History, Yes; Tariffs, No

 

History is the record of what happened. It’s the story of mankind’s successes and failures—often inspiring, often depressing—but of little value unless it’s as true as we can make it with the known facts. Trying to erase parts of our past that some may not like is a loser’s game that distorts reality and spreads ignorance to serve someone’s selfish purposes.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe, a George W. Bush appointee, was not having it, ruling that the Trump Administration had no right to remove a National Park Service display of information about nine slaves owned by George Washington from the Philadelphia house he, Martha, and the slaves occupied while he was president. Judge Rufe ordered that the exhibit be restored in its original condition and not in a way that explains the history differently. NPR reported that Rufe had warned Justice Department lawyers during an earlier hearing that arguing that Trump officials can choose which parts of our history to display at historic sites was both “dangerous” and “horrifying.”

Rufe’s written ruling opened with a bang: “As if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984 now existed, with its motto ‘Ignorance is Strength,’ this Court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims—to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts. It does not.” 

Orwell’s Ministry of Truth routinely altered historical records to suit its own purposes, making what was history a self-serving pack of lies. Judge Rufe knows what the Administration is up to and won’t allow it.

The City of Philadelphia sued the Trump Administration after Park Service workers pried the display off a brick wall, apparently following an order from the president to restore “truth and sanity to American history” at federal museums, landmarks, and other sites by ensuring that exhibits do not “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.” Officials have removed other factual displays concerning enslaved people, LGBTQ+ people, and Native Americans. A sign removed at Grand Canyon National Park said that settlers pushed native tribes “off their land” for the park and to exploit the area for mining and grazing. Well, that happened.

Also last week, the Supreme Court (pictured), by a 6-3 vote, struck down Trump’s sweeping tariffs, ruling that the Emergency Powers Act doesn’t give a president taxation power. The Constitution gives that power to Congress. Trump’s arbitrary and sometimes capricious tariffs (He slapped a tariff on Switzerland, saying he didn’t like the “tone” of the Swiss president during a conversation with her.) have upended global trade, weakened America’s respect and trust from allies, and raised prices for American consumers who have paid about 90 percent of the tariffs. 

Tariffs have been, in effect, a national sales tax estimated to be between $1,300 and $1,700 on the average family during the past year. A question is how, or if, to refund the tariffs paid by businesses and consumers. The Court decision was announced February 20; by the end of that day, some businesses had already sued for refunds, and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzger had sent Trump an invoice for $8,679,261,600—$1,700 payable to every state family. 

Informed of the decision, Trump called it “disgraceful.” What is disgraceful is a president failing to do the hard work of promoting legislation to achieve his goals through Congress—the Constitutional way. At a press conference, the angry president vowed to levy a 10 percent (later 15) tariff on the world using a different legal provision that will expire in five months unless Congress extends it. He called the Court “an insult to our nation” and called the six majority Justices, including two of his appointees, “fools and lap dogs,” a tantrum unlikely to help him in future Court cases. 

 

              

              Leader of the Free World

 

The annual World Economic Forum (WEF) met in Davos, Switzerland, last month. The non-profit WEF was founded in 1971 by a University of Geneva professor to spread good management practices among European businesses and was so successful that it soon expanded with offices around the world and has observer status as a non-government organization in the U.N. The 2026 Forum invited 3,000 of the most influential government, business, and academic leaders from 110 countries to consider solutions to the world’s most pressing problems such as climate change, international cooperation and trade, geopolitical stability, unregulated capitalism, taxation and wealth gaps, public health, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution (AI and other advanced technologies). 

The highlight of this year’s Forum was a speech by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who said that erratic changes in U.S. economic and foreign policies during the past year have “ruptured” the stable and largely predictable relations that have prevailed for nearly 80 years among most nations. He called the rupture in the world order “the end of a nice story and the beginning of a brutal reality where geopolitics among the great powers is not subject to any restraints.” 

With the U.S. now an unreliable ally and largely responsible for the rupture, he asked “middle powers” and smaller countries to unite when the great powers use “tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, [and] supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.” Carney said that “middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” and reminded his audience that “other countries, like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that embodies our values, like respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and the territorial integrity of states.”

Carney closed by saying, “The powerful have their power. But we have something too—the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home and to act together. That is Canada’s path. We choose it openly and confidently. And it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us.” 

Then something very rare happened: a standing ovation. UK former PM Tony Blair’s communications director called the speech “real leadership” and one of the “most important of recent times.” The Treasurer of Australia described the speech as “stunning … thoughtful, and certainly widely shared and discussed in our government and undoubtedly around the globe.” California Governor Gavin Newsom, leader of the world’s fourth largest economy, said that “numerous leaders from the United States privately sent me the transcript of the speech … and praised Carney for his courage and conviction.”

Clearly, Mark Carney is a man we should get to know. A Harvard graduate with a doctorate in economics from Oxford, Carney rose to a senior position at Goldman Sachs and then served five years as Governor of the Bank of Canada where he oversaw the country’s response to the 2008 global financial crisis. His policies were so successful that he was appointed Governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020, the first non-Briton in the Bank’s 332-year history. After that, he was UN special envoy for climate action and finance.

In March 2025, Carney ran in his first election and became leader of Canada’s Liberal Party with 86 percent of the Party vote, making him prime minister. As PM, he has struck trade deals with Indonesia, the UAE, China, and others; has criticized global and U.S. wealth gaps between the rich and the rest; has increased the defense budget; and has favored green energy with incentives while keeping an additional tax on large industrial emitters. He announced Canada’s formal recognition of a Palestinian state. We need an able, trusted, visionary Leader of the Free World. Mark Carney is such a person.