Since the National Emergencies Act took effect in 1976, presidents of both parties have declared national emergencies at a strikingly steady rate. About 51 remain in force today, most declared years or decades ago and renewed year after year by every president who followed. The accumulation is bipartisan by design: emergencies rarely end.
The accumulation is the story, and it's bipartisan. About 51 national emergencies are still in force today. Of roughly 90 ever declared, ~40 were already active when the current president took office. The long-running ones, such as the 1979 Iran asset freeze and the post-9/11 terrorism-financing order (Bush's Executive Order 13224), have been renewed every year by Republicans and Democrats alike. Under the Act an emergency auto-expires on its anniversary unless the president renews it; the average one has run ~9.6 years, and in nearly 50 years Congress has ended an emergency by legislation only once, the COVID-19 emergency in 2023.
What these declarations actually are
Most are routine economic-sanctions tools, not domestic power grabs: all but about three of the ~51 active emergencies rest on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which blocks assets of and bars transactions with specific foreign governments, cartels, or individuals. The genuinely consequential domestic cases are a small minority, which is why they drew litigation: Trump I's 2019 Southern-border-wall emergency (used to redirect military-construction funds) and the 2020 COVID-19 emergency (which Biden ended in 2023 by signing a congressional joint resolution, the only time an emergency has been terminated by legislation rather than by a president). Trump II's early declarations include several IEEPA tariff emergencies; in February 2026 the Supreme Court held that IEEPA does not authorize tariffs.