President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency at the southern border in order to grant himself access to billions of dollars to build a border wall. This is the same wall that Congress refused to give him.
This morning, Trump explained how he was signing the declaration to defend the country from the flow of drugs, criminals and illegal immigrants coming through the border from Mexico. This, in his opinion, is a intense threat to national security. (I will quickly add that the majority of illegal immigration occurs from immigrants coming over legally, and then overstaying their temporary visas.)
Will this really yield the results that Trump wanted all along? Under the National Emergencies Act of 1976, he has declared a national emergency, but now he must point to statutory authority in order to receive the resources and funds he needs to build this wall. He will most likely look to the statue that allows the secretary of defense to start a military program. The difficulty lies in the idea that there is no evidence that the armed forces will need a wall to support them.
My main problem with the emergency declaration is how Trump is overreaching and trying to go around the constitutional check on presidential power. Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York said in a joint statement that “This is plainly a power grab by a disappointed president, who has gone outside the bound of the law to try to get what he failed to achieve in the constitutional legislative process.”
In efforts to stop Trump’s move, House Democrats plan to present legislation which could pass both houses if it wins the votes of the half-dozen Republican senators.
Moreover, this issue will most likely be taken to court. While the administration can come up with arguments to validate what they have done, courts could decide that Trump’s actions are stretching the intent of the law.
Should he win, it would set a scary standard. I am not sure that conservatives who applaud Trump on what has happened today will be as happy when the next Democratic president uses the same sort of power grab. I think that is in all people’s best interests that no one person has this type of far-reaching control over our tax money and property rights.
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Source: NBCnews