Ceding tariff authority to the executive was the Congress' way of escaping the political consequences of fulfilling their responsibilities under the constitution, but that may be changing

 The phenomenon is mirrored in the states by the enthusiasm for referenda, aka ballot measures, which are promoted as democracy but are in fact simply a reflection of elected representatives' desire to escape the consequences of their votes.

"Hey, don't look at me, that's what the people wanted".

 

7 GOP senators sign on to bill to check Trump’s trade authority 

Seven Republican senators, including Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), the Senate’s president pro tempore, and Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), the former Senate Republican leader, have signed on to a bipartisan bill that would require Congress to approve President Trump’s steep tariffs on trading partners.

Grassley and McConnell have joined five other Republicans — Sens. Jerry Moran (Kan.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Todd Young (Ind.) and Susan Collins (Maine) — in supporting the Trade Review Act of 2025. ...

It would require that new tariffs sunset after 60 days unless Congress passes a joint resolution approving them.

And it provides a pathway for Congress to cancel tariffs before the 60-day period expires by passing a joint resolution of disapproval.

Trump has already threatened to veto the bill. ...

Trump last week announced reciprocal tariffs on more than 180 countries and territories by invoking his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

 

Yeah, that saying everything is an emergency business has got to go, too

 

 

Trump tariffs will increase costs of fruits, vegetables, potatoes, and grains, among a hellish host of things

 

... The sweeping tariff could make more expensive a host of items that the U.S. imports from its neighbors. Among the common Mexican imports that will now get pricier to bring into the country: fruits, vegetables, beer, liquor and electronics. And from Canada: potatoes, grains, lumber and steel. ...

Trump is enacting the tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which allows the president to respond to “extraordinary threat,” which Trump has identified as a fentanyl and drug crisis that he alleges China, Mexico, and Canada facilitate. ...

More.

Because some Americans use illegal drugs, Trump is punishing all Americans.

Makes sense, right?

I mean George Floyd's blood fentanyl level was fatal and we lit the nation's cities on fire because of it, so yeah, we deserve it.

Biden signs bill ending COVID-19 national emergency one month earlier than planned

 Heh heh.

 

Story.

The measure ends the national emergency a month earlier than the Biden administration had planned. A separate public health emergency tied to Covid will remain until May 11. Biden had signaled his opposition to ending the national emergency but said he wouldn’t veto the legislation. The Senate passed the measure 68-23 at the end of March, with nearly two dozen Democrats supporting it.

We now know from TSA data that an average of 2 million air passengers traveled daily in the first 10 days of March 2020 when they should have been grounded due to coronavirus

The average for the same days in 2019 was 2.3 million per day, so while air travel was indeed down, it wasn't down very significantly, only about 13%. Obviously only a minority of the population acted prudently by refraining from air travel.  

You can see from the graph how air passenger travel did not start to decline in earnest until after Mar 13 when Trump declared a national emergency. People simply abandoned air travel after that, out of fear.

Think what might have been had Trump only done it sooner.

Air passenger travel throughout February and March ensured that every corner of America would be deeply penetrated by China novel coronavirus 2019 because millions of people helped spread it everyday, everywhere.

We today have over 500,000 cases and over 20,000 dead in a matter of just weeks with the American economy also on its knees, all because Trump ignored pandemic warnings from his own administration as late as Jan 30.

So in exchange for letting a privileged minority of well-heeled jet-setters continue to travel at the beginning of the epidemic, the rest of us can't even go to church tomorrow for Easter services.

Let that sink in.

Sad doesn't even begin to describe it.

LOL, lowly Republican House member stops $19.1 billion disaster relief spending spree Trump caved on

Notice: It's Not Justin Amash.

 

House Republican holds up $19 billion disaster relief bill expected to pass unanimously:

The bill was expected to pass the House under a unanimous consent process, to which any member may object. ... “Secondly, it’s a bill that includes nothing to address the clear national emergency and humanitarian crisis we face at our southern border,” [Chip] Roy [TX:21] said. ... President Donald Trump has declared the situation on the southern border a national emergency and had previously sought to include border-related funding in the bill. He later dropped the demand. ... Roy, in a statement later Friday, wrote that  “I stayed in D.C. to object because this kind of swampy practice is what Texans elected me to stand against.

 

Ann Coulter is finally starting to put 2 & 2 together: Does Trump WANT to stop the invasion?

As everyone knows by now, Trump pulled the campaign trigger in 2015 about one month after reading ADIOS AMERICA. He had found his issue. It was not his issue. It became his issue. He had found his angle, his tool.

Immigration restriction marked Trump out from all the other candidates. It got him elected, narrowly. The tilt to the libertarian open borders Mercers with Conway and Bannon in August 2016 nearly did him in. He prematurely tracked to the middle (DACA waffling in Arizona townhall, showing he was never sincere), and once in office, did nothing of substance about the issue. There was no liason to Congress on the issue in the White House, coordinating policy. All the appointments in the White House were opposed to immigration restriction save one here or there, confounding his supporters to this day. It was not a priority, until after the House was lost. None of the cabinet appointments were restrictionists, but for Sessions, whom he neutered early over what really matters, muh MAGA presidency.

Now he returns to immigration, putting it front and center as a matter of what, policy? No, as a matter of the reelection campaign, as it was in the beginning. It's an election tool, a campaign issue like abortion has been for decades. He never really intended to do anything about it, and doesn't now, except in a half-hearted kind of way where if he gets lucky with it here and there as a matter of policy, so much the better. That keeps the believers believing, as does the dumpster fire he's created at the border. He keeps signaling over and over again since losing the House how he wants more immigrants to come here than ever before. Well they're coming over like never before! Trump created the National Emergency. Trump created the surge at the border. He wanted it. He needs it. We are in a political campaign.

Donald Trump will go down in history as the man who forever put the stink on running as an immigration restrictionist, which is why you never trust a "former" Democrat with the leadership of your party. It ain't called stupid for nothin'. It was Ronald Reagan, after all, who started us down the road to exporting all those jobs Trump now says he wants to bring back.

How's that working out for you on this winter day reporting a mere 20,000 new payrolls in February?

We are screwed. "Conservatives" and "Republicans" have failed us, utterly. And that much Coulter already knows.

This is just stupid: Trump is causing the invasion, he wants the invasion, he needs the invasion!

Trump will veto the bill. There aren't enough votes to override. The National Emergency must and will continue! There's another election coming you fool.

The illusion of accomplishment: Trump's had just 3 quarters out of 8 with real GDP at 3% or higher, and no new wall

Trump works to maintain illusions of progress, as his main promises go unfulfilled:

President Trump, now in the third year of his term, is struggling to maintain the illusion of accomplishment as some of his biggest promises remain unfulfilled. ... Trump wrote in his book “The Art of the Deal” that he “plays to people’s fantasies.” He still does. ... “He kind of talked himself into a corner in promoting the wall all the time and gave Democrats an opportunity to stymie him just by refusing to pay for a wall,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. Krikorian, whose group supports more restrictive immigration policies and thus is allied with Trump on some issues, disagrees with the president’s portrayal of a wall as critical to border security. The president felt he had to declare a national emergency “because he has made the wall such a high-profile objective,” Krikorian said. “It's important, but it’s not job one and it’s certainly not the reason we have a crisis at the border.”

LA Times: No construction for Trump's wall has begun anywhere because he signed border deal

If Trump had been serious about building the wall, he wouldn't have signed a border deal which ties his hands. He would have vetoed it and proceeded with the national emergency.

Had he done so, legislators would have had little choice but to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government departments threatened with a shutdown at existing levels.

That's the art of the deal, Mr. Big Stuff, but Mr. Big Stuff is all bark and no bite.

Bulldozers sit idle at border amid legal confusion over Trump’s emergency:

No construction for Trump’s wall has begun anywhere, although officials have started or completed fence replacement projects in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

Trump, who made building a border wall a central promise of his campaign, declared the emergency on Feb. 15 to bypass Congress and shift up to $6.6 billion, mostly from the Pentagon budget, to build — or rebuild — 234 miles of fencing.

Trump acted after Congress had appropriated only $1.375 billion for 55 miles of border barrier in the Rio Grande Valley, far less than he wanted.

But the 1,169-page appropriations bill Trump signed into law when he issued his emergency declaration also contained restrictions on construction in specific towns, parks and wildlife reserves along about 150 miles of the border in the Rio Grande Valley, which is the administration’s top priority for building new barriers. The restrictions have thwarted Trump’s efforts to build a wall there, at least for now.

An aide to Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), who helped negotiate the restrictions, said it’s not clear if the terms of the spending bill would override the emergency declaration, or vice versa, leaving landowners and town officials in limbo.

13 Republicans vote with Democrats against National Emergency

Two in Michigan, two in Wisconsin, two in Washington.

The wall will stop the cheap illegal agricultural migrant labor used to pick the apples, grapes, etc. and pour profits into the hands of greedy Republican farmers, who are the real problem.

Trump wants more bollard fence (National Emergency), and more legal immigrants than ever before (SOTU address)

Two main themes of every Trump rally in 2015-2016: More Bollard Fence! More Legal Immigrants!

Yeah, that's the way it was.