Trump. Epstein. SCOTUS. Patel. Just Another Week in Chaos-ville.

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There are weeks where nothing happens, and there are (many more) weeks when Donald Trump happens. This one was the second kind. This jam-packed week saw Trump deliver a record-length State of the Union address, stunning new revelations in the Jeffrey Epstein saga, yet another set of scandals involving FBI Director Kash Patel, a major Republican sex scandal unfolding in the House of Representatives, and the Supreme Court’s landmark decision to overrule Trump’s emergency tariffs. And those are just the big headlines!

It’s easy to get lost in the frenetic pace of Trump’s chaos. How can anyone with a day job be expected to follow every single outrage and chart the fallout from the GOP’s cascade of terrible policy decisions? We’re here to help. This week’s Truth About is a rapid-fire breakdown of all the news you need to know — and more importantly, what happens next. 

Let’s dive in.

— Max Burns

Some of them. The Supreme Court specifically ruled that Trump overreached when used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to implement tariffs on dozens of nations. According to IEEPA, the president can only invoke emergency tariff powers when the United States is at war. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the court, agreed.

“The Government thus concedes, as it must, that the President enjoys no inherent authority to impose tariffs during peacetime,” Roberts wrote. “And it does not defend the challenged tariffs as an exercise of the President’s warmaking powers. The United States, after all, is not at war with every nation in the world.”

Other tariffs are still in place, including 50% fees on steel and aluminum and a 25% levy on automobiles and auto parts, which Trump implemented using Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which gives the White House power to implement specific tariffs for national security reasons. The court did not rule on the legality of those tariffs.

The FBI’s bumbling director can’t seem to keep himself out of trouble. Patel was already facing scrutiny for using the FBI”s $60 million jet as a personal shuttle to his country music star girlfriend’s concerts. Now Patel is in hot water again — this time for using taxpayer money to party with the US men’s hockey team at the Olympics. Patel is so frequently spotted partying it up on the FBI’s dime that even Republicans are wondering when he finds time to do his actual job.

As it turns out, he isn’t. Patel allegedly did no work during his ‘official’ trip to the Olympics. Now multiple FBI agents are alleging in a formal whistleblower complaint that Patel’s misuse of the FBI jet actively harmed the bureau’s ability to fight crime. They claim Patel’s “irresponsible joyriding” delayed critical investigations and that the director has been an almost invisible presence on the job. Trump has publicly defended his FBI director in the past, but his conspicuous silence this week suggests Patel is fast running out of runway with the one man willing to protect him from accountability

If you had any doubt that the Trump administration was engaged in a historic cover-up of Jeffrey Epstein’s misconduct, Attorney General Pam Bondi just provided the smoking gun. An NPR investigation published this week found that the Justice Department actively withheld Epstein files related to Donald Trump, including hiding 53 pages of Trump-specific FBI interviews that allege he committed “sexual abuse of minors.” 

The Justice Department has come under heavy scrutiny for how many critical FBI interviews are missing from their public releases. According to CNN, 90 of the 325 witness interview records contained in the Epstein Files are missing from the DOJ website. In response, House Democrats are launching a probe into whether the White House illegally withheld documents from public scrutiny — though it’s unclear what power that investigation would have without support from House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Yep, and it poses an existential threat to Mike Johnson’s ability to run the House. A growing number of Johnson’s GOP colleagues are calling on Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales to resign after it emerged that the married congressman pressured a staffer to send him “sexy” photos as part of an extramarital affair. The staffer, Regina Santos-Aviles, later committed suicide. Gonzales has stridently denied any wrongdoing.

Gonzales is currently under investigation by the nonpartisan Office of Congressional Conduct, though Johnson has yet to demand the lawmaker’s resignation. There’s a big reason why: If Gonzales resigns, Johnson is effectively left with an ungovernably small Republican majority. Johnson may be damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t; GOP lawmakers including Reps. Nancy Mace, Lauren Boebert and Anna-Paulina Luna have pledged to make the speaker’s life hell until he stops protecting Gonzales.

Clocking in at just under two hours, Trump’s rambling reality show of a presidential address set records both for its length and for how completely Trump avoided addressing the majority of Americans who now say they are worse off today than they were a year ago. 68 percent of respondents now say Trump is ‘focused on the wrong problems’ according to a new CNN poll, though you wouldn’t know it from the rosy picture he painted on Tuesday night. Cue the fact-checking.

Trump’s State of the Union speech was heavy on social division and hatred, from slamming Minnesota’s Somalis as “pirates” to reigniting his culture war against transgender Americans. But with millions of angry working people suffering the double-whammy of a sagging job market and skyrocketing health care costs, it’s unlikely Trump’s two-hour bragfest will move the needle with the voters his party needs to win in November. 

Voters are looking for solutions to the serious economic challenges facing the country and their own wallets. Instead, Republicans have offered them another week of deepening scandal and political dysfunction. Americans across party lines are exhausted by Trump’s nonstop parade of chaos. Judging by Tuesday’s big speech, the only one who can’t see that is the president himself.