Here is a surprise: the president’s tariffs have been ruled unconstitutional (6-3). He bragged that he could willy-nilly upset international trade markets and use tariffs as an economic and political weapon against his real and imagined enemies, and until recently he has. But somewhat shockingly, his rash actions are unsupported by the laws of the land—even as interpreted by the typically Trump-friendly Roberts Supreme Court (SCOTUS). 

All those illegally collected tariffs (taxes) that fell on American consumers ($150 billion?) in 2025 have now become a Fed refund conundrum. Likely, there will be some refund scheme, but as a consumer, I do not expect a check in the mail any time soon. That is despite a New York Federal Reserve research report finding that American consumers and not retail importers are paying upwards of 90 percent of the costs of the (illegal) tariffs https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/

Of course, the White House disagreed with that research finding, fumed, predictably attacked the motives of the Fed researchers, but in the end offered no factual rebuttal. 

The tariff scam has transferred and would have continued to transfer enormous wealth from the middle class to the government apparatus, and for what? Trump’s hollow claims about federal budget balancing or U.S. deficit reduction are laughable given that trillions in revenue (not just paltry billions) are required to address either of those chronic problems. Also, with enormous unconscionable giveaways to his billionaire friends and familiars here and abroad, and funding cancellations to his real and imagined political foes, Trump simply has neither the time nor the inclination to be fiscally responsible. He is much better at spending America’s wealth on “redecorating” what is left of our democracy or perhaps someday redeveloping the Gaza ruins into a tourist strip.

ICE-cold murder for hire

In their recent weeks of occupation of Minneapolis, MN, in seemingly chance encounters with citizens, Immigration Customs and Enforcement (as seen on public video) infamously murdered at least two Minnesotan Americans. This federal force of thousands of highly paid, lightly trained, heavily armed and apparently angry men has been loosed upon major cities of mostly politically blue states to terrorize people of color and anyone who watches, films or speaks out (protected First Amendment rights) about this organization’s violent helter-skelter methods. Citizens and noncitizens alike have been attacked, seriously wounded, terrorized (the main point), illegally incarcerated and had their private property destroyed. Of course, all these Gestapo-like tactics are outside of the Constitution and the rule of law.

Malignant geometric growth and nefarious ends

From $6 billion 10 years ago, ICE now runs on a massive budget supercharged by the Republican “One Big Beautiful Bill” with a midyear “supplement” of up to $75 billion for 2025. (www.npr.org/2026/01/21/nx-s1-5674887/ice-budget-funding-congress-trump)

It seems, out in the open, ICE is coming for me and you with planned gulag facilities right in the countryside and neighborhoods. With near limitless financial resources (arguably, a budget approaching the size of that of the Russian military), across the states, they can and have purchased local warehouses or vacant buildings, influenced politicians, changed ordinances and even made some of their local collaborators wealthy as they prepare mass incarceration facilities for however many “terrorists” they choose to arrest. 

Of course, with a “unitary president” in office, or one who thinks that he is, that now-illegal tariff money might have been handy to further help ICE buy America a modern U.S. dictatorship. In the end, only you and I (people power) can stop this ugly tale of despotism from further unfolding.

John Pace lives in Honesdale, PA.