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‘No More Hiding’: House Dems Vow to Hammer GOP With More Votes on Destructive Trump Tariffs
"We will keep holding Republicans accountable for raising prices on families and fighting to end Trump’s senseless trade war," said Rep. Suzan DelBene.
Feb 12, 2026
The House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a resolution to overturn President Donald Trump's tariffs on Canada, and Democratic lawmakers are vowing to keep the pressure on their Republican counterparts.
The House voted to roll back Trump's Canada tariffs by a margin of 219 in favor to 211 against, with six House Republicans crossing the aisle to back the measure. Among Democrats, only Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) voted in favor of keeping the tariffs in place.
According to Politico, the vote on ending Canadian tariffs was just the start of a number of votes House Democrats have planned aimed at rolling back the president's taxes on imported goods.
"Senior House Democrats plan to call up at least three more resolutions that will force many Republicans to choose between protecting their tariff-hit districts and pleasing their MAGA voter bases," Politico wrote, "not to mention their loyalties to a president who has, up until this week, not tolerated any House GOP dissent on the matter."
In an interview with Axios, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) said that he planned to push a resolution overturning Trump's tariffs on Mexican goods next.
Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) released a statement celebrating the vote to repeal the Trump tariffs, while warning her Republican colleagues that there will be "no more hiding" on the issue.
"This is the first vote to restore congressional authority and repeal Trump’s tariffs," she said. "We will keep holding Republicans accountable for raising prices on families and fighting to end Trump’s senseless trade war. The Senate must now take up this measure."
In a video posted on social media, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) outlined the damage that Trump's tariffs have caused both to US consumers and international relations with longtime allies.
"Canada has been our close friend and ally for more than 200 years," Beyer explained. "Donald Trump promised to lower the cost of living, but his tariff regime is doing the exact opposite. These tariffs have done nothing but hurt the American people."
Trump's tariffs crushed our economy, raised prices, and alienated our allies.
Republicans passed rules preventing the House from voting to stop him.
We defeated that 'gag rule' last night, and now we're voting on ending Trump's tariffs on Canada.
Here's why I'm voting YES: pic.twitter.com/cwbOT2apKQ
— Rep. Don Beyer (@RepDonBeyer) February 11, 2026
Ontario Premiere Doug Ford hailed the vote to end the tariffs and expressed hope that it was the start of better relations between the US and Canada.
"Thank you to every member from both parties who stood up in support of free trade and economic growth between our two great countries," he wrote. "Let’s end the tariffs and together build a more prosperous and secure future."
Trump, however, has shown no signs of backing down and vowed to support primary challengers against any Republicans who joined with Democrats to roll back his tariffs.
"Any Republican, in the House or the Senate, that votes against TARIFFS will seriously suffer the consequences come Election time, and that includes Primaries!" Trump wrote in a Wednesday Truth Social post.
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Omar Condemns Trump Oil Blockade of Cuba as 'Cruel and Despotic' Regime Change Ploy
"Innocent civilians will pay with their lives to force regime change," warned US Rep. Ilhan Omar.
Feb 12, 2026
US Rep. Ilhan Omar on Wednesday condemned the Trump administration's oil blockade against Cuba as part of an "economic war designed to suffocate an island" and force regime change, a longtime goal of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other right-wing American officials.
"The US oil blockade on Cuba is cruel and despotic," Omar (D-Minn.), the deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, wrote in a social media post as fuel and food shortages and public health outcomes in Cuba continued to worsen due to the Trump administration's ramping up of the decades-long strangulation of the island nation's economy.
Omar, who visited Cuba along with other progressive lawmakers in 2024, warned that "innocent civilians will pay with their lives to force regime change," and called for the immediate lifting of the US blockade, which most of the international community views as illegal.
Omar's demand came after the Wall Street Journal reported that "children are being sent home from school early, people can barely afford basic food like milk and chicken, and long lines have sprung up at gas stations" as the Cuban people reel from the Trump administration's decision to deprive the country of oil from Venezuela—previously Cuba's largest supplier—and threaten economic retaliation against any nation that sends fuel to the Caribbean island.
"The last oil delivery to the country was a January 9 shipment from Mexico, which has since halted supplies under US pressure," the Journal noted. "President Trump’s executive order on January 29 called Cuba 'an unusual and extraordinary threat' and warned of new tariffs for any country that supplies oil to the island. The new measures go on top of a comprehensive set of US sanctions on Cuba that began in the early 1960s."
One Cuban, 36-year-old Raydén Decoro, told the Cuba-based Belly of the Beast that "the future is extremely uncertain, but something has to happen, somehow, because we’re the ones suffering the most."
"Electricity is impossible to get, food is getting more and more expensive," said Decoro. "Right now, fuel is only available in dollars, and inflation keeps rising."
Earlier this week, Omar joined other progressives in the US House in introducing a resolution calling for the annulment of the Monroe Doctrine, an assertion of US dominance of the Western Hemisphere that the Trump administration has openly embraced and expanded.
The resolution, led by Reps. Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) and Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), calls for "the termination of all unilateral economic sanctions imposed through executive orders, and working with Congress to terminate all unilateral sanctions, such as the Cuba embargo, mandated by law."
“This administration's aggressive stance toward Latin America makes this resolution critical," said Velázquez. "Their 'Donroe Doctrine' is simply a more grotesque version of the interventionist policies that have failed us for two centuries."
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Don Lemon’s Travail Is a Warning of Rising Authoritarianism; I Would Know
My experience as a university professor in Congo demonstrates that repressive governments may go after a variety of observers sympathizing with militant protesters by purveying false or distorted reports of their actions.
Feb 12, 2026
Former CNN anchor Don Lemon is under federal indictment for participating in a Minnesota protest group’s obstruction of a church service. He is scheduled to be arraigned Friday. News of his prosecution took me back more than five decades to when I was a young university professor in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). At that time, President Mobutu Sese Seko’s government threatened to arrest me for my alleged involvement in student disruptions.
In both cases, increasingly authoritarian governments decided to clamp down on independent observers—journalists or others—who sympathized with community activists. To do so, they distorted what actually happened to serve their political interests. Yet, I suspect that the last person President Donald Trump wants to be compared to is a corrupt, fallen, disgraced African dictator.
In December 1970, my university screeched to a halt as the entire student body boycotted classes. With support from Zairian professors and staff, the students called for the replacement of the Protestant missionary rector, criticized for incompetence and racism. From afar, I sympathized with their position. One day, with the university offering no information on the conflict, I accepted an invitation to hop onto a student bus. As a curious political scientist, I hoped to learn more about what my students were thinking. Arriving at a dormitory, I found myself enveloped in a crowd slowly moving forward. Suddenly, I found myself standing before a mock coffin for the rector emblazoned, “Rest in Peace.” Reaching for humor, I tossed a vine I had picked up onto the coffin. Then I walked away, seeing no opportunity for discussion.
Encountering one of my best students on campus a day or two later, I asked him what was happening with his movement. We discussed the students’ perspective and actions. I posed questions in the style of a neutral reporter or scholar. At a certain point, he reiterated the students’ expressed belief that the rector had discouraged his better qualified, potential replacement. Out of sympathy with the student demands and wanting to equalize our exchange, I shared relevant information I had, which appeared to confirm their suspicion. In doing so, I later realized, I yielded to an impulse that deserved more scrutiny.
Whether or not Lemon is convicted, the Trump administration’s approach of pursuing individuals who can be loosely linked to disruptive demonstrations is likely to continue.
Soon, I was surprised to learn that the rector’s supporters in the university were spreading exaggerated and false versions of my involvement in the protests. I was said to have knelt before the coffin, worked to replace a Protestant rector with a Jewish one, and actively participated in students’ subsequent siege, including minor violence, of university trustees’ meeting in a private home. Declassified State Department records show that Mobutu, his minister of the interior, and the American ambassador believed these baseless reports. I was ordered to fly with my family 800 miles to the capital and report to the minister. Over 10 anxious days, I finally managed to persuade the minister that my case should be “closed.”
Last month, Don Lemon live streamed a community protest group’s disruption of a religious service in a St. Paul, Minnesota church. In the context of community resistance to Immigration and Custom Enforcement abuses, the group had discovered that one of the pastors was an important ICE official. Lemon and eight others were charged under the federal FACE Act with conspiring “to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate” (including chants, yelling, and physical obstruction) multiple persons in the free exercise of religion—causing termination of the service, parishioners’ flight, emergency planning, and children’s fears.
Lemon himself was accused of certain “overt acts“ in and around the church:
- Reporting on parishioners' responses to the mayhem, including a young man crying and congregants departing, he called them understandable since the “whole point [of the operation is to disrupt;”
- Physically obstructing, along with two other protesters, the pastor on three sides while peppering him with questions and ignoring his request to leave immediately; and
- Physically obstructing some parishioners attempting to leave.
Some MAGA activists condemned Lemon and the others for “storming” the church and committing an anti-Christian hate crime.
Yet, a detailed examination of Lemon’s hour-long live-stream video of the event shows a far different reality. He is mainly observing and interviewing—as I was in the Congo—plus publicly reporting on what he sees. Inside the church, he tells parishioners and viewers several times that he is “chronicling and reporting” and “not part of the activists.” He interviews protesters, the pastor, and parishioners, generally seeking their views in a neutral way. Sometimes his questioning cites protesters’ grievances, but he generally does not insist upon them. It is also clear from the video that he and nearby protesters are not obstructing the pastor, nor are they preventing parishioners from leaving the church.
Like me, Lemon indicates sympathy with the protesters, invoking the history of the US civil rights movement. At one point he tells viewers—but not others—that he supports the disruption because “you have to make people uncomfortable in these times [when ICE is committing abuses during operations against illegal immigrants].” “I believe…, he declares, "everyone has to be willing to sacrifice something.” Only once though does he seem to depart from neutrality with a parishioner. After an interchange in which he states ICE’s excesses are powering protests and his interlocutor maintains ICE is keeping America safe, he asks the latter, “Do you really believe that?” Then, as the man starts to walk away, Lemon persists by trying to present him with “facts” that immigrants have lower crime rates than natives and most detainees were not convicted of crimes.
Lemon also presents an alternative to the conflict: He suggests to both the pastor and a parishioner that they move from confrontation to calm discussion with the protesters, for that might reveal areas of agreement.
These are however minor chords in Lemon’s overall conventional reporting style. We might consider whether, in an age of flagging journalist legitimacy, a reporter’s acknowledgement of his personal perspective amid an effort to tell a story objectively can enhance audience trust.
Either way, Lemon’s remarks did not transform him into a member of the group besieging the church any more than my two encounters with student protesters made me into a member of the group besieging the trustees.
Together these cases warn that repressive governments may go after a variety of observers sympathizing with militant protesters by purveying false or distorted reports of their actions. Whether or not Lemon is convicted, the Trump administration’s approach of pursuing individuals who can be loosely linked to disruptive demonstrations is likely to continue. Worryingly, the head of the FBI has announced investigations of “paid protest campaigns” throughout the country including “organizers, protesters, and funding sources that drive illicit activities.”
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House Member Crafting Legislation to Stop Climate Lawsuits
Following Reports the Oil Industry is Lobbying for Total Immunity from Climate Lawsuits, U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) told A.G. Bondi that She Is Working on A Bill
Feb 12, 2026
Following widespread reports that the oil and gas industry has been lobbying Congress for a liability waiver that could give fossil fuel companies complete legal immunity, a U.S. House Representative said yesterday that she is working to “craft legislation” aimed at “tackling” climate lawsuits and climate superfund bills that seek to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for their role in the climate crisis.
“Multiple climate lawsuits are now advancing toward trial,” U.S. Rep Harriet Hageman (R-WY) said to Attorney General Pam Bondi during a hearing yesterday. “Clearly this is an area in which Congress has a role to play. To that end, I am working with my colleagues in both the House and Senate to craft legislation tackling both these state laws and the lawsuits.”
In January, the American Petroleum Institute announced that killing state climate lawsuits is a top 2026 priority for the oil lobby. Last year, 16 Republican attorneys general proposed creating a “liability shield” for fossil fuel companies modeled on a 2005 law protecting gun manufacturers from lawsuits. Lawmakers in Utah and Oklahoma have also introduced state-level immunity bills for the fossil fuel industry. Nearly 200 groups have urged Democratic leaders in the House and Senate to oppose these efforts.
Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, released the following statement:
“As communities across the U.S. move closer to putting Big Oil companies on trial to make them pay for the damage their climate lies have caused, the fossil fuel industry is panicking and pleading with Congress for a get-out-of-jail-free card.
“Let’s be clear: you don’t need immunity unless you are in fact responsible for the damages claimed in these lawsuits. A liability shield for Big Oil would bar the courthouse doors for communities across the country and stick U.S. taxpayers with the massive and growing bill for climate damages, while bailing out corporate polluters from having to pay for the mess they made.
“It’s time for leaders in Congress to speak out and make clear that Big Oil is not above the law.”
Background on U.S. Climate Accountability Lawsuits Against Big Oil
Eleven U.S. states — California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai`i, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont — and the District of Columbia, along with dozens of city, county, and tribal governments in California, Colorado, Hawai`i, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Puerto Rico, have active lawsuits to hold major oil and gas companies accountable for deceiving the public about their products’ role in climate change. These cases collectively represent more than 1 in 4 people living in the United States.
A growing number of cases — including those brought by Boulder, Colorado, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, the District of Columbia, and the states of Massachusetts, Vermont, Minnesota and Connecticut — are advancing toward discovery and trial after courts denied the oil companies’ motions to dismiss them.
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