A view of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington.
| Photo Credit: AP

The U.S. Supreme Court building, where justices released their opinion striking down President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs in Washington, D.C., U.S..
| Photo Credit: Reuters

President Donald Trump vowed on Friday (February 20, 2026) to impose a 10% tariff on all imports into the United States after the Supreme Court handed him a stinging rebuke by striking down his signature economic policy.

The conservative-majority top court ruled six-three that a 1977 law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) Mr. Trump has relied on “does not authorize the president to impose tariffs.”

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Mr. Trump, who had nominated two of the justices who repudiated him, responded furiously, alleging without any evidence that the court was influenced by foreign interests.

“I’m ashamed of certain members of the court, absolutely ashamed, for not having the courage to do what’s right for our country,” Mr. Trump told reporters.

Mr. Trump said he would use a separate authority to impose a uniform tariff of 10% — after he spent the past year imposing various rates spontaneously to cajole and punish other countries.

“In order to protect our country, a president can actually charge more tariffs than I was charging in the past,” Mr. Trump said, insisting that the ruling left him “more powerful.”

Major setback

The ruling did not impact sector-specific duties Mr. Trump separately imposed on imports of steel, aluminum and various other goods. Several government probes which could lead to more sectoral tariffs remain in the works.

Still, it marked Mr. Trump’s biggest defeat at the Supreme Court since returning to the White House last year.

While Mr. Trump has long relied on tariffs as a lever for diplomatic pressure and negotiations, he made unprecedented use of emergency economic powers in his second term to slap new duties on virtually all U.S. trading partners.

These included “reciprocal” tariffs over trade practices that Washington deemed unfair, alongside separate sets of duties targeting major partners Mexico, Canada and China over illicit drug flows and immigration.

The court noted Friday (February 20, 2026) that “had Congress intended to convey the distinct and extraordinary power to impose tariffs” with IEEPA, “it would have done so expressly, as it consistently has in other tariff statutes.”

The Supreme Court’s three liberal justices joined three conservatives in Friday’s (February 20, 2026) ruling, which upheld lower court decisions that tariffs Mr. Trump imposed under IEEPA were illegal.

Mr. Trump heaped praise on Brett Kavanaugh, the only justice he nominated who voted with him. Mr. Kavanaugh was joined in his dissent by fellow conservatives Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

Chief Justice John Roberts, in delivering his opinion, said “IEEPA contains no reference to tariffs or duties.”

‘Much-needed certainty’

Business groups largely cheered the ruling, with the National Retail Federation saying this “provides much-needed certainty” for American firms and manufacturers.

“We urge the lower court to ensure a seamless process to refund the tariffs to U.S. importers,” the federation said.

But the justices did not address the degree to which importers can receive refunds. This will likely be litigated.

Mr. Kavanaugh warned that this process — as acknowledged during oral arguments — could be a “mess.”

EY-Parthenon chief economist Gregory Daco told AFP the loss of IEEPA tariff revenues for the U.S. government could amount to around $140 billion.

Delighted Democratic leaders pounced on the ruling, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer lauding the outcome as a “win for the wallets” of U.S. consumers.

But top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee Elizabeth Warren cautioned there remains “no legal mechanism for consumers and many small businesses to recoup the money they have already paid.”

The Budget Lab at Yale University estimates consumers face an average effective tariff rate of 9.1% with Friday’s (February 20, 2026) decision, down from 16.9%.

But it said this “remains the highest since 1946,” excluding 2025.

Constrained ambition

The European Union said it was studying the court ruling and will remain in close contact with the Trump administration.

Britain plans to work with the United States on how the decision affects a trade deal between both countries, while Canada said the decision affirms that Mr. Trump’s tariffs were “unjustified.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom, who is widely expected to seek the Democratic presidential nomination to succeed Mr. Trump, called for refunds to Americans over the “illegal cash grab.”

“Every dollar unlawfully taken must be refunded immediately – with interest. Cough up!”

Published – February 21, 2026 12:34 am IST

The Supreme Court on Thursday (November 6, 2025) allowed U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to enforce a policy blocking transgender and non-binary people from choosing passport sex markers that align with their gender identity.

The decision is Mr. Trump’s latest win on the court’s emergency docket, and allows the administration to enforce the policy while a lawsuit over it plays out.

It halts a lower-court order requiring the government to keep letting people choose male, female or ‘X’ on their passport to correspond with their gender identity on new or renewed passports. The court’s three liberal justices dissented.

The court has sided with the government in nearly two dozen short-term orders on a range of policies since the start of Mr. Trump’s second term, including another case barring transgender people from serving in the military.

In a brief, unsigned order, the conservative-majority court said the policy isn’t discriminatory.

“Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth,” it said. “In both cases, the government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment.”

The court’s three liberal justices disagreed, saying in a dissent that those passports make transgender people vulnerable to “increased violence, harassment, and discrimination”.

“This court has once again paved the way for the immediate infliction of injury without adequate (or, really, any) justification,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote, saying the policy stemmed directly from Trump’s executive order that described transgender identity as “false” and “corrosive”.

Transgender and nonbinary people who sued over the policy have reported being sexually assaulted, strip-searched and accused of presenting fake documents at airport security checks, she wrote.

The Supreme Court majority said being unable to enforce the policy harms the government because passports are part of foreign affairs, an area of executive branch control. The dissenters, though, said it’s not clear exactly how individual identification documents affect the nation’s foreign policy.

The State Department changed its passport rules after Trump, a Republican, handed down an executive order in January declaring the United States would “recognise two sexes, male and female”, based on birth certificates and “biological classification”.

Transgender actor Hunter Schafer, for example, said in February that her new passport had been issued with a male gender marker, even though she’s marked female on her driver’s licence and passport for years.

Also read: On gender performativity: how it challenges the gender binary

The plaintiffs argue those passports aren’t accurate, and can be unsafe for those whose gender expression doesn’t match what’s on the documents.

“Forcing transgender people to carry passports that out them against their will increases the risk that they will face harassment and violence,” Jon Davidson, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ and HIV Project, said.

“This is a heartbreaking setback for the freedom of all people to be themselves, and fuel on the fire the Trump administration is stoking against transgender people and their constitutional rights.” Sex markers began appearing on passports in the mid-1970s and the federal government started allowing them to be changed with medical documentation in the early 1990s, the plaintiffs said in court documents.

A 2021 change under then-President Joe Biden, a Democrat, removed documentation requirements and allowed non-binary people to choose an ‘X’ gender marker after years of litigation.

A judge blocked the Trump administration policy in June after a lawsuit from nonbinary and transgender people, some of whom said they were afraid to submit applications. An appeals court left the judge’s order in place.

Solicitor General D John Sauer then turned to the Supreme Court, pointing to its recent ruling upholding a ban on transition-related healthcare for transgender minors and calling the Biden-era policy inaccurate.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly applauded Thursday’s (November 6) order.

“This decision is a victory for common sense and President Trump, who was resoundingly elected to eliminate woke gender ideology from our federal government,” she said.

Attorney General Pam Bondi also celebrated the order, saying there are two sexes and Justice Department attorneys would continue to fight for that “simple truth”.

Published – November 07, 2025 06:49 am IST

Washington:

The US Supreme Court on Thursday denied a last-minute bid by President-elect Donald Trump to halt sentencing in his hush money case.

The top court rejected Trump’s emergency application seeking to block Friday’s sentencing by a 5-4 vote.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Washington:

US President-elect Donald Trump filed a brief Friday urging the Supreme Court to pause a law that would ban TikTok the day before his January 20 inauguration if it is not sold by its Chinese owner ByteDance.

“In light of the novelty and difficulty of this case, the court should consider staying the statutory deadline to grant more breathing space to address these issues,” Trump’s legal team wrote, to give him “the opportunity to pursue a political resolution.”

US President-elect Donald Trump filed a brief Friday urging the Supreme Court to pause a law that would ban TikTok the day before his January 20 inauguration if it is not sold by its Chinese owner ByteDance.

“In light of the novelty and difficulty of this case, the court should consider staying the statutory deadline to grant more breathing space to address these issues,” Trump’s legal team wrote, to give him “the opportunity to pursue a political resolution.”

Trump was fiercely opposed to TikTok during his 2017-21 first term, and tried in vain to ban the video app on national security grounds.

The Republican voiced concerns — echoed by political rivals — that the Chinese government might tap into US TikTok users’ data or manipulate what they see on the platform.

US officials had also voiced alarm over the popularity of the video-sharing app with young people, alleging that its parent company is subservient to Beijing and that the app is used to spread propaganda, claims denied by the company and the Chinese government.

Trump called for a US company to buy TikTok, with the government sharing in the sale price, and his successor Joe Biden went one stage further — signing a law to ban the app for the same reasons.

Trump has now, however, reversed course.

“Now (that) I’m thinking about it, I’m for TikTok, because you need competition,” he recently told Bloomberg.

“If you don’t have TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram — and that’s, you know, that’s Zuckerberg.”

Facebook, founded by Mark Zuckerberg and part of his Meta tech empire, was among the social media networks that banned Trump after attacks by his supporters on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The ban was driven by concerns that he would use the platform to promote more violence.

Those bans on major social media platforms were later lifted.

In the brief filed on Friday, Trump’s lawyer made it clear the president-elect did not take a position on the legal merits of the current case.

“President Trump takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute,” John Sauer wrote in the amicus curiae — or “friend of the court” — brief.

“Instead, he respectfully requests that the court consider staying the act’s deadline for divestment of January 19, 2025, while it considers the merits of this case, thus permitting President Trump’s incoming Administration the opportunity to pursue a political resolution of the questions at issue in the case.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Washington:

TikTok asked the US Supreme Court on Monday to temporarily block a law that would force its Chinese owner to sell the popular online video-sharing platform or shut down a month from now.

The law, signed by President Joe Biden in April, would block TikTok from US app stores and web hosting services unless its owner ByteDance divests from the app by January 19.

TikTok asked for the move to be put on hold while it challenges a lower court ruling that upheld the law, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, potentially with an appeal to the Supreme Court itself.

TikTok asked the nation’s top court to make a decision by January 6.

“Congress has enacted a massive and unprecedented speech restriction,” TikTok, which claims to have more than 170 million monthly American users, said in its filing with the Supreme Court.

Should the law come into force it would “shutter one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration,” TikTok said.

“This, in turn, will silence the speech of Applicants and the many Americans who use the platform to communicate about politics, commerce, arts, and other matters of public concern,” it added.

“Applicants — as well as countless small businesses who rely on the platform — also will suffer substantial and unrecoverable monetary and competitive harms.”

The potential ban could strain US-China relations just as Donald Trump prepares to take office on January 20.

The US president-elect has emerged as an unlikely TikTok ally amid concerns that a ban on the app would mainly benefit Meta, the Facebook parent company owned by Mark Zuckerberg.

Trump’s stance reflects conservative criticism of Meta for allegedly suppressing right-wing content, including the former president himself being banned from Facebook after the January 6, 2021 US Capitol riot by his supporters.

Trump’s support for TikTok marks a reversal from his first term, when the Republican leader tried to ban the app over similar security concerns.

The US government alleges TikTok allows Beijing to collect data and spy on users. It also says the video hosting service is a conduit to spread propaganda, though China and ByteDance strongly deny these claims.

A three-judge US appeals court panel earlier this month unanimously upheld the law’s premise that TikTok divesting from Chinese ownership “is essential to protect our national security.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump.
| Photo Credit: AP

A win for former President Donald Trump in the coming U.S. presidential election could see the conservatives in the country’s Supreme Court retain control for the coming decades.

Conservatives already have a supermajority on the Supreme Court as a result of Mr. Trump’s first stint.

Justices Clarence Thomas, 76, and Samuel Alito, 74, are the two oldest members of the court. Either, or both, could consider stepping down knowing that Mr. Trump, a Republican, would nominate replacements who might be three decades younger.

“With President Trump and a Republican Senate, we could have a generation of conservative justices on the bench in the Supreme Court,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, recently wrote on X.

That is exactly what worries Christina Harvey, executive director of the progressive group Stand Up America. “The real key here is Trump prevention. If Trump wins again, he could solidify right-wing control of the Supreme Court for decades,” Ms. Harvey said.

Lower profile

Yet the nation’s highest court has a lower profile than it did in the past two presidential campaigns.

That is despite an early summer ruling on presidential immunity that insured that Mr. Trump would not have to stand trial before the election on charges of interference in the 2020 election and other consequential decisions on abortion, guns, affirmative action, and the environment.

Washington:

The US Supreme Court on Friday denied a request by the Biden administration to lift a block in several Republican states on expanding sex discrimination protection to transgender students.

President Joe Biden’s administration moved in April to extend rules forbidding sex-based discrimination in schools to cover gender identity.

Courts in 10 Republican-controlled states temporarily blocked the rules, and the administration petitioned the Supreme Court to intervene.

But in a 5-4 decision, the judges declined to take action while the legal process at the state level is still playing out.

Conservative justice Neil Gorsuch and the court’s three liberal justices issued a partial dissent.

The protections were part of a larger set of new rules on anti-discrimination, all of which will remain blocked in the Republican states while the legal challenges proceed.

The dissenting justices wanted the less controversial rules to take effect.

In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor highlighted that the court’s decision “leaves in place preliminary injunctions that bar the Government from enforcing the entire rule — including provisions that bear no apparent relationship to respondents’ alleged injuries.”

“Those injunctions are overboard,” she added.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

President Joe Biden walks on stage to speak during the NAACP national convention Tuesday, July 16, 2024, in Las Vegas.
| Photo Credit: AP

U.S. President Joe Biden is preparing to propose a major Supreme Court overhaul in the coming week that would include term limits for justices and an enforceable ethics code, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday citing two sources familiar with the plans.

Mr. Biden is also weighing whether to call for a constitutional amendment to eliminate broad presidential immunity, the Post reported, adding that Mr. Biden discussed at the move in a video conference with the Congressional Progressive Caucus on Saturday.

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Mr. Biden has previously shunned calls to overhaul the top court with term limits or by expanding the number of seats on the bench. Some Democrats have made calls for the changes following former President Donald Trump’s appointment of three conservative justices.

In October, a bipartisan group of legal experts expressed their support for 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices as a way to deter partisanship and improve the judiciary’s reputation.