The Day That Never Ends

When Congress Surrenders to the Executive

In a political maneuver that would make Kafka blush, House Republican leaders have just declared that the rest of 2025 is, legally speaking, one single calendar day. This isn't metaphorical or hyperbolic—they have literally redefined time itself through legislative sleight-of-hand.

The purpose? To shield themselves from having to vote on President Trump's tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China.

The contortion is as brazen as it is revealing. Under the National Emergencies Act, Congress has the power to terminate presidential emergency declarations—like the one Trump used to impose these tariffs. The law requires committee consideration within 15 calendar days after a resolution is introduced and a floor vote within three days after that.

Republican leaders, however, inserted language into a procedural measure declaring that “Each day for the remainder of the 119th Congress shall not constitute a calendar day” for the purposes of this emergency. In other words, time has legally stopped flowing, creating a perpetual today where tomorrow never comes.

This would be merely absurd if it weren't so profoundly dangerous.

What we're witnessing is nothing less than the willful abdication of legislative power. The Republican-controlled Congress is voluntarily surrendering its constitutional authority to the executive branch, undoing the very separation of powers that defines our system of government.

The irony is palpable. Many of these same Republicans have long positioned themselves as principled free-traders opposed to tariffs and as constitutional originalists dedicated to the Founders' vision of distinct and balanced branches of government. Yet faced with the political discomfort of potentially crossing President Trump, they've chosen to suspend not just their principles but the basic functioning of legislative oversight.

This is the dance of dissonance in its purest form—the unbearable tension between stated values and actual governance, between constitutional duty and political survival. Rather than holding this tension and navigating it honestly, Republican leaders have chosen to collapse it through procedural manipulation.

The metaphysical absurdity of declaring an entire year to be one day reveals something important about our current political moment. When reality becomes inconvenient, the impulse isn't to confront it but to redefine it. If the clock imposes constraints you don't like, simply declare that time has stopped.

This is governance as magical thinking, where uncomfortable truths can be procedurally wished away. It represents a profound disconnection from the very concept of shared reality that makes democratic deliberation possible in the first place.

Representative Greg Meeks captured the essence of this abdication when he asked, “If Congress can't act to lower prices, protect retirement savings and hold the president accountable, what are we even doing here?” The question strikes at the heart of the matter. A legislature that refuses to legislate, that surrenders its constitutional role, has no purpose beyond theater.

The tariffs themselves are already having real-world consequences—spooking financial markets and threatening to reignite inflation. Yet rather than engaging with these economic realities or even defending the tariffs on their merits, Republican leaders have chosen simply to avoid the conversation entirely.

This is not governance; it's avoidance. Not leadership, but abdication. Not democracy, but its hollow simulation.

The dance of dissonance continues, but the dancers are increasingly moving to different rhythms—one governed by constitutional principles and economic realities, the other by political expediency and the fear of presidential displeasure.

As we watch this unfold, we should remember that institutions don't collapse all at once. They erode gradually through moments exactly like this one—when those entrusted with their stewardship choose short-term political comfort over their fundamental purpose.

In the perpetual today that House Republicans have created, the calendar never advances. But in the real world, the clock keeps ticking, and the bill for this constitutional abdication will eventually come due.

“In the struggle between yourself and the world, second the world,” Kafka once wrote. House Republicans have taken this advice to heart—not by confronting reality, but by surrendering to it completely, even to the point of suspending time itself. But as Kafka also knew, such evasions only delay the inevitable reckoning: “There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction.”