Trump Already Hit With Lawsuit Over Tariffs—From Unexpected Group

A right-wing group with financial ties to Leonard Leo and the Koch network is aiming to halt Donald Trump’s tariff plan.

The New Civil Liberties Alliance sued the president Thursday, claiming that Trump’s decision to invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act did not give him the power to “usurp” Congress’s right to control tariffs or “upset the Constitution’s separation of powers.”

In a press release, the group argued that the emergency statute “authorizes specific emergency actions like imposing sanctions or freezing assets to protect the United States from foreign threats.” 

“It does not authorize the President to impose tariffs,” the NCLA wrote.

“Congress has sole authority to control tariffs, which it has done by passing detailed tariff statutes. The President cannot bypass those statutes by invoking ‘emergency’ authority in another statute that does not mention tariffs,” the group continued. “His attempt to use the IEEPA this way not only violates the law as written, but it also invites application of the Supreme Court’s Major Questions Doctrine, which tells courts not to discern policies of ‘vast economic and political significance’ in a law without explicit congressional authorization.”

The NCLA further argued that Trump had massively overstepped his presidential powers by leaning on the wartime statute.

“In its nearly 50-year history, no other president—including President Trump in his first term—has ever tried to use the IEEPA to impose tariffs,”  they wrote. “NCLA’s lawsuit does not quibble with President Trump’s declaration of an opioid-related emergency, but it does take issue with his decision to impose tariffs in response, without legal authority to do so.”

The group sued Trump on behalf of Simplified, a Florida-based home goods company whose business relies on imported materials from China, arguing that Trump’s move to impose even more tariffs on China would crush the company’s profits. In a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida, the NCLA asked the court to declare the tariff unlawful, vacate the increase reflected in the U.S. tariff schedule, and effectively block the tariff in its entirety.

“By invoking emergency power to impose an across-the-board tariff on imports from China that the statute does not authorize, President Trump has misused that power, usurped Congress’s right to control tariffs, and upset the Constitution’s separation of powers,” stated NCLA senior litigation counsel Andrew Morris.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen slammed Donald Trump’s outlandish bid to acquire Greenland Thursday, saying that the United States “cannot annex another country.”

During JD Vance’s own humiliating trip to the Arctic island last week, he whipped out some of his venture capitalist jargon to allege that Denmark had “underinvested in the security architecture” of Greenland.  

Frederiksen gave remarks Thursday alongside Greenland’s new Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and his predecessor, Mute Egede, where she voiced her disappointment in the U.S., arguing that Denmark had always been a good ally to the country. 

“When you ask our businesses to invest in the U.S., they do. When you ask us to spend more on our defense, we do; and when you ask of us to strengthen security in the Arctic, we are on the same page,” Frederiksen said. 

“But when you demand to take over a part of the Kingdom of Denmark’s territory, when we are met by pressure and by threats from our closest ally, what are we to believe in about the country that we have admired for so many years?

“This is about the world order that we have built together across the Atlantic over generations: You cannot annex another country, not even with an argument about international security,” Frederiksen said. 

Frederiksen added that she would still work to maintain relations with the U.S. “If we let ourselves be divided as allies, then we do our foes a favor. And I will do everything that I can to prevent that from happening,” she said. 

But it doesn’t seem like Trump intends to make that easy. On Wednesday, the Trump administration levied a 20 percent tariff on all imports from the European Union, including Denmark. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen in Brussels Thursday to reaffirm the “strong relationship” between the two countries, according to a statement from the State Department. 

Elon Musk isn’t leaving politics anytime soon, if his X posts are to be believed.

The tech mogul and fascism enthusiast posted “Fake news” Wednesday afternoon, in response to a Politico article saying that Musk is on the outs with the Trump administration following his disastrous intervention in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election, which saw Brad Schimel, who received more than $25 million from Musk, lose handily.

Shortly after the loss was announced, Musk didn’t cry fraud but instead claimed that he didn’t expect Schimel to win and that the real victory was a voter ID law being enshrined in Wisconsin’s state Constitution. But the alarmed reactions from Republicans both in the state and around the country suggest otherwise, and they now fear similar bloodbaths in the 2026 midterms and beyond.

Democrats, meanwhile, rallied behind the news, with DNC Chair Ken Martin saying, “We should put Elon Musk into every state” and Wisconsin Democratic Party chief Ben Wikler urging Musk to stay in the Trump administration and keep talking.

“When Elon Musk comes to town, Republicans should flee in panic,” Wikler added.

On Thursday morning, Vice President JD Vance told Fox News that “DOGE has got a lot of work to do, and yeah, that work is going to continue after Elon leaves, but fundamentally, Elon is going to remain a friend and an adviser of both me and the president,” referring to Musk’s efforts to overhaul the federal government.

Musk’s time in the federal government doesn’t appear to be ending, at least in the short term, but whether he’ll continue to get involved in elections remains to be seen. Democrats are hoping he does, much as he did in Wisconsin, while the GOP fears that the world’s richest man is now more of a liability than an asset.

Judge James Boasberg thinks Stephen Miller, Tom Homan, and the rest of the Trump administration “acted in bad faith” when they invoked the Alien Enemies Act to extrajudicially deport 200 Venezuelan men to a megaprison in El Salvador on March 15.

Judge Boasberg—whose restraining order to halt the deportation plans was defied by the administration—noted that he is considering contempt for the administration’s actions. And if he does, he wants to know who to blame.

“If I don’t agree, I don’t find your legal arguments convincing, and I believe there is probable cause to find contempt, what I’m asking is how—how should I determine who [is at fault]?” Judge Boasberg raised, wanting to know who exactly decided to disobey his order to turn planes carrying deportees around. The Trump administration insists that it somehow complied with the order.

“It seems to me, there is a fair likelihood that that is not correct,” Judge Boasberg responded. “In fact, the government acted in bad faith throughout that day. You really believed everything you did that day was legal and could survive a court challenge? I can’t believe you ever would have operated in the way you did.

“Why wouldn’t the prudent thing be to say, ‘Let’s slow down here. Let’s see what the judge says. He’s already enjoined the removal of five people; certainly in the realm of possibility that he would enjoin further removal. Let’s see what he says, and if he doesn’t enjoin it, we can go ahead. But surely better to be safe than risk violating the order,’” Boasberg asked the Justice Department lawyers.

The Justice Department also invoked the state secrets privilege to avoid having to give Judge Boasberg any more information about the deportation flights, which Boasberg called “pretty sketchy-looking.” The Justice Department insisted that revealing the information could have “diplomatic consequences.”

“Like what?” Judge Boasberg replied, noting that he has discussed confidential matters in closed sessions before.

The Trump administration insists that all 200 of these men are dangerous, hardened members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, hence the wartime Alien Enemies Act. This is completely false. Now innocent people are sitting in one of the most brutal prisons in the world.

Judge Boasberg plans to issue a ruling this week.

Donald Trump thinks everything is going just fine with his insane tariffs.

In his lone statement about the tariffs Thursday, Trump didn’t seem bothered when a reporter asked him, “The markets today are way down. The worst day in years. Because of the tariffs. So, how’s it going?”

“I think it’s going very well. It was an operation like when a patient gets operated on, and it’s a big thing. I said this would be exactly the way it is. We have six or seven trillion dollars coming into our country, and we’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump said, repeating what he said in a Truth Social post hours earlier. “The markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country is going to boom, and the rest of the world wants to see, is there any way they can make a deal?”

“They’ve taken advantage of us for many, many years. For many years, we’ve been at the wrong side of the ball, and I tell you what, I think it’s going to be unbelievable,” Trump added.

Right now, international markets aren’t agreeing with Trump’s ideas, with stock indexes plummeting everywhere. Criticism has come from fellow Republicans and former Trump administration officials, and some companies, such as automaker Stellantis, are laying off employees. Republicans and Democrats in the Senate are even working together on a bill to rein the president in, although it is unlikely to pass.

And the rest of the world isn’t lining up to make deals: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney strongly rebuked the tariffs Thursday, saying that America’s economic dominance is over. France’s Emmanuel Macron has called for European companies to stop investing in America. Right now, this “medical operation” is crippling Americans.