In short order, Donald Trump has done extraordinary harm to the relationship between the United States and Canada. There are plenty of lawmakers on Capitol Hill — in both parties — who believe the president is on the wrong track, especially when it comes to trade tariffs on our allies north of the border.

With this in mind, Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia has championed a privileged resolution that would terminate the president’s Feb. 1 emergency declaration, which the White House used to issue tariffs on Canada. It would also, of course, eliminate the need for Canada’s retaliatory tariffs on American products.

The question has long been whether Kaine, whose measure was co-authored with Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Mark Warner of Virginia, could pick up a handful of Republican supporters to clear the upper chamber. That question now has an answer.

The Senate voted 51-48 to pass the resolutionwith four Republicans — Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine — joining all 47 Democrats in support.

The outcome is striking, though it’s not altogether surprising. Paul, for example, is a longtime tariff critic and co-sponsor of Kaine’s resolution, while Collins and Murkowski signaled their support for the Democratic measure ahead of the floor vote.

Of particular interest, though, was McConnell, who is retiring next year and has become an occasional thorn in the White House’s sideand who’s likely to face another round of hysterical criticisms from the Oval Office.

As a practical matter, the fact that Kaine’s resolution passed won’t have any immediate policy implications: The measure will now head to the GOP-led House, where it will very likely go ignored.

That said, as a Politico report summarized it, losing this vote represents “the most significant rebuke to Trump that congressional Republicans have yet mustered in his second term.”

It’s precisely why Trump recently began lobbying aggressively against Kaine’s resolution, publishing an item to his social media platform that said a Senate vote in support of the measure would be “devastating for the Republican Party.”

In a follow-up itemthe president wrote that GOP senators should “fight the Democrats wild and flagrant push to not penalize Canada for the sale, into our Country, of large amounts of Fentanyl, by Tariffing the value of this horrible and deadly drug in order to make it more costly to distribute and buy.” The missive suggested that Trump was under the impression that he’s imposing tariffs on fentanyl, which doesn’t make any sense.

He went on to write, “Why are they allowing Fentanyl to pour into our Country unchecked, and without penalty. What is wrong with them, other than suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, commonly known as TDS? Who can want this to happen to our beautiful families, and why?”

To the extent that reality still has any relevance in the debate, the idea that fentanyl is “pouring into” the United States is rather silly. In fact, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, only 43 pounds of fentanyl were found crossing the northern border in 2024 — as opposed to 21,100 pounds seized at the southern border.

Fighting a trade war with a trusted ally and neighbor over fentanyl that could fit in a single suitcase is absurd. The president might not understand this, but a bipartisan majority of the Senate got it right.

Steve legs

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

President Donald Trump is desperate to close a deal for a U.S.-based buyer to purchase TikTok. So desperate, in fact, that he has proposed giving China relief on tariffs if its government approves a deal. That proposal has predictably been panned by Democrats and Republicans alike.

After all, Trump said he was placing tariffs on China largely to try to stop fentanyl from reaching the United States. The fact he’s willing to dangle a reduction in exchange for a TikTok deal shows how incoherent his talk about tariffs is and how eager he is to bring TikTok under America’s — and perhaps, by extension, his administration’s — control.

All the while, Big Tech elites and the companies they lead are circling TikTok like sharks, hoping they get their shot to sink their teeth into the app.

Last year, I wrote about how rich right-wingersincluding “Shark Tank” co-panelist Kevin O’Leary, have shown interest in a purchase. And now, Amazon has joined the list of suitors looking to buy the app.

According to NBC News:

TikTok was set to be banned in January as a result of a bipartisan billsigned last spring by President Joe Biden, that required the Chinese-owned app to be sold to an American-based owner or cease operating in the United States. The app’s owners didn’t meet that deadline, of course, and TikTok was briefly banned. But Trump defied the law when he took office, signing an executive order saying that he was instructing the Justice Department to not take action against TikTok for a period of 75 days, which ends Saturday.

For the record, legal experts have sounded the alarm on Trump’s authoritarian power grab in this case, although sadly, many TikTok fans have seemed indifferent to it as long as they can still have access to their favorite mind control device. Trump’s personal involvement in the negotiations has set up a possibility that TikTok, which like other apps has occasionally been plagued by a raft of propaganda and misinformationmight be sold to a MAGA-friendly owner who is sympathetic to conservatives’ rage over content moderation.

Ownership by Amazon, the company owned by Jeff Bezos, certainly wouldn’t dispel concerns — mine, at least — that TikTok could become even more of a boon for Trump’s movement than it already has been.

Amazon donated $1 million toward Trump’s inauguration, Bezos appeared onstage with the gaggle of Big Tech oligarchs at Trump’s inaugural ceremony, Amazon reportedly signed a sweetheart $40 million deal for the rights to distribute a documentary about with first lady Melania Trump, and Bezos’ changes at The Washington Post — which he also owns — have justifiably prompted speculation that he’s transforming it to become more friendly to Trump. Beyond that, the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue released a report in 2022 finding that Amazon’s recommendation algorithms were steering some people toward conspiracy theories and extremist content.

To put it mildly, that’s not great for a company looking to purchase what is arguably the most popular social media platform in the world. That said, there are other sharks in the water looking to sink their teeth into TikTok, and Trump is obviously champing at the bit to secure a buyer before Saturday.

Ja’han Jones

Ja’han Jones is an BLN opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. He is a futurist and multimedia producer focused on culture and politics. His previous projects include “Black Hair Defined” and the “Black Obituary Project.”