Every presidential declaration of national emergency under the National Emergencies Act of 1976, which created the modern declare-renew-terminate regime: a one-page notice renews an emergency indefinitely, and Congress has never successfully terminated one.
Bars colored by declaring president. Tap or hover a year for the underlying declarations.
Count at year-end. Declarations accumulate because renewal is costless and termination is rare: the 1979 Iran emergency has now been renewed by eight presidents across 47 years.
Raw counts; terms differ in length (Trump 47 spans Jan 2025–May 2026). “Live” = still in effect.
Scope. NEA national emergencies only (Brennan Center list, rev. May 26, 2026). Excluded: Stafford Act disaster declarations, §319 public health emergencies, Defense Production Act invocations, and agency-level emergencies. Starting at 1976 also crops a real prehistory — the Truman emergency of 1950 ran 28 years, and the country had been under continuous declared emergency since 1933 when the NEA was written to end exactly that. The empty chart before 1979 reflects the new regime's sunset of old emergencies, not an emergency-free past.
Most of these are routine. The large majority are IEEPA sanctions programs — legally “emergencies,” functionally ordinary foreign-policy plumbing. Frequency is a poor proxy for intensity: the 2019 border declaration and the 2025–26 tariff, border, and energy emergencies redirect spending and tariff powers around congressional inaction — a qualitatively different use of the same instrument than, say, South Sudan sanctions.
Counting judgment calls. Sources disagree (CRS counted 53 NEA emergencies in 2019 against Brennan's 62). Emergencies never formally terminated but never renewed (Iran 1980, H1N1 2009, bulk-power and critical-minerals 2020, likely bulk-data 2024) are treated here as lapsing at the missed renewal — an interpretive choice. The “in effect” figure carries roughly ±2 of uncertainty.