From the Fraser Institute

By Scott Lincicome

The U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide the fate of the global tariffs President Donald J. Trump has imposed under the International Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA). A court decision invalidating the tariffs is widely expected—hovering around 75 per cent on various betting markets—and would be welcome news for American importers, the United States economy and the rule of law. Even without IEEPA, however, other U.S. laws all but ensure that much higher tariffs will remain the norm. Realizing that protection will just take a little longer and, perhaps, be a little more predictable.

As my Cato Institute colleague Clark Packard and I wrote last year, the Constitution grants Congress the power to impose tariffs, but the legislative branch during the 20th century delegated much of that authority to the president under the assumption that he would be the least likely to abuse it. Thus, U.S. trade law is today littered with provisions granting the president broad powers to impose tariffs for various reasons. No IEEPA needed.

This includes laws that Trump has already invoked. Today, for example, we have “Section 301” tariffs of up to 25 per cent on around half of all Chinese imports, due to alleged “unfair trade” practices by Beijing. We also have global “Section 232” tariffs of up to 50 per cent on imports of steel and aluminum, automotive goods, heavy-duty trucks, copper and wood products—each imposed on the grounds that these goods threaten U.S. national security. The Trump administration also has created a process whereby “derivative” products made from goods subject to Section 232 tariffs will be covered by those same tariffs. Several other Section 232 investigations—on semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, critical minerals, commercial aircraft, and more—were also initiated earlier this year, setting the stage for more U.S. tariffs in the weeks ahead.

Trump administration officials admit that they’ve been studying these and other laws as fallback options if the Supreme Court invalidates the IEEPA tariffs. Their toolkit reportedly includes completing the actions above, initiating new investigations under Section 301 (targeting specific countries) and Section 232 (targeting certain products), and imposing tariffs under other laws that have not yet been invoked. Most notably, there’s strong administration interest in Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which empowers the president to address “large and serious” balance-of-payments deficits via global tariffs of up to 15 per cent for no more than 150 days (after which Congress must act to continue the tariffs). The administration might also consider Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930—a short and ambiguous law that authorizes the president to impose tariffs of up to 50 per cent on imports from countries that have “discriminated” against U.S. commerce—but this is riskier because the law may have been superseded by Section 301.

We should expect the administration to move quickly to use these measures to reverse engineer Trump’s global tariff regime under IEEPA. The main difference would be in how he does so. IEEPA was essentially a tariff switch in the Oval Office that could be flipped on and off instantly, creating massive uncertainty for businesses, foreign governments and the U.S. economy. The alternative authorities, by contrast, all have substantive and procedural guardrails that limit their size and scope, or, at the very least, give American and foreign companies time to prepare for forthcoming tariffs (or lobby against them).

Section 301, for example, requires an investigation of a foreign country’s trade and economic policies—cases that typically take nine months and involve public hearings and formal findings. Section 232 requires an investigation into and a report on whether imports threaten national security—actions that also typically take months. Section 122 has fewer procedures, but its limited duration and 15 per cent cap make it far less dangerous than IEEPA, under which Trump has repeatedly threatened tariffs of 100 per cent or more.

Of course, “procedural guardrails” is a relative term for an administration that has already stretched Section 232’s “national security” rationale to cover bathroom vanities. The courts also have largely rubber-stamped the administration’s previous moves under Section 232 and Section 301—a big reason why we should expect the Trump administration’s tariff “Plan B” to feature them.

Thus, a court ruling against the IEEPA tariffs would be an important victory for constitutional governance and would eliminate the most destabilizing element of Trump’s tariff regime. But until the U.S. Congress reclaims some of its constitutional authority over U.S. trade policy, high and costly tariffs will remain.

From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

An NHS-backed trial will administer puberty blockers to children as young as 10 despite serious harms and is facing legal action from a prominent detransitioner.

Over 200 children in the United Kingdom will be injected with puberty blockers as part of an experiment on the effects of “gender transitioning.”

In November, King’s College London announced the Pathways Trial, which will track 226 gender-confused children as they take puberty blockers that are known to damage fertility, bone density, and brain development.

“Right now, there isn’t enough information about the possible benefits or risks that young people with gender incongruence may experience when taking puberty suppressing hormones,” a press release reads. “PATHWAYS TRIAL aims to help fill this gap in the evidence about what we know.”

READ: HHS study confirms dangers of transgender drugs, surgeries for minors

The Puberty Suppression and Transitional Healthcare with Adaptive Youth Services core trial, will administer puberty blockers to 226 children, from ages 10 to 15 years old, recruited over three years from the NHS.

The children will be divided into two groups and receive the drugs 12 months apart. After being given the drugs, the children will receive ongoing therapy, family counseling, and monitoring for two years.

Researchers claimed that the study has been “carefully checked by independent scientists” and is “overseen by two groups of people who are independent from the research team and the funders.”

Prominent detransitioner and outspoken activist Keira Bell condemned the experiment as a “betrayal of the children it claims to help” in a recent op-ed article published by The Telegraph.

“It will undoubtedly lead to infertility and lack of sexual function, to name only a couple,” she warned. “A child cannot fully understand these effects, let alone those that are unknown.”

On November 14, Bell, along with British psychotherapist James Esses, launched pre-action, demanding disclosure of trial documents. If the documents are not released, the pair promised to demand a judicial review.

📢 PRE-ACTION LETTERS SENT

Under instruction of @JamesEsses and I, legal have sent pre-action letters today to the regulatory bodies in charge of the puberty blocker trial.

They have been playing it sneaky, refusing to provide those important details to us since early this… pic.twitter.com/FVzAo2gVhO

— Keira Bell (@KBtheYoungOG) November 14, 2025

The research, approved and funded by the NHS, comes after puberty blockers were banned last year after a major review exposed the practice as dangerous and medically baseless.

The Cass Review is the world’s largest review into transgender interventions for minors. Dr. Hilary Cass, the pediatrician commissioned by the NHS to review the transgender “services” being made available to gender-confused minors, was scathing in her analysis.

Cass found that “gender medicine” is “built on shaky foundations” and that while these drastic interventions should be approached with extreme caution, “quite the reverse happened in the field of [so-called] gender care for children.”

LifeSiteNews has compiled a list of medical professions and experts who warn against “transgender” surgeries, warning of irreversible changes and lifelong side effects.

Moreover, internal documents from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) have shown that doctors who offer so-called “gender-affirming care” know that transgender hormones cause serious diseases, including cancer, but have prescribed them anyway.

The internal documents, dubbed the “WPATH FILES,” include emails and messages from a private discussion forum by doctors, as well as statements from a video call of WPATH members. The files reveal that the doctors working for WPATH know that so-called “gender-affirming care” can cause severe mental and physical disease and that it is impossible for minors to give “informed consent” to it.

As LifeSiteNews has previously noted, research does not support the assertions from transgender activists that surgical or pharmaceutical intervention to “affirm” confusion is “necessary medical care” or that it is helpful in preventing the suicides of gender-confused individuals.

In fact, in addition to asserting a false reality that one’s sex can be changed, transgender surgeries and drugs have been linked to permanent physical and psychological damage, including cardiovascular diseases, loss of bone density, cancer, strokes and blood clots, infertility, and suicidality.

There is also overwhelming evidence that those who undergo “gender transitioning” are more likely to commit suicide than those who are not given irreversible surgery. A Swedish study found that those who underwent “gender reassignment” surgery ended up with a 19.2 times greater risk of suicide.

Indeed, the most loving and helpful approach to people who think they are a different sex is not to validate them in their confusion but to show them the truth.

A study on the side effects of transgender “sex change” surgeries discovered that 81 percent of those who had undergone “sex change” surgeries in the past five years reported experiencing pain simply from normal movement in the weeks and months that followed — and that many other side effects manifest as well.