House Speaker Mike Johnson and GOP leaders on Wednesday moved to make it harder for challenges to President Donald Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs to succeed.
Johnson’s move illustrates how leading Republicans remain behind the White House even as trade tensions worsen.
“Every House Republican who votes for today’s rule is voting to preemptively surrender congressional authority and their own power to stop Trump’s tariffs from wrecking the economy,” Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia, a Democrat, wrote on X.
Republican leaders tucked in a provision in an unrelated measure that would forestall challenges to the underlying national emergency Trump used to unilaterally impose sweeping tariffs on Liberation Day. If successful, it would be far more difficult for lawmakers to challenge Trump’s tariffs until at least October.
Effectively, Johnson is shielding Trump’s trade policies amid grumbling from Republicans on both sides of the Capitol. Seven GOP senators are backing an unrelated bill to curb presidential tariff policy. Trump has promised to veto that legislation.
Under the National Emergency Act, Congress can terminate national emergencies by a joint resolution. A president could still veto a termination.
Crucially, the 1976 law allows such votes to be privileged, meaning they are among the few topics Republican leaders cannot block from reaching the floor. But the law requires a specific number of days before further action can be taken, and the GOP’s provision would prevent the countdown from starting until the end of September.
GOP leaders included the policy in a key procedural step for Trump’s budget resolution. By doing so, Johnson is practically forcing his colleagues to stomach the tariff provision or risk further imperiling the passage of a necessary step needed to get Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” of tax cuts and immigration policy through Congress.
Johnson and his team used a similar strategy in March to protect a previous round of Trump tariffs by inserting a provision into a procedural measure ahead of a potential government shutdown.
“Why haven’t we voted on tariffs in the House of Representatives?” Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a libertarian-leaning Republican, wrote on X. “Because Speaker Johnson is using Rules Committee Resolutions, consummated by majority votes of the whole House, to declare that ‘a day is not a day’ in order to AVOID THE U.S. LAW that requires Congress to vote.”
It’s rare for majority party members to buck their own leadership on a rule vote, though it has happened much more frequently in recent years.
On April 1, Republicans sank a previous rule that Johnson was using a vehicle to kill a bipartisan push to allow lawmakers who are new parents to vote remotely.
The House is expected to vote later this afternoon on the procedural rule that includes the trade provision. If Republicans pass that hurdle, a final vote on the Trump-backed budget will likely occur on Wednesday evening.
