President Donald Trump used his State of the Union address Tuesday night to signal he has no intention of abandoning his signature tariff agenda, even after the Supreme Court struck down his use of emergency powers to impose them. And Republican voters liked what they heard.

A real-time voter panel assembled by polling group Maslansky & Partners tracked reactions as Trump spoke, with Republicans responding favorably to his defiance of the court's ruling and his promise of alternative legal pathways forward. The panel included 29 Democrats, 30 independents, and 41 Republicans, Fox News reported.

Democrats and independents, predictably, moved in the opposite direction.

Four Justices, Front Row Seats, Stone Faces

Trump called the Supreme Court's decision "unfortunate" while four justices sat stone-faced in the front row of the House chamber. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett, and Brett Kavanaugh attended Tuesday, as is customary, though not all justices typically show up.

The court had found that Trump illegally bypassed Congress by invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to unilaterally impose global tariffs last year. The majority held that tariffs function as a tax and therefore require congressional approval under the Constitution.

Trump framed the setback as a speed bump, not a roadblock:

"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."

He added that trading partners would "continue to work along the same successful path that we had negotiated before the Supreme Court's unfortunate involvement."

The Leverage Argument

Trump touted the tariffs as a key negotiating tool, crediting them with brokering peace deals between other countries and generating billions in revenue. This is the core of the case he's been making since his first term: tariffs aren't just trade policy, they're foreign policy leverage.

The voter dial results reinforce what anyone paying attention already knows. The tariff debate isn't really about economics for most people. It's about whether America should use every tool available to extract better terms from countries that have enjoyed lopsided trade relationships for decades. Republicans overwhelmingly say yes. The establishment says it's complicated. Voters aren't interested in complicated.

Trump told the chamber he had "time-tested" alternatives to the IEEPA that would allow him to again sidestep Congress' role in authorizing tariffs. He didn't elaborate on the specifics, but the message was unmistakable: the agenda continues.

What Comes Next

The real question isn't whether Trump will find an alternative legal authority. It's whether Congress will step up and give him what the court says the Constitution requires: legislative backing for tariffs.

Republicans hold the House and Senate. If the tariff agenda is as popular with the base as Tuesday's dial test suggests, there's no reason GOP lawmakers should be dragging their feet. The Supreme Court didn't say tariffs are unconstitutional. It said the president can't impose them alone under IEEPA. That's an invitation for Congress to act, not an excuse to stall.

The countries that cut deals aren't going to tear them up overnight. Trump's right about that. They negotiated under pressure, and the threat of new pressure hasn't disappeared just because the legal mechanism shifted. But sustained leverage requires sustained authority. Executive creativity has limits.

The base sent its signal Tuesday night. The dials moved up. Now it's Congress' turn to move.