☕️ LITERALLY ☙ Thursday, May 29, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Court nukes Trump’s tariffs; RFK Jr. targets corrupt journals; DOJ reopens Whitmer, COVID, Dobbs; Rubio bans censors; and Dems keep dying as The Nation calls it—literally—the end. And much more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! Today’s packed roundup includes: Court knocks down all Trump’s tariffs and we tackle the fallout (don’t give up yet); Kennedy body-slams scientific journals and vows their replacement, while technocratic progressives wail; Trump’s DOJ just kicked open the file cabinets on the Whitmer fednapping farce, the COVID origin cover-up, and the Supreme Court’s long-buried Dobbs leaker; Rubio weaponized visa policy to target foreign censors, turning free speech into an instrument of American power; and The Nation, of all places, declared that the Democrat Party is “literally dying” — a phrase that might’ve raised fewer eyebrows if eight jabbed House Dems hadn’t done just that since 2022.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

⚖️⚖️⚖️

Now this is getting ridiculous. The judges just unplugged Trump’s tariff dashboard, right in the middle of a game. Yesterday afternoon, Politico ran the latest judicial disappointment, headlined “Federal court strikes down Trump's tariffs on countries around the world.” Before we go any further, let me just say: Congress needs to do something. Anything! Stage a rally outside the Supreme Court, at least. Even better, do your jobs and pass some laws. But I digress.

This wasn’t the typical court or the typical liberal injunction we’ve grown used to seeing. Eleven progressive states (led by Oregon) filed a lawsuit against Trump’s tariffs in the U.S. Court of International Trade, which is one of a few specialty courts that focus on particularly nettlesome and fouled-up legal areas. The cases are heard by three judges, and in this case, the panel included two Republican appointees (Trump and Reagan), and the 49-page decision was unanimous.

I can only imagine how Trump’s legal team must be feeling. Now what? Not only did the court’s decision completely destroy all the deals currently in the system, and caused Trump to lose all his game progress, but adding gross insult to mortal injury, the order even requires the U.S. to pay back all the tariffs already collected. It’s like the courts are spending their credibility faster than drunken sailors on shore leave in a Thai brothel.

“An injunction would be extremely disruptive while the president is in the middle of foreign negotiations with other countries about trade deficits and about the fentanyl crisis,” Trump’s lawyer argued to the 3-judge panel. They ignored him.

⚖️ I hesitate to second-guess the well-researched and loquacious decision, since it deals with such a complex and historically difficult area of law in which I’ve never practiced. But then I figured, if every other influencer lawyer is doing it, so why shouldn’t I? Indeed, one weak link stood out.

The Constitution explicitly gave Congress the power to set tariffs. The trouble is, modern Congress is slow, ineffectual, and often can’t agree on which party gets the big office at the front of the building, never mind what to do about Chinese fentanyl. So, when countries declare economic war on the U.S., Congress can’t keep up. So over the years, they’ve created various laws and statutes designed to give the president a certain degree of flexibility and power, especially under declared emergencies.

Thus, President Trump has a variety of tariff tools available to him. One of them is a wordily named 1997 statute called IEEPA, which is the one Trump used to build his trade dashboard, and which the three judges in this case found don’t let him set tariffs at all. They wrote a lot, page after mind-numbing page, about predecessor statutes and what happened during Smoot-Hawley and told us all about Nixon’s favorite movie,* but finally got around to the crux, or nub, of their decision, which revolved around interpreting two words.

(* Idiocracy. ** I’m kidding. They didn’t really talk about Nixon’s favorite movie. I know some of you hyper-literalists will ask in the comments.)

Specifically, IEEPA (50 U.S.C. § 1702a1B) gave the President an impressively long list, transitive verb after verb, of powers he may legally deploy to regulate trade. The judges sniffed but it doesn’t say ’levy tariffs.’ Here’s the list: the President may “…investigate, block, regulate, direct, compel, nullify, void, prevent or prohibit… importation… of any property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest.”

Hmmm. The judges decided, absent the word ‘tariff’ itself, the next closest match was “regulate … importation.” But they thought about it very carefully, and finally decided that the word “regulate,” while broad, just isn’t broad enough to include “setting tariffs.” That “decision” was a disaster, and in a sane world, it will get yanked in ten seconds on appeal.

Not only did the judges’ parsimonious definition defy the dictionary, but it defied a predecessor statute (TWEA), which included the exact same language and which presidents used then to set tariffs. As Charlie Brown would say, good grief.

Webster’s online dictionary:

The judges must have known their reasoning was as thin as gas-station toilet paper. So they bolted on a second “but even if” reason. Even if they were wrong, they wrote, they would still strike the tariffs down under the Supreme Court’s “major questions” doctrine, which is a generalized and rarely-used “non-delegation” prohibition against letting Congress assign its Constitutional powers to other branches.

The “major questions” theory was even more suspect and subject to appellate revision than their obsessive-compulsive definition of “regulate.” Politico drily observed, “Ultimately, the case could end up at the Supreme Court.”

From the tone and text, it was obvious that the judges were correct in their concern that Trump is using the tariffs powers to address problems far beyond the declared emergency. After all, what does Great Britain have to do with the fentanyl crisis? But that sort of executive micromanagement, while arguably fair, is the kind of political question that isn’t installed in the judicial wheelhouse.

First off, in Regan v. Wald (468 U.S. 222), the Supreme Court upheld restrictions on travel to Cuba under IEEPA. It said courts should not second-guess executive judgments made under a facially lawful emergency declaration. SCOTUS’s language is worth quoting: “Matters relating to the conduct of foreign relations… are so exclusively entrusted to the political branches… as to be largely immune from judicial inquiry or interference.”

Second, where was all this judicial interest in evaluating whether an emergency was “real” or not during the first painful years of the pandemic? That “emergency” was within the judicial wheelhouse, since it didn’t involve political questions relating to the conduct of foreign relations. But back then, they couldn’t be bothered. Or, how about during the 2020 ‘stolen election’ emergency?

Oh, well.

It’s also worth pointing out that President Trump has plenty of other statutory authority to impose tariffs, and even other non-tariff powers under IEEPA. So even if the Supreme Court cuts off the IEEPA spigot, he can pivot to other, less elegant ways to accomplish the same thing. Beyond tariffs, Trump has plenty of other tools and seems prepared to use them. Yesterday, for example, NBC ran a story headlined, “U.S. will 'aggressively' revoke Chinese students' visas, Rubio says.”

While we wait to see whether the Court of Appeals will overturn this decision, I’d advise the other countries to keep negotiating.

I remain optimistic about Trump’s chances on appeal, but it sure would also be helpful if Congress could weigh in. I realize the GOP lacks the Senatorial firepower to overcome what remains of the filibuster, but maybe it’s time for more nuking.

💉💉💉

In much better developments, two days ago, Stat News ran a story headlined, “‘Corrupt’ medical journals have to change, RFK Jr. says, or the NIH will publish in-house.” The sub-headline dug in deeper: “The health secretary said The Lancet, NEJM, and JAMA have been influenced by the pharmaceutical industry.”

I have often quoted the Lancet’s former editor-in-chief, Richard Horton, who in 2015 famously said, “The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue.” And he should know. “Science has taken a turn toward darkness,” Horton added.

On Tuesday’s “Ultimate Human Podcast,” Kennedy announced, “We’re probably going to stop publishing in the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and those other journals, because they’re all corrupt.” The journals, he explained, publish unreproducible studies funded by the pharmaceutical industry. Instead, the NIH plans to make its own medical journals for its various institutes and centers — unless, that is, current journals make “radical” changes.

Haha, Kennedy also called the NIH, CDC, FDA and CMS “sock puppets” for Big Pharma.

Boom.

It must have stung. Neither Stat News nor any of the slew of other stories about Kennedy’s comments, such as the Washington Post’s, could find anyone who shared Kennedy’s point of view— your first red flag for fake news. None of the stories I reviewed (till I got sick of looking) quoted Horton’s now-famous 2015 comment.

Also on Tuesday, NIH Director Bhattacharya nixed a long-standing rule requiring NIH scientists to get permission from political appointees before they could publish their own studies:

You’d think that “real” scientists would celebrate these kinds of developments. But it’s crickets from the science community. Cowards.

Tear it all down.

🔥🔥🔥

Meanwhile this week, the Trump Administration kept dropping news bombs like a Russian fighter jet over Ukraine. Yesterday, NBC ran a remarkable story headlined, “Trump says he will look into possible pardons for the men convicted of plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.” President Trump said that he had watched the trial, and that “it looked to me like somewhat of a railroad job.” See how happy kidnapping-survivor Whitmer and her team appeared, when she recently raised Democrat hackles by visiting President Trump:

That’s Gretchen, in the middle, like she’s dodging a mugshot. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything quite like it.

We don’t know exactly what is happening. But something is happening in Whitmer’s world of faux heroism fueled by the fake FBI fednapping fracas. A week ago, newly appointed pardon attorney Eric Martin promised, “we’re going to take a hard look at this case.” Is Trump pulling Gretchen’s strings now?

Governor Whitmer, normally a chatty Cathy, sure has been unusually quiet lately.

🔥 Fox News ran a story yesterday headlined, “FBI examining COVID-19 origin 'cover-up' amid new strain emergence: Bongino.” The story arose, so far as I can tell, from an X post by FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino:

In other words, this isn’t over. Buckle up, cockroaches.

🔥 That wasn’t all. In another X post this week, Deputy Director Bongino named off three more re-opened or new investigations, including the J6 pipe bomb, the coke baggie in the White House, and the Supreme Court leak:

We made the decision to either re-open, or push additional resources and investigative attention, to: the DC pipe bombing investigation, the cocaine discovery at the prior administration’s White House, and the leak of the Supreme Court Dobbs case. I receive requested briefings on these cases weekly and we are making progress. If you have any investigative tips on these matters that may assist us then please contact the FBI.

Any of these cases could provide massive potential narrative fuel and political leverage. That’s not even including the Epstein and Trump assassination investigations.

Sally, grab the popcorn and put your phone on speaker, because with Trump’s DOJ aiming the investigatory searchlight at the Whitmer case, the COVID cover-up, the Dobbs leak, and J6 anomalies, there’s a whole cast of D.C. players who just felt the thermostat crank up. Even SCOTUS is in the crosshairs.

This may seem like routine X chatter, but let’s pick just that one. The idea that SCOTUS could be under federal investigative scrutiny — from a Trump-aligned FBI — is unprecedented, and deliciously ironic after years of watching courts rubber-stamp “national security” opacity for the administrative state and the Biden Administration.

For Portland readers: In May 2022, Politico published the leaked draft Dobbs opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, triggering mass protests, attempted intimidation of justices (including an assassination plot), and a media frenzy. The Supreme Court conducted its own investigation, and its “Marshal of the Court,” Gail Curley, concluded that nothing was found. Baffling! A mystery! We’ll never know.

Since only the Justices and their clerks had access to the draft opinion, they are all potential suspects in federal criminal violations. And the Court’s Marshal herself could conceivably be implicated in a cover-up. The possibilities are wild and mind-bending.

And remember: We just endured four long years of media and Democrats sanctimoniously reminding us that "no one is above the law." Now, that cutesy catchphrase is boomeranging so hard it needs a trigger warning. Now, the institutional currents have shifted, and the investigative lens is pivoting toward termite-like scientists, Democrat operatives, covid-era Governors-gone-wild, deep-state bureaucratic actors, Supreme Court insiders, and possibly even SCOTUS Justices themselves.

The legal machinery that was recently weaponized against outsiders (including us) is now being turned around at the very insiders who once assured us of its sacred incorruptibility. “No one is above the law?” Perfect. Let’s roll.

🔥 Finally, yesterday Fox (and only Fox) ran a terrific story below the headline, “Rubio announces visa restrictions for foreigners 'complicit' in censoring Americans.” Secretary Rubio began with a post on X:

The story’s sub-headline added, “Trump’s secretary of state says those who undermine Americans' free speech 'should not enjoy the privilege' of US travel.”

I considered including this story earlier, as another example of non-tariff leverage Trump weilds through the State Department. It is fair to say this announcement piles on top of the tariff leverage, potentially applying to foreign officials, NGO members, and even right up to other countries’ leaders themselves. But it could be bigger than that.

Our enemies have long silenced and punished American speech. This is most clearly seen in the banning of US-based social media platforms, for example. But it’s our allies, such as the European Union, who’ve begun criminalizing speech, recently arresting Telegram’s founder, for example. And they are suing the dickens out of Twitter and Facebook, as two more examples, for violating their stupid online speech codes.

Ironically, George Orwell was British.

Foreign leaders will be desperate to avoid being put on Rubio’s “list” because it doesn’t just block their access to the United States— it publicly brands them as enemies of American liberty. Being sanctioned under a speech-based visa restriction effectively exiles them from the global stage, cutting off face-to-face diplomacy, high-level trade talks, swanky elite conferences, and media platforms that all flow through Washington, New York, and Silicon Valley.

Worse, becoming a diplomatic persona non grata invites political embarrassment back at home, and emboldens the leaders’ rivals to circle like sharks. For a ruling-class technocrat or regulator whose power depends on international status and institutional access, being blacklisted by the U.S. is career poison. The threat of losing that privilege turns the list into a geopolitical electric cattle prod— and Rubio’s message seems clear: if you target American speech, you could forfeit your seat at America’s table.

This is the first time in U.S. history that foreign officials could face personal diplomatic consequences for participating in the global censorship-industrial complex and collectively violating Americans’ constitutional rights.

The move is part of the bigger theme we’ve been tracking — that the Trump administration is reversing the vectors of power, especially on censorship, lawfare, and institutional corruption. Rubio’s visa ban on foreign censors is the next chess move. It’s early, and it was just an announcement, so I don’t want to speculate too much yet about how hard this geopolitical haymaker could land.

Taken together, Bongino’s and Rubio’s quiet-seeming X posts not only made history, but messaged that the old era of narrative control is ending, and might someday be marked as the day the information war’s tide officially turned.

💉💉💉

Last weekend, the Nation ran a remarkable story with the astonishing headline, “The Democratic Party Is Literally Dying.” Seeking to clarify the scope, the sub-headline added, “The dead hand of gerontocracy is also a symptom of ideological malaise.” This anguished hand-wringing was provoked by last week’s death of fully vaccinated Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) from sudden-onset (“turbo”) esophageal cancer. But sure, blame his age.

Unlike their former presidential candidate, the Nation’s woke but sullen editors were not joyful. Behold the story’s heavily sarcastic lead sentences: “In theory, the Democratic Party is a political organization. In practice, the Democrats more closely resemble a hospice, if not a funeral home.”

As recently as December, Rep. Connolly spryly beat out progressive poster-girl AOC for the minority chairmanship of the key House Oversight Committee. Just four months later, last month, Connolly had to step down due to his new cancer diagnosis. Now, he’s finished. Terminally speaking. Kaput.

The Nation’s astonishing article quoted a recent X post from progressive political analyst Lakshya Jain* (*if that’s her real name). Behold, the Democrat slaughterhouse:

Eight House members — all Democrats— have died since the jab rollout. The Democrat die-off has real political consequences. Reporter for the far-left Jacobin Magazine (a communist rag), Branko Marcetic, observed on X that Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” would not have passed last week had three dead Democrats still drawn breath:

“Gerontocracy,” the Nation complained, “is merely a symptom of a deeper issue: Democrats have no guiding ideology or principles holding them together. It’s increasingly difficult to know what Democrats collectively believe.”

It might be a sign of progress. Instead of just repeating the old shibboleths, they’re starting to actually think about what democracy really means. (Or at least, to finally talk about it.) “In a democracy,” the story concluded, “politicians exist to serve the public; the public does not exist to serve politicians.”

There’s no reason to think this new introspective mood is spreading, though. Maybe the Nation, Jacobin, and random progressive analysts are musing about twelve Democrats dying while serving in their House offices, in twelve months, but corporate media remains silent as the grave.

Nobody, of course, mentioned the you-know-what. 💉

The deceased eight were not all elderly. Representative Donald McEachen (D-Va.) died in November, 2022, at the age of 61, from “cancer complications.” Rep. Donald Payne Jr. (D-NJ) passed in April, 2024 at the age of 65, from a “heart attack related to diabetes.” But the Nation is right about one thing: the average age of Democrat House members is significantly older than their Republican fellows.

Congressman Gerry Connolly didn’t just lose his seat — he vacated it with finality. The 73-year-old, triple-jabbed Democrat from Virginia died from turbocharged esophageal cancer, just after stepping down from a leadership role he’d only recently won. We learn that his sudden death marked the eighth Democratic House member to die in office since the vaccine rollout—a morbid trend quietly reshaping the balance of power in Congress.

But if you expected solemn reflection from the left’s intellectual class, you were being very silly. The Nation’s funereal headline was so scathing it practically slapped the embalmer: “The Democratic Party Is Literally Dying.” That headline wasn’t a metaphor. And still — nobody mentions the giant needle in the House Chamber.

We pray for Congressman Connolly’s family and friends during this difficult time.

And that’s a wrap! Have a terrific Thursday, and get back here tomorrow morning for more essential news and commentary.

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

How to Donate to Coffee & Covid

Twitter: jchilders98.
Truth Social: jchilders98.
MeWe: mewe.com/i/coffee_and_covid.
Telegram: t.me/coffeecovidnews
C&C Swag! www.shopcoffeeandcovid.com