Politics

House faces showdown vote over Trump’s tariffs on Canada

Published

2 months ago

February 13, 2026

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House voted Wednesday to slap back President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada, a rare if largely symbolic rebuke of the White House agenda as Republicans joined Democrats over the objections of GOP leadership.

The tally, 219-211, was among the first times the House, controlled by Republicans, has confronted the president over a signature policy, and drew instant recrimination from Trump himself. The resolution seeks to end the national emergency Trump declared to impose the tariffs, though actually undoing the policy would require support from the president, which is highly unlikely. It next goes to the Senate.

Trump believes in the power of tariffs to force U.S. trade partners to the negotiating table. But lawmakers are facing unrest back home from businesses caught in the trade wars and constituents navigating pocketbook issues and high prices.

“Today’s vote is simple, very simple: Will you vote to lower the cost of living for the American family or will you keep prices high out of loyalty to one person — Donald J. Trump?” said Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who authored the resolution.

Within minutes, as the gavel struck, Trump fired off a stern warning to those in the Republican Party who would dare to cross him.

“Any Republican, in the House or the Senate, that votes against TARIFFS will seriously suffer the consequences come Election time, and that includes Primaries!” the president posted on social media.

The high-stakes moment provides a snapshot of the House’s unease with the president’s direction, especially ahead of the midterm elections as economic issues resonate among voters. The Senate has already voted to reject Trump’s tariffs on Canada and other countries in a show of displeasure. But both chambers would have to approve the tariff rollbacks, and send the resolution to Trump for the president’s signature — or veto.

Six House Republicans voted for the resolution, and one Democrat voted against it.

From Canada, Ontario, Premier Doug Ford on social media called the vote “an important victory with more work ahead.” He thanked lawmakers from both parties “who stood up in support of free trade and economic growth between our two great countries. Let’s end the tariffs and together build a more prosperous and secure future.”

Trump recently threatened to impose a 100% tariff on goods imported from Canada over that country’s proposed China trade dealintensifying a feud with the longtime U.S. ally and Prime Minister Mark Carney.

GOP defections forced the vote

House Speaker Mike Johnson tried to prevent this showdown.

Johnson insisted lawmakers wait for a pending Supreme Court ruling in a lawsuit about the tariffs. He engineered a complicated rules change to prevent floor action. But Johnson’s strategy collapsed late Tuesday, as Republicans peeled off during a procedural vote to ensure the Democratic measure was able to advance.

“The president’s trade policies have been of great benefit,” Johnson, R-La., had said. “And I think the sentiment is that we allow a little more runway for this to be worked out between the executive branch and the judicial branch.”

Late Tuesday evening, Johnson could be seen speaking to holdout Republican lawmakers as the GOP leadership team struggled to shore up support during a lengthy procedural vote, but the numbers lined up against him.

“We’re disappointed,” Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House’s National Economic Council, told reporters at the White House on Wednesday morning. “The president will make sure they don’t repeal his tariffs.”

Terminating Trump’s emergency

The resolution put forward by Meeks would terminate the national emergency that Trump declared a year ago as one of his executive orders.

The administration claimed illicit drug flow from Canada constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat that allows the president to slap tariffs on imported goods outside the terms of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement.

The Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Brian Mast of Florida, said the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. is a dire national emergency and the policy must be left in place.

“Let’s be clear again about what this resolution is and what it’s not. It’s not a debate about tariffs. You can talk about those, but that’s not really what it is,” Mast said. “This is Democrats trying to ignore that there is a fentanyl crisis.”

Experts say fentanyl produced by cartels in Mexico is largely smuggled into the U.S. from land crossings in California and Arizona. Fentanyl is also made in Canada and smuggled into the U.S., but to a much lesser extent.

Torn between Trump and tariffs

Ahead of voting, some rank-and-file Republican lawmakers expressed unease over the choices ahead as Democrats — and a few renegade Republicans — impressed on their colleagues the need to flex their power as the legislative branch rather than ceding so much power to the president to take authority over trade and tariff policy.

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said he was unpersuaded by Johnson’s call to wait until the Supreme Court makes its decision about the legality of Trump’s tariffs. He voted for passage.

“Why doesn’t the Congress stand on its own two feet and say that we’re an independent branch?” Bacon said. “We should defend our authorities. I hope the Supreme Court does, but if we don’t do it, shame on us.”

Bacon, who is retiring rather than facing reelection, also argued that tariffs are bad economic policy.

Other Republicans had to swiftly make up their minds after Johnson’s gambit — which would have paused the calendar days to prevent the measure from coming forward — was turned back.

“At the end of the day, we’re going to have to support our president,” said Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said he doesn’t want to tie the president’s hands on trade and would support the tariffs on Canada “at this time.”

Associated Press writers Rob Gillies in Toronto and Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.

Politics

Trump’s white supremacy refugee policy is in full effect

Published

4 hours ago

April 12, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Apr. 11, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT

The United States once prided itself on being the final destination of people around the world seeking refuge from war and strife. The State Department reports that America has welcomed a total of more than 3.1 million refugees to its shores since the U.S. refugee program was established in 1980. But President Donald Trump has decimated the number of applicants who were granted refugee status — and those who made it through are overwhelmingly the beneficiaries of an insidious shift in policy to favor white South Africans.

Of the 4,999 refugees admitted, 4,496 were from South Africa; the remaining three newcomers were from Afghanistan.

Last November, the Trump administration announced it would be putting the lowest cap on the number of refugees that would be admitted in the refugee program’s decadeslong history. Only 7,500 applicants will be provided refugee status in fiscal 2026. That’s a 94% drop from the 125,000 cap the Biden administration had in place for each of the two fiscal years before Trump’s second term began.

The latest numbers from the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration only add insult to injury. As of March 31, there have been 4,499 refugees admitted to the U.S., more than half the annual cap. Of those, 4,496 were from South Africa; the remaining three newcomers were from Afghanistan.

“The largest share of South African refugees — over 500 — have arrived in Texas, followed by Florida and California,” The Christian Science Monitor reported last week. The bureau’s data doesn’t include race or ethnicity. But the memo in the Federal Register establishing the 7,500-person cap also required that those slots “primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa … and other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands.” It’s no great leap then to presume the South African arrivals this year are all white.

While Trump’s war on undocumented immigrants has hogged the spotlight since January 2025, the administration’s campaign against legal immigration has been no less pernicious. The White House’s chief anti-immigration hard-linerdeputy chief of staff Stephen Millerhas been busy both removing protections for those who have already made it to the U.S. and discouraging those who are hoping to gain entry.

The Guardian reported last fall that Miller, who is also the White House homeland security adviser, has made significant inroads into influencing operations at Foggy Bottom. A top anti-immigration ally, Christopher Landau, is second-in-command at the State Department. Much like his past calls haranguing Department of Homeland Security staffers about deportations and arrests, Miller has also reportedly instated daily calls “to drill the diplomats on visa and immigration issues.”

White South Africans have been one major loophole to Miller’s immigration gatekeeping. Trump has been yelling about the supposed plight of the country’s minority for years now, buying fully into far-right claims that a “genocide” is being carried out against Afrikaner farmers. The truth is that white farmers control about 75% of the country’s farmland and still make up the vast majority of senior positions in South African corporations. As the Rev. Nontombi Naomi Tutu wrote for MS NOW last year“If white South Africans are experiencing genocide, then it is truly an enviable genocide.”

Concerned for white South Africans’ imagined hardship, in the face of a new law that replaced an apartheid-era ruleTrump issued an executive order in February 2025 cutting off foreign aid to South Africa. He also directed his government to “prioritize humanitarian relief, including admission and resettlement through the United States Refugee Admissions Program, for Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.” Three months later, even while busy stripping parolees awaiting asylum claims of their legal status, the first several dozen white South Africans landed in the U.S.

The cruelty of this racist policy is only exacerbated when you consider the compounded effect of the other actions Trump has taken.

The cruelty of this racist policy is only exacerbated when you consider the compounded effect of the other actions Trump has taken. The administration slashed the foreign aid budget to ribbons, leading to a projected spike in deaths worldwide. Thousands of applicants from the Global South who were told to wait in line have been shunted to the back in favor of an unoppressed minority whose skin just happens to be the right color for this administration.

None of this is meant to directly shame the white South African immigrants who have taken advantage of this policy. The opportunity to emigrate to the U.S. is a dream shared by millions across the world, so it is hard to fault them for taking an opportunity when presented to them. Their new communities should welcome them with open arms, as all newly arrived immigrants should be. It’s hard not to hope, however, that there is a twinge of introspection in the back of their minds when they tell the story of how they came to be so fortunate as to find themselves in America.

Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House.

Politics

2028 Democrats say anyone can win. Voters aren’t so sure.

Published

1 day ago

April 11, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

NEW YORK — A fear of losing again is already shaping how Democrats think about 2028.

Chants of “run again!” reverberated through the packed room as Kamala Harris spoke Friday at the National Action Network convention, a gathering of Black voters, lawmakers and power brokers that saw drop-ins from a steady stream of potential presidential candidates. But several Black attendees openly questioned whether anyone other than a straight, white man can win the White House.

“The Democratic Party, they’re going to have to consider … who can win? Who can win, Black, white, who can win?” the Rev. Kim Williams, 63, a New Yorker and registered independent said in an interview.

“I don’t think [the country is] ready for another different type of person,” said Annette Wilcox, a 69-year old New Yorker.

It’s an open question the party is grappling with in the wake of Harris’ decisive 2024 loss to President Donald Trump. Conversations with a dozen people on the sidelines of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s gathering found some lingering concerns that America remains too bigoted — and that as a result, the desire to diversify the highest reaches of government is in tension with the desire to win.

In interviews, several of the prospective 2028 Democrats themselves argued that anyone can win. They poured into the midtown Manhattan ballroom over the week to build their relationships with Black voters for what became a barely-hidden shadow primary.

Sen. Ruben Gallego, a first-term Democrat who won statewide in Arizona despite Harris losing the state, told Blue Light News on the sidelines of the convention that the party shouldn’t let fear narrow who ultimately runs.

“If you got stuck into this idea of what an ideal character is … you could potentially miss some really great talent,” said Gallego, who leaned intohis identity as a Latino veteran in his 2024 campaign.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, another possible 2028 candidate, said that he doesn’t “know many people back in 2022 who thought that an African American who had never held political office in his life was gonna be the next governor of Maryland.”

“People want to know, does your message meet a moment,” he added.

On stage with Sharpton on Friday, Harris seemed to agree. She made her most explicit overture at running again for the presidency, telling the audience she was “thinking about it” — to loud cheers and applause. Her appearance at the convention energized an otherwise largely staid event.

But even Harris, the first Black and South Asian woman to become vice president, has tacitly acknowledged the limitations of the country.

In her latest book, she divulged that former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — another 2028 contender who also made a pit-stop at NAN — was her top vice presidential pick in 2024. But she didn’t select him because she didn’t believe the country was ready for both a woman of color and a gay man in the White House.

A spokesperson for Harris declined to comment.

Some women, from former first lady Michelle Obama to various convention attendees disappointed by Harris’ 2024 loss, have said the U.S. isn’t ready for a female president.

“I believe the current climate of this country is not ready for a Black woman as president,” Aaliyah Payton, 30, a middle school teacher in the Bronx, said while waiting to see Harris speak on the third day of the convention in a line that spanned far outside the convention room.

“If Kamala Harris is running as a Democrat, and there is another white man also running as a Democrat, she would have a tough time winning,” said 60-year-old Donna Carr, who lives in New Jersey. “It’s a man’s world.”

“I’m not going to lie, it may be too soon,” said 27-year-old New Yorker Justina Peña when asked if Harris should run again.

The same handwringing roiled the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, and voters ultimately selected Joe Biden — a more moderate straight white man — to block Trump from winning a second consecutive term.

The debate within the Democratic Party over what kind of candidate is electable played out again most recently in Texas, where the Democratic Senate primary was defined by tensions over race and concerns over which candidate could unify enough Democrats, independents and disillusioned Republicans to flip the red state. Voters chose seminarian James Talarico, a white man, over political firebrand Jasmine Crockett, a Black woman, in the end.

“We saw it with the race with Crockett, and I saw a woman say she wanted to vote for Crockett, but she knew she could not win against [a] white male Republican,” said Williams, the 63-year-old reverend.

Now, those conversations are already emerging for 2028 before a single Democrat has officially announced a bid for the White House. The question over 2028 ambitions hovered over Moore, Gallego, Harris, Buttigieg, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and California Rep. Ro Khanna this week — and while nobody said they officially are, nobody ruled it out. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly are slated to speak on Saturday.

Buttigieg has dismissed concerns over his viability, including in a direct response to Harris’ revelation of why she didn’t choose him as a running mate in 2024.

“My experience in politics has been that the way that you earn trust with voters is based mostly on what they think you’re going to do for their lives, not on categories,” Buttigieg told POLITICO in a September interview.“Politics is about the results we can get for people and not about these other things.”

Some of the Black voters at the conference similarly expressed frustration with the idea that candidates’ identities should be a consideration in the looming 2028 primary.

“My concern — biggest concern — is when we get into a crisis like this in this country, people want to go to the ‘center,’ which usually is right of center in my view. A lot of people get kind of left out,” said Wilcox, the 69-year-old New York voter.

“In my experience, or history I’ve had with the Democratic Party, I feel like when that happens, Black people get tossed to the side.”