This week brought fresh signs that as President Donald Trump’s popularity withers, Republicans in Congress are starting to reassert some of the prerogatives — and pride — that they abandoned during his first year back in office.
It’s a contrast from just last spring when the Republican-controlled House voted to strip itself of power to stop Trump’s tariffs — and did so by taking some liberties with the concept of time.
It voted to effectively pretend that a day was not a day, in order to skirt a rule that says any attempts to cancel Trump’s tariffs emergency had to be voted on within 15 days.
The Constitution expressly gives Congress the power over tariffs. So here was the House not just declining to stop Trump from gobbling up that power, but willfully preventing itself from reclaiming it. All in the name of helping Trump.
If anything encapsulates Congress’ willful acquiescence and fealty to Trump, those votes had to be it. But it was part of a broader trend. The Constitution arguably makes the legislative branch more powerful than the executive and judicial branches, but GOP lawmakers have repeatedly ceded that power to keep the peace with Trump.
Some have even spoken as if their roles were to do whatever Trump wanted — as if their elections didn’t matter, next to Trump’s 49.8% plurality in the 2024 election.
That dynamic is hardly going away, but with looming midterm elections — in which they’re on the ballot and Trump’s not — GOP lawmakers are breaking with him in more ways.
Three House Republicans voted this week to prevent an extension of House Speaker Mike Johnson’s tariffs gimmick. And meanwhile, key Republicans have balked at a pair of major Trump incursions into the legislative branch: his administration’s apparent monitoring of lawmakers’ searches of the Jeffrey Epstein files, and its failed attempt to indict six congressional Democrats.
The tariff votes
The tariffs vote Tuesday was hardly a resounding reclamation of congressional power, given 214 Republicans still voted to continue ceding it to Trump. But it was a significant rebuke of Trump and Johnson that means we’re likely to see a bevy of tariffs votes in the coming months.
Those votes could test Republicans’ willingness to toe Trump’s unpopular line on tariffs in an election year — and potentially make the tariffs more difficult to sustain if the GOP defections grow.
Already on Wednesday, six House Republicans joined with Democrats to block Trump’s Canada tariffs. Given the Senate already voted against those tariffs, that means majorities of both GOP-controlled chambers are now on-record opposing what Trump has done.