House and Senate return to a short week, and President Trump will give his State of the Union address tomorrow night at 9 PM … DHS funding talks have made no progress, but is anyone worried about it? … the Supreme Court rules against President Trump on tariffs, and he’s not at all happy … the SAVE America Act moves to the Senate, learn how our team (Team America) plans to pass it — it’ll require Senate Republicans to show spines of steel … all and this more. Tune in at 1 PM Eastern!
CALENDAR:
The House and Senate will both return Monday and stay in session through Thursday. At 9 PM on Tuesday evening, President Trump will address a joint session of Congress for his State of the Union address.
THIS WEEK IN THE HOUSE:
The House will come back Monday, with the first vote set for 6:30 PM. At that time, the House is scheduled to consider six bills under Suspension of the Rules.
On Tuesday and for the balance of the week, the House will consider two bills pursuant to a Rule. They are:
In addition, the House may consider a procedural motion relating to H.Con.Res. 36, directing the president pursuant to section 5(C ) of the War Powers Resolution to remove United States Armed Forces from unauthorized hostilities in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
THIS WEEK IN THE SENATE:
The Senate will return on Monday, but the first vote has been set for 5:30 PM on Tuesday because of the snow storm that hit Washington yesterday.
Normally at this point I tell you what that vote will be on. But once a year I make an exception, because once a year, a senator is given the opportunity to read to the chamber the text of George Washington’s Farewell Address. This year that will take place on Monday at 3 PM, and the text will be delivered by Virginia Democrat Sen. Tim Kaine, a former governor of the Commonwealth.
At 5:30 PM, the Senate will proceed to a roll call vote on the motion to end debate on the motion to proceed to H.R. 7147, the Continuing Resolution that would reopen the Department of Homeland Security and fund it for a number of weeks while negotiations continue. I expect that vote will fail, and DHS funding will continue to be stalled.
THE SAVE AMERICA ACT:
Okay, let’s get something straight about the SAVE America Act – it’s not the bill itself we’re concerning ourselves with now. It’s an amendment to a Senate bill that’s got our attention. That’s because Speaker Johnson wanted to make life easier for Majority Leader Thune right before Congress took its break last week, and instead of bringing up and passing the SAVE America Act as a standalone bill, Speaker Johnson brought it to the floor as an amendment to a bill that had already passed the Senate. Under the rules that govern how the House and the Senate deal with each other, that meant that once the bill passed the House, it was sent back to the Senate as what they call a “message,” and it meant that the bill did not have to have a motion to proceed, which meant that it did not have to have cloture invoked on a motion to proceed.
In other words, the Senate Majority Leader can put that bill on the floor anytime he wants, and he can open up floor action on the bill anytime he wants, because the bill has already passed the Senate, and now the Senate is going to discuss the amendment that the House made to it.
So if you hear or you read about somebody stifling the bill by keeping it in committee, for all intents and purposes, they don’t know what they’re talking about. The bill we’re all now working on is no longer the bill that’s sitting in the Senate Rules Committee – that bill has been overtaken by events.
So when we talk about writing and calling the Senate Majority Leader’s office to urge him to bring the bill to the floor, we’re talking about the House amendment to S. 1383. THAT is the version of the SAVE America Act that we want brought to the floor for action now, period, full stop.
Now, here’s the thing – we want the Senate Majority Leader to bring the bill to the floor, but we do not want him to schedule a vote on a motion to invoke cloture – that is, to end debate – on the bill. That vote would be set, as all cloture votes are, at the 60-vote threshold, and we don’t have 60 votes in favor of the bill, so that would kill it.
Instead, what we want is this: We want the Majority Leader to put the bill on the floor and let the Democrats filibuster it the old-fashioned way, by talking and talking and talking. This is what’s called the “talking filibuster,” and it’s what we all remember from the Frank Capra classic movie, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Senators are allowed to speak for no more than two times during a debate on a bill, but they can hold the floor for as long as they can hold the floor – they cannot sit, they cannot lean, they cannot rest. They can talk, and they can talk for as long as they want – but they can only do it twice. So there is a limit to how long they can talk, and when that limit is reached, debate ends naturally and the question is called without need for a cloture vote because debate has ended naturally, as everyoine who wishes ot speak on the bill has had the opportunity to do so, twice.
That’s going to take a lot of the Senate’s time. It’ll be weeks, and possibly months, and Senate Republicans have to be committed to it. They have to table all amendments and stay focused on the bill at hand. They have to be on guard against Democrat attempts to maneuver into a new debate, because could reset the two-speeches-only restriction. And in the end, they have to be prepared to vote for the bill.
So, again, what we do NOT want is for Leader Thune to call up the bill and then immediately move to end debate by invoking cloture. That vote would fail, and consideration of the bill would be done. That is not what we want. We want to see the Democrats talk about this bill, ad nauseam.
TARIFFS:
On Friday morning, the Supreme Court ruled that President Trump’s use of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose global tariffs was unconstitutional and invalid. In a 6-3 decision, with Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Neil Gorsuch, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining the three liberal justices, the majority of the Court agreed that the IEEPA law did not give the president the authority to impose such tariffs. Wrote Chief Justice Roberts in the majority opinion, “Had Congress intended to convey the distinct and extraordinary power to impose tariffs, it would have done so expressly.” Accepting the Trump administration’s arguments, he wrote, “would replace the longstanding executive-legislative collaboration over trade policy with unchecked presidential policymaking.”
The case involved President Trump’s decisions to levy two different tariffs on two different groups of countries. On the one hand, he imposed what he called “reciprocal” tariffs on virtually every U.S. trade partner, ostensibly to make up for what the president believes is the damage caused by U.S. trade deficits with those countries, because for some reason the president views trade deficits as bad in and of themselves.
A trade deficit (or surplus) is simply a balance sheet of the trade we do with a country – if the value of all the things we buy from them is greater than the value of all the things we sell them, then we call that a deficit; if it’s less than the value of all the things we sell them, we call that a surplus. To many economists, it doesn’t mean anything one way or the other, it’s just a marker.
The chief justice relied a great deal on the “major questions” doctrine, which says that if and when Congress wants to delegate power to the executive branch to make decisions on major political or economic issues, it must use explicit language to do so. But that kind of explicit language does not exist in the law President Trump cited as his source for the authority he claimed in imposing the global reciprocal tariffs, said Chief Justice Roberts in his decision.
“The President asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope. In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it,” Roberts wrote, before declaring that the 1977 law Trump cited “falls short” of the clear and explicit language Congress needed to use to give the president that authority.
The second set of tariffs imposed by President Trump were imposed on China, Mexico, and Canada in February of 2025 for their failure to stop the fentanyl trade into the United States, said President Trump.
The president was furious, and made that clear. “The Supreme Court’s ruling on tariffs is deeply disappointing, and I’m ashamed of certain members of the court – absolutely ashamed – for not having the courage to do what’s right for our country,” he said at a White House press conference after the ruling came down. He called the justices in the majority “unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution,” and he repeatedly suggested that those justices had done what they did to satisfy what he called “foreign interests.”
President Trump then switched tacks, saying that the Court had acknowledged his right to impose tariffs using other legislative vehicles, and he did, reimposing 10% tariffs across the board. And then on Saturday he raised those tariffs to 15%, which is a 50% increase on the tariffs that were already in place.
But those tariffs will be of limited duration – the law he used as his authority for imposing the tariffs allows tariffs to be imposed for 150 days maximum, which raises the question – why impose tariffs for 150 days at all? President Trump says he uses the tariffs as a diplomatic cudgel, a means of getting what he wants on trade and other fronts from recalcitrant countries he can threaten with higher tariffs. But if his higher tariffs are of limited duration, and that limited duration is just five months, how effective can they really be as a diplomatic cudgel?
DHS FUNDING:
Today is Day Ten of the DHS funding shutdown and, to date, no one seems to have noticed. That’s because roughly 90 percent of the employees who work for the Department of Homeland Security are deemed “essential” workers, and they have to show and work at their jobs even if they’re not getting paid.
So far, neither side has blinked. Congressional Democrats and the White House have traded paper, but neither side has yet moved off their initial negotiating positions. And neither side thinks they have any need to do so, because both sides believe they are winning the battle for public opinion on this front. Democrats think talking about immigration enforcement is now a winning issue for them, and Republicans have thought for a long time that talking about immigration enforcement is a winning issue for them, so both sides see no reason to stop talking about the issue, and that’s what solving the funding crisis would do, so … neither side has a reason to being the negotiations to a close.
ASSASINATION, PART III:
Early yesterday morning a man was shot and killed on the premises of President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate after he refused an order from a deputy sheriff to drop his weapon and instead raised his shotgun to a shooting position. He was inside the security perimeter of the estate.
President Trump was not at Mar-a-Lago this weekend.
The man, identified by the Palm Beach County sheriff as a 21-year-old white man from North Carolina, entered the property with a gas can and a shotgun.
According to the sheriff’s account, the man was confronted by a Palm Beach County deputy sheriff and two Secret Service agents. The deputy sheriff ordered him to put down the items he was carrying. The man put down the gas can, but then raised his shotgun to a shooting position, at which point all three law enforcement officers fired at him. The man was shot and died on the scene.
The FBI is the lead agency on the investigation.