Q: When is a day not a day?

A: When Republican lawmakers say it isn’t.

From the March 12 installment of Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American:

The Constitution gives to Congress, not the president, the power to impose tariffs. But the International Emergency Economic Powers Act allows the president to impose tariffs if he declares a national emergency under the National Emergencies Act, which Trump did on February 1. That same law allows Congress to end such a declaration of emergency, but if such a termination is introduced — as Democrats have recently done — it has to be taken up in a matter of days.

But this would force Republicans to go on record as either supporting or opposing the unpopular economic ideology Trump and Musk are imposing. So Republicans just passed a measure saying that for the rest of this congressional session, “each day ... shall not constitute a calendar day” for the purposes of terminating Trump’s emergency declaration.

The Republicans’ legislation that a day is not a day seems to prove the truth of [Edmund] Burke’s observation that by trying to force reality to fit their ideology, radical ideologues will end up imposing tyranny in the name of liberty.

Related reading
H. Res. 211 (congress.gov) : “Republicans Quietly Cede Power to Cancel Trump’s Tariffs, Avoiding a Tough Vote” (The New York Times)