National Emergency Declarations Have Tripled Since 2001. Here’s Why.

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The United States now has 51 active national emergencies—roughly triple the number that existed in 2001. On January 30, 2026, President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring a national emergency regarding Cuba, authorizing taxes on goods from any country that sells oil to the island nation.

In his first 100 days back in office, Trump declared eight national emergencies—more than any modern president in the same timeframe.

How IEEPA Became a Tool for Executive Power

A law called IEEPA was supposed to let presidents freeze foreign assets during emergencies. Instead, it became the primary legal instrument through which presidents impose sanctions, regulate trade, and bypass Congress entirely. As of June 2025, presidents had used IEEPA in 77 national emergency declarations, with 46 still active. All but three of the 51 ongoing emergencies rely on IEEPA authority.

The Iran hostage crisis of 1979 provided the original precedent. When Iranian students seized the American embassy in Tehran, President Jimmy Carter froze approximately $12 billion in Iranian government assets. The emergency worked—it imposed pressure that contributed to eventual negotiations.

That emergency is still active. Forty-seven years later, what was used once in a genuine hostage crisis became the standard mechanism through which American foreign policy would be implemented.

How the National Emergencies Act Failed

The National Emergencies Act, enacted in 1976 after Watergate, was supposed to prevent this outcome. Congress built in safeguards: emergency declarations would expire after one year unless renewed, and Congress could stop them with a simple majority vote.

In 1983, the Supreme Court ruled in INS v. Chadha that Congress couldn’t terminate emergencies with a simple vote. Before that decision, Congress could terminate an emergency through a simple majority vote not subject to presidential veto. After Chadha, Congress would need the president to sign off on ending an emergency—or Congress would need two-thirds of both chambers to override a presidential veto.

A president declares an emergency. Congress disagrees and votes to terminate it. The president vetoes that termination. Now Congress needs not a majority, but two-thirds support in both chambers to stop the emergency. In a polarized environment where the president’s party controls even one-third of either chamber, termination becomes mathematically impossible.

The 2019 border wall emergency proved the point. Trump declared an emergency to build his wall after Congress explicitly denied him the funding. Both the Senate and House passed joint resolutions opposing the declaration—a remarkable bipartisan consensus. Trump vetoed both. Congress couldn’t override his vetoes despite having simple majorities against the emergency.

The oldest continuously renewed emergency—Carter’s 1979 Iran declaration—gets renewed annually despite radically changed circumstances and fundamentally different US-Iran relations. Nobody in Congress seriously believes Iran presents the same emergency threat it did during the hostage crisis, yet the emergency persists because the system has no meaningful mechanism to end it.

Why Both Parties Enabled the Problem

Each president complains about his predecessor’s emergency declarations while simultaneously issuing new ones to advance his own priorities. Each wants to maintain the powers he inherits while expanding them to address his own perceived crises. The result is a one-way expansion of power—emergency authority becomes progressively more expansive, the threshold for invoking it becomes progressively lower.

Neither party has consistent incentive to constrain a power it may wield in the future. When Democrats control the White House, Republicans suddenly care about constitutional limits on executive power. When Republicans control it, Democrats discover emergency authority concerns. The bipartisan complicity makes the problem nearly impossible to solve through normal political processes.

Trump’s Expansion of Emergency Authority

Trump’s approach since January 20, 2025 represents an extraordinary acceleration. Eight emergencies in 100 days: a national security emergency at the southern border, a national energy emergency authorizing federal agencies to bypass environmental review, emergencies regarding illegal drugs, the northern border, the International Criminal Court, Brazil, and Venezuela.

What distinguishes these declarations is their explicit use of emergency authority to impose tariffs—a domain the Constitution specifically gives to Congress. The Constitution specifically gives Congress the power “to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” and “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.”

Trump’s assertion that IEEPA authorizes sweeping tariffs on imports from dozens of countries represents an expansion of the statute. IEEPA was created in 1977 to limit emergency powers, but it’s been used to expand them. The law contains no explicit authorization for tariffs. In May 2025, the U.S. Court of International Trade declared Trump’s tariffs imposed under IEEPA unlawful and issued permanent injunctions.

The Cuba Emergency: Tariffs on Third Countries

Rather than directly sanctioning Cuba, the order establishes a tariff mechanism targeting third countries that sell oil to Cuba. The Secretaries of Commerce and State determine whether any country is providing oil to Cuba, either directly or indirectly, and recommend tariff rates that the president may then impose on goods from those countries.

Venezuela supplied approximately 33 percent of Cuba’s oil until recently, while Mexico supplied 44 percent, with Russia and Algeria providing smaller amounts.

This secondary tariff approach functions like punishing countries that trade with nations the U.S. opposes. If this survives legal challenge, future presidents inherit a new tool: the ability to impose tariffs on any country as a mechanism to pressure other nations, all without congressional approval.

Can the president, through emergency authority, impose tariffs on other countries to pressure them into not trading with Cuba? IEEPA doesn’t say that. Congress didn’t authorize that. But it’s happening.

Why Courts Defer to Executive Emergency Claims

Federal courts have consistently sided with the president on emergency authority claims. Courts have historically deferred to executive determinations regarding national security and foreign affairs. Courts also say they shouldn’t get involved in political decisions about whether an emergency exists, reasoning that deciding whether an emergency exists is a political choice committed to the president’s discretion.

When courts decline to examine whether a president’s asserted factual bases for emergency declarations exist, they effectively turn emergency powers from a crisis tool into unlimited presidential power.

The border wall case illustrated this. Trump asserted that immigration at the southern border constituted a genuine national emergency. Federal judges were presented with evidence regarding border apprehensions—though the data showed that FY 2019 apprehensions were near historic highs for the period under review (FY 2017-2019), not 40-year lows. Yet judges repeatedly characterized the determination of whether an emergency existed as a political question outside their purview, or trusted the president’s judgment instead of checking the facts despite contradictory public data.

A president facing congressional opposition can declare an emergency, assert facts supporting that declaration, and implement the policy through emergency authority—confident that courts will either decline jurisdiction or defer to executive assertions even when contradicted by available evidence.

The Bipartisan Reform That Stalled

Congress knows the system is broken. A bipartisan bill called the Article One Act would completely overhaul emergency powers by requiring that emergency declarations would end after 30 days unless Congress votes to keep them. The proposal has attracted unusually broad support—from Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) in the Senate, from Representative Chip Roy (R-TX) and Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN) in the House. Previous versions attracted support from Bernie Sanders to Ted Cruz, from the Progressive Caucus to the Freedom Caucus.

In 2019, the Republican-led Senate Homeland Security Committee reported out an earlier version on an 11-2 bipartisan vote. The bill didn’t advance further. In 2021, a Democratic-led House passed a version as part of the Protecting Our Democracy Act. The measure didn’t advance in the Senate.

Any real reform needs the president to agree to it, as the president can veto reform unless Congress has two-thirds support in both chambers. A president inclined to use emergency authority expansively has little incentive to constrain powers he may wield. People also disagree on whether to eliminate emergency powers or limit them. Some members support eliminating emergency powers altogether. Others support constraining them while preserving them for genuine crises. Some support the 30-day automatic expiration approach. Others prefer alternative mechanisms.

Concrete Consequences for Americans

Emergency powers have gone from rare exceptions to routine tools. As Congress has become less functional and more polarized, presidents have found emergency authority increasingly attractive as a mechanism to bypass legislative gridlock. As courts have become more deferential to executive claims of national security authority, the constraints on emergency power have weakened.

Each president inherits and maintains the emergency authorities declared by his predecessors while also issuing new declarations, creating a one-directional expansion of executive power. Over time, emergency powers that were once rare become normal. Congress loses both the ability and the willingness to push back, making future executive action seem increasingly inevitable.

When presidents impose tariffs through emergency authority, those tariffs function as taxes on imported goods—taxes that American consumers and businesses pay. States like California have filed lawsuits against these tariffs, arguing that these tariffs are taxes on Americans. Business groups have challenged emergency tariffs. But litigation takes years, and in the meantime, the tariffs remain in effect.

When presidents declare emergencies to take military construction money for border walls, that money comes from projects Congress explicitly authorized—often military housing, schools, and infrastructure that service members and their families need. When presidents declare emergencies to bypass environmental review for energy projects, communities lose their ability to challenge projects that may affect their air, water, and land.

The Trajectory Ahead

Future presidents, regardless of party, will inherit the expanded emergency authorities of their predecessors and will be tempted to invoke them to address policy challenges that Congress proves unable or unwilling to address through legislation. With each invocation, the emergency becomes more normalized, the threshold for invoking it lowers further, and executive power expands further.

Unless interrupted through genuine reform or sustained constitutional resistance from Congress and the courts, this trajectory will ultimately undermine the constitutional system of limited government that the founders designed. The separation of powers—the idea that Congress makes the laws, the president executes them, and courts interpret them—becomes progressively more theoretical and less actual.

Without a president willing to limit emergency powers and a Congress willing to fight back, real reform seems unlikely. The next president, whoever that is, will inherit these expanded powers. And the president after that. And the one after that. Each will find reasons to use them. Each will find new ways to expand them. And each will leave the office more powerful than they found it, while Congress becomes progressively weaker and the constitutional constraints that were supposed to limit executive power become progressively more theoretical.

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