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Republicans were pleased when President Donald Trump spoke during the State of the Union on Tuesday about his plan to continue imposing global tariffs in the wake of the Supreme Court dealing him a setback, according to live reactions from a panel of voters.
The panel, assembled by polling group Maslansky & Partners and made up of 29 Democrats, 30 independents and 41 Republicans, gave real-time reactions as Trump spoke. The responses were displayed on a line graph, with higher values indicating positive reactions and lower values indicating negative reactions.
Trump called the Supreme Court’s decision striking down the tariffs “unfortunate” as four justices sat stone-faced in the front row of the House chamber.
A panel reacted as President Donald Trump spoke about tariffs during the State of the Union on Feb. 24, 2026.
It is customary for justices to be invited to the address, though not all typically attend. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh attended Tuesday.
Trump touted the tariffs, which he unilaterally imposed last year under an emergency law, as a key negotiating tool, saying they helped him broker peace deals between other countries and generated billions of dollars in revenue. The Supreme Court found that Trump illegally bypassed Congress by invoking the law, known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
John Roberts, chief justice of the Supreme Court, from left, Elena Kagan, associate justice of the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, associate justice of the Supreme Court, and Amy Coney Barrett, associate justice of the Supreme Court, during a State of the Union address in the House Chamber of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
But “just four days ago an unfortunate ruling from the United States Supreme Court, it just came down, a very unfortunate ruling,” Trump said, as the dials on the line graph showed Republicans reacting approvingly and Democrats and independents responding negatively.
SPEECHWRITERS FROM REAGAN TO BIDEN AGREE: TRUMP’S SOTU IS A CRITICAL TEST FOR HIS SECOND TERM
President Donald Trump speaks during a “Make America Wealthy Again” trade announcement event in the Rose Garden at the White House on April 2, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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“The good news is that almost all countries and corporations want to keep the deal that they already made … knowing that the legal power that I as president have to make a new deal could be far worse for them, and therefore they will continue to work along the same successful path that we had negotiated before the Supreme Court’s unfortunate involvement,” Trump said.
Trump said he had “time-tested” alternatives to IEEPA that he planned to use so that he could again sidestep Congress’ role in authorizing tariffs, which the Supreme Court said functioned like a tax and therefore required congressional approval under the Constitution.
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