an end run

end run

An evasive or diversionary action or maneuver around some obstacle or difficulty. An allusion to a play in American football, in which the carrier of the ball runs wide to evade the defensive line. Many wealthy citizens try to perform an end run around their country's tax laws by filtering their money in offshore accounts.
See also: end, run
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

an end run

AMERICAN, INFORMAL
An end run is something that you do in order to avoid something. He's trying to do an end run around the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Note: This expression comes from American football where a player with the ball runs around a line of members of the other team.
See also: end, run
Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed.
See also:
  • end run
  • the mark of Cain
  • a security blanket
  • end game
  • waste time
  • kiss of death
  • kiss of death, a/the
  • the kiss of death
  • game is not worth the candle, the
  • strike out at (something or some place)
References in periodicals archive
Federal and state officials are doing an end run around voters' desire to keep Idaho from becoming a nuclear waste dump.
The Times acknowledged that the administration's purpose in issuing the regulation is to perform an end run around Congress: "While the new law does not mention advance care planning, the Obama administration has been able to achieve its policy goal through the regulation-writing process, a strategy that could become more prevalent in the next two years as the president deals with a strengthened Republican opposition in Congress."
"My Web site is how I'm gonna communicate with people and do an end run right around the media.
Taken in their totality these eight rules amount to an end run around the U.S.
Meanwhile, in an end run, our guest had commandeered the clicker.
General Electric, RCA, and other companies deliberately acquired patents to block competition, an end run around antitrust law that evaded serious judicial scrutiny until mid-century.
Congress rejected a Bush voucher proposal last year, and now opponents of the measure say the president is trying to do an end run around the House of Representatives and Senate by inserting the tax-credit plan directly into the budget.
Then there is the conservative commentator John McLaughlin, who sounds like a Nation editorial: "The US and NATO did an end run around the UN, violating international law and the NATO charter.
It was underwriting like this that earned PBS the tag "Petroleum Broadcasting Service." The Schmerz legacy lives on in the form of those 30-second "underwriter-ID spots" which made an end run around PBS's "no advertising" rule and now punctuate most programs.
Critics of these laws have called them an end run around the constitutional separation of powers.
But the intent of the law is to make medical considerations the sole criteria for organ distribution, and the considerable resource expenditure involved in procuring the precious liver in this case was an end run that legislators hadn't foreseen.
"Those government officials out there are trying to do an end run around the First Amendment," he said.
One anonymous source called the meeting "an end run that bypassed the governing process."
If the critics are taking you to the cleaners, why not make an end run and get your message to the audience directly?
He has spent a good deal of his life encouraging industrial production and jobs to leave our shores, shoveling taxpayer-funded welfare to corrupt foreign governments, debasing our currency, peddling influence, doing an end run around the Constitution, and damaging our national sovereignty by encouraging trade with an aggressive Communist Chinese government whose business interests are controlled by its military machine.