Greg Sargent talks to Norm Ornstein:

Greg Sargent: I think we can expect Democratic senators to push something in the next day or so that would effectively cancel the national emergency that Trump used to impose the tariffs. That would end them. You’d need a few GOP senators to support this, but a few already supported a narrower anti-tariff measure that just passed the other day. Then after that, you’d need a discharge petition in the House moving the same thing, canceling the national emergency. You need a handful of Republicans in the House to support that, which is not impossible. It’s implausible, but not impossible. Norm, could you walk us through the details of how that would work?

Norm Ornstein: Let me note as well the election results on Tuesday of two House seats in overwhelmingly Republican districts in Florida that Trump and the predecessors had won by 30 points or more. While Republicans won, the margin was cut in half in both instances to 15 percent or less. I mention that because that had to leave every House Republican who won by 15 percent or less quite nervous last night. They see the direction that things are going. So you’ve got pressure points with some of these Republicans.

Now, what happens is this. As you indicated, we’ve already seen a Senate resolution that passed with four Republican votes that countermands the 25 percent tariffs on Canada that Trump had already imposed, before these across-the-board huge ones that he announced just yesterday and today. That has to go through the House. Speaker Mike Johnson has already indicated he will not bring it up, so the venue to use is a discharge petition. This is a rule in the House that goes back well over a century, and was a way to get around an all-powerful speaker who could block anything from taking place. It says, under limited circumstances, a majority of the House—218 members in this case—signing a petition can force a bill to come to the floor and get an up-or-down vote. A resolution by House and Senate passing into law can countermand Donald Trump.

If Democrats are going to have any savvy at all in this case, they should not only bring up the resolution that passed the Senate to block the 25 percent tariffs on Canada. They should also introduce a broader one to block all of these outrageous tariffs and save the economy—and get Republicans on the record about whether they’re for it or against it.

Sargent: I want to be clear, Norm. The thing that already passed the Senate with a few Republicans only applied to tariffs on Canada. What we’re going to see in the next day or so from Democratic senators is a new resolution that terminates the national emergency that Trump is using to justify the across-the-board global tariffs, all of them. So presumably, maybe, let’s hope you could get three, four, five Senate Republicans to support that just as they supported the narrow margin on Canada. Then after, you would take that and try to do a discharge petition in the House on the broader thing—and you’d need around five House Republicans to cross over for that. It’s not impossible, right?

Ornstein: It’s not impossible. I’m frankly skeptical that we can get that happening in the next few days, or even the next week or two. Senate Republicans are weak when it comes to defying Donald Trump. And for something that’s just taken place, they may say, Let’s wait, we’ll see if he’s right, maybe it will be just a short period with pain. When we see the pain ratcheted up, there is no reason why Democrats can’t keep bringing this up for a vote and get an outcome that would be more favorable a little bit further down the road.

Sargent: The bottom line here is that all you need is four or five GOP senators and around five GOP House members so that Congress could pass something to terminate the fake national emergency and end the global tariffs, right?

Ornstein: That’s correct. And we can add that if this were able to be done by secret ballot vote—which it is not—the votes, I believe, would be overwhelming to block this. Most Republicans in Congress know that this is not just folly; it’s dangerous, destructive, and horrifying folly that could lead to a global depression. They know that. But it’s a cult, and they’re not going to go against it at this point without maximum pressure from Democrats in the House and the Senate to get them on record repeatedly endorsing this strategy until they can’t do it anymore. [Continue reading…]