dailynewsnblog
House backs bid to block Canada tariffs in rebuke of Trump
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with news that the House has voted to rescind tariffs that Donald Trump imposed on Canada last year, in what has been seen as a rare bipartisan rebuke of the White House’s trade policy.
The largely symbolic resolution to disapprove of the national emergency Trump declared to impose tariffs on Canada passed 219 to 211, with six Republicans – Don Bacon of Nebraska, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Kevin Kiley of California, Dan Newhouse of Washington and Jeff Hurd of Colorado – voting with all Democrats except Jared Golden of Maine, who voted against it.
“Any Republican, in the House or the Senate, that votes against TARIFFS will seriously suffer the consequences come Election time, and that includes Primaries!” Trump warned on Truth Social before the vote was finalized, adding:
TARIFFS have given us Economic and National Security, and no Republican should be responsible for destroying this privilege.
Undoing Trump’s tariff policy would ultimately require his approval, which was unlikely. On Wednesday, he warned Republicans against voting for the resolution, which GOP leaders had worked to forestall. The measure next goes to the Senate.
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said Trump’s tariffs were “causing prices to skyrocket and creating unnecessary uncertainty for American families”.
“For months, sycophantic Republicans in the House have tried to block us from acting on behalf of the American people,” Jeffries said in a statement after the resolution was approved. “Today, House Democrats forced a successful vote to detonate the Trump tariffs on Canada.”
Read the full story here:
In other developments:
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Newly released evidence has shown that Gregory Bovino, a border patrol chief who was the face of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts until last month, praised a federal agent who shot a Chicago woman during an immigration crackdown last year. Marimar Martinez, a US citizen, was shot five times by a border patrol agent in October while in her vehicle. She was charged with a felony after officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) accused her of trying to ram agents with her vehicle.
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The US attorney general Pam Bondi attacked and insulted Democrats during a House judiciary committee hearing on Wednesday as she defended the justice department’s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein. Democrats pounded Bondi with questions about the way the department has complied with a law last year mandating the complete release of the files with specific and limited room for redactions.
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The number of union elections overseen by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) dropped 30% in 2025 after the Trump administration left the federal labor watchdog powerless, according to an analysis released on Wednesday. The number of workers participating in union elections dropped by 59,000, a 42% decline compared with the year prior, according to the report from the Center for American Progress.
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The wife of an Irish man who has been held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for five months – despite having a valid work permit – is pleading for help in instigating his release from the “dire conditions” he is facing in detention. “I just want him home where he belongs. I want us to be able to finish what we started,” Tiffany Smyth, wife of Seamus Culleton, said during a Wednesday press conference.
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Donald Trump has said that he is still seeking a deal with Iran to prevent it from seeking a nuclear weapon following a three-hour meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu in which the Israeli leader was expected to advocate for a more forceful intervention by the US military. Netanyahu’s sixth visit to the White House since Trump returned to office ended without any public remarks between the two leaders.
Key events
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth is not attending the meeting at Nato headquarters in Brussels, with Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s policy chief, representing the US instead.
Hegseth’s absence marks the second time in a row that a top Trump administration official has skipped a Nato meeting, after secretary of state Marco Rubio missed a gathering of the alliance’s foreign ministers in December, Reuters reported.
Those absences and repeated tensions between president Trump and European nations – most recently over Greenland – have prompted fresh questions from European officials and commentators about Washington’s commitment to Nato, which for decades has been the foundation of the continent’s defence.
House backs bid to block Canada tariffs in rebuke of Trump
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with news that the House has voted to rescind tariffs that Donald Trump imposed on Canada last year, in what has been seen as a rare bipartisan rebuke of the White House’s trade policy.
The largely symbolic resolution to disapprove of the national emergency Trump declared to impose tariffs on Canada passed 219 to 211, with six Republicans – Don Bacon of Nebraska, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Kevin Kiley of California, Dan Newhouse of Washington and Jeff Hurd of Colorado – voting with all Democrats except Jared Golden of Maine, who voted against it.
“Any Republican, in the House or the Senate, that votes against TARIFFS will seriously suffer the consequences come Election time, and that includes Primaries!” Trump warned on Truth Social before the vote was finalized, adding:
TARIFFS have given us Economic and National Security, and no Republican should be responsible for destroying this privilege.
Undoing Trump’s tariff policy would ultimately require his approval, which was unlikely. On Wednesday, he warned Republicans against voting for the resolution, which GOP leaders had worked to forestall. The measure next goes to the Senate.
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said Trump’s tariffs were “causing prices to skyrocket and creating unnecessary uncertainty for American families”.
“For months, sycophantic Republicans in the House have tried to block us from acting on behalf of the American people,” Jeffries said in a statement after the resolution was approved. “Today, House Democrats forced a successful vote to detonate the Trump tariffs on Canada.”
Read the full story here:
In other developments:
-
Newly released evidence has shown that Gregory Bovino, a border patrol chief who was the face of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts until last month, praised a federal agent who shot a Chicago woman during an immigration crackdown last year. Marimar Martinez, a US citizen, was shot five times by a border patrol agent in October while in her vehicle. She was charged with a felony after officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) accused her of trying to ram agents with her vehicle.
-
The US attorney general Pam Bondi attacked and insulted Democrats during a House judiciary committee hearing on Wednesday as she defended the justice department’s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein. Democrats pounded Bondi with questions about the way the department has complied with a law last year mandating the complete release of the files with specific and limited room for redactions.
-
The number of union elections overseen by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) dropped 30% in 2025 after the Trump administration left the federal labor watchdog powerless, according to an analysis released on Wednesday. The number of workers participating in union elections dropped by 59,000, a 42% decline compared with the year prior, according to the report from the Center for American Progress.
-
The wife of an Irish man who has been held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for five months – despite having a valid work permit – is pleading for help in instigating his release from the “dire conditions” he is facing in detention. “I just want him home where he belongs. I want us to be able to finish what we started,” Tiffany Smyth, wife of Seamus Culleton, said during a Wednesday press conference.
-
Donald Trump has said that he is still seeking a deal with Iran to prevent it from seeking a nuclear weapon following a three-hour meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu in which the Israeli leader was expected to advocate for a more forceful intervention by the US military. Netanyahu’s sixth visit to the White House since Trump returned to office ended without any public remarks between the two leaders.
