Supreme Court gives Trump — and the rest of the GOP — a gift in disguise

 https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/21/politics/tariffs-ruling-supreme-court-trump-gop

In the long run, the court might have saved him from himself — at least politically.

That’s because, while the decision is clearly a major setback for Trump’s agenda, it also strips him of tools that seemed to cause short-term economic damage to the country, and that were clearly doing short-term political damage to Trump’s party.

It was fortuitous that the Supreme Court’s decision came Friday. Just 90 minutes before it landed, the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced the gross domestic product had grown at just a 1.4% annualized rate in the fourth quarter. That made 2025 the second-worst year for GDP growth since 2016.

In other words, the stock market aside, the economy isn’t doing great.

At the very least, they gave Americans a reason to blame Trump for economic hardships. Trump voluntarily took ownership of a struggling economy, using a method that economists widely predicted would cause more problems, at least in the near term.