The President is Seeking to Exploit Questionable Statutory Language to Aggrandize His Own Power,

Kevin D. Williamson

by Kevin D. Williamson, The Dispatch, February 23, 2026 - ... Suppose for argument’s sake that Congress can delegate its tariff powers to the President as completely as Justice Thomas suggests. Even then, the question remains whether Congress has given the President the tariff authority he claims in this case—or whether the President is seeking to exploit questionable statutory language to aggrandize his own power. ...

.... Of course “the President is seeking to exploit questionable statutory language to aggrandize his own power.” He also seeks to exploit imaginary statutory language to aggrandize his own power, and seeks to exploit phony emergencies to aggrandize his own power, to exploit imaginary Venezuelan fentanyl to aggrandize his own power, to exploit imaginary Haitian cat-eaters in Ohio to aggrandize his own power, to exploit an absolutely ignorant misunderstanding of trade deficits to aggrandize his own power, etc. The president of these United States is not an aspiring autocrat but an actual autocrat acting outside of the constitutional powers of his office in matters ranging from imposing illegal taxes on Americans to carrying out massacres of civilians in the Caribbean. Speaking with his trademark stroke victim’s diction, Trump insisted: 

I am allowed to cut off any and all trade or business with that same country. In other words, I can destroy the trade. I can destroy the country! I’m even allowed to impose a foreign country-destroying embargo. I can embargo. I can do anything I want, but I can’t charge $1. Because that’s not what it says, and that’s the way it even reads. I can do anything I wanted to do to them but can’t charge any money. So I’m allowed to destroy the country, but it can’t be a little fee.

We have there what would have been another Kinsley gaffe coming from the mouth of anyone else—the president’s attachment to the erroneous and unconstitutional idea that “I can do anything I want”—but, given that Trump has been talking about himself as a god-emperor for as long as he has been in politics, the statement surely is not unintentional.

“The President is seeking to exploit questionable statutory language to aggrandize his own power,” writes the chief justice—out of context, yes, but that is where the truth is. And the Supreme Court now has acted, in its modest way. Trump, being Trump, has announced that he will set about subverting this ruling by any means he can find “to exploit questionable statutory language to aggrandize his own power.” ... 

... Attention to Mike Johnson, the gutless worm who serves as speaker of the House—that is the sound of history calling your name. The Supreme Court has done what the Supreme Court can do, but now it is time for Congress to get in the game—long past time, in fact. The best time for Congress to rediscover its self-respect (as opposed to its self-importance) would have been 40 years ago—the second-best time is now. Never mind the fantasy of a Republican Congress impeaching and removing Donald Trump from the presidency, a prophylactic measure that should have been taken at the very latest after the attempted coup d’état that crowned his first administration but which was not, thanks in part to the catastrophic miscalculation of the risk-averse Mitch McConnell, then the Republican leader in the Senate. Congressional Republicans, having grown accustomed to (and perhaps even fond of) the taste of cordwainer’s leather, will not be weaned from their boot-licking ways so quickly. What could be done instead—what should be done but almost certainly will not be done—is to remove all of the president’s current statutory authorities touching trade in such a way as to invite his taking the opportunity “to exploit questionable statutory language to aggrandize his own power.” 

And while it is the case that as a political reality Donald Trump cannot be impeached, is it so impossible to think that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick or Kevin Hassett, the president’s top economic adviser, could? If not by gutless Republicans today, then by a new Democratic majority come January? Can you imagine how much fun it would be to have a halfway competent economic inquisitor (I know, I know: Democrats) putting one of those guys through some tough questions (including ethical questions about Lutnick’s self-dealing) in front of the cameras for a couple of weeks? Hassett, who does not believe a word of the bullshit that comes out of his mouth but really likes to ride on Air Force One, would, from the Democratic point of view, make an excellent face for the Republican Party in its current intellectually vacant, shifty, self-serving, amateur-hour incarnation. 

The Trump administration’s tariff policy is—and I cannot write was, inasmuch as they are going to try to ignore the Supreme Court ruling—bad on three counts. 

Least important is the fiscal calculation: The tariffs will bring in some money, but... 

Slightly more important, in the long run, is the ideological content: Protectionism is a dumb and backward economic policy that may serve the short- to middle-term interests of a small number of market incumbents but which does not serve the overall economy very well. The relatively dynamic and risk-exposed U.S. economy has lifted Americans’ standard of living relative to the rest of the world, while the relatively statist, risk-averse, protectionist economic policies of the rich nations of Europe have produced relatively low growth, ... Trump’s notion that the rest of the world has been getting over on the United States through crafty trade policy is utterly unsupported by the facts—it is pure flat-earther economics. ...

Most important—and most often overlooked—is the procedural issue: It is really, really important that presidents not be permitted to do things beyond the constitutional power of their offices. The president of the United States already has made war on Venezuela and Iran, threatened to make war on NATO, and reshaped the tax environment for American businesses (tariffs are taxes on American businesses) with no congressional authorization, only by “seeking to exploit questionable statutory language to aggrandize his own power.” Contrary to the popular assumption, overpowered executives unmoored from procedural and constitutional restraints do not produce order by consolidating power—they produce chaos by making one man’s whimsy the law of the land. ...

As a paragon of management excellence once said to an underling: “A nutless monkey could do your job.” If the other job candidate is Mike Johnson, I’d hire the nutless monkey. But perhaps there is someone in Congress—and I do not much care which party that someone belongs to—who is willing to stand up and do his goddamned job. Chief Justice John Roberts has done his. Your turn. (read it all)

Kevin D. Williamson is national correspondent at The Dispatch and is based in Virginia. Prior to joining the company in 2022, he spent 15 years as a writer and editor at National Review, worked as the theater critic at the New Criterion, and had a long career in local newspapers. He is also a writer in residence at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. When Kevin is not reporting on the world outside Washington for his Wanderland newsletter, you can find him at the rifle range or reading a book about literally almost anything other than politics.

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