* Crain’s…

Rick Woldenberg is a third-generation member of a family that started a laboratory-supply business in Chicago more than a century ago that unpredictably evolved into a successful pair of educational toy companies known to parents and teachers nationwide and beyond.

Those Vernon Hills-based companies, Learning Resources and hand2mind, market products such as Pretend & Play Calculator Cash Register, Spike the Fine Motor Hedgehog, and Botley the Coding Robot.

The companies are getting a much bigger public profile as they and Woldenberg, the CEO of both family-owned concerns, are on the front line of legal challenges to President Donald Trump’s aggressive second-term tariff policies.

That excerpt doesn’t do the story justice. It’s very comprehensive. Go read the rest.

* Bloomberg…

Nowhere to be found [in the lawsuit] are the companies paying the biggest sums. Although the US Chamber of Commerce opposes the tariffs, major importers like General Motors Co. and Walmart Inc. are keeping their names off the case.

“I was shocked that those with much more power and money did not step up,” said Victor Schwartz, president of V.O.S. Selections Inc., a New York-based wine importer helping press the other small-business suit.

Woldenberg says he’s happy to play a leading role amid his estimated $20-30 million tariff bill this year – far above last year’s $2.3 million. He says the companies have raised their prices “middle single digits” to recoup some of the cost. He says he sued after other companies that were considering pressing a case dropped out.

Woldenberg says he expects to incur millions of dollars in legal bills even after accepting contributions from unnamed outsiders. He says he won’t take help from non-Americans or anyone with political affiliations. “I am not a front for anyone else,” he said.

* Bloomberg’s report about the US Supreme Court hearing…

Chief Justice John Roberts said the tariffs were an “imposition of taxes on Americans and that has always been the core power of Congress.” Trump-appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett also asked skeptical questions, though all three also probed arguments pressed by tariff opponents.

A decision against Trump could force more than $100 billion in refunds, remove a major burden on the US importers that are paying the tariffs, and blunt an all-purpose cudgel the president has wielded against trading partners. More broadly, it would be by far the Supreme Court’s most significant pushback against Trump’s assertions of powers that go well beyond those claimed by his White House predecessors. […]

A ruling could come as quickly as the end of the year, given the ultra-expedited schedule the Supreme Court has set so far.

The case involves Trump’s April 2 “Liberation Day” tariffs, which impose taxes of 10-50% on most US imports depending on the originating country. Trump says those duties are warranted to address the longstanding national trade deficit. The high court clash also covers separate tariffs Trump said he imposed on Canada, Mexico and China to address fentanyl trafficking.

* ABC News…

The Constitution gives Congress the exclusive authority to levy taxes on citizens and duties on imports, with a few limited exceptions adopted over the years to give the president some discretion during times of national crisis.

The key question in the Trump case is whether the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act gives a president unfettered ability to set tariffs for any country, at any level, for as long as needed, whenever an emergency is declared at the president’s sole discretion.

Trump is the first president to try use the IEEPA to set tariffs without Congress, and the justices pushed Solicitor General John Sauer to justify the sweeping authority.

Sauer argued the tariffs are “regulatory” in nature, and that any revenue raised is incidental. That, despite Trump often boasting the billions of dollars he says the administration has raked in as a result of the levies. […]

“The vehicle is the imposition of taxes on Americans. That has always been the core power of Congress,” Chief Justice John Roberts, considered a key vote in the case, said at one point.

Lots more in SCOTUSblog’s live coverage.