It was not about anything other than Article I specific powers that Congress has and the statute under which Trump was operating. Let’s say that despite their best efforts, Republicans lose the White House in 2028. And 2029, despite the Sargent at Arms arresting him to count the electoral votes, Democrats take over. A Democrat decides to cut tariffs on everything, but double them on hydro-carbons. Because the climate is an emergency and the president has these emergency powers. And the three justices who “crossed the line” understood that and the law.

I think they would have easily changed their tune had the tariffs been enacted by a Democrat. I think the mask has been off with Alito and Thomas for some time. They aren’t concerned with the about a Democrat using those powers, because they would stop that in a heartbeat. They are not there for precedents or the law. I think they’re there for a political agenda. This should have been a 9-0 decision. It should have been a slam dunk. Nothing in the statute indicated Congress gave up the power to tax.

My hope is that a Democrat House and (more importantly) Senate majority is in place when Alito or Thomas leave their posts. That way the majority leader could discover a tradition that says the appointment of a new judge can wait until the next president. You know, pulling a Mitch McConnell. Clarence Thomas is 77 and Alito is 75. The average age for upper income Americans is in the 80s. They might go for six more years, but they might not. Or it might be evident that they cannot. I don’t know what will happen if a dementia ridden judge refuses to step down because the president is the “wrong party.”

And let’s face it, we no longer care what the Bar Association thinks about qualifications, temperament, or caliber of individual. The court has come out as partisan so we’re going to pick the youngest partisan hack we can find that has a credible CV for the Supreme Court. An existing federal judge who we think will advance our agenda. The idea we’re going to pick our best jurists for the role is a quaint notion.

What the decision was not about was any kind of split or rebuke of the president. For the three judges who “crossed over,” their basic sense of the job and their sense of their legacy probably prevented them from voting to protect the tariffs. But only in this narrow instance. From the earlier immunity decision, we have plenty of evidence what the conservative justices think the limits of their president are. To varying degrees, they support a stronger, less restrained executive. (And thankfully it’s openly written about, so we know the Unitary Executive isn’t just a liberal brain disease).