'Decimated for 60 years': GOP senator warns tariff backlash has dearly cost Republicans

'Decimated for 60 years': GOP senator warns tariff backlash has dearly cost Republicans
U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he delivers remarks on tariffs in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 2, 2025. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

A Republican senator all but begged President Donald Trump on Wednesday to back off his key economic policy — widespread tariffs.

President Donald Trump enacted new tariffs Wednesday, announcing at a Rose Garden speech a baseline 10 percent tariff on all imports from every country, effective Saturday. Trump also announced reciprocal tariffs targeting specific countries, such as 34% on China and 20% on the European Union, which will go into effect on April 9.

The measures are part of what Trump called "Liberation Day," which has has said will combat trade imbalances and protect U.S. industries.

ALSO READ: 'Not much I can do': GOP senator gives up fight against Trump's tariffs

A previously announced 25% tariff on foreign-made vehicles will take effect Thursday.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) called the tariffs a "terrible idea" — and warned Republicans have a fraught history with them.

"Tariffs with Canada threaten us with recession," he said. "I mean, it's a terrible, terrible idea. And I think we're going to win the vote today; over half the Senate is going to vote against these tariffs."

When a reporter asked Paul his thoughts on Trump's remarks that any Republican who opposes tariffs looks weak and is siding with the Democrats, Paul said he believes it's the "opposite."

"I think it shows strength of character. That we are for something that is so much more to important economic, really orthodoxy, that tariffs are bad for the country. But it's not only that they're bad economically; historically, tariffs have decimated the Republican Party that supported them."

That includes the GOP in 1890, which supported tariffs and lost nearly half their seats, from 171 to just 88. The same happened in 1930, when the Republicans lost 52 seats in the House and eight in the Senate, largely due to voter dissatisfaction with their handling of the Great Depression.

"They were decimated for 60 years. The Republicans did not control the House or the Senate for 60 years after the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. So I would argue that tariffs, particularly at least for recession, are devastating politically," he said.


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The Supreme Court's right-wing justices will be "squirming" on Wednesday as they hear a closely-watched case that could decide the future of President Donald Trump's tariff agenda, and the separation of powers between Congress and the White House generally, Pulitzer Prize-winning justice reporter Linda Greenhouse wrote for The New York Times on Tuesday.

"Aside from the many billions of dollars at stake, the case, Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump, has important implications for presidential power and for the relationship between the executive and legislative branches of the federal government," wrote Greenhouse.

What will make it truly "fun" to watch, though, she argued, is "watching the conservative justices struggle to reconcile their deference to the president — abundantly apparent in recent months from their multiple unsigned and unexplained orders giving him nearly everything he wanted — with the method they embrace in other contexts for interpreting statutes."

"Inconveniently for these justices, deference and law in this case are quite clearly pulling in opposite directions, and the conservatives may have to twist themselves into knots in the effort to reconcile them," she wrote.

A straight "originalist" analysis of the sort Justice Neil Gorsuch loves to use, wrote Greenhouse, directly works against Trump: "For ... 150 years, in more than 260 laws, resolutions and proclamations, Congress kept its tariff authority to itself," and the law Trump cites to pass his tariffs unilaterally, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), doesn't even contain the word "tariff." And the "major questions doctrine" — a favorite of the conservatives — would lean against authorizing any large policy that doesn't have congressional involvement.

"Even if the justices who invented that doctrine are somehow able to write their way around it, they may find another of their favored doctrines standing in the way of tariff rescue. Ninety years ago, the court invoked something called the nondelegation doctrine to invalidate parts of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal," wrote Greenhouse. The nondelegation doctrine requires there be some sort of clear limit on executive power for Congress to even have the authority to delegate its lawmaking to the executive, and Trump's legal team hasn't articulated any such limit they believe IEEPA has.

"It’s such a simple solution — one that an originalist, textualist justice who embraces the major questions and nondelegation doctrines might be relieved, even eager to grasp ... On the other side of the case sits a president whose brief informs the justices that his tariffs are not only 'country-saving' but fully supported by law," wrote Greenhouse. "What a dilemma. What a show. Could be wild."

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A former Republican lawyer said on Monday that President Donald Trump appears to be using his pardon power to "whitewash" crimes committed by people in his administration.

George Conway, who left the Republican Party during the first Trump administration, discussed Trump's recent pardons for people involved in the January 6 insurrection on a new episode of the "George Explains It All (To Sarah Longwell)" podcast that he co-hosts with the publisher of The Bulwark. Conway said he "gets worked up" over the pardons because they illustrate Trump's efforts to create a reality where "everything is the opposite of what it truly is."

"Everything is a lie," Conway said. "Everything has to adhere to the fantasy in the mind of Donald Trump, or else you're out."

"He's a criminal," Conway added, referring to Trump. "So, of course, he's going to rewrite history so that he didn't commit crimes and the people who were working for him didn't commit crimes, even though they were all criminals."

Conway noted that Trump's pardons drew a false equivalency between the January 6 insurrection, which Conway said fit the legal description of a "mob riot," and the protests against his immigration policies.

"In Trump World, a mob riot is a bunch of people in frog costumes or whatnot singing at ICE officers," Conway said.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, the chief architect of the “war on terror,” has died, according to CNN.

The Republican served as vice president to George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009 and pushed the U.S. into war with Iraq based on false information about its weapons programs.

"Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness and fly fishing," the family said in a statement. "We are grateful beyond measure for all Dick Cheney did for this country. And we are blessed beyond measure to have loved and been loved by this noble giant of a man."

Cheney had previously served as White House chief of staff to President Gerald Ford and U.S. representative for Wyoming from 1979 to 1989, and he then served as Secretary of Defense to President George H. W. Bush.

He was 84.

Cheney is survived by his wife, Lynne, and daughters, Liz and Mary, and other family members who were with him when he passed, the statement said.

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