The Senate once again rebuked President Donald Trump on tariffs, a vote that comes as the president is in Asia touting tariffs and notching progress on trade agreements.

Senators on Tuesday voted 52-48 to terminate the national emergency Trump declared in order to impose 50 percent tariffs on most Brazilian goods in July. Five Republican Senators joined the Democrats in the vote: Thom Tillis (N.C.), Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Rand Paul (Ky.), the measure’s co-sponsor.

The vote — the first in a series of three expected resolutions aiming to block President Trump’s tariffs on Brazil and Canada as well as his widespread global tariffs — comes amid bubbling tension in the Senate over how Trump’s trade war has affected farmers and small businesses.

Next week, the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments over whether Trump has overstepped his authority by using an emergency law to impose tariffs on nearly every country in the world.

“Emergencies are like war, famine [and] tornadoes,” said Paul, the most vocal opponent of Trump’s tariffs in the Senate. “Not liking someone’s tariffs is not an emergency. It’s an abuse of the emergency power and it’s Congress abdicating their traditional role in taxes.”

But the vote remains largely symbolic: Republican leaders in the House have blocked the chamber from voting to overrule the tariffs until March, protecting Republican members who are facing blowback from home state farmers and small businesses angry over the economic impact.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a co-sponsor on the Canada and global tariff resolutions, said he is hearing rising discontent among “Republican senators who go home and they just feel like they’re getting hit by a trade wrecking ball.”

“People come up and say ‘the tariffs are killing us.’ You go to the grocery store and everybody’s up in arms,” continued Wyden, a ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees trade issues.

Trump announced that he would impose a 50 percent tariff in July, in response to what he felt was an unfair legal case against former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro — a Trump ally — over his role in attempting to overturn the results of the country’s 2022 election, as well as over a Brazil’s policies on digital content, which has ensnared U.S. social media companies.

In his order imposing the tariffs, Trump declared a national emergency over “the scope and gravity of the recent policies, practices, and actions of the Government of Brazil constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”

That order has received pushback from some in Congress, including Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who argued that by allowing the president to declare an emergency over a country’s treatment of a political ally would open the door to broader use of national emergencies to govern.

“Don’t lie and say there’s an energy emergency when there isn’t,” said Kaine, who sponsored the resolution. “Don’t lie and say Brazil’s prosecution of a president is an emergency when it’s not. Don’t use the lie to increase the price of coffee by 40 percent in a year. Don’t use the lie to punish a country with whom we have a trade surplus. Don’t lie and don’t hurt my citizens.”

Sen. Tom Cotton wasn’t fast enough in 2022 to block Senate passage of legislation that would make daylight savings time permanent. Three years later, he wasn’t about to repeat that same mistake.

The Alabama Republican was on hand Tuesday afternoon to thwart a bipartisan effort on the chamber floor to pass a bill that would put an end to changing the clocks twice a year, including this coming Sunday.

“If permanent Daylight Savings Time becomes the law of the land, it will again make winter a dark and dismal time for millions of Americans,” said Cotton in his objection to a request by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) to advance the bill by unanimous consent.

“For many Arkansans, permanent daylight savings time would mean the sun wouldn’t rise until after 8:00 or even 8:30am during the dead of winter,” Cotton continued. “The darkness of permanent savings time would be especially harmful for school children and working Americans.”

A cross-party coalition of lawmakers has been trying for years to make daylight savings time the default, which would result in more daylight in the evening hours with less in the morning, plus bring to a halt to biannual clock adjustments.

President Donald Trump endorsed the concept this spring, calling the changing of the clocks “a big inconvenience and, for our government, A VERY COSTLY EVENT!!!”

His comments coincided with a hearing, then a markup, of Scott’s legislation in the Senate Commerce Committee. It set off an intense lobbying battle in turn, pitting the golf and retail industries — which is advocating for permanent daylight savings time —against the likes of sleep doctors and Christian radio broadcasters — who prefer standard time.

Joined by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) in calling for the Senate to pass the bill Tuesday, Scott cited states’ rights as a major reason for his support for the so-called “Sunshine Protection Act.”

“It allows the people of each state to choose what best fits their needs and the needs of their families,” said Scott. “The American people are sick and tired of changing their clocks twice a year. It’s confusing, unnecessary and completely outdated.”

There was hope earlier this year that momentum was growing for the quixotic legislative campaign after progress stalled following senators’ success in 2022 to pass a version of Scott’s bill by unanimous consent — an outcome typically reserved for noncontroversial bills that took lawmakers by surprise.

Cotton on Tuesday decried the “abject failure” of the last time Congress enacted permanent daylight savings time in 1974, pledging to always oppose legislation that would do just that.

He said he took “full responsibility” for dropping the ball in 2022, explaining he hadn’t adequately communicated the extent of his opposition and that he had expected another senator to object.

A federal judge has indefinitely extended her order banning the Trump administration from mass firing federal employees during the government shutdown.

Following a hearing Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston granted a preliminary injunction blocking reductions in force — better known as RIFs — at most major government agencies.

Barring further action by a higher court, Illston’s decision limits the Trump administration’s ability to continue downsizing the federal government and moves it has made to leverage the ongoing shutdown to cut federal programs and agencies favored by Democrats.

The Office of Personnel Management, the Office of Management and Budget “and the federal agency defendants are enjoined from issuing any more RIF notices because of the shutdown,” said Illston, a San Francisco-based Clinton appointee. The judge also barred the administration from implementing RIF notices issued during the shutdown and said she might hold further court proceedings to resolve disputes about some RIFs that were in the works just before the shutdown began on Oct. 1.

The Trump administration is expected to appeal Illston’s ruling to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment. OMB spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A Justice Department attorney defending the administration at the hearing Tuesday, Michael Velchik, said the firings were lawful and represented the will of the electorate expressed through President Donald Trump’s victory at the polls last year.

“The American people selected someone known above all else for his eloquence in communicating to employees that, ‘You’re fired!’” Velchik said, referring to Trump’s trademark line on his television show, “The Apprentice.”

However, Illston bluntly rejected the administration’s key arguments, including that the lapse in appropriations gave agencies new flexibility to fire workers because unfunded programs are no longer required by law.

“I think that’s completely wrong,” the judge said.

Velchik was undeterred. “I think that’s obviously correct. I think all three branches of government agree on that,” he said.

A lawyer representing the federal employee unions challenging the RIFs said that argument suggests Trump could permanently dismantle every federal agency simply because Congress failed to meet a funding deadline.

“What counsel is arguing is that if Congress lets funding lapse for one day, the president can fire the entire federal government. That is absurd,” the unions’ attorney, Danielle Leonard, said.

On Monday, one of the unions suing, AFGE, shifted its position in the shutdown fight. While it initially joined with other federal employee unions backing Democrats’ resistance to supporting a temporary funding bill, AFGE urged senators to support a three-week funding patch. It fell short in the Senate again Tuesday in a 54-45 vote.

Illston made clear at the outset of the hearing that she intended to issue an injunction that effectively extends a temporary restraining order she issued two weeks ago at the unions’ request. She called it “particularly ironic” that the federal employees sending out the RIF notices appeared to be violating the Anti-Deficiency Act, which prohibits the government from incurring expenses not authorized by Congress, but includes some exceptions for essential activities.

The judge also said she found some accounts from federal RIFed employees “very affecting.”

“I think it’s important that we remember that although we are here talking about statutes and administrative procedure and the like, we are also talking about human lives, and these human lives are being dramatically affected by the activities that we’re discussing this morning,” Illston said.

As an example, she cited an account by a RIFed Department of Housing and Urban Development employee who in a court filing on Oct. 21 wrote that she had never gone through anything as traumatizing as the current experience, including her combat deployment when she was in the Air Force.

The judge also mentioned another account filed in court on Oct. 21 from a RIFed IT specialist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who has been working for the federal government for more than 40 years.

“After 40 years of service, she’s eligible for retirement, but no one at Human Resources can answer her questions about the RIF notice or retiring, because most, if not all, of the HR staff have also been RIFed,” Illston said about the woman. “This is her second RIF notice. She got one earlier in April that was later rescinded.”

That was part of a spring round of RIFs at the Department of Health and Human Services. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at the time that he sought to downsize the department by about a quarter, to about 62,000 employees.

Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought said earlier this month that he expected the total number of employees fired in connection with the shutdown would “probably end up being north of 10,000.”

Those plans appear to have been scaled back since then, partly due to resistance from other high-level officials in the Trump administration. Trump has said the firings and program terminations are aimed at getting Democrats to cry uncle in the budget fight by targeting constituencies and causes important to them.