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tom steyer
After Supreme Court Kills Tariffs, Trump Plots '15% Tax Out of YOUR Pockets to Feed HIS Deranged Ego'
"Donald Trump is a gangster with no respect for the rule of law and no understanding of economics," said former Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer.
Feb 21, 2026
Shortly after the US Supreme Court on Friday ruled against President Donald Trump's use of emergency powers to impose sweeping tariffs, the Republican announced plans for a 10% global import tax under another law. By Saturday, he'd hiked it to 15%.
In a 6-3 decision penned by Chief Justice John Roberts, the high court found that "nothing" in the text of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) "enables the president to unilaterally impose tariffs." Trump responded by not only lashing out at the justices but also invoking Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 for a 10% global tariff beginning February 24.
Then, in a Saturday morning Truth Social post, Trump said:
Based on a thorough, detailed, and complete review of the ridiculous, poorly written, and extraordinarily anti-American decision on tariffs issued yesterday, after MANY months of contemplation, by the United States Supreme Court, please let this statement serve to represent that I, as President of the United States of America, will be, effective immediately, raising the 10% Worldwide Tariff on Countries, many of which have been 'ripping' the US off for decades, without retribution (until I came along!), to the fully allowed, and legally tested, 15% level. During the next short number of months, the Trump Administration will determine and issue the new and legally permissible Tariffs, which will continue our extraordinarily successful process of Making America Great Again GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE!!! Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Critics across the country swiftly blasted the announcement. Democratic strategist Jon Cooper argued that "Trump CANNOT legally impose a 15% global tariff because the US doesn't meet the clear emergency economic conditions envisioned by Section 122. If Trump tries to invoke it, it would certainly face immediate legal challenges, economic pushback, and potential congressional scrutiny."
Former Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer declared that "Donald Trump is a gangster with no respect for the rule of law and no understanding of economics. This is a 15% tax out of YOUR pockets to feed HIS deranged ego."
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who's expected to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, similarly said that "Donald Trump just announced a NEW 15% TAX on the American people. He does not care about you."
Another California Democrat, Congressman Ted Lieu, quipped that "crybaby Trump woke up this morning and still feels hurt from the Supreme Court slapping him. So he's taking it out on the American people by increasing his 10% tax increase to 15%. These temporary tariffs will be challenged in court and Democrats will kill them when they expire."
Elected Democrats have often spoken out against Trump's legally dubious duties, but the GOP-controlled Congress hadn't forcefully countered them. As Politico detailed Friday:
Before the ruling, while congressional Republicans had occasionally grumbled about the policy, they had largely fallen in line when actually required to vote on it. Now, the Supreme Court’s decision could put more pressure on them to break with the president...
Six House Republicans voted alongside Democrats last week to condemn Trump's tariffs on Canada, sending the measure to the Senate, which has already seen significant GOP defection in other votes on the duty measures. Senior House Democrats have vowed to bring up at least three more similar resolutions that will force GOP members to choose between their adherence to free trade principles and their MAGA base.
Last week, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, released a report laying out how Trump's economic policies, particularly the tariffs, "are making life unaffordable for millions of American small businesses, their workers, and their customers."
Markey held a virtual press conference with Massachusetts small business owners celebrating the Supreme Court's Friday ruling. The senator said that "for the last year, Trump has created Pain on Main with an affordability crisis plaguing communities across the country. At the heart of it are Trump's tariff taxes."
"The Supreme Court did what was right and struck down these illegal tariffs. Trump said the small businesses who brought this case hate our country. He’s wrong. Small businesses are our country," Markey continued. "I will keep fighting until every cent illegally collected from small businesses, consumers, and families in Massachusetts and across the country has been returned."
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If Bloomberg Wants to Buy an Election, He Should Run as a Republican Against Trump--Not Sabotage Democrats
The mega-billionaire should be running against Trump in the Republican primaries, not as a Democrat. If he actually cared about this country more than stroking his massive ego that is exactly what he would be doing.
Feb 10, 2020
Presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg is one of the 10 richest persons in the world, with a net worth approaching $60 billion, depending upon the vagaries of the stock and bond markets on any given day.
For anyone who is not a billionaire, it is almost impossible to grasp just how much money this is for a single human being. It would be like calculating the distance of our planet to a distant galaxy in centimeters. Bloomberg could spend $100 million every single day on his presidential campaign between now and election day in November--basically more than any candidate except Bloomberg and fellow billionaire Tom Steyer have spent so far in the entire 2019-20 election cycle--and he would still have a net worth greater than $30 billion. He would remain one of the 30 richest people in the world.
Think about that. Money basically means nothing to Bloomberg. It makes no material difference to his life--anymore than losing a penny would to most people--to spend all this money. At age 77, why the hell not? And wouldn't it be fun to be president? You only live once.
"Bloomberg could spend $100 million every single day on his presidential campaign between now and election day in November--basically more than any candidate except Bloomberg and fellow billionaire Tom Steyer have spent so far in the entire 2019-20 election cycle--and he would still have a net worth greater than $30 billion. He would remain one of the 30 richest people in the world."
Bloomberg may well be successful. He has already made media corporations hugely profitable by flooding the airwaves with his expensive and slick advertising--he has shown something corporate America knows well: carpet-bombing advertisements works if you can afford it--and this is just the beginning. He has bought off everyone with a pulse so he has a large chunk of the political class on his payroll, with many more to come. He will accordingly get terrific mainstream press coverage, the type any other candidate would like, and Bernie Sanders can't even begin to imagine.
In short, Bloomberg is demonstrating the deep problems of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that permits candidates to spend unlimited amounts of their own money on their own campaigns, especially in a period of breathtaking wealth inequality. Why be like the Kochs and Sheldon Adelson and spend a fortune on other people running for office? You are the smart guy after all; spend it on yourself.
If Bloomberg is successful, this could well become the new normal. Presidential elections will be contests between the wealthy who put their own money on the line. Bloomberg demonstrates that no one else could possibly compete with them in terms of resources. We are already a way down that road in Congressional elections. The already fading notion that this is a functional democracy will take another sharp turn in the wrong direction.
Bloomberg explains his decision to run for president as a concern with how Trump is such a dreadful president and that he is best positioned to defeat Trump, restore integrity to governance, and change his deplorable policies, especially on the environment and guns.
Fair enough. But aside from the issue of billionaires buying elections, there is one other extraordinary flaw in his thinking: Bloomberg should be running against Trump as a Republican, not a Democrat. If he actually cared about this country more than stroking his massive ego that is exactly what he would be doing.
This is not such a crazy idea. For starters, Bloomberg is a Republican, or he was until the tea party and then Trump showed up. He fits the profile of the sort of traditional Republican most Americans have been familiar with for generations. He is pro-business, pro-empire, anti-labor, and not especially sympathetic to the concerns of minorities or the dispossessed. These old-school Republicans were committed to the rule of law, however, and to majority rule.
Now Trump has come in and crystallized currents already growing in the Republican Party, like the "tea party" explosion in 2009-10. With his endless lying and rejection of the rule of law, Trump has led the Republicans toward a stronger embrace of authoritarianism, even, dare I say it, fascism. There are discussions about whether Trump would even leave office were he to lose the 2020 presidential election! The career Republican politicians have capitulated to Trump en masse, hence discrediting this party in toto.
Because of the way U.S. elections are structured, we have a two-party system and it is very difficult to replace one of the existing parties with a new one, despite popular support for introducing new ideas into our politics. So the United States is moving toward an exceptionally dangerous place where one of the two main parties is flirting with fascism and dedicated to maintaining political power with only a minority of the country supporting it. It holds the rule of law in contempt.
Bloomberg could have been a real patriot and applied his billions of dollars to challenging Trump and the fascist trend within the Republican party. He could have done everything possible to expose Trump and to locate and encourage anti-Trump Republicans. He could have supported primary challengers on the Republican side to defeat Trump's allies and enablers. He could have built up a parallel party apparatus employing thousands of Republican operatives at big salaries. He probably would have lost, but you never know for sure until you try. Bloomberg could outspend Trump 20 to 1. He would have been able to force public attention to this issue, and keep it there. He might have made Trump completely crack up. At any rate, he would have had an enormous impact that might have helped to slow and begin to reverse the Trumpian drift.
"If Bloomberg is successful in buying the Democratic nomination... The party could disintegrate enough that Trump waltzes to a second term, precisely what Bloomberg claims he does not want to have happen."
Then, if he failed to get the Republican presidential nomination, Bloomberg could throw his support and his resources to the Democrats, as he claims he plans to do now.
He would have been a patriot, perhaps even a hero.
Instead, he has opted to bring his takeover project to the Democratic Party. The Democrats are currently in a profound struggle for determining the course of the party between their progressive and establishment wings. By most accounts, patching it up by November will be crucial for electoral success. Bloomberg's entrance as an establishment savior has won him understandable support from those Democrats who dislike the progressive trend, and believe, erroneously in my opinion, that Bloomberg is the best bet to defeat Trump in November. If Bloomberg is successful in buying the Democratic nomination, or being the kingmaker who decides it, it will generate such anger and antipathy in the progressive wing of the party to the point where even his billions cannot buy off people to see things his way. The party could disintegrate enough that Trump waltzes to a second term, precisely what Bloomberg claims he does not want to have happen.
The moral of the story for establishment Democrats is don't be seduced by Bloomberg and his billions. He will break up the Democrats and cost them the election if he or someone he supports takes the nomination.
So Bloomberg's legacy would be that he left his own party to the neo-fascist crowd and went on to blow-up the Democrats, keeping the Republicans in control.
That is 180 degrees away from being a hero, or a patriot.
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'Nobody Can Build Like I Can Build. Nobody': Watch Winds Knock Down Trump Border Wall
"What a perfect visual metaphor for a presidency fuelled by hot air."
Jan 29, 2020
Mother Nature: 1.
President Donald Trump: 0.
That's the scorecard from the southern border after gusts of wind of up to 37 miles per hour took down a section of the president's much-vaunted border wall in Calexio, California.
The steel wall sections that toppled under the winds, which fell in the Beaufort Scale as "moderate gale" force gusts, were held in place by concrete anchors that had not fully set, according to reporting from the Guardian.
Watch the winds blow the wall over:
News of the collapse drew mockery from opponents of the president's immigration policy.
"Point and laugh everyone, just point and laugh," immigration activist Juan Escalante said on Twitter.
Billionaire Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer quoted Trump's own words in a tweet linking to a news story about the wall's collapse.
The news even drew amused reaction from across the Atlantic.
"What a perfect visual metaphor for a presidency fuelled by hot air," said Scottish National Party politician John Nicolson.
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