How Speaker Johnson tried to block Democrats from rolling back Trump’s tariffs yet again
By Michael Jones
In the span of three months, House Democrats have scored four bipartisan legislative victories from the minority against the will of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and House Republican leadership.
First, they forced a vote in November to compel the release of the Epstein Files. A month later, the House repealed an executive order signed by President Donald Trump that stripped union rights from roughly one million federal workers. After Congress returned from the holiday recess, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) shrewdly triggered a vote on a three-year extension of the Affordable Care Act enhanced premium tax credits—the demand at the heart of the historic government shutdown last fall. And just last week, the House voted to terminate the national emergency underpinning Trump’s tariffs against Canada.
Each of the first three wins was enabled by a successful discharge petition—a procedural tool that empowers a majority of House members to bypass leadership to bring legislation to the floor for a vote. In the case of the fourth, the House rolled back the Canada tariffs with a disapproval resolution, a specific type of fast-track measure created by statute that allows Congress to vote to reject a president’s action.
The vote was largely a symbolic rebuke of Trump’s trade policy, because even if the Senate passes the resolution, the president is likely to veto it, and the votes aren’t there to override it. But it underscored the growing congressional pushback against Trump’s executive emergency authority.
“We are supposed to be a separate and equal branch of government with oversight, so it should not be a Democrat or Republican issue. Either it’s an emergency or it’s not. If it is an emergency, the president should demonstrate it,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), the sponsor of the resolution, said ahead of the vote. “He has not been able to do so. We know tariffs should be within our jurisdiction of the House, not giving it away to the executive branch of government. So it just seems to be, this should be common sense.”
Meeks also connected Trump’s tariffs to the high cost of living many Americans are facing, an argument House Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Ted Lieu (D- Calif.) also reinforced as he registered his support of Meeks’s resolution ahead of the vote.
“We have an affordability crisis in America,” he said last week. “Americans are drowning in bills and in debt, and we know grocery prices continue to increase. The cost of everyday items continues to increase. One large reason is because of Trump’s tariffs.”
If Johnson had had his way, the vote wouldn’t have happened at all.
Ahead of the House Rules Committee meeting to prepare the Republicans’ legislative agenda for the floor, the speaker had language slipped into a procedural motion at the White House’s request to prevent Meeks from forcing a vote on his resolution, which is his prerogative under the National Emergencies Act. (Johnson’s rule language essentially redefined a legislative day so that the window for a mandatory vote never opened.)
It wasn’t the first time Johnson had done this. He has repeatedly used procedural maneuvers to protect Trump from uncomfortable votes—whether on tariffs, Ukraine, emergency powers, or oversight. In the past, that strategy worked because Republicans were unified around two things: loyalty to Trump and fear of internal revolt. Blocking votes kept fractures from becoming visible.
Democrats—and, this time, some Republicans including Reps. Kevin Kiley (Calif.), Thomas Massie (Ky.), and Don Bacon (Neb.)—blasted the rule as an abuse of procedure since the tariff language had nothing to do with the underlying bills the rules package was supposed to govern, and it prevented members from exercising their constitutional authority over taxation and trade. The House narrowly rejected the rule with the tariff ban embedded after GOP defectors joined Democrats in opposition.
House Rules Committee Ranking Member Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) accused Johnson of providing cover for Trump out of self-preservation at the expense of the institution the speaker leads.
“I don’t think the speaker believes in democracy,” he told me. “What a disgusting thing for the speaker to do. He has such contempt for this body that he won’t even let us debate these issues and vote on these issues. And I get it. He’s afraid of Trump, but at some point he’s gotta grow a spine and stand up for the people in this chamber.”
Johnson said his intervention was motivated by his desire to allow the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of Trump’s tariffs—a decision expected to come down as early as a matter of weeks.
The Trump administration argued in November that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) covers the emergencies Trump cited in his declarations (fentanyl trafficking and trade deficits). The challengers disputed that Congress silently gave the president the power to upend the entire tariff system via IEEPA—a statute historically used for sanctions and asset freezes, not across-the-board tariffs—and that the fact no president has used it this way for more than 50 years is telling.
“He’s just trying to delay whatever he can,” Meeks said of Johnson. “The delay tactics and the false narratives that they’re putting forward—saying a day is not a day—should be over. And the American people are watching to see what we do on this issue.”
Johnson isn’t expected to escape the issue anytime soon. The rejection of the Canada tariffs has opened the door for Democrats to force votes to repeal tariffs on Mexico, Brazil and the so-called reciprocal tariffs Trump imposed on most countries last April on “Liberation Day.”
There’s also the reality of Johnson’s vote math: His majority is slimmer than ever. Members who are uneasy about tariffs—especially those from border states, farm districts, or manufacturing-heavy regions—now have to swallow another leadership move that protects the White House at their expense. When margins are tight, resentment compounds faster.
Meanwhile, Republicans are heading into an election cycle in which tariffs are both a trade policy and a pocketbook issue. Meeks predicted that retaliatory tariffs, higher consumer prices, and strained relations with allies like Canada will all fall differently on members who are already getting heat back home as Election Day nears.
“I think as we get past the primaries and people realize that their constituents are concerned. And you see the results of some of these state legislative elections recently in strong Republican districts, those folks are starting to speak out. I think those are warning signs for them that they need to do what the right thing is and not just follow the president and his wayward ways.”
Michael Jones is an independent Capitol Hill correspondent and contributor for COURIER. He is the author of Once Upon a Hill, a newsletter about Congressional politics.
