The White House deepened its attacks on the judiciary on Wednesday as it hit back at a federal court decision striking down President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs.
“[Trade] deficits have created a national emergency that has decimated American communities,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai told HuffPost in a statement. “It is not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency.”
And White House senior adviser Stephen Miller went even further, claiming in a post on X that “the judicial coup is out of control.”
The statements mark the Trump administration’s latest broadsides against the courts after judges have repeatedly paused or blocked White House policies ranging from the rollback of Biden-era immigration programs to the targeting of various law firms. With Republicans in Congress declining to use their power to check the president, the judiciary has become one of Trump’s few restraints and has received his wrath — which, in turn, earned the president a rare rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
In the latest blow to Trump’s agenda, a bipartisan panel at the U.S. International Court of Trade determined in a unanimous decision on Wednesday that the president had acted beyond his authority in imposing “reciprocal” tariffs, and that his justification for the import taxes using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act wasn’t sufficient.
