Republicans in both the House and Senate are holding discussions about how to respond to Donald Trump’s threatened tariffs against Mexico. And in the process, they may also join Democrats in overriding the declaration of a national emergency that is allowing Trump to redirect military funds to his border fence.
Last month, The New York Times called Hope Hicks’s decision about whether to obey a congressional subpoena “an existential question.” On Tuesday, The Washington Post described Republicans thinking about voting for the thing that Republicans claim has been a central dictum of their party for a century “a dramatic act of defiance.” That simply upholding the law or long-standing principles has become such a big deal … is a big deal. But in this case, it could also have implications that go beyond just daring to break with the cult of Trump.
Though Trump has been acting as if he has unlimited ability to impose tariffs on his own or any reason, the authority for his action against Mexico comes through the National Emergency Act. It’s Trump’s declaration of an emergency that’s both providing funds for throwing coils of razor wire along the border, building giant tent cities in the desert, and allowing Trump to threaten tariffs that will immediately impact workers and consumers in the U.S. as well as Mexico.
In March, a handful of Republicans joined with Democrats to pass an override of Trump’s emergency declaration in both the House and the Senate. Like most bills that Trump doesn’t like, Mitch McConnell would have spiked this and prevented a vote—as he has for over 100 bills now gathering dust after passing he House—but the motion shepherded through the House by Nancy Pelosi was of a type that can’t be blocked. It passed in the Senate. So would many of those other bills if McConnell would allow a vote. However, when the motion reached the White House, Trump, as expected, vetoed the bill and there was not enough support among Republicans to override that veto.
However, the tariff threat may pull in enough Republicans that a second effort to override the emergency declaration could successfully derail not just Trump’s new tax on consumers, but end his war at the border.
Trump’s tariffs would kick in just one week from Monday on June 10, unless Mexico meets requirements that are deliberately imprecise, unspecified, and strictly up to Trump to define, and redefine, however he wants. The phrasing of the threat allows Trump to clamp on the tariffs whenever he feels he needs a distraction from events in the news, and remove them whenever he wants to claim “victory” with no need for any change in any number.
It’s difficult to believe that Republicans are actually going to stand up to Trump at this point. After all, they’ve been willing to reverse themselves on other principles that were supposedly core to the Republican Party and the conservative movement when those principles came into conflict with the whims of Trump. The fact that the Post article can describe them only as “some Republicans” discussing the idea, without names, only reinforces the idea that the stomach for putting up any fight against Trump does not exist. Those Republicans who do get named in the article seem to be willing to shrug off this assault like any other, on the grounds that, as Republican Senator Joni Ernst says, Trump “is a tariff guy.”
Republicans disagreeing with a Republican executive over a point of policy, shouldn’t be “a dramatic act of defiance.” But in the party under Trump any disagreement has become dramatic. And increasingly unlikely.