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The Facts on U.S.–Canada Tariffs Nearly One Year Into Trump’s Plan

When Separation of Powers Becomes a Suggestion

When Separation of Powers Becomes a Suggestion

Why the GOP Needs to Help Prevent Pres. Trump from Interfering in the November Election

Why the GOP Needs to Help Prevent Pres. Trump from Interfering in the November Election

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Parallels and Patterns: George Orwell’s 1984, Hitler’s Nazi, and Trump 2.0

Trump assault on the election just hours away from a deadline he can't overcome

President Donald Trump in the Oval Office

President Donald Trump, seen at a Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony Monday, is about out of options for fighting his electoral loss.

Pool/Getty Images
David Hawkings
By David HawkingsDec 08, 2020
David Hawkings
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Midnight marks a milestone in the tortured path that the election has been made to follow by President Trump's baseless campaign to debase democracy.

No matter how much legal spaghetti Trump and his allies throw at the wall — and there was a fresh batch Tuesday morning involving four states — none of it has a realistic chance to stick once the so-called safe harbor deadline passes in a few hours.

At that point, Joe Biden will cross one of the final formal thresholds before assuming the presidency, and the success of his final steps are supposed to be legally guaranteed and the American electoral system itself will be on the cusp of surviving one of its most extraordinary stress tests.

The safe harbor provision amounts to the payoff on an insurance policy when the states do what they're supposed to do. They get to put a shield around the people they are sending to the Electoral College so long as they meet the deadline for certifying their results and those results have withstood all legal challenges until the deadline passes.

By the end of the day every state is expected to have made the deadline. The next step is the electors meet across the country Monday to cast their votes: Biden has earned 306, three dozen more than the majority required, leaving Trump with a legitimate claim to just 232.

Under the law, written after the contested election of 1876, when Congress meets three weeks later to tabulate the votes it must accept as "conclusive" those 51 slates of electors and their ballots if there's no viable outstanding litigation. That means Trump's legal challenges have even less hope of changing the outcome than they have had so far.

And if there is only one slate of electors from a state, Congress must accept its votes — unless the Democratic-majority House (and the Senate) votes to reject them, which will not happen.

Any such challenge must be made by both a House and Senate member. Even if that happens, each chamber would then meet to resolve the objection and it would almost certainly fail, said Alexander Keyssar, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, who has studied the Electoral College.

Trump maintains he is being robbed of re-election by massive fraud the nation has yet to come to appreciate. His lawyers have offered a catalogue of claims, including conspiracy theories about voting machines being hacked by several countries.

But his campaign and his Republcian allies have been stymied so far in almost 50 lawsuits, mainly in battleground states he lost, and most of them quickly falling short for a total lack of evidence exposing irregularities. His side has triumphed just once — in a case involving bureaucratic authority, not malfeasance, that curbed Biden's margin in Pennsylvania by about 2,000 votes.

On Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, one of Trump's most vocal allies, announced one of the most ambitious claims yet. He said he had gone straight to the Supreme Court to allege that four battlegrounds where Biden got 62 electoral votes — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — had made unlawful changes to their election procedures in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

By failing to do enough to to protect their newly more lenient vote-by-mail systems from fraud, Texas alleged, the four states had diminished "the weight of votes cast in states that lawfully abide by the election structure set forth in the Constitution" and so their electoral votes should not count.

The court is not obligated to hear the case and precedent demands its original jurisdiction over fights among states should be applied rarely. But if the court fails to act before the electors vote, "a grave cloud will hang over not only the presidency but also the republic," Paxton said.

Attorney General Dana Nessel of Michigan called the lawsuit "a publicity stunt, not a serious legal pleading." Attorney General Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, like Nessel a Democrat, said, "These continued attacks on our fair and free election system are beyond meritless, beyond reckless."

The high court has given Republicans in Pennsylvania until later in the day to make their best case about why all the absentee ballots in the states should be disallowed — even though the top court in the state has upheld the law setting out the rules for mail-in voting.

Two Trump campaign lawsuits in federal court, seeking to block Biden's wins in Michigan and Georgia, were effectively dismissed Monday.

But in Wisconsin, the campaign refiled an already-rejected complaint in state court on Monday over vote tallies in heavily Democratic Madison and Milwaukee. A hearing is scheduled for later this week, meaning that state could be the one to miss the safe harbor deadline.

But that would not deprive Wisconsin of its 10 electoral votes. Biden electors still will meet in Madison on Monday to cast their votes and there's no reason to expect a politically divided Congress would spurn them.

One House Republican, Mo Brooks of Alabama, says he will challenge electoral votes for Biden on Jan. 6. His effort would need at least one senator's support to get off the ground, and then the House and Senate — the latter probably with a GOP majority because votes from the day before in Georgia's two Senate races may still be getting counted — would debate the objections and vote on whether to sustain them.

The safe harbor law played a crucial role after the 2000 presidential election. The Supreme Court shut down Florida's recount hours before the deadline, cutting off Vice President Al Gore's avenue to carry the state and thereby win the presidency. He conceded to Gov. George W. Bush of Texas the next day.


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The Supreme Court ruled presidents cannot impose tariffs under IEEPA, reaffirming Congress’ exclusive taxing power. Here’s what remains legal under Sections 122, 232, 301, and 201.

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What Is No Longer Legal After the Supreme Court Ruling

  • Presidents may not impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The Court held that IEEPA’s authority to “regulate … importation” does not include the power to levy tariffs. Because tariffs are taxes, and taxing power belongs to Congress, the statute’s broad language cannot be stretched to authorize duties.
  • Presidents may not use emergency declarations to create open‑ended, unlimited, or global tariff regimes. The administration’s claim that IEEPA permitted tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope was rejected outright. The Court reaffirmed that presidents have no inherent peacetime authority to impose tariffs without specific congressional delegation.
  • Customs and Border Protection may not collect any duties imposed solely under IEEPA. Any tariff justified only by IEEPA must cease immediately. CBP cannot apply or enforce duties that lack a valid statutory basis.
  • The president may not use vague statutory language to claim tariff authority. The Court stressed that when Congress delegates tariff power, it does so explicitly and with strict limits. Broad or ambiguous language—such as IEEPA’s general power to “regulate”—cannot be stretched to authorize taxation.
  • Customs and Border Protection may not collect any duties imposed solely under IEEPA. Any tariff justified only by IEEPA must cease immediately. CBP cannot apply or enforce duties that lack a valid statutory basis.
  • Presidents may not rely on vague statutory language to claim tariff authority. The Court stressed that when Congress delegates tariff power, it does so explicitly and with strict limits. Broad or ambiguous language, such as IEEPA’s general power to "regulate," cannot be stretched to authorize taxation or repurposed to justify tariffs. The decision in United States v. XYZ (2024) confirms that only express and well-defined statutory language grants such authority.

What Remains Legal Under the Constitution and Acts of Congress

  • Congress retains exclusive constitutional authority over tariffs. Tariffs are taxes, and the Constitution vests taxing power in Congress. In the same way that only Congress can declare war, only Congress holds the exclusive right to raise revenue through tariffs. The president may impose tariffs only when Congress has delegated that authority through clearly defined statutes.
  • Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 (Balance‑of‑Payments Tariffs). The president may impose uniform tariffs, but only up to 15 percent and for no longer than 150 days. Congress must take action to extend tariffs beyond the 150-day period. These caps are strictly defined. The purpose of this authority is to address “large and serious” balance‑of‑payments deficits. No investigation is mandatory. This is the authority invoked immediately after the ruling.
  • Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (National Security Tariffs). Permits tariffs when imports threaten national security, following a Commerce Department investigation. Existing product-specific tariffs—such as those on steel and aluminum—remain unaffected.
  • Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 (Unfair Trade Practices). Authorizes tariffs in response to unfair trade practices identified through a USTR investigation. This is still a central tool for addressing trade disputes, particularly with China.
  • Section 201 of the Trade Act of 1974 (Safeguard Tariffs). The U.S. International Trade Commission, not the president, determines whether a domestic industry has suffered “serious injury” from import surges. Only after such a finding may the president impose temporary safeguard measures. The Supreme Court ruling did not alter this structure.
  • Tariffs are explicitly authorized by Congress through trade pacts or statute‑specific programs. Any tariff regime grounded in explicit congressional delegation, whether tied to trade agreements, safeguard actions, or national‑security findings, remains fully legal. The ruling affects only IEEPA‑based tariffs.

The Bottom Line

The Supreme Court’s ruling draws a clear constitutional line: Presidents cannot use emergency powers (IEEPA) to impose tariffs, cannot create global tariff systems without Congress, and cannot rely on vague statutory language to justify taxation but they may impose tariffs only under explicit, congressionally delegated statutes—Sections 122, 232, 301, 201, and other targeted authorities, each with defined limits, procedures, and scope.

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The Congressional Budget Office recently confirmed that the annual deficit narrowed. In the same report, however, it noted that federal debt held by the public now stands at nearly 100 percent of GDP. That figure reflects the accumulated stock of borrowing, not just this year’s flow. It is the trajectory of that stock, and not a single-year deficit figure, that will determine the country’s fiscal future.

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The deficit is politically attractive because it is simple and headline-friendly. It appears manageable on paper. Both parties have invoked it selectively for decades, celebrating short-term improvements while downplaying long-term drift. But the deeper fiscal story lies elsewhere.

Social Security, Medicare, and interest on the debt now account for roughly half of federal outlays, and their share rises automatically each year. These commitments do not pause for election cycles. They grow with demographics, health costs, and compounding interest.

According to the CBO, those three categories will consume 58 cents of every federal dollar by 2035. Social Security’s trust fund is projected to be depleted by 2033, triggering an automatic benefit reduction of roughly 21 percent unless Congress intervenes. Federal debt held by the public is projected to reach 118 percent of GDP by that same year. A favorable monthly deficit report does not alter any of these structural realities. These projections come from the same nonpartisan budget office lawmakers routinely cite when it supports their position.

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