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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.
“The Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariff Orders exceed any authority granted to the President by IEEPA to regulate importation by means of tariffs,” the judges wrote in their opinion, which also called for the levies to be “vacated.”
The White House’s digs on Wednesday at judges add to repeated salvos Trump and others have made when they’ve disagreed with actions a court has taken. Previously, Trump has called judges “crooked,” “radical,” and “MONSTERS,” and even personally attacked individuals like U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who issued a court order halting the deportation of Venezuelan migrants.
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Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has spoken on how this onslaught is “designed to intimidate the judiciary,” calling the rhetoric “attacks on our democracy [that] … ultimately risk undermining our Constitution and the rule of law.” Increasingly, judges have also raised concerns about their safety. A Reuters investigation found that at least 11 federal judges who have ruled against Trump have faced threats of violence and harassment directed at their families.
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