It's very clear that the system of Constitutional governance has been intentionally broken. It is very common for authoritarian regimes to have compliant judiciaries and broad legislative control.

Effective restoration and reconstruction of Constitutional governance will necessarily be dramatic. It's still doable, but optimism is more of a survival strategy than an obvious conclusion at this stage.

Market manipulation?

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/well-timed-options-...

(Besides, at this point I wouldn't be surprised if Trump's Russian oligarch friends were among these traders.)

Pausing tariffs was an official act. The Supreme Court ruled courts could not consider presidents' motives for official acts.

But what about leaking information about it?

Leaking is vague. What part of what law?

It's not vague. I'm not a lawyer but usually cases of trading with insider information are taken very seriously. It's theft, basically. And the scale here is enormous.

Leaking, insider trading, and theft are different. And laws contain specific definitions.

There is evidence of him tweeting insider information.

Again I'm not a lawyer, and I don't care what law is applicable here. But surely this warrants further investigation.

It’s not “insider” trading if you post about it publicly on Truth Social, the same way it’s not “insider” trading if you took out an ad in the New York Times.

The government is allowed to announce policy before doing it! Even if it affects stock prices!

Yeah, I'm not on that social media, nor do I read NYT. The same holds for millions of others.

Too bad! Insider trading, as a crime, requires that the information be nonpublic material information. You can join Truth Social and follow Donald Trump, so that makes the information public.

It actually is that broad. Futures traders often rely on industry-specific periodicals, which are “public”. Same for anything in the (high monthly cost!) Bloomberg terminal. So posting on a specific social media platform, where subscribing is free? That’s 100% public.

Except he didn't announce anything. He said "a good time to buy" which may be code language that his friends understand.

… are you hearing yourself? “It’s a good time to buy!” has the plain english meaning “you should buy stock”. Everyone, you included, understood he was talking about US company stocks. Which, if you did, you would have profited. This theoretical code would be “when i say it’s a good time to buy stock, we should all buy stock!”. That is, well, not a code.

He should have announced the policy, and said something like "we will pause the tariffs". But instead, he said something vague, which can be interpreted as a hint, and which will open the road for investigations.

“Now is a good time to buy” isn’t vague.

The point is that this text is not the official policy. It is a hint to investors.

A public hint to investors.

A hint to those who know the code.