Tariff-ied

Johnson readies new ban on tariff votes. The House of Representatives is expected to vote on a renewal of its self-imposed ban on members requesting floor votes on President Donald Trump’s tariffs, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R–La.) told reporters on Monday, per Politico.

The rule the House will vote on would ban members from bringing resolutions challenging Trump’s tariffs through August.

The vote will be close. Punchbowl News reports that a handful of Republicans have already said they’ll vote against it. But Johnson is committed to passing the tariff vote ban, and the White House is reportedly exerting a lot of pressure on individual members to support it as well.

The Trump administration has controversially asserted its unilateral power to set global tariff rates through the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Last November, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that might see it rule against the administration’s power to levy taxes all on its own.

While the country anxiously awaits that decision, Trump continues to threaten tariffs on everybody for any reason. Recently, he announced, and then paused, tariffs on European countries for opposing the United States’ efforts to acquire Greenland.

Congress could create a little additional trade regime certainty by voting to block Trump’s tariffs.

But, as Reason‘s Eric Boehm has covered, Johnson has repeatedly said he’s completely uninterested in Congress retaking its constitutional role in setting tariff and tax rates.

I suppose it’s easier to let the president and the courts sort it out.

Immigration court stops deportation of student for anti-Israel speech: An immigration court has dismissed a case against Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk, saying that the Department of Homeland Security couldn’t prove the Turkish national needed to be removed from the country.

Ozturk made national news when she was arrested on the street by masked federal agents near her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, after the Trump administration revoked her student visa because of an anti-Israel op-ed she’d co-written a year prior. She spent the next month being shuttled between detention facilities before a judge in Vermont eventually ordered her release in early May.

The Trump administration made no secret of the fact that it wanted to deport Ozturk because of her anti-Israel speech.

The initial State Department memo justifying the revocation of Ozturk’s student visa said she was “involved in associations that ‘may undermine U.S. foreign policy by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students and indicating support for a designated terrorist organization,’ including [co-authoring] an op-ed that found common cause with an organization that was later temporarily banned from campus.”

The Trump administration attempted to deport a number of foreign students for their anti-Israel activism over the course of the last year.

That effort was met with concerted opposition and lawsuits from the affected students and free speech advocates, who argued that the First Amendment restricts the government from punishing the protected speech of immigrants and citizens alike.

The courts have generally, although not exclusively, ruled in favor of the targeted students.

In January, an appeals court overturned a lower court decision that had released Columbia student activist Mahmoud Khalil from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention. Khalil remains a free man for the time being, although the Trump administration continues to assert its right to arrest and deport him to Algeria.

“Today, I breathe a sigh of relief knowing that despite the justice system’s flaws, my case may give hope to those who have also been wronged by the U.S. government,” Ozturk said Monday, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Scenes from D.C.: Buddhist monks’ 2,300-mile “Walk for Peace” from Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington, D.C., will end today when the monks arrive at the city’s National Cathedral. They come in just in time for some welcome, balmy 40-degree temperatures.

Buddhist monks’ Walk for Peace arrives at the Washington National Cathedral Tomorrow: https://t.co/Nn2RdN2xP9

— PoPville (@PoPville) February 9, 2026

QUICK LINKS

• The New York Times reports on the release of heretofore classified pages of Richard Nixon’s grand jury testimony, in which he discussed the Pentagon’s efforts to spy on his National Security Council.
• A Democratic New Jersey House candidate who’d promised “no negativity” tried to dig up dirt on his opponents, reports Politico.
• A federal judge partially blocked a California law that bans federal officers from wearing masks, reports the Associated Press. Judge Christina Snyder’s ruling said that because California’s law did not apply to state law enforcement officials, it unfairly discriminated against the federal government. Snyder upheld part of the law that requires federal agents to display identification.
• The Trump administration says that it will repeal a major federal rule regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
• There was a little bit of discourse on X last evening about how to rank the 21st century presidential administrations from a libertarian perspective. It’s a tough one because they’ve all been so bad, but here’s my ranking, from relative best to worst. It’s possible the second Trump administration will end up being the worst of the bunch, but it’ll take a lot to do something worse than the Iraq War.

1. Trump-Pence
2. Obama
3. Biden
4. Trump-Vance
5. Bush

— Christian Britschgi (@christianbrits) February 10, 2026

• Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance did not include an explicit denunciation of the Jones Act, but it’s nice to think that it did.

Yall probably don’t know this because it was all in Spanish, but the entire halftime show was actually an anti Jones Act protest piece.

Repeal the Jones Act! pic.twitter.com/dQlaQZWT24

— YIMBYLAND (@YIMBYLAND) February 9, 2026

They should gamify education by giving regular challenges and tests of skill and assigning points based on how you do

— Daniel (@growing_daniel) February 10, 2026