National Emergencies

Scattered through federal law are more than 130 statutory powers that become available to the President only during a declared national emergency, from freezing assets to redirecting military construction funds. By the 1970s several emergencies declared decades earlier were still technically in force. The National Emergencies Act of 1976 set a common procedure: the President must declare an emergency formally, publish it in the Federal Register, specify which statutory powers are being invoked, and renew it each year or it lapses.

The act lets Congress terminate an emergency by joint resolution. It originally used a concurrent resolution that bypassed the President, but after the Supreme Court struck down legislative vetoes in INS v. Chadha in 1983, termination requires a resolution the President can veto, making it nearly impossible against his wishes. Congress is supposed to review each emergency every six months but rarely does. About forty emergencies are in effect at any time, the oldest dating to the 1979 Iran hostage crisis.

Most emergencies are declared under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to impose sanctions on foreign governments, groups, and individuals. Others have been more contested: Donald Trump declared an emergency in 2019 to redirect military funds to a border wall after Congress refused to appropriate them, and in 2025 declared emergencies over the southern border, energy supplies, and trade deficits, invoking IEEPA to impose broad tariffs. On February 20, 2026, in Learning Resources v. Trump, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that IEEPA does not authorize tariffs, and importers became entitled to refunds.