Bessent To Americans: About Those Tariff Refunds — Bless Your Heart

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made an appearance on this Sunday's State of the Union on CNN and was asked repeatedly by host Dana Bash whether or not the administration was going to refund Trump's emergency tariffs that the Supreme Court just ruled were illegal, and Bessent basically said they're going to tie this up in the courts again for as long as possible.

BASH: I do want to start with the big question. Will you refund the roughly $134 billion in revenue taken by these emergency tariffs?

BESSENT: Well, Dana, that's not the big question. Let's just level set here. What the Supreme Court did was a very narrow reading of the president's authority under the IEEPA tariffs.

We have other tariff authorities which have been functioning -- Section 232 tariffs, Section 301 tariffs. And Dana, when you say it's a big question, that's bad framing, because the Supreme Court didn't even address that. The Supreme Court remanded it down to a lower court. And we will follow what they say, but that could be weeks or months when we hear them. So the Supreme Court did not address refunds.

BASH: Sure, they didn't address refunds. That is clearly going to be up to you, which is why...

BESSENT: No, no, no, no, Dana. It is not up to me.

BASH: Not you...

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Wikipedia blacklists Archive.today after alleged DDoS attack

Wikipedia editors have decided to remove all links to Archive.today, a web archiving service that they said has been linked to more than 695,000 times across the online encyclopedia.

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Gov Pritzker: 'America Still Loves Its People'

Heartland Signal shared the closing comments of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker's State of the State address, and I want to inject it straight into my veins. He's reassuring us that America still loves its people, but it's saying it in a way we might not be used to hearing it:

It's not speaking in anthems, or flags, or ostentatious displays of patriotism. It will never come from the people who say the only way to love America is to hate Americans. Love is found in every act of courage, large and small, taken to preserve the country we once knew. You will find it in homes, schools, churches, and art. It is there; it has not been squashed.

Over the last twelve months, I've heard love start to shout here in Illinois. I heard it from the bicyclers who showed up in Little Village every day during Operation Midway Blitz to buy out tamale carts so the vendors could return to the safety of their homes. I heard it from the parishioners who formed human chains around churches so immigrants could worship. I heard it from the moms in the school pick-up line who whipped out their cameras and their whistles. I saw it in the face of every Midwesterner who put on their heaviest coat and protested outside on the coldest day.

I would be remiss if I did not include this powerful sentence: "Only the weakest of people believe that love is the weakest of weapons."

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Trump Accuses Obama Of Disclosing Classified Information With Alien Comments

Isn't this special? The guy with boxes full of stolen classified documents at Mar-a-Lago is making thinly veiled threats against former President Barack Obama for telling a podcaster that aliens are real.

From Time: Barack Obama Says Aliens Are ‘Real,’ But They Aren’t Being Kept at Area 51:

Former President Barack Obama said in an interview published Saturday that aliens are “real,” but added that he hadn’t seen them.

Asked by progressive podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen about the existence of extraterrestrial life, the former president responded: “They’re real.”

“But I haven’t seen them. They’re not being kept at Area 51. There’s no underground facility—unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the President of the United States.”

Obama clarified his remarks the following day:

Obama’s answer was picked up by international media, as well as people on social media. On Sunday evening, Obama issued a statement to clarify his position.

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InScope nabs $14.5M to solve the pain of financial reporting

The startup, founded by accountants who worked at Flexport, Miro, Hopin and Thrive Global, automates the difficulties of prepping financial statements.

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Trump Flies Into A Rage After Supreme Court Decision On Tariffs

CNN is reporting that while Trump was having breakfast with some governors, he flew into an expletive-filled rage after the Supreme Court struck down his emergency tariffs.

CNN senior White House correspondent Kristin Holmes reported that Demented Donald fumed at the Supreme Court and called the ruling a "disgrace."

HOLMES: I am told that they are meeting, discussing how they are going to respond, but we have learned more about what happened in the room when President Trump was with those governors, and he learned of the Supreme Court decision.

Apparently, the breakfast had been going well, they were working together, and then President Trump became enraged.

He started ranting about the decision, not only calling it a disgrace, but started attacking the courts.

At one point, saying, these effing courts, but using the actual language there.

We know that President Trump does use expletives quite often when he is enraged, in particular.

From listening to Kevin Hassett on Fox Business, it appeared Trump and his scum-buckets thought the Supreme Court would rule in their favor.

But a 6-3 ruling is a complete rebuke of his ridiculous yo-yo tariffs.

We're still waiting for the official White House statement.

Will Trump wait until 3 AM to unleash his wrath on Truth Social?

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'Could Always Use Extra Cash': Trump's Board Of Peace Meeting Goes Off The Rails

Donald J. Trump rambled throughout his first Board of Peace meeting on Thursday. It didn't go down well for Vice President J.D. Vance, either, after he attempted to tell a "joke" about Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which went down worse than Melania's ticket sales at the box office. No one laughed.

Trump spoke of the renaming of yet another entity in his name. The backstory: This month, the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. got a shiny new name slapped on it: the Donald J. Trump U.S. Institute of Peace. Because nothing says "peace" quite like a hostile takeover, amirite? The Trump administration muscled its way into controlling the organization, a move that, unsurprisingly, was not met with universal applause — and ended up being challenged in court.

And here comes the grift.

"This building was built for peace, and nobody knew what to name it," he falsely said. "And then Marco named it after me. I had nothing to do with it. I swear I didn't. I swear. I had no idea."

"They said, there's a surprise coming," he continued. "I didn't know the surprise. "I thought they were going to give me a lot of money or something, maybe cash. You can always use some extra cash."

"But I came, and they stopped the beautiful beast," he said. "I got out very safely, I'm sure, and looked up, and there it said, Donald J. Trump on the building. When I say that that had nothing to do — nobody believes it, and that's okay."

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