How Trump Leans on Emergency Declarations to Bypass Congress and Skirt Regulations

In his seven months back in office, President Trump has declared nine national emergencies, plus a “crime emergency” in Washington. Those emergency declarations have been used to justify hundreds of actions — including immigration measures, sweeping tariffs and energy deregulation — that would typically require congressional approval or lengthy regulatory review, according to a New York Times analysis of presidential documents.

The chart below shows every emergency declaration and the actions that flowed from each. Hover or tap on the dots to see details.

All presidents have the authority under the National Emergencies Act, a post-Watergate law, to declare a national emergency to enable the federal government to respond quickly to a crisis. But Mr. Trump has already invoked this power much more frequently than his predecessors and, experts say, for situations that do not qualify as true emergencies.

Previous emergency declarations have been made over events like the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, as well as to issue sanctions on countries like South Africa during apartheid in 1985 and North Korea in 2008.

Mr. Trump’s use of emergency powers in this term has far outpaced what is typical. On average — between Ronald Reagan’s inauguration in January 1981 and the start of Mr. Trump’s second term this year — presidents declared about seven national emergencies per four-year term, according to a Times analysis of data from the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan think tank focused on democracy. Mr. Trump declared that many in his first month back in office.

Immigration emergencies

On the first day of his second term, Mr. Trump declared two national emergencies related to immigration.

Just as he did during his first term, Mr. Trump claimed that an “invasion” of “illegal aliens” constituted a national emergency along the U.S.-Mexico border. This move allowed him to unilaterally unlock federal funding for border wall construction and to empower the military to support the Border Patrol.

In a separate order, he used the border emergency to give the military specific responsibility for immigration enforcement. A few months later, he issued another directive, turning a narrow strip of federal border land along the Mexican border in California, Arizona and New Mexico into a military installation under the jurisdiction of the Pentagon.

Mr. Trump’s second immigration-related national emergency declaration called for a crackdown on major drug cartels. In it, he directed the State Department to start labeling drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, saying they “constitute a national security threat beyond that posed by traditional organized crime” and that the United States would “ensure the total elimination” of the groups.

This month, The Times reported that Mr. Trump had secretly signed a directive to the Pentagon to begin using military force against certain Latin American drug cartels that had been deemed terrorist organizations.

Trade and drug emergencies to justify tariffs

The president has used two major categories of emergency, encompassing four separate declarations, to justify the sweeping tariffs he has imposed on most of the United States’s trading partners.

The most recent category is a trade imbalance. In an April executive order declaring a national emergency, Mr. Trump cast “large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits” as a national security and economic threat. That emergency declaration has been cited to justify at least nine actions since then, some of them encompassing changes to tariff rates for many trading partners at once.

Most economists see trade deficits as a long-running feature of the U.S. economy, and many economists and legal experts questioned the declaration of an emergency at a time when the economy was strong.

The second category is a drug crisis. Back in February, the president issued three separate declarations targeting Canada, China and Mexico for what he argued were their roles in the national public health crisis caused by opioid use and addiction. (In each of those three declarations, Mr. Trump also mentioned the border and cartel emergencies discussed in the above section in conjunction with the drug crisis.) Each of those declarations has given rise to multiple tariff actions relating to those countries. According to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fentanyl deaths in the United States have been falling since January of last year.

Tracking the use of these emergency orders to justify tariff actions is extraordinarily complicated: Mr. Trump has changed rates; extended and further extended deadlines; and made specific adjustments to minimize disruption to particular American industries, among other actions. But the result, at least so far, has been a landscape of punishing rates — starting at 10 percent and going as high as 50 percent — that have taken effect for more than 90 trading partners.

Attempts in Congress to block or forestall the tariffs have not been successful, but court challenges remain underway.

Separately, Mr. Trump also declared a specific national emergency with respect to the government of Brazil, which he has argued is politically persecuting its ex-president, Jair Bolsonaro. Mr. Bolsonaro, an ally of Mr. Trump, is accused of orchestrating an attempted coup after losing the 2022 election. In the same document, Mr. Trump imposed duties on Brazil that brought the country’s tariff rate up to 50 percent.

Emergencies about energy, the International Criminal Court and Washington, D.C.

Mr. Trump has declared three other emergencies in pursuit of his policy goals. The first, among those declared the day he retook office, is a national energy emergency.

“That’s a big one. You know what that allows you to do? That means you can do whatever you have to do to get out of that problem. And we do have that kind of an emergency,” Mr. Trump said while signing the declaration. It came amid a flurry of other Day 1 actions that reversed previous decisions driven by concerns for the climate and environment.

Experts soon said no such emergency exists (the United States produces more oil and gas than any other country). In May, 15 Democratic-led states sued the Trump administration over the declaration and how, they argued, it was being used to skirt environmental and other regulations. And the administration has withdrawn federal support for projects to boost renewable energy, like wind and solar.

The emergency declaration cleared the way for the administration to expedite the production of domestic energy resources, including on federal lands, using a variety of methods and authorities. Among several actions taken later that cited the energy emergency was an order to the Department of Energy to develop a process to keep unprofitable coal plants operational in order to avert power outages.

In February, Mr. Trump declared another national emergency regarding the International Criminal Court, and the threat he argued the court posed to U.S. national security and foreign policy. In the same document, Mr. Trump imposed sanctions on the court, its members and its supporters, in response to its investigations of American and Israeli personnel. As the declaration notes, those investigations have resulted in arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant.

And this month, Mr. Trump declared a “crime emergency” — a more targeted claim than the nine national emergencies — in Washington. In this case, he invoked an emergency provision of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act of 1973 to take control of Washington’s police force for 30 days, deploy the National Guard and send hundreds of federal law enforcement agents into the city in what he described as an effort to combat crime. In fact, crime numbers in Washington have been falling.

Other emergencies and crises

Even when Mr. Trump has stopped short of declaring a new, official national emergency, he has frequently cited emergencies or comparable crises to justify executive action.

For example, a proclamation issued on his first day back in office declared “that an invasion is ongoing at the southern border.” It made a legal argument referring to “times of emergency,” including an invasion, during which the president’s powers over immigration should be expanded.

Mr. Trump used this argument to justify several actions, including suspending the entry of migrants across the United States-Mexico border — and, more broadly, restricting entry for migrants at all ports of entry who fail to provide certain information to federal officials.

The proclamation also restricted migrants entering the country across the southern border from invoking provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act, including claiming asylum. In addition, Mr. Trump’s proclamation empowered federal officials to take “appropriate action” to stop migrants from entering across the southern border and to deport those who do.

In March, Mr. Trump invoked a centuries-old wartime authority, the Alien Enemies Act, to deport men the administration said were members of a Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua, with little or no due process. The action that set off a high-stakes legal battle culminating in a Supreme Court order blocking some deportations until further notice. Although the March proclamation did not mention an emergency specifically, it followed the national emergency he declared in January to start the process of designating certain drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, specifically calling out Tren de Aragua and MS-13 of El Salvador.

A presidential memorandum Mr. Trump signed in June to authorize the deployment of several thousand National Guard troops to Los Angeles, where protests had sprung up against immigration raids, cast the protests as “a form of rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States.” This action was also challenged in court.

Special circumstances driven by claims of emergency have also animated the Trump administration’s own relationship with the legal system since Mr. Trump re-entered office. The administration has filed about 20 emergency applications with the Supreme Court since January, seeking relief from rulings issued by federal trial judges. The court has ruled in favor of Mr. Trump in a large majority of those cases, which have touched on issues including deportation, mass firing of federal workers and termination of education grants. The emergency orders by the court are not the last word on cases but can resolve as a practical matter for years while lawsuits wind through the courts.

Mr. Trump has also taken several actions related to emergencies declared by previous presidents. These include extending a Biden-era emergency over the “harmful foreign activities of the government of the Russian federation” — which Mr. Trump used to threaten secondary tariffs on India for importing Russian oil. Mr. Trump also continued a national emergency declared by President Barack Obama over Venezuela, which formed the basis for a similar threat of tariffs for countries that import Venezuelan oil.

Finally, Mr. Trump has ended one previously declared emergency. In recognition of the fall of the Assad regime, he removed sanctions declared on Syria by President George W. Bush in 2004.