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Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, a politics newsletter that is just saying—just saying—that the best Winter Olympics event would have been: You start in Milan. First one to Cortina wins. But no one asked us …

Politics news, meanwhile, continued to happen this week. Early voting is underway in Texas, and some primary races are only getting more peculiar. President Donald Trump may bomb Iran again? Also: Aliens are real, and the Labor Department is in crisis.

Let’s begin with a Supreme Court decision that was uncharacteristically rude and disrespectful to the Trump administration.

A dagger to Trump’s agenda.

The Supreme Court, in a 6–3 opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, struck down most of Trump’s tariffs on Friday, ruling that the law he was invoking could not be used for such a purpose. Trump had been claiming that the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act gave him the emergency power to set tariffs on a whim, without the need for investigative findings or durational limits, for any particular reason that struck his fancy. This view undergirded certain tariffs against Mexico, Canada, and China, his global matrix of “reciprocal tariffs,” and various threats he’s made against, say, European countries that don’t support his attempt to acquire Greenland. It was the stick he waved around the world to achieve his foreign policy aims, to show favor and disfavor, to offer or withhold exemptions to courtiers. Roberts’ simple conclusion that “IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs” is more than a blow to his economic vision. It’s a strike against the sweeping vision of the presidency he’s built.

That’s why Trump is so darn mad about it and, in a seething Friday afternoon press conference during which he said he was “ashamed” of the justices, announced he would use other powers to replicate the fallen tariff regime. Trump does have additional tariff authorities delegated to him by Congress, but they all have certain restraints. Some cap the duration of time they can be implemented, or cap the tariff rate he can set; others require departmental investigations or findings. None may meet that sweet, sweet high offered by the pretend authority he thought he had in IEEPA.

Stephen Colbert enters the Democratic Senate primary in Texas.

On his broadcast Monday, CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert explained to his audience that he was supposed to air an interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico but had been told by his network’s lawyers, “in no uncertain terms,” that he couldn’t air it. At issue was CBS’s interpretation of recent guidance from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr stating that the FCC would reconsider an exemption of the “equal time” rule enjoyed by late-night and daytime talk shows. CBS, meanwhile, said in a statement........

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