longer be serving as president. From his petulant tone, we can imagine that he is not feeling appreciated or beloved, which is fantastic because he is not.
While the state of the union is still a fucking disaster, we should open the champagne (V.O.S. brand, in gratitude) on nights like this. The gang at the Hex office has been enjoying bottomless mimosas since the news came across the wire. I hope everybody’s Thursday is just as great.
EDIT: Now, it is Thursday, I am hungover and an appeals court has paused the injunction, so I guess the economy is still in trouble while this winds its way through the process, and the administration complains about a “judicial coup.” F.