White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller was among a number of high-profile names to lash out at a federal trade court for blocking Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs.
“The judicial coup is out of control,” Miller wrote on X after the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977—the law Trump cited to justify his tariffs—doesn’t allow him “unbounded authority.”
“The worldwide and retaliatory tariff orders exceed any authority granted to the president by IEEPA to regulate importation by means of tariffs,” the three-judge panel determined. “The challenged tariff orders will be vacated and their operation permanently enjoined.”
The ruling was made even more brutal by the fact it come from one of Trump’s own appointees: Judge Timothy Reif. Reif was nominated to the federal trade court in 2018 by the president. Alongside Reif were Judge Jane Restani, a Reagan appointee, and Judge Gary Katzmann, an Obama nominee. A White House spokesperson criticized all three.
“It is not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency,” Kush Desai said in a statement to the Daily Beast.
Elsewhere on the right, allies of the president expressed similar outrage.
On Fox News, Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy told Laura Ingraham that the president’s ability to institute tariffs was “pretty clear.”
“You mean a federal judge has intervened with the other two branches’ ability to make policy?” he said. “I’m shocked. That hasn’t happened since yesterday. It’ll be appealed. I think it’s pretty clear that the president has tariff authority. Congress gave it to him.”
More outrage came from podcaster and serial plagiarist Benny Johnson, who called the panel’s ruling “corrupt.”
Conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, like Miller, labeled the decision a “JUDICIAL COUP.”
Steven Crowder used the same term. “This is a judicial coup against the President and the American people who elected him,” Crowder wrote on X. “These corrupt judges might as well be doing the bidding of Beijing at this point.”
X user Gunther Eagleman, meanwhile, called on Republicans to “rein in the rogue judiciary.”
To challenge Trump’s tariffs, a dozen states and a group of small businesses sued the administration.
“This ruling reaffirms that our laws matter, and that trade decisions can’t be made on the president’s whim,” Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield told NPR.
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