Legal experts react to Trump’s SCOTUS clash and tariff pivot in fiery SOTU
Legal experts and commentators toed a careful line Wednesday in responding to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, with many using the moment to weigh in on the broader legal and political climate itself, rather than Trump’s actual remarks. Some of the biggest moments of Trump’s address included his response to the Supreme Court’s 6–3 ruling that invalidated his use of a 1977 emergency law to impose tariffs on most U.S. trading partners, as well as his administration’s crackdown on violent crime in major U.S. cities, among other things. “This is the golden age of America,” Trump proclaimed Tuesday night. “And you’ve seen nothing yet. We’re going to do better, and better, and better.” SUPREME COURT BLOCKS TRUMP TARIFFS IN MAJOR TEST OF EXECUTIVE BRANCH POWERS Trump struck a notably measured tone in responding to the Supreme Court’s tariff ruling during the State of the Union, briefly describing the 6–3 majority decision as “unfortunate” before pivoting to highlight the 10% import fees his administration had announced shortly after the high court’s ruling under Section 122 of the U.S. Trade Act of 1974. “Countries that were ripping us off for decades are now paying us hundreds of billions of dollars,” Trump said of the tariffs, which he previously described as “life or death” for the nation’s economy. “The good news is that almost all countries and corporations want to keep the deal that they already made” with the U.S., Trump said Tuesday night, “knowing that the legal power that I as president have to make a new deal could be far worse for them.” “Therefore, they will continue to work along the same successful path that we had negotiated before the Supreme Court’s unfortunate involvement,” he added. Four of the nine Supreme Court justices present for the State of the Union, including Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Elena Kagan and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who had ruled against Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to unilaterally enact his tariffs. Trump’s comments marked a shift from his more abrasive tone in the immediate aftermath of the tariff decision, when he said the high court was “incompetent” and that the majority should be “absolutely ashamed” of themselves “for not having the courage to do what’s right for our country.” TRUMP TAKES DIRECT SOTU SWIPE AT DEMOCRATS OVER TAXES: ‘TO HURT THE PEOPLE’ Trump’s remarks during the State of the Union were a nod to his new tariffs he invoked under Section 122, or a statute that allows a sitting president to impose sweeping tariffs for up to 150 days in response to either large or serious U.S. “balance-of-payments deficits,” or in response to situations that pose “fundamental international payments problems” for the U.S. Congress can extend them once the 150-day period ends. But some experts have questioned the legality of using Section 122 to invoke the broad global tariffs — signaling what could be more legal challenges to come. Gita Gopinath, Harvard economics professor and former senior International Monetary Fund official, noted on social media: “As long as there is plenty of demand for US debt and equities, which is the case, the US does not have a ‘payments’ problem. It can finance its trade deficits easily.” “The first thing to note is that the statute does not apply to the current US international payments position,” the Peterson Institute’s Kimberly Clausing and Maurice Obstfeld said Monday. “Indeed, the president’s own lawyers argued in the IEEPA case that Section 122 was no substitute for IEEPA, since balance of payment deficits are conceptually distinct from the current account and trade deficits that Trump has characterized as an emergency.” Separately, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., vowed that his caucus would not approve Trump’s bid to extend tariffs beyond the 150-day period. “We will not extend those tariffs,” Schumer declared, urging Republicans to join Democrats in blocking them. Schumer linked the tariffs to higher costs of groceries, cars, and homes. “Americans are suffering, because (Trump) is raising tariffs,” Schumer said. Trump also used his remarks to tout the significant drop-off in violent crime during his first year back in the White House, reiterating his administration’s claim that the U.S. murder rate dropped to its lowest point in 125 years in 2025. FROM GRIEF TO GOLD MEDALS, TRUMP’S SOTU GUEST LIST TELLS A BIGGER STORY White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt previously pointed Fox News Digital and other outlets to recent data from the Council on Criminal Justice that she said shows that Trump is “delivering overwhelmingly on his promise” to restore law and order in the U.S. “A study from the Council on Criminal Justice shows that the murder rate across America’s largest cities plummeted in 2025 to its lowest level since at least 1900,” Leavitt told reporters. “Let me repeat to put this in perspective, this marks the largest single-year drop in murders in recorded history.” Nationwide homicide data released later in 2026 could show killings in 2025 falling to roughly 4.0 per 100,000 residents – the lowest rate ever recorded in law enforcement or public health data dating back to 1900 and the largest single-year percentage drop on record. Reactions to the speech — and Trump’s policies — vary, but the president did win some praise from across the aisle. “As a voter, I may not like him. I may find his long form exhausting. But when he speaks, he never wavers from American exceptionalism,” Michael Ceraso, a Democratic strategist with a background in speechwriting, told Fox News Digital. “I see someone protecting our cities against those he deems a threat to democracy, revving up the economy, managing global partners, and defeating terrorism. Fox News Digital’s Charlie Creitz, Emma Colton and Michael Ruiz contributed to this report.
Minnesota remains front line in Vance’s ‘war on fraud’; Walz given 60 days ‘to clean up the systems’
Vice President JD Vance announced Wednesday that the Trump administration is temporarily halting Medicaid funding to the state of Minnesota, giving Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz 60 days to clean up how the state doles out funding. “We have decided to temporarily halt certain amounts of Medicaid funding that are going to the state of Minnesota in order to ensure that the state of Minnesota takes its obligations seriously to be good stewards of the American people’s tax money,” Vance said Wednesday at a press event attended by Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The announcement was made after President Donald Trump railed against fraud in the Gopher State Tuesday evening in his State of the Union address. The administration and Congress have zeroed in on rampant abuse of federal taxpayers’ funds since December 2025, when details of Minnesota’s fraud relating to social and welfare programs stretching back to the COVID-19 pandemic first came under the national spotlight. Investigators have since estimated the Minnesota scheme could top $9 billion. JD VANCE SPEARHEADS ‘WAR ON FRAUD,’ PROMISES TO ROOT OUT TAXPAYER MONEY ‘STOLEN’ BY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS Trump pointed to his vice president as leading the administration’s “war on fraud” during his State of the Union remarks. Vance explained Wednesday that “we are stopping the federal payments that will go to the state government until the state government takes its obligations seriously to stop the fraud that’s being perpetrated against the American taxpayer.” The vice president added that officials have verified that a program in Minnesota intended to provide after-school care to autistic children actually benefited fraudsters. “A lot of people are getting rich off the generosity of American taxpayers,” Vance said. “But more fundamentally, and more importantly than that, it means that there are kids in Minnesota who deserve these services, who need these services, and they’re not going to those kids. They’re going to fraudsters in Minneapolis. That is unacceptable. And that’s the sort of thing that we’re cutting off with this action today.” Oz added that the pause marks “the largest action against fraud that we’ve ever taken” at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, before launching into how the administration is deferring funds to the state. HEAVILY REDACTED AUDIT FINDS MINNESOTA MEDICAID HAD WIDESPREAD VULNERABILITIES “It’s going to be $259 million of deferred payments for Medicaid to Minnesota, which we’re announcing, as I speak, to Gov. Walz and his team,” Oz said. “That’s based on an audit of the last three months of 2025. Restated, a quarter billion dollars is not going to be paid this month to Minnesota for its Medicaid claims. “We have notified the state and said that we will give them the money, but we’re going to hold it and only release it after they propose and act on a comprehensive corrective action plan to solve the problem,” Oz said. “If Minnesota fails to clean up the systems, the state will rack up $1 billion of deferred payments this year.” Walz has 60 days to respond to a letter Oz and the administration sent to Walz on the matter, Oz said. Fox News Digital reached out to Walz’s office Wednesday afternoon for comment and has yet to receive a reply. Oz said he believes Walz will take the matter seriously and noted fraud is not exclusive to Minnesota. “These schemes disproportionately involve immigrant communities,” Oz continued. “They’re insulated, they’re able to … organize efforts, and sometimes they don’t understand what’s going on.” Vance added that the administration does not want to make this move, but it is needed due to Minnesota being “careless with federal tax dollars.” “All we need the governor and the administration of Minnesota to do is something quite simple, which is to show that before you give Medicaid funds to somebody, you’re taking seriously whether they provided the services that they say that they’re providing,” the vice president said, calling the alleged fraud a “disgrace.” MINNESOTA DEMOCRATS DEMAND REPARATIONS FROM ICE AFTER LOSING $18 BILLION TO SOMALI FRAUD Trump spotlighted the fraud in his State of the Union address Tuesday, underscoring that while Minnesota has taken the spotlight, schemes run deep in other states as well. “When it comes to the corruption that is plundering — it really, it’s plundering America — there’s been no more stunning example than Minnesota, where members of the Somali community have pillaged an estimated $19 billion from the American taxpayer,” Trump said. “Oh, we have all the information. “And, in actuality, the number is much higher than that, and California, Massachusetts, Maine and many other states are even worse. This is the kind of corruption that shreds the fabric of a nation, and we are working on it like you wouldn’t believe,” Trump added, before naming Vance the administration’s leader taking on fraud.
Biden’s FBI subpoenaed Kash Patel’s and Susie Wiles’ phone records during federal Trump investigation
The FBI subpoenaed Kash Patel and Susie Wiles’ phone records in 2022 and 2023, when both were private citizens, as part of a federal probe into then former President Donald Trump, Fox News has confirmed. Patel is the current FBI director, and Wiles is White House chief of staff. At least 10 FBI employees were also fired Wednesday, Fox News was told. Names were not given due to privacy reasons, with the FBI Agents Association (FBIAA) later criticizing the firings. “The FBIAA condemns today’s unlawful termination of FBI Special Agents, which—like other firings by Director Patel—violates the due process rights of those who risk their lives to protect our country,” the organization said in a statement. “These actions weaken the Bureau by stripping away critical expertise and destabilizing the workforce, undermining trust in leadership and jeopardizing the Bureau’s ability to meet its recruitment goals—ultimately putting the nation at greater risk.” GRASSLEY: BIDEN DOJ BYPASSED CONSTITUTIONAL SAFEGUARDS BY SUBPOENAING SENATOR PHONE RECORDS Reuters first disclosed the subpoenas, which were issued during the Biden administration, while special counsel Jack Smith was investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Smith ended up charging Trump in 2023 with multiple felony offenses related to alleged efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election and Trump’s handling of the documents after he left office. A federal judge later dismissed the election interference case after Smith moved to drop it following Trump’s re-election, citing a Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president. Smith also dropped the Justice Department’s appeal of a separate ruling that dismissed the classified documents case. Trump has denied any wrongdoing in both matters. TOP 5 MOMENTS FROM JACK SMITH’S TESTIMONY ON CAPITOL HILL In a statement to Fox News Wednesday, Patel called the move to seize the phone records “outrageous and deeply alarming.” “It is outrageous and deeply alarming that the previous FBI leadership secretly subpoenaed my own phone records — along with those of now White House chief of staff Susie Wiles — using flimsy pretexts and burying the entire process in prohibited case files designed to evade all oversight,” he said. The FBI had found the phone records in files labeled as “Prohibited,” Reuters reported. Patel also said he recently ended the FBI’s ability to categorize files as “Prohibited.” Fox News also learned from two FBI officials that in 2023, FBI agents recorded a phone call between Wiles and her attorney. FEDERAL JUDGE BLOCKS RELEASE OF JACK SMITH REPORT’S SECOND VOLUME According to those officials, Wiles’ attorney was aware the call was being recorded and consented, but Wiles was not informed. Smith testified last year that records of members’ calls helped investigators verify the timeline of events surrounding the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. He said prosecutors “followed all legal requirements in getting those records” and told a House panel the records obtained from lawmakers did not include the content of conversations, Reuters reported.
Voters react as Trump touts signature tariff plan at State of the Union
Republicans were pleased when President Donald Trump spoke during the State of the Union address Tuesday about his plan to continue imposing global tariffs after the Supreme Court dealt him a setback, according to live reactions from a panel of voters. The panel, assembled by polling group Maslansky & Partners and made up of 29 Democrats, 30 independents and 41 Republicans, gave real-time reactions as Trump spoke. The responses were displayed on a line graph, with higher values indicating positive reactions and lower values indicating negative reactions. Trump called the Supreme Court’s decision striking down the tariffs “unfortunate” as four justices sat stone-faced in the front row of the House chamber. TRUMP RIPS SUPREME COURT TARIFF RULING IN SOTU, VOWS NEW LEGAL FIGHT AFTER 6-3 BLOW It is customary for justices to be invited to the address, though not all typically attend. Chief Justice John Roberts and justices Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh attended Tuesday. Trump touted the tariffs, which he unilaterally imposed last year under an emergency law, as a key negotiating tool, saying they helped him broker peace deals between other countries and generated billions of dollars in revenue. The Supreme Court found that Trump illegally bypassed Congress by invoking the law, known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. But “just four days ago, an unfortunate ruling from the United States Supreme Court, it just came down, a very unfortunate ruling,” Trump said, as the dials on the line graph showed Republicans reacting approvingly and Democrats and independents responding negatively. SPEECHWRITERS FROM REAGAN TO BIDEN AGREE: TRUMP’S SOTU IS A CRITICAL TEST FOR HIS SECOND TERM “The good news is that almost all countries and corporations want to keep the deal that they already made … knowing that the legal power that I as president have to make a new deal could be far worse for them. And, therefore, they will continue to work along the same successful path that we had negotiated before the Supreme Court’s unfortunate involvement,” Trump said. Trump said he had “time-tested” alternatives to the IEEPA that he planned to use so he could again sidestep Congress’ role in authorizing tariffs, which the Supreme Court said functioned like a tax and therefore required congressional approval under the Constitution.
Israel kills more journalists than any nation on record: Media watchdog
Israel is responsible for 84 of 129 journalist killings in 2025 tracked by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Listen to this article Listen to this article | 3 mins info Published On 25 Feb 202625 Feb 2026 Click here to share on social media share2 Share plus2googleAdd Al Jazeera on Googleinfo Israel killed at least 84 media workers and journalists in 2025 – far more than any other country in what was the deadliest year on record for the news media. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released the findings on Wednesday in its annual report and pointed to “a persistent culture of impunity for attacks on the press” by Israel’s military. Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list A total of 129 media workers were killed in 2025, the highest figure since the watchdog group began keeping records in 1992. Israel was responsible for more than two-thirds of the death toll. Most of the media workers Israel killed were Palestinian, but Israeli air strikes also killed 31 staff in Yemeni newspaper offices, the CPJ said. Israel was overwhelmingly responsible for targeted killings, which the CPJ classifies as “murder”, carrying out 38 of 47 deadly incidents recorded globally by the organisation. “Israel has now killed more journalists than any other government since CPJ began collecting records in 1992,” it said in a statement. It cautioned that the true number of journalists targeted and killed by Israel could be much higher because some of the killings could be potentially concealed by press restrictions and humanitarian difficulties that complicate conducting investigations during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. “With much contemporaneous evidence now destroyed, the true number of Palestinian journalists in Gaza who were deliberately targeted by Israel may never be known,” the CPJ said. ‘Deadly smears’ The rights group listed five Al Jazeera journalists as having been “murdered” in Israeli attacks, including Anas al-Sharif and three others killed by an Israeli strike on a journalist tent in Gaza City. It also named slain Al Jazeera Mubasher correspondent Hossam Shabat as among those targeted. Advertisement In total since the start of the war, Israel has killed nearly 300 journalists and media workers, according to Shireen.ps, a monitoring website named after veteran Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank in 2022. Israel has acknowledged killing some journalists while accusing them of having ties to armed groups – claims rejected by their employers and criticised by the CPJ as “deadly smears”. Outside Gaza and Yemen, the most attacks that killed journalists in 2025 occurred in Sudan, which is in the throes of a civil war, and Mexico, which has been swept by violence linked to organised crime. Nine journalists were killed in Sudan and six in Mexico. Four Ukrainian journalists were also killed by Russian military attacks, the CPJ report said. Adblock test (Why?)
Demonstrators in frog costumes protest Trump’s State of the Union
NewsFeed As Trump delivered his State of the Union address, demonstrators dressed in frog costumes took to the streets outside the White House to protest the administration and what some called a “fascist regime.” Trump’s speech came as his approval rates have drastically slid. Published On 25 Feb 202625 Feb 2026 Click here to share on social media share2 Share plus2googleAdd Al Jazeera on Googleinfo Adblock test (Why?)
US issues new sanctions as it dials up pressure on Iran
Washington penalties target oil vessels as Trump administration intensifies ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Tehran. Listen to this article Listen to this article | 2 mins info Published On 25 Feb 202625 Feb 2026 Click here to share on social media share2 Share plus2googleAdd Al Jazeera on Googleinfo The United States has issued a new wave of sanctions against Iran, targeting ships that it said are selling Iranian oil to help fund the country’s ballistic missile programme. The penalties on Wednesday come a day after President Donald Trump renewed his threats against Iran in his State of the Union address. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list “Iran exploits financial systems to sell illicit oil, launder the proceeds, procure components for its nuclear and conventional weapons programs, and support its terrorist proxies,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said in a statement. “Under President Trump’s strong leadership, Treasury will continue to put maximum pressure on Iran to target the regime’s weapons capabilities and support for terrorism, which it has prioritised over the lives of the Iranian people.” While the US describes the Iranian oil trade as “illicit”, Iran, which is selling its own petroleum products, describes the crackdown on its energy sector as piracy. The US has been intensifying sanctions against Iran as it amasses military assets – including two aircraft carriers and large fleets of fighter jets – in the region in apparent preparation for war. Wednesday’s penalties targeted 12 vessels, as well as several companies and individuals that the US said are involved in Iran’s oil sales and weapons acquisition. The new sanctions will freeze targeted assets of the designated firms and individuals in the US and make it mostly illegal for American citizens to engage in financial transactions with them. Advertisement Washington has been piling such sanctions on the Iranian economy since Trump nixed the multilateral nuclear deal with Tehran in 2018 during his first term. That agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), saw Iran scale back its nuclear programme in exchange for the release of international sanctions. After returning to the White House in 2025, Trump reignited his economic maximum pressure campaign against Tehran with the goal of choking off Iran’s oil exports. Still, the two countries have been engaging in diplomacy to avert the looming conflict. US and Iranian negotiators are set to meet in Geneva on Thursday for their third round of negotiations this year. Adblock test (Why?)
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