‘Time to Pay Up!’ Newsom, Pritzker Demand Trump Admin Refund American Families for Tariff ‘Damages’

(AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast) (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)

California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) demanded President Donald Trump “pay up” just hours after the Supreme Court struck down the president’s emergency tariffs, joining the call of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker (D), who went as far as to tally the “damages’ owed to each family in a similar call.

The court’s 6-3 decision on Friday found that the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) did not authorise the president to impose the tariffs, which Trump had used to set sweeping tariffs since returning to office.

Speaking to reporters as he reacted to the ruling, Newsom hit out at Trump as “increasingly unhinged” as he mocked that even the president’s “hand-picked Supreme Court said what he was doing was lawless.”

He framed tariffs as a “tax” on working Americans and farmers as he laid out his demand that Trump “return that money immediately” – calculating the refund to be “$1,751 per family.”

“Pay us back!” he said.

Pritzker published a direct letter he’d sent to the president, saying Trump had “wrecked havoc” with his tariffs regime and “sent grocery prices through the roof.” He calculated $1,700 owed in what he called “damages” to the citizens of his state, tallying the total he said Trump should pay Illinois at a staggering $8,679,261,600. He went on to threaten legal action if the demand was not met.

Pritzker even went so far as to include an invoice:

(Screengrab via X)

Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who slammed “gloating Democrats” in a speech Friday afternoon in Texas, insisted that the administration would “invoke alternative legal authorities to replace the AIPA tariffs” and that this would result in “virtually unchanged tariff revenue in 2026.”

Angered by the decision, Trump lashed out at the court and vowed to deploy “even stronger” measures to preserve his tariffs.

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