Terrified Republicans face reckoning as Trump's madness comes back to haunt them

Friday while declaring Trump’s import taxes unconstitutional, the U.S. Supreme Court told congressional Republicans the U.S. Constitution gives them a job to do, and they should start doing it for a change.

Don’t hold your breath.

Meanwhile, Aaron Ford (the Nevada attorney general running for governor) and Zach Conine (the state treasurer running for attorney general) were among Democrats citing estimates of how much Trump’s unconstitutional import taxes have cost Nevadans. Conine issued a statement saying he had sent a $2.1 billion bill to the Trump administration “on behalf of Nevada workers and families.”

No one should hold their breath for that either.

If and when anybody gets a refund, it won’t be workers and families. The companies that directly paid Trump’s import taxes are first in line, and even they have no idea if/when they’re going to see any refunds. If/when they do, any benefit befalling consumers will be incidental.

Nevada Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen hopped on as co-sponsor to a Senate bill with about 20 of her Democratic colleagues “instructing” The Trump Show to refund the $175 billion collected through import taxes Trump imposed via his unconstitutional “emergency” excuse. The Senate measure would have the money refunded to the businesses that paid it within 180 days.

Under the Senate proposal, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the federal agency that collects import tax revenue (they don’t just shoot nurses in Minneapolis), would have to prioritize small business as they refund the money.

In the House, Nevada Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford and Oregon Democratic Rep. Janelle Bynum are co-sponsors of a bill that aims to refund the tax payments within 90 days of enactment.

“When the government takes money without proper authority, it doesn’t get to keep it,” Horsford said in a statement announcing the bill. It’s a sensible sentiment, reflecting fairness, rightness, and justice. In other words, Trump can be expected to order Republican House(trained) Speaker Mike Johnson to try to block the Horsford-Byman measure from even getting a vote.

Passage of either the Senate or House tariff refund bills will hinge on a sufficient number of congressional Republicans taking up the Supreme Court’s suggestion to make Congress a functioning branch of the U.S. government again.

The Retail Association of Nevada issued a hopeful statement after Friday’s Supreme Court ruling calling for “an efficient process to return these funds to the businesses that paid them.”

RAN’s statement also said the court’s decision “provides much-needed certainty for Nevada retailers, small businesses, and manufacturers, enabling global supply chains to operate without ambiguity.”

If only.

Lamentably but predictably, Trump is adding even more confusion to the omnishambles he’s created by doing what he does best after he makes a mess: make it messier.

In full-on Queen of Hearts mode, he’s decreeing more import taxes to replace the ones the court struck down, and promising even more are forthcoming. In other words, the legal, budgetary, regulatory, and affordability chaos that characterizes his signature economic initiative is going to get worse before it gets better.

Like public health, global standing, and so much more, Trump’s tariff madness is another area where a significant portion of the damage he has wrought is irreparable.

In Nevada as nationwide, an overwhelming majority of Republicans in elected office or running for one are either genuinely fine with that, or pretending to be because Trump’s base terrifies them. But it doesn’t matter why they bow before Trump. Whatever the reason, the result is the same.

If those Nevada Republicans (oh hi Joe Lombardo) stand by their man as he not only continues to fight efforts to return tax revenue that should have never been collected in the first place, but moves ahead with imposing even more import taxes on U.S. businesses and consumers … guess we’ll see how that works for them.

• A portion of this commentary was originally published in the Daily Current newsletter, which is free, and which you can subscribe to here. Hugh Jackson is editor of the Nevada Current, part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.