Justice Sotomayor Just Became My Favorite Supreme Court Justice!!!

[army judge]

Poster's Note: Justice Sotomayor's outstanding reply in response to the definition of
"tariffs" was common sense "mother wit", as my late, beloved maternal grandfather was wont to regularly reply! I'm her newest "fan boy"!

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor clashed with Solicitor General John Sauer, President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer, after he claimed that tariffs were not a tax burden on the American people.

During oral arguments about Trump's global tariff agenda, Sotomayor said she didn't buy the government's argument that the president had the power to enact tariffs.

"I just don't understand this argument," the justice explained. "It's a congressional power, not a presidential power to tax. And you wanna say tariffs are not taxes, but that's exactly what they are. Degenerating money from American citizens' revenue."

"I don't understand this argument, that it's equivalent, or that foreign powers, or even an emergency, can do away with the major questions doctrine," she continued.

Sauer countered by claiming Trump's power to enact tariffs was "a foreign-facing regulation of foreign commerce."


"So Biden could have declared a national emergency in global warming and then gotten his student forgiveness?" Sotomayor wondered.

"I don't think he could have gotten student loan forgiveness," Sauer replied.

"Why? It's foreign-facing, to tax fossil fuel or to do something else," the justice observed. "That's all Biden would have had to do with any of his programs?"

"The power to impose tariffs is a core application of the power to regulate foreign commerce," Sauer insisted.

'That's exactly what they are': Sotomayor schools lawyer claiming tariffs aren't taxes

via C-SPAN

rumble.com

'That's exactly what they are': Sotomayor schools lawyer claiming tariffs aren't taxes

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor clashed with Solicitor General John Sauer, President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer, after he claimed that tariffs were not a tax burden on the American people.During oral arguments about Trump's global tariff agenda, Sotomayor said she didn't buy the...

www.rawstory.com

 

[Tax Counsel]

The Trump administration is really reaching to the extreme to make this argument. The founders of this nation revolted in part because of tariff taxes and those taxes prompted the famous rallying cry "No taxation without representation." The founders had no doubt that tariffs are taxes and no competant tax expert, including myself, would say otherwise. They've been regarded as taxes for several hundred years going all the way back to Colonial rule. This "forward facing" crap to try to turn it into a foreign policy power of the president is one of the indicators to me that Trump is working to turn the presidency into a dictatorship.

I had made that prediction before the election and some members here seemed to think that Trump would never do any such thing. He's now doing a lot of things members here and others who voted for him never imagined he'd do. One only had to pay attention to his campaign rhetoric to see what his ambitions were. Blind loyalty prevented his ardent supporters from seeing what was aready becoming evident.

I was told here that the U.S. institutions that can check presidential power and the public would not allow that to happen. I replied that we do have those institutions and a well armed populice but they have to be willing to stand up and invoke the power they have to stop the march to authoritarianism. Yet I see no real opposition to what Trump is doing. Those institutions are complicit in helping Trump along his way rather than doing what expect of them — to defend our republic. We have to put a stop to it before he accumulates so much power that one day we wake up and realize the it's too late. The constitutional democratic republic that has served us so well for nearly 250 years would be gone and we find ourselves living under a dictatorship.

I saw the post earlier that had a series of quotes about being a liberal. One stated the current administration is fascist. While that's not literally true, it fair to say that it is authoritarian and is pushing us into a dictatorship. Dictatorships don't always come to power by use of arms. A number of them in the last century were voted into office and then subverted the government to kill democracy. If we aren't vigilant, it could happen here too.

It's time for the Supreme Court to do its job and follow the thinking of Justice Sotomayor: it's a tax, the term "forward facing" has no real meaning in American law, and in any event being forward facing doesn't remove it from being a tax. All tax bills must originate in the House of Representatives. It is not a power the President may invoke on his own.