House majority rules: When a 'calendar day' isn't what it seems

WASHINGTON — It can seem like a day on Capitol Hill never ends. Last week the House Rules Committee made that feeling a reality.

Amid debate over the rule that set up a floor vote on the continuing resolution to keep the government open through Sept. 30, the chamber’s “traffic cop” committee slipped in a provision which stipulates that for the remainder of the first session of the 119th Congress, there would be no more calendar days — at least as far as President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs are concerned.

The language included in the rule for the CR paused “calendar days” under a national emergencies law, effectively curbing House Democrats’ ability to force a vote on whether to terminate three national emergencies Trump declared on Feb. 1, 2025, to launch a maelstrom of tariffs directed at Canada, Mexico and China.

The 1976 law establishing the ability of presidents to declare a national emergency, conferring on them unusually flexible authorities, provides a fail-safe mechanism for Congress to ensure the president doesn’t, in lawmakers’ eyes, go too far.

The National Emergencies Act requires committees to report a bill to terminate a national emergency within 15 calendar days after its introduction and referral, and a floor vote on passage must occur three days later. But, if the calendar day never turns over, emergency termination measures can be left to die in committees unless brought to the floor under a special rule or discharge petition.

“It’s a way for minority members to force a vote in the House, for example, if they don’t like tariffs, they could put everybody, every Republican, on the record about Trump’s tariffs,” said Josh Huder, senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute.

“Now, if you’re in the majority and you don’t want to vote against Trump tariffs because you think it’s politically unpalatable to do so, to look like you’re on the opposite side of the president, then you put this sort of thing in which basically negates the privilege purposes of the National Emergencies Act,” he said.

The move drew an immediate outcry from House Democrats. Rules ranking member Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said the GOP was “sneaking” an unrelated provision into the rule because they wanted “no floor vote, no Republicans on record and no way to stop these devastating price hikes.”

The practical effect is to prevent House Foreign Affairs ranking member Gregory W. Meeks from bringing to the floor two joint resolutions that would terminate the emergency tariffs imposed on Mexico and Canada when the House reconvenes after this week’s recess.

“House Republicans are declaring that the days are no longer days and that time has literally stopped,” Meeks, D-N.Y., said during floor debate on the CR rule. “The speaker is petrified that members of this House will actually have to take a vote on lowering costs for the American people.”

Time-tested tactic

While McGovern denounced the Republican move to block votes on the national emergency, he made use of a similar strategy when he chaired the Rules Committee.

In 2021, House Democrats twice waived the expedited procedures under the National Emergencies Act to block an effort led by Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., to terminate the COVID-19 national emergency. Those maneuvers also prevented the House from being forced to take up two Senate-passed joint resolutions to terminate the COVID-19 emergency, both sponsored by Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan.

“The speaker does not like situations where he or she loses control of the floor because someone is using some particular maneuver to force consideration of something,” Molly Reynolds, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said. “Obviously, here we’re talking about options available under expedited procedures, but this is the same reason why the majority party leadership in the House hates the discharge petitions. They simply do not like situations where they have lost control to the rank and file over what’s being considered on the floor.”

House leaders used similar tactics on other matters. In 2018, House Republicans used the Rules Committee to stipulate that expedited consideration of a War Powers Act resolution did not apply to a concurrent resolution introduced by Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., that would have called for Trump, then in his first term, to remove U.S. troops from Yemen.

When Khanna later introduced an identical resolution, the House waived expedited consideration of war powers measures related to Yemen for the remainder of the Congress.

No easy feat

Even without a procedural roadblock, ending a national emergency declaration is no small feat.

In order to cancel a national emergency declaration, Congress would need to pass a bill, which would then be sent to the president’s desk where it would be subject to a veto. To override the veto, the bill would need to pass both houses with a two-thirds majority — something rare even in more harmonious times.

Only one emergency termination measure has ever been enacted into law, according to the Congressional Research Service. That measure, which finally terminated the COVID-19 emergency, was signed by then-President Joe Biden in 2023 even though he strongly opposed it.

When the National Emergencies Act was enacted in 1976, it originally allowed Congress to terminate a national emergency upon both chambers’ adoption of a concurrent resolution, which doesn’t need the president’s signature to take effect.

However, in 1983, the Supreme Court ruled in INS v. Chadha that congressional disapproval measures must be presented to the president for approval, making them subject to a presidential veto.

Just how broad the sweep of powers available to a president during a national emergency is ill defined.

When a special Senate committee first convened to review emergency authority in 1973, the panel identified 470 provisions of federal law providing the president with extraordinary authority during times of national emergency, according to the CRS. A more recent survey by the Brennan Center for Justice identified 137 provisions that would expand the president’s authority in an emergency without congressional approval.

Many of these provisions have never been invoked and the full extent of the powers available to the president in national emergencies remains murky.

“It’s sort of like Pandora’s box, that if they do declare a national emergency, all of a sudden they have much broader and more expansive executive power,” Huder said.

In recent years, there have been bipartisan attempts to amend the procedures that Congress uses to review national emergencies.

In 2024, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee advanced a bipartisan bill sponsored by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., that would have turned the emergency review process on its head by requiring a president’s emergency declaration to terminate automatically after 30 days unless specifically approved by Congress. The bill was never considered on the floor.

Paul, who now chairs the committee, said he plans to move forward on the bill again in this Congress, even though it would curtail the emergency powers of the current Republican president. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., has introduced a similar measure in that chamber.

“I’m not excited about a country run by emergencies … it’s one of those things where, during the last administration, [overhauling national emergency procedures] wasn’t that popular with Democrats, and now all of a sudden it’s very popular with Democrats but not with Republicans,” Paul said. “People treat emergencies depending on who the president is. But I think rule by emergency is not a great way to go, and I think we should have reform of it.”

Rep. Chip Roy introduced a similar bill that the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee reported out in 2024 with bipartisan support. A companion was introduced in the Senate by a bipartisan group of senators headed by Mike Lee, R-Utah, but it never moved forward.

McGovern has also introduced a measure in the 117th and 118th Congresses that would automatically terminate emergency declarations without congressional approval. It would also modify congressional review of hostilities and foreign arms exports. Sens. Christopher S. Murphy, D-Conn., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Lee introduced that chamber’s version.