President Donald Trump responded to last month's smackdown by the U.S. Supreme Court by imposing his will over every bastion of American power, according to new reporting.
After the court's right-wing struck down his tariff regime 6-3, the 79-year-old president has sidestepped Congress and smashed norms in a 14-day effort to reshape the global order, reported Axios.
"Over the past two weeks, Trump launched a massive Middle East war, blacklisted the hottest AI company on the planet, ordered new global tariffs, and presided over the biggest media merger in two decades," wrote Axios co-founders Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen. "He did it all unilaterally — without passing a single law, and without pretending he needed to."
Trump responded to the court ruling hours later by imposing a new, 10- or 15-percent global tariff Feb. 20 under a separate emergency law and watched his allies Larry and David Ellison take control of CNN, HBO and Warner Bros. on Feb. 26, and a day later he unilaterally ordered federal agencies to stop doing business with Anthropic after the AI giant refused to give the Pentagon unrestricted access to its technology.
"[Then] on Feb. 28, Trump did what no president before him had dared — launch a full military assault on an Iranian regime that has tormented the United States since the 1979 Islamic Revolution," Axios reported.
Some U.S. officials have avoided calling the joint military operation with Israel a "war," which connotes congressional approval, or admit that "regime change" is the goal, but Trump openly calls the conflict a war and insists he must be personally involved in choosing the nation's next leader.
"Trump has spent his second term systematically testing how much power a president can seize without Congress, the courts or public opinion stopping him," Axios reported. "The answer, so far: almost limitless."
"What's all the more remarkable is that Trump is doing this with most of America opposed to his performance in office — and to these specific actions," the report added.