In early September, President Donald Trump’s White House sent out a press release laying out ways Trump has been “delivering historic results.” It outed $158 billion in tariff revenues coming into the U.S. since Trump took office. It said that Trump’s border crackdown has led to a 97% drop in northward migration from Central America and that his use of the military for law enforcement in Washington DC is a “model” for other cities.
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It was just the latest example of the Administration highlighting how Trump is following through on his campaign promises to aggressively deploy tariffs, ramp up deportations, and send the National Guard into U.S. cities. But a recent drumbeat of court rulings have called those three central actions of Trump’s presidency into question. Lower courts are repeatedly finding that Trump has exceeded his powers as President under the Constitution. In just the last two weeks, federal courts ruled that most of his tariffs are illegal, that he violated a law prohibiting the use of soldiers for law enforcement inside the U.S., and that many of his most high-profile deportations were based on a faulty reading of law.
The White House is challenging all of those decisions, setting the stage for the Supreme Court to ultimately determine if if Trump may have to rein in his efforts in those areas The high court, where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority thanks to the three justices Trump hand-picked during his first term, has so far taken an expansive view of Trump’s ability to act.
Here are three major actions Trump has taken that are in jeopardy and appear destined for the Supreme Court:
Issuing Tariffs
A federal court ruled in late August that most of Trump’s tariffs are illegal because they were imposed without Congressional approval. But that lower court held off on enacting its order to give the Trump Administration time to appeal to the Supreme Court. On Tuesday, the high court announced it was expediting the tariff case, demanding briefs from all sides from the government and the plaintiffs by Sept. 19 in order to hear in-person arguments in early November.
The case was brought by a group of small businesses that said the tariffs Trump imposed so far “amount to an average tax increase of $1,200-$2,800 per American household.” The business owners argued that issuing those tariffs were beyond the President’s powers under the Constitution. Article I of the Constitution empowered Congress to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” and demands that bills for raising revenue “shall originate in the House of Representatives.”
Trump began imposing tariffs in February, first by targeting goods coming from Canada, Mexico and China. Trump said he was punishing those countries for failing to stop fentanyl from being smuggled into the U.S. He soon slapped 10% baseline tariffs on nearly all countries worldwide and higher tariffs on some other countries’ goods, saying that the trading practices of many U.S. trading partners were a threat to national security.
Peter Navarro, a White House adviser, designed the tactics Trump has deployed so far to impose tariffs, arguing that a a national security law dating back to the 1970s—the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)—gives the President the authority to declare an emergency and slap down tariffs on his own.
But a majority of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in a 7-4 decision that none of the emergency powers granted the President under the IEEPA law “explicitly include the power to impose tariffs, duties or the power to tax.”
Trump has appealed that decision to the Supreme Court where White House lawyers are banking that the six conservative justices will side with Trump’s effort to expand his power as President.
Administration officials argue the emergency powers in IEEPA include imposing tariffs and that the financial penalties are needed to prod countries to negotiate better trade deals. Lifting the tariffs, the Trump administration argued in court, would disrupt its “ongoing, sensitive diplomatic negotiations with virtually every major trading partner.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has warned the Trump administration would have to refund billions of dollars to companies that paid tariffs if the Supreme Court rules Trump’s actions as illegal “We would have to give a refund on about half the tariffs, which would be terrible for the Treasury,” Bessent said on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sept. 7. While the Supreme Court has until June to rule, Bessent warned against the court taking too long. “Delaying a ruling until June 2026 could result in a scenario in which $750 billion-$1 trillion in tariffs have already been collected, and unwinding them could cause significant disruption,” Bessent said.
If the Supreme Court doesn’t side with Trump, there are other laws that Trump could try to use to justify his tariffs. The alternatives are likely to take longer to implement and, in some cases, may be difficult to maintain for an extended period. One option would be for Trump to invoke Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which allows a President to modify duties on certain goods if an investigation finds imports “threaten to impair the national security.” Tariffs under Section 232 could be applied to major imports like aluminum and steel, but gathering the information to justify the action would take time. Trump’s Commerce Department has so far this year launched Section 232 investigations into copper, lumber, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, trucks, jet engines, polysilicon, drones and wind turbines.
Sending National Guard to U.S. Cities
President Trump continues to deploy military forces to police crime and immigration violations in Washington, D.C. He sent 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 active duty Marines to Los Angeles in June. And he’s threatened to use the military in other cities he called “Democrat-controlled” like Baltimore and Chicago.
“Chicago is about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” Trump wrote in a social media post on Sept. 6. The next day, Trump was asked by a reporter about the threat and tried to downplay his post. “We’re not going to war. We’re going to clean up our cities,” Trump said.
His use of the military on U.S. soil was rebuked by a federal judge on Sept. 2. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco said Trump’s deployment of troops to Los Angeles was illegal. By sending soldiers for crowd control and traffic blockades into the city in response to protests against Trump’s immigration actions, Trump had “violated the Posse Comitatus Act,” Breyer wrote. That 19th century law forbids the use of soldiers for law enforcement inside the U.S. “There was no rebellion, nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law,” Breyer wrote.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the National Guard to stay in Southern California through the special election in November that will decide how the state’s Congressional districts are drawn. “The timing of Trump’s extension of the National Guard soldiers isn’t coincidental — he’s holding onto soldiers through Election Day,” said California Governor Gavin Newsom. “The reality is this — they want to continue their intimidation tactics to scare Californians into submission.”
Speeding Up Deportations
Can Trump assert war time powers to deport people from the U.S. without due process? A surprise ruling in early September by a conservative court in Louisiana said he can not, and questioned Trump’s use of the term “invasion” to justify using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. If the Supreme Court agrees, it could hamper Trump’s effort to quickly deport millions of people.
President Trump invoked the 18th-century wartime law in March to justify deporting Venezuelans from the U.S. to a notorious prison in El Salvador without a court hearing. Administration officials have said that the Venezuelan migrants were part of an invasion of the U.S. by the gang Tren De Aragua. But multiple courts have deemed that use of the law a stretch of the terms.
Last week, the conservative Fifth Circuit rejected Trump’s declaration that drug gangs from Venezuela coming to the U.S. constituted an “invasion” or “predatory incursion”.
In an opinion written by Judge Leslie Southwick, a Republican judge appointed by George W. Bush, the majority of the three judge panel ruled that immigration didn’t amount to a military incursion on U.S. soil. Invoking the law, the judges ruled in a 2-to-1 decision, would require an “act of war involving the entry into this country by a military force of or at least directed by another country or nation, with a hostile intent.” But that standard was not met, the judges ruled.
The dissenting judge on the panel was Judge Andrew Oldham, a conservative jurist who is seen as a potential Trump Supreme Court nominee should a vacancy open up. The ruling knocking down Trump’s action was 55 pages, but Oldham’s lengthy dissent came in at 130 pages, and argued that the President alone can decide what is an invasion. The majority decision, he wrote, goes against 200 years of legal precedent and “transmorgrifies the least-dangerous branch into robed crusaders who get to playact as multitudinous Commanders in Chief.”
Though the White House has not yet appealed the decision, the case will likely end up again at the Supreme Court, which has sided with the Trump Administration this year more often than some close watchers of the court had expected.
Most recently, the Court opened the door for Trump to resume using racial profiling in sweeping immigration raids in Los Angeles. In a 6-3 ruling issued on Monday, the conservative majority said agents are allowed to stop suspects on the basis of race, language or their job, while a challenge to that practice moves through the courts. That ruling was not the Supreme Court’s final word on the case. It could be asked to make a final decision on it once other lower courts have heard the case.
Terry M. Moe, a professor of political science emeritus at Stanford University and co-author of Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency, is skeptical that the Supreme Court will act as a check on Trump’s power. “We have a Supreme Court whose super majority supports the unitarity executive theory—and that theory argues that the Constitution guarantees Presidents a very expansive power,” says Moe. “This is what a strongman presidency looks like and this was always Trump’s intention.”