◼ President Donald Trump spoke for nearly two hours at the 2026 State of the Union address. He made his case that we are, as he likes to say, the hottest country in the world, in a mostly upbeat presentation. Trump has things to boast about. He closed the southern border. He hit the Iranian nuclear program. He has struck blows against DEI and contributed to the rollback of trans insanity. He signed a tax bill that, while including some unfortunate and costly gimmicks, makes permanent the tax cuts from his first term. Military recruitment is up and fentanyl-trafficking down. But Americans are still discontented over the cost of living. Trump argued that things are headed in the right direction, and real wages have indeed been increasing. The problem is that elected officials cannot talk people out of how they’re feeling about the economy, and the inflation rate, while down significantly, is still too high. Moreover, the new initiatives the president advanced in his speech to address the cost of living are either insignificant or not going to pass Congress. The Democrats inadvertently came to Trump’s rescue on a few occasions, such as when they refused to stand to endorse the proposition that the government should prioritize citizens over illegal immigrants. That said, these speeches matter much less than they used to. For all the sound and occasional fury, nothing from the address is likely to alter the trajectory of the midterms.

◼ In a 6–3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump can’t keep imposing tariffs under the powers granted by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA). Presidents may well have broad emergency powers to impose tariffs and trade embargoes during wartime. But Trump’s own solicitor general conceded that the Trump tariffs at issue rested only on IEEPA, not on war powers. As Chief Justice John Roberts’s opinion acridly noted, the U.S. “is not at war with every nation in the world.” The president’s furious and intemperate response—effectively accusing the justices in the majority of being bought off by foreign powers and suggesting that Democrats might have a point in calls for Court-packing—was irresponsible. In fact, the Court may have done Trump a favor. Tariffs have driven up costs without correspondingly helping boost American manufacturing or even cutting the trade deficit. With nine months to go before the midterms, relief from the global and “liberation day” tariff regime could give some of those voters a rest—if Trump will take the opportunity to pursue less draconian tariffs.

◼ But that seems unlikely. Hours after the ruling came down, Trump said that he would use other statutory tools to reconstitute his global tariff regime. His administration swiftly imposed a nearly universal 10 percent tariff under Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act—yet another obscure law that had never been used to tax imports. Trump then promised to raise the tariff to 15 percent, the statutory maximum, which would bring average rates close to where they were before. Still, the president might end up disappointed. Section 122 only authorizes tariffs for up to 150 days, absent congressional approval, to address “large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits.” The balance of payments was a relevant concept back when the dollar was exchanged with foreign currencies at fixed rates and could be swapped for gold. But since America adopted floating exchange rates along with the rest of the world, every dollar sent abroad through imports and outbound investment returns through equivalent financial inflows and exports. The balance of payments each year is, therefore, essentially zero, so Trump’s backup tariff has no legal basis. If the courts strike it down as well, Trump will simply move on to the next vague statute. The only real solution to the president’s indiscriminate protectionism is for Congress to finally reclaim its Article I taxing power.

◼ Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee to the federal bench, has an exaggerated reputation as a rubber-stamper for the president. She ruled against the defense on several motions while presiding over the prosecution of Trump for mishandling classified documents. Still, she controversially dismissed the indictment, finding Jack Smith’s special counsel appointment constitutionally infirm. Now, Judge Cannon has ordered the Department of Justice not to disclose Smith’s final special counsel report outlining the evidence against Trump. Cannon pointed out that no one objected to her order, but the litigation was rigged: Trump demanded suppression, and his DOJ was eager to be ordered to suppress. In the absence of a real case, courts have no authority over the DOJ’s publication of a special counsel report. By regulation, that’s the attorney general’s call. Smith’s case against Trump was dismissed when Trump was elected president in 2024. If Democrats take control of the House next year, however, Pam Bondi should expect a subpoena.

◼ After a humiliating rejection of proposed charges by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., the DOJ has dropped its absurd investigation of the “Seditious Six”—a group of Democratic lawmakers, all veterans of the military or intelligence agencies, who produced a video admonishing our armed forces not to follow unlawful orders. The video was obnoxious and unhelpful. Our well-trained troops are schooled in the obligation to obey only legal orders, and the Democrats in their video did not specify which, if any, order they claimed was illegal. (They seemed to be referring to lethal strikes, directed by Trump without congressional authorization, against boats suspected of ferrying cocaine in the Caribbean.) But the video was constitutionally protected—notwithstanding Trump’s unhinged description of it as “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH.” What was not harmless was the president’s leveraging of government law enforcement processes against members of Congress—exacerbated by the Defense Department’s simultaneous lawfare against Senator Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.), a retired naval captain still subject to military law. The administration’s climbdown is welcome but should not have been necessary.

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◼ California Governor Gavin Newsom (D.) pardoned an illegal immigrant from Cambodia even though he had an attempted-murder conviction. In 1996, when Somboon Phaymany was a 19-year-old with a green card, he was involved in gang violence between the Oriental Boy Soldiers and the Oriental Killer Boys. Newsom, however, cited “evidence” that Phaymany is “living an upright life and has demonstrated his fitness for restoration of civic rights and responsibilities.” His previous criminal convictions having been wiped clean, the Cambodian is no longer deportable because of them and may now reopen his immigration case. The Department of Homeland Security rightfully called the pardon “insanity.”

◼ Climate activists are trying to bypass the ballot box by resorting to lawfare, often by suing oil companies in state courts. (A 2011 Supreme Court decision has effectively blocked the federal route.) Those suits have been wending their way through different state systems, so far without much success, but one that has survived has been brought by the City and County of Boulder, Colo., against ExxonMobil and Suncor. The defendants have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that such cases raise issues that stretch far beyond Colorado and should be considered at the federal level. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case. While its conclusion may be affected by the Environmental Protection Agency’s rejection of the Obama-era finding that greenhouse gas emissions are a threat to public health, the plaintiffs should fail even without that. State-by-state litigation would pose a serious threat to U.S. energy security. Moreover, attributing responsibility for damage allegedly caused by changes to the climate to specific companies makes nonsense of any reasonable notion of causation.

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◼ Europe is threatening to institutionalize and expand its status as a “regulatory superpower” with the Digital Services Act, which will target what it defines as “Very Large Online Platforms” (VLOPS) of 45 million active users in the EU. That means Meta, Google, TikTok, Amazon, and X. The European Commission and many national assemblies want U.S. tech companies to act as political bodyguards, censors, and watchdogs for the European establishment. This is a project that has been abandoned in the United States. Mark Zuckerberg initially, and stupidly, accepted responsibility for Donald Trump’s 2016 election and for Brexit. He subsequently tried to manage the political speech of more than 1 billion users. This began furtively in Europe, with his cancellation of pro-life ads in the lead-up to Ireland’s abortion referendum. Since then, Zuckerberg has publicly repented and has readopted the internet’s original ethos of global free speech through technology. Europe’s political class, however, still believes that it can head off populist challenge or critique by banning speech critical of governments or of mass migration. America’s innovative tech companies should remain steadfast in their renewed commitment to democratic values—especially the robust freedom of speech on which everything else relies.

◼ It has been four years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine has paid a terrible price in blood for its resistance. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that “Ukrainian forces likely suffered somewhere between 500,000 and 600,000 casualties, including killed, wounded, and missing, and between 100,000 and 140,000 fatalities between February 2022 and December 2025.” But Ukraine has made Russia pay a much higher price. CSIS calculates that Russia has suffered 1.2 million casualties, with as many as 325,000 killed. That is more than five times the number of U.S. military fatalities during the Vietnam War. Negotiations between the two sides, led over the past year by Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, have gone in circles with little sign of progress. It has long been clear that Putin will consider a cease-fire only when the conditions on the battlefield force his hand.

◼ The University of Notre Dame drew criticism when it appointed Susan Ostermann to direct its Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies even though the professor has attributed opposition to abortion—a view held by the university—to white supremacy and misogyny. Ostermann has now declined the appointment. But the question remains: What was the university thinking? It’s not a rhetorical question: Notre Dame ought to clarify what its Catholic commitments mean operationally. Does it have the same hiring policies as any secular university? Or does its apostolic mission make a difference? If the university has not communicated its view of these matters, it’s not the fault of Ostermann or the people who sought to promote her.

◼ For the first time in 46 years, the U.S. men’s hockey team won gold at the Winter Olympics, edging out a thrilling 2–1 victory over a Canadian team that spent most of the game relentlessly on the attack. Goalie Connor Hellebuyck faced 42 shots and let only one get through. Meanwhile, forward Jack Hughes had a substantial part of his smile knocked out of his skull by a Canadian high-stick to the face but returned to the ice moments later, finally scoring the game-winning goal in overtime. It was a deliriously joyful moment for the men’s team as they joined the U.S. women’s team as fellow Olympic champions—one made all the more poignant by the tribute the players immediately paid to their departed teammate Johnny Gaudreau, felled two years ago by a drunk driver. The attempts by some miserable journalists to politicize and sully this moment—to make it about Trump, or about some imagined slight to the women’s team—are beneath contempt and deserve to be beneath notice. All Americans, regardless of political affiliation, should enjoy this moment of national pride.