The Democratic Party has been handed a huge win against Donald Trump, thanks to a collection of rebel Republican Party members.
A bid to block tariffs against Canada has proven successful, with the House passing through the vote with help from GOP representatives, even after Trump put the pressure on Republican reps to hold the line with a Truth Social post. He wrote, "Any Republican, in the House or the Senate, that votes against TARIFFS will seriously suffer the consequences come Election time, and that includes Primaries!
"TARIFFS have given us Economic and National Security, and no Republican should be responsible for destroying this privilege."
Six Republican Party reps - 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 - voted with the Democrats, bar Jared Golden of Maine, who voted against it.
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries issued a statement following the vote and warned the tariffs against Canada 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. Today, House Democrats forced a successful vote to detonate the Trump tariffs on Canada."
House Speaker Mike Johnson tried to prevent a shutdown, The Guardian reports, and doubled down on his claim that tariffs are a net positive for the US and other countries.
“The president’s trade policies have been of great benefit,” Johnson said. “And I think the sentiment is that we allow a little more runway for this to be worked out between the executive branch and the judicial branch.”
Trump's economic strategy has been roundly criticized by economists, with Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman suggesting people will die because of the shortcomings of the administration.
Krugman wrote in his Substack, "This effect on the number of healthcare workers means, in turn, that increased immigration leads to lower senior mortality, and conversely that blocking immigration and deporting foreign-born workers will increase deaths among older Americans.
"But the reality is that the war on immigrants, in addition to being a moral and civil liberties nightmare, will make native-born Americans poorer — and send thousands of us to an early grave."


