In Section 122, Congress endowed the president with narrow, temporary authority to impose tariffs “to deal with large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits” (emphasis added). What Trump is complaining about — something he insists is a crisis but is not — is the balance of trade, not of payments. The United States does not have an overall balance of payments deficit, much less a large and serious one.

A trade deficit between the U.S. and a foreign nation occurs, mainly in connection with goods (which is just one aspect of international commerce), when imports are greater than exports. This is not really a problem for a variety of reasons — e.g., a trade deficit results in an investment surplus, the U.S. is a major services economy and often runs exported services surpluses that mitigate the imports deficit in goods, etc.

The balance of payments is a broader concept than the balance of trade. It accounts for all the economic transactions that take place between the United States and the rest of the world. Even without getting into every kind of transaction that entails, suffice it to say that foreign investment in the United States, coupled with the advantages our nation accrues because the dollar is the world’s reserve currency, more than make up for the longstanding trade deficit in goods.

Our overall payments are in balance. There is no crisis.

It’s vital to understand why Section 122 was enacted. There was a financial crisis in the late 60s and early 70s under the Bretton Woods system, when the dollar was tied to gold. Foreign countries that held dollar reserves could exchange them for gold at a fixed rate. Meanwhile, our government was spending at a high clip due to the Vietnam War and Great Society programs. This and the obligation to pay out gold put enormous pressure on the dollar. In response, in 1971, President Nixon severed the dollar’s tie to gold and — as several justices recounted in Friday’s Learning Resources opinions — imposed a temporary 10 percent import surcharge (a tariff) to stabilize the economy......

There is no rationale under Section 122 to impose tariffs. Because President Trump has no unilateral authority to order tariffs, he must meet the preconditions of Section 122 to justify levying them. He cannot. Not even close.

With this in mind, MS NOW reported Thursday on the latest addition to the façade at Main Justice:

A large banner with Donald Trump’s face was hung on the front of the Justice Department headquarters in Washington, D.C., the president’s latest effort to imprint his personal brand on the nation’s capital.

Observers spotted the lengthy blue banner featuring Trump’s face sandwiched between two pillars on the building’s exterior on Thursday. The banner, which also includes the DOJ seal, states, ‘Make America Safe Again,’ and adorns the front entrance of a department that Democrats say has been weaponized by Trump.

In a written statement, Trump’s DOJ acknowledged the developments, saying: “We are proud at this Department of Justice to celebrate 250 years of our great country and our historic work to make America safe again at President Trump’s direction.”

Photo:

— Ryan J. Reilly “paints a vivid and urgent portrait of… disarray” (@ryanjreilly.com) 2026-02-19T20:37:47.353Z

.....Indeed, the banner was helpful in removing a pretense that no one took seriously anyway. The DOJ’s official statement was explicit and unambiguous: The department works at “Trump’s direction” — as opposed to the direction of the attorney general, who’s supposed to lead federal law enforcement.

But I’m also reminded of a column written by the Times’ Jamelle Bouie in August:

The administration-produced imagery in Washington is, then, a projection of sorts — a representation of what the president wants reality to be, drawn from its idea of what authoritarianism looks like. The banners and the troops — not to mention the strangely sycophantic cabinet meetings and news conferences — are a secondhand reproduction of the strongman aesthetic of other strongman states. It is as if the administration is building a simulacrum of authoritarianism, albeit one meant to bring the real thing into being. No, the United States is not a totalitarian state led by a sovereign Donald Trump — a continental Trump Organization backed by the world’s largest nuclear arsenal — but his favored imagery reflects his desire to live in this fantasy.

Six months later, Bouie’s observation still resonates. The DOJ banner doesn’t signal Trump’s strength — it reflects his desperation.

A failing president wants to convey authority, so he and his team scramble to impose symbols like these on the public. They appear intended to convey questions Trump seems reluctant to ask out loud: “Don’t I appear imposing? Isn’t it clear how powerful I am? Shouldn’t my opponents feel an overwhelming sense of fear?”

The answer to the questions, however, is “no.” In fact, members of Team Trump have it backward: By trying too hard, their posturing delivers the opposite of the intended message.

The Justice Department’s banner, in other words, doesn’t show a commanding figure; it shows a flailing politician pretending to convey confidence and strength.

The resolution, adopted last week, made a host of recommendations for the EU to pursue at the 70th annual UN Commission on the Status of Women, which is set to take place next month.

Among the recommendations was a proclamation emphasising the “importance of the full recognition of trans women as women, noting that their inclusion is essential for the effectiveness of any gender-equality and anti-violence policies”.

Other proclamations referencing LGBTQ+ people included the need for a “comprehensive tool to monitor and counter democratic backsliding and backsliding in women’s rights”, as well as the acknowledgement of a rise in attacks against LGBTQ+ and women’s rights activists.

The array of recommendations were adopted in a 340-141 vote, with 68 abstentions, according to LGBTQ+ Nation.

While most European Parliament resolutions aren’t legally binding, their passage typically marks significant influence within EU member states.

The resolution, adopted last week, made a host of recommendations for the EU to pursue at the 70th annual UN Commission on the Status of Women, which is set to take place next month.

Among the recommendations was a proclamation emphasising the “importance of the full recognition of trans women as women, noting that their inclusion is essential for the effectiveness of any gender-equality and anti-violence policies”.

Other proclamations referencing LGBTQ+ people included the need for a “comprehensive tool to monitor and counter democratic backsliding and backsliding in women’s rights”, as well as the acknowledgement of a rise in attacks against LGBTQ+ and women’s rights activists.

The array of recommendations were adopted in a 340-141 vote, with 68 abstentions, according to LGBTQ+ Nation.

While most European Parliament resolutions aren’t legally binding, their passage typically marks significant influence within EU member states.

About a year later, in November 2025, the Republican administration advanced a plan to approve agricultural pesticides containing “forever chemicals” as an active ingredient, despite concerns raised by some scientists and environmental activists. Kennedy, in his capacity as Trump’s health and human services secretary, bit his tongue.

This year, the underlying dynamic has reached a new level. The New York Times reported:

President Trump issued an executive order late Wednesday aimed at spurring the domestic production of glyphosate, a widely used weedkiller that has figured in health lawsuits.

The move immediately set off alarms among supporters of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ movement, and appeared to put Mr. Kennedy in an awkward position.

As the report explains, glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup, which has been the target of tens of thousands of lawsuits that claim it causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma......

This has been an ongoing issue for months. In June, MS NOW’s Catherine Rampell wrote a memorable Washington Post column along these lines, noting that Kennedy’s MAHA agenda is rooted in part in the idea that Americans’ health would greatly improve through better nutrition and exposure to fewer environmental toxins.

Kennedy, Rampell added, is nevertheless playing a leading role in an administration that’s “expanding use of environmental toxins.”

If Kennedy and Team Trump wanted to admit that the MAHA agenda was largely focused on undermining vaccines, it would be impolitic, but it would also be far closer to the truth.

With this in mind, the Cabinet secretary clearly didn’t need another damaging report, but she confronted one anyway this week when NBC News, citing four sources, reported on Noem’s increasingly strained relationship with U.S. Coast Guard officials. (The Coast Guard falls under DHS, not the Pentagon.)

According to the report, which also has not been independently verified by MS NOW, the relationship between the DHS secretary and Coast Guard reached new depths following a “verbal directive” to shift Coast Guard resources from a search-and-rescue mission to find a missing service member. From the NBC News report:

The tension between some Coast Guard officials and Noem began after a 23-year-old Coast Guardsman went overboard into the Pacific Ocean from the cutter Waesche on Feb. 4 last year, shortly after the Senate confirmed Noem into her role, according to the two U.S. officials, the Coast Guard official and the former Coast Guard official.

The Coast Guard had surged ships and aircraft to the Pacific to find the guardsman. Hours into the search, Noem learned that a Coast Guard C-130 that was supposed to fly detained migrants from California to Texas was among the aircraft over the Pacific looking for the missing guardsman, and she intervened, according to the two U.S. officials and the Coast Guard official.

According to the report, Noem verbally instructed the acting Coast Guard commandant to pull the plane off the search-and-rescue mission so it could instead help with the deportation of immigrants. Adm. Kevin Lunday complied and notified the National Command Center, which ordered the C-130 to fly to San Diego while other aircraft and ships involved in the search continued.

That did not, however, end the matter: Coast Guard officials reportedly scrambled to find other planes that could transport immigrants so that the C-130 to continue searching for the missing guardsman......

He was never found......

But the report concluded that the incident “left Coast Guard officials with a negative impression of Noem,” which seems understandable given the circumstances.

Highlighting the reporting, Rachel Maddow asked via Bluesky, “How is it possible that Kristi Noem still has this job?” That need not be a rhetorical question.

The answer generated some overwrought headlines about Obama confirming the existence of aliens, so he issued a clarification the day after Cohen’s interview appeared online. “Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there,” the former president said. “But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!”

The follow-up statement almost certainly should have brought the story, such as it was, to a rapid end. Obama’s Republican successor, however, didn’t see it quite that way.

Trump on Obama saying ailens are real: “He's giving you classified information. He's not supposed to be doing that…He made a big mistake.”

— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) 2026-02-19T20:20:52.735Z

.....Doocy quickly followed up by asking whether Trump was confirming that aliens are real. “I don’t know if they’re real or not,” Trump replied. “I can tell you he gave classified information. He’s not supposed to be doing that. He made a big mistake. He took it out of classified information.”

So, a few things.

First, Trump’s yearslong fixation on Obama continues to be rather creepy. The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd recently accused the Republican of having “Obama Derangement Syndrome,” and there’s ample evidence to bolster the point.

Second, the idea that Obama’s innocuous comments about the likelihood of intelligent life somewhere in the universe reflected “classified information” is so ridiculous that it’s kind of hilarious that Trump even floated the baseless criticisms.

Third, and perhaps most important, Trump probably ought to be more careful about accusations like these, given his track record of blurting out sensitive national security secrets and storing classified files in the bathroom of his glorified country club. Indeed, if the incumbent president is looking for someone who’s actually mishandled classified information, he ought to look in a mirror.

Nevertheless, a few hours after targeting Obama with nonsense, Trump published a related item to his social media platform, announcing his intention to direct federal agencies “to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters.”

Earlier this week, Peter Navarro, a leading White House voice on trade and economic policy, appeared on Fox News and insisted that the U.S. economy is “perfect.” In fact, during the same on-air comments, Navarro described the economic conditions in the first year of Donald Trump’s second term as the best since 1998, dovetailing with the president’s near-constant insistence that the domestic economy has literally never been as healthy as it is now......

But as the week comes to an end, the latest economic news adds insult to injury. CNBC reported:

Economic growth slowed more than expected near the end of 2025 while inflation held firm, according to data released Friday that could complicate the Federal Reserve’s path on interest rates.

Gross domestic product rose at an annualized rate of just 1.4%, according to Commerce Department numbers released Friday, well below the Dow Jones estimate for a 2.5% gain.

What’s more, we now know that the economy grew at a 2.2% pace across all of 2025 — down from 2.8% in 2024. Excluding the pandemic, 2025 showed the weakest economic growth in the United States in nine years.

In other words, despite endless Republican hype, economic growth and job growth were stronger during Joe Biden’s final year in office compared with the first year of Trump’s second term.

The White House has not yet offered a persuasive explanation as to why the economy got worse after the Republican returned to the Oval Office......

If recent history is any guide, the administration will try to move the goalposts again, but the underlying question for the White House remains the same: As a candidate, Trump promised to deliver immediate, Day 1 results. Why did he fail?

Oz said at the National Press Club last week that if older Americans could remain in the workforce, they’d help the economy and save the country money. Putting his best spin on the idea, the former television personality said seniors who push off retirement would gain “agency over their future” in exchange.

But many GOP officials don’t just want older Americans to stay in the workforce, they also want Americans at the other end of the age spectrum to join the workforce sooner.

Florida AG James Uthmeier: "We need to focus on getting people into the workforce even earlier. We passed legislation last year to help high school students get their hands dirty and get on job sites more quickly."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-02-17T12:59:21.012Z

“We need to focus on … getting people into the workforce even earlier,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier told Fox Business this week. “We passed legislation last year to help high school students get their hands dirty and get on job sites more quickly.”

This isn’t an altogether new priority for the GOP. In the wake of the 2010 midterm elections, when so-called Tea Party Republicans were riding high, a surprising number of party officials took aim at an unexpected target: child labor laws. One might have assumed a generations-old national consensus had taken root, but no, many Republicans were eager for a new public conversation on the topic.

Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, for example, suggested child labor laws might not be constitutional. Maine’s then-Gov. Paul LePage called for rolling back his state’s restrictions on children in the workplace. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa even argued that looser child labor laws might help combat childhood obesity.

Ahead of his ill-fated 2012 presidential campaign, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich went so far as to argue that existing child labor laws were, as he put it in 2011, “truly stupid.”

In time, the issue largely faded from the Republican Party’s to-do list, but in 2023, the issue started to make a comeback. Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, for example, signed a bill that made it easier for companies to hire children without getting consent from their parents. Similar efforts were launched in several other states.

When the right-wing Project 2025 blueprint was written two years ago, it specifically endorsed rolling back “hazard” regulations around child labor. Around the same time, as Uthmeier noted, Florida loosened its child labor laws at Gov. Ron DeSantis’ behest.