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Trampâs getting some Republican congresscritters up off their backs because he broke the partyâs Number 1 Rule: Donât mess with the money.
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You know what would have been nice? If Bacon and a couple of other Republican Senators had voted against giving Trump that power to begin with. But he didnât. Color me less than impressed.
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Iâm not either, but the infighting is good to hear about.
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I sent a new message to both of my senators, after 11 Democrats voted to confirm a COVID vaccine conspiracist as our new embarassador to Japan:
First off, I want to thank you Senator [redacted] for voting against, well, pretty much everything the T**** administration has tried to push through the Senate. As a small business owner who is working to build a startup medical device company, as you may imagine, Iâm having a rough year. Between delays at the FDA for reviewers who I pay for directly and watching investment dry up as we burn all our relationships with foreign countries and the economy goes into free fall, I have been directly harmed by the incompetence of this administration. I appreciate you taking an active part in the resistance.
What Iâm asking of you is to take a good look at Democratic leadership right now and ask yourself if they are up to the task. If you do that, I canât think that you would see Chuck Schumer as the leader to help America get through this. Heâs stuck in the time when the US had a two-party system. We donât. We have a fascist dictatorship and the resistance. We need a resistance leader. I would ask that you work towards guiding your colleagues to find that leader we need.
Thank you.
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Can they even pass a valid law that takes away their own powers under the Constitution?
If this passes; what happens if they then just go and vote to remove the tariff power they delegated to the President?
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Indeed. I imagine theyâre only doing it to wink at Tramp about how thoroughly theyâre rolling over and exposing their bellies for him.
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One explanation from within that thread says it only prevents a single member of Congress from âgoing rogue,â i.e. it could still go thru committee & be brought to a vote etc. 
Another says this already passed in the 03/11 legislation, & so this is to keep that in there.
That said, I canât say Iâm more edified, having read more of the thread.
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Yes, they can pass a law that passes their power from them to another group or division. Thereâs even been a SC ruling on this long ago because what used to happen was they would do this, then have the ability to instantly pull it back. The SC said that if you codify it in a law, you then have to pass a law to get it back.
This change, which for legal purposes says a day isnât a day (incoherent ranting here) would need a law to be passed to pull back, which means theyâd have to be ready to override the obvious veto. Unless they simply inserted the wording into another bill and never mentioned it, which would be hilarious.
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But is passing a law saying that you canât vote to revoke a previous delegation of power a delegation of power to someone else? They already have that power. Nothing new is being delegated.
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One of the lawsuits filed against the tariffs brings probably the best point, especially if youâre a cowardly GOP congresscritter - several lawsuits state that AIPA does not specifically say he can do tariffs, thus he canât use it. Instead, tariffs require a process, which he did in his first time (and Congress can still override those).
The lawsuit(s) winning would mean that Trump loses and the GOP congress people can say âsorry Dear Leader, itâs not us, but them! Donât send your cult members to our homes.â
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Yeah, I was going to say, I donât think the House can limit their own power that way. I donât think the Constitution grants them the power to prevent themselves from enacting legislation. And frankly, itâs still fucking bizarre to me that the MAGA wing of Congress doesnât seem to be interested in exercising their own authority, but just in reinforcing Trumpâs.
ETA: Iâm gonna have to look and see what exactly they did.
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Ok, hereâs the law in question. Itâs about how a national emergency declaration can be ended, once made. The easiest way is for the President to just declare the emergency over. Congress has two ways to end it. One, every six months after the declaration, there is a mandatory consideration of a vote to end the emergency by each House of Congress. Two, Congress can at any time enact a law by joint resolution to end the emergency. Once such a resolution is referred to a House or Senate Committee, they have 15 calendar days to report out of committee. However, the law also gives each House the right to make its own rules for the details of how such a resolution will be voted on, etc. And whatâs happening here is the House made a rule saying that there are no calendar days for this first 6 month period, effectively foreclosing any attempt to end the emergency early. And because itâs rule making, they can totally do this.
ETA: also, the emergency automatically ends after a year, unless the President renews it.
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Normally, yes. But these guys wrote up in the budget bill, which passed as a law, no matter what the calendar says, no days are passing for Trumpâs emergency.
Edit - for accuracy, correcting my comment. I read it incorrectly. They essentially gave up their power to cancel it and Danimagoo brought the receipts. Did a lot of reading on it and my confusion was pretty common. Luckily, thereâs people like danimagoo and others to explain. Side note - amusingly Rand Paul of all people is trying to get legislation passed to make them end automatically at 30 days, because he feels running by emergency is wrong.
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No, thatâs not accurate. The thing they snuck in the budget bill only affects the way Congress can pass a law to end the emergency early. It does not affect the part of the statute that automatically ends the emergency after one year, or the part that stipulates an automatic Congressional review at 6 months. All itâs doing is preventing the ability of Congress to end the emergency early. In other words, prior to 6 months. I included a link to the statute. My whole paragraph before the ETA explains this.
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