Oct. 31, 2025 · Elections
The Senate Tariff Vote Changed Nothing
Everybody got what they needed from the performance, except for the American public.
Note from the author: this article is not all doom and gloom. Get to the end and you’ll see a link that offers actionable insights on what you can do to not just reverse our collision course with fascism, but to kick it to the side and leave it as a footnote in the history books. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page for a big announcement from the Existentialist Republic!
The Senate just voted 51-47 to terminate Trump’s emergency tariff powers. Social media erupted. News outlets ran headlines about Republican defections. People started celebrating like something meaningful just happened.
Nothing meaningful just happened.
We are being lied to. Not misled, but actually lied to. This will do nothing to remove the tariffs and all 535 members of Congress know that to be true, as does the media.
To actually end a presidential national emergency, Congress must pass a joint resolution. The president can veto that joint resolution. Congress then needs a two-thirds supermajority in both chambers to override that veto. The Senate got 51 votes. They need 67. They’re 16 votes short. The House hasn’t even voted yet because they’re not in session, and when they eventually do vote, they’ll need 290 votes to override.
Trump’s emergency tariff powers remain completely intact. This vote terminated nothing. It restricted nothing. It changed nothing. The celebration is for a performance, not a result.
The Senate held a vote they knew couldn’t succeed. Republican senators facing tough races in 2026 got to cast a “principled” vote against Trump while understanding it would never actually constrain him. Political journalists got their horse race story about GOP defections.
Everybody got what they needed from the performance, except for the American public.
Meanwhile, Trump still has exactly the same emergency powers he had before the vote. The legal authority hasn’t changed. The enforcement mechanisms haven’t changed. The tariffs that are devastating industries across the country will continue exactly as planned.
This follows a pattern we’ve seen since 2016. Susan Collins furrows her brow. Mitt Romney makes a speech. Lisa Murkowski expresses concerns. They cast votes that generate headlines and give false hope to liberals, but never accumulate into actual constraints on power. The impeachment votes ran this exact playbook. Enough Republicans defect to make news, never enough to actually remove Trump from office or restrict his power.
The system gets to claim it’s working while producing the predetermined result every single time.
The National Emergencies Act of 1976 was supposed to create congressional oversight of emergency authorities. In practice, it created a system where presidents declare emergencies for virtually any reason and Congress lacks the ability to terminate them. We now have dozens of active national emergencies, some running for decades, because the two-thirds override threshold is essentially insurmountable in our polarized political environment.
Presidential emergency powers have become normal presidential powers. Temporary authorities are now permanent. The constitutional separation of powers exists on paper while the executive branch operates with unilateral authority that would have horrified the founders.
Trump didn’t break this system. He’s just using it more brazenly than his predecessors. Every modern president has governed through emergency declarations because Congress has spent fifty years abdicating its constitutional role. The difference is Trump doesn’t pretend the emergency is real. He declares a national emergency to impose tariffs everyone knows aren’t about national security, and the system responds with symbolic votes that everyone knows won’t work.
Congress won’t constrain Trump’s emergency authorities. The votes aren’t there and won’t be there. So either we accept that presidential emergency powers are now unlimited, or we look at where power actually exists to resist federal overreach.
States have constitutional authority that doesn’t depend on Congress finding a spine. Governors can refuse to deploy National Guard troops for federal purposes. State legislatures can decline to cooperate with federal tariff enforcement, and if SCOTUS disagrees then let them come and get the money themselves.
None of these strategies are easy. All of them require organizing, sustained pressure campaigns, and detailed knowledge of what actually works. They require focusing attention on governors and state legislators who most people can’t name. They require accepting that the federal system gives ordinary citizens far more leverage over state officials than senators.
But what works is that they’re actual strategies rather than performances. They create real friction rather than symbolic resistance. They force the federal government to try enforcing policies without state cooperation, which turns out to be remarkably difficult when states decide to make it so
This approach requires work and focus and accepting that D.C. won’t save us. It requires building power locally rather than waiting for national figures to suddenly develop courage they’ve never demonstrated.
It requires educating and recruiting rather than celebrating.
Fifty-one senators voted for a measure that will not become law. News organizations covered it like a meaningful development. People celebrated like something changed. And Trump remains unmoved by any of this. He wouldn’t listen even if was passed by Congress, and if it did? Who would hold him accountable?
This is how institutional collapse happens. Not through dramatic confrontations but through a belief that the system will eventually self correct. The media is complicit with politicians in this theater of celebrating actions that everyone involved knows are meaningless.
Trump’s emergency powers remain unchanged and mostly unchallenged. Everything everyone involved knew would happen.
State-level resistance to federal overreach requires work, knowledge, and organization. Celebrating symbolic resistance gestures requires nothing. That’s why one happens constantly and the other barely happens at all.
The system is functioning how it’s intended, for feckless resistance and brutal exploitation.
Every member of Congress knows that Mike Johnson already announced he won’t bring the House back into session until January. That means three more months of federal shutdown while Trump’s tariff powers remain completely untouched. And when the House finally reconvenes, the procedural rules blocking these resolutions still run through March. The Senate held its symbolic vote knowing the House would never act.
The shutdown serves the strategy. Keep Congress out of session so it can’t interfere. Let the system collapse, so oligarchs can buy up the scraps. Let senators cast their principled votes for the cameras. Ensure nothing ever reaches Trump’s desk. The system works exactly as designed to protect executive authority from any meaningful check.
Additional Note:
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