Donald Trump wasn’t in a courtroom when the Supreme Court clipped his tariff ambitions this week, but you could practically hear the gavel echoing in the way he tried to hold himself together afterward. The loss landed like an insult delivered in public—wounding, personal, and, in classic Donald Trump fashion, immediately repackaged as proof that he’s the only adult in the room.
The case at the center of the mess, Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, ended with a 6–3 ruling that said the International Emergency Economic Powers Act doesn’t give the president authority to impose sweeping tariffs. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—an alignment that, not-so-gently, reminded Donald Trump that the Court is not a prop department.
Irish Star’s reporting leans into a familiar lens: not policy, not law, but the theatre of reaction. Body language expert Judi James told the outlet that Donald Trump’s response carried “defiance and barely suppressed anger,” with a tightened upper lip signalling resistance and a one-shoulder shrug meant to minimise the sting of opposition. She called it “peak Trump,” describing a man who almost seems energised by having something to fight.
Donald Trump, presidente de Estados Unidos, no dudó en expresar su enojo por el fallo de la Corte Suprema que declaró como ilegales sus aranceles globales.https://t.co/v4hUUFMbap pic.twitter.com/WQ9zcMklIZ
— Aristegui Noticias (@AristeguiOnline) February 21, 2026
It’s a tempting read because it fits the Donald Trump we’ve all watched for a decade: the showman who treats setbacks as fuel, the politician who refuses the ordinary human script of “I lost.” But what makes this moment more uncomfortable than your average outburst is the specific source of the rebuke.
Two of the justices in that majority—Gorsuch and Barrett—were Donald Trump appointees. For a president who talks about loyalty the way other people talk about oxygen, that’s not just a legal defeat; it’s a psychic bruise.
Do you support our Supreme Court giving Donald Trump the power to use Tariffs on other countries ?
YES or NO?
If YES , Give me a Thumbs-Up👍 pic.twitter.com/nwH76gfnTy
— Right Scope 🇺🇸 (@RightScopee) February 5, 2026
And Donald Trump did what he tends to do with bruises: he poked them.
On Truth Social, he vented that the ruling was “deeply disappointing,” wrote that he was “ashamed of certain Members of the Court,” and thanked Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh for their “Strength, Wisdom, and Love of our Country.” Then came the sharper edge—Donald Trump accusing members of the Court of being “FOOLS” and “LAPDOGS,” language that reads less like presidential persuasion and more like the kind of shout you hear through a condo wall at 2 a.m.
Here’s the part that matters beyond the drama: Donald Trump didn’t just complain. He moved.
Within hours, he announced what he framed as a workaround—signing an executive order to impose a “temporary” 10 percent global tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. Standing at the White House, he said the new tariff would be “over and above our normal tariffs already being charged,” and he underscored that national-security tariffs under Section 232 and existing Section 301 tariffs would remain “fully in place.”
🚨 JUST IN: Governor Gavin Newsom is calling for Donald Trump to issue immediate tariff refund checks — with interest — following today’s Supreme Court ruling! pic.twitter.com/DTC1dIyGCF
— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) February 20, 2026
In his Truth Social statement, Donald Trump also presented the pivot as a kind of strategic restraint, claiming he’d been “very modest” in what he asked for under the IEEPA framework and suggesting that “other alternatives will now be used” to replace the tariffs the Court rejected. That’s a neat bit of rhetorical judo—turning a judicial “no” into a claim that he was simply warming up.
But the Court’s message in Learning Resources wasn’t subtle: IEEPA doesn’t authorize tariff-setting power, and presidents don’t get to rummage through emergency statutes for whatever tool they want when Congress hasn’t clearly handed it over. You can already see why this has Donald Trump so agitated: it’s not only about trade. It’s about the edges of presidential power, and whether his second-term approach—big swings, blunt instruments, maximalist interpretations—still gets to run the table.
Judi James may be right that defiance is his comfort zone. But comfort doesn’t equal strength. Sometimes it’s just where a person goes when they can’t admit, even to themselves, that the room has changed.
