Our “National Emergency”
After the approximate month-long government shutdown, President Trump failed to receive the money that he desired and needed to fund his border wall. Both parties, while varying in their reasons, decided that the money that President Trump wanted to spend on the border wall could be better spent somewhere else, whether it be in our transportation systems, education, or military. With the end of the shutdown, we believed that the national crisis has ended – or so we thought.
On February 15, 2019, thirteen hours after he lost in Congress, President Trump decided to declare a “national emergency” at our southern border. As a country, we have determined that one of the president elect’s constitutional vested powers is that he or she has the power to declare a national emergency. According to Duhaime’s Law Dictionary, there are only two necessary requirements for a president to declare a national emergency: a situation arises that is beyond the ordinary which threatens the health and safety of citizens and that the use of other laws cannot adequately address it.
In his press statement in the Rose Garden, President Trump declared to the American Public that the flow of drugs and illegal immigrants coming into the country from Mexico has made it necessary to declare a national emergency. President Trump claims that these illegal immigrants are the monsters destroying our country, that they are the reason our country is in trouble and why he has to place our southern border under a national emergency.
However, like most of President Trump’s speeches, the facts surrounding his speech are hazy at best. According to USA Today, the FBI, CIA and other major intelligence offices have captured and questioned many of the high-ranking members of the Mexican Drug Cartel. From these interrogations, our government intelligence agencies have discovered that most of the drugs that are smuggled into our countries come from legal ports or entrances, not random border crossings. However, since President Trump has declared a national emergency, he can take the funds that were allocated to the military and spend them on his border wall claiming that it is a “military construction project not otherwise authorized by the law.” What this means is that President Trump can now go around Congress’s decision and build his wall.
Now Congress has the power to end a national emergency; but like every decision they make, Congress requires a two-thirds majority vote. However, according to the Washington Post, despite the overwhelming evidence that we do not need a border wall, not many Republicans will not stand against the President on this issue because they fear the backlash from his base. Therefore, it seems unlikely that Congress will act against the President’s actions in this matter.
President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency is, according to the New York Times, clearly a retaliation towards Congress’s decision to not fund the wall; thereby raising the question, should there be more requirements to declare a national crisis, or at least require another person, besides the President or Vice-President, to sign off on this executive decision. Luckily, since this is a government by the people, for the people, of the people, the people who are directly impacted have the power to challenge a national emergency in Congress.
This process may appear difficult; it may even seem impossible; however, because of the structure of our government, we the people have the power to challenge any decision made by the President. However, according to NBC News, there are several organizations, such as Public Citizens, Center for Biological Diversity, even sixteen states, challenging President Trump’s national emergency. These groups are challenging him in federal court stating that there was no need for him to call a national emergency. President Trump’s only response was that “I didn’t need to do this. But I’d rather do it much faster.”
While this national emergency is still in effect, the lawsuits made against his national emergency has deterred President Trump from immediately beginning the construction on his wall.
Links:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/19/trumps-words-used-against-him-in-national-emergency-lawsuits.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/02/15/what-exactly-is-national-emergency-heres-what-that-means-what-happens-next/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7c71436c7edb
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/01/16/fact-check-mike-pence-donald-trump-drugs-crossing-southern-border-wall/2591279002/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/us/politics/national-emergency-trump.html
http://www.duhaime.org/LegalDictionary/N/NationalEmergency.aspx
I really enjoyed the cartoons you placed with this blog. It made the read more fun and personally I have always found politically cartoons really comical. I agree that allowing the President to call a national emergency is an abuse of his power. I understand that congress can override the “emergency” with a 2/3 vote, however I fear that that is still giving the President too much power.
With this being said, I do believe that illegal immigration is an issue in this country. Now, it may not be as bad as the President says it is, however Democrats and Republicans are mostly bipartisan on this issue that illegal immigration is a problem in the United States. With this being said, I am aware of the facts on both sides and most of them lean towards the fact that Trump’s wall will not stop the drugs and illegal weapons that come into this country. Therefore, I feel that if a national emergency was truly to be declared at the southern border, the military and money used should be used at the checkpoints and to increase security, not build a wall.
Also, I do think that President Trump’s wall would deter people from trying to cross the border illegally, which may help them for their own good. An article by the Huffington Post (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/12/central-america-migrants-rape_n_5806972.html) claims that 80% of Central American Women crossing the border are raped by other illegals. If Trump’s wall is to go up, I do hope that it acts as a deterrent and prevents a statistic like this from rising.
Hudson, I completely agree with what you are saying about the proper use of a national emergency. What President Trump is arguing for is nothing short of him attempting to make good on his election campaign promise. I completely agree that illegal immigration is a serious issue that needs to be addressed and providing troops to check-point at our southern border may potentially prove to be an answer to this difficult situation.
President Trump’s shutdown of the national government has been, without a doubt, extensive as it has become the longest government shutdown in our nation’s history. By continuously blaming illegal immigrants for the drug trade in America, President Trump attempts to gain support from Congress and Americans to get the wall that he has been so desperately asking for built. In his recent rhetoric on this national emergency in the media, he has been shifting the blame away from himself and putting blame on illegal immigrants. In this case, he has made illegal immigrants the scapegoat for this national emergency and has even presented false statistics in order to back this claim.
As mentioned in your article, much of the drug smuggling that occurs in the United States does not even occur at the southern border but at legal ports. In fact, according to the Time Magazine article titled Trump Repeated Many of His Old Claims About the Border to Justify the State of Emergency. Here Are the Facts written by Gina Martinez and Abigail Abrams, it also exposes some of the other claims made by President Trump on our nation’s national emergency that have been false. For example, President Trump’s claim that illegal immigration leads to crime has also been proven to be entirely false as illegal immigrants nationwide are responsible for less crime in the United States than natural born citizens. By using this rhetoric, President Trump attempts to make it seem as if illegal immigrants are responsible for the majority of the violent crime that occurs in the United States. He even uses the statements made by loved ones who have been killed by illegal immigrants to strengthen the effectiveness of his rhetoric. However, most critics and people in Congress can see right through these false claims and have therefore continued to shame President Trump in the public sphere. I believe if President Trump continues on this trail of lies within his rhetoric he will only continue to diminish his chances of getting his wall built.
Links: http://time.com/5530506/donald-trump-emergency-border-fact-check/
I agree that President Trump’s false claims are only worsening his situation. With so many people speaking out against him and calling out his lies, he is losing credibility. Because of this, I feel he is losing much of his base supporters. Many of those who voted for him wanted a wall, however to completely go past congress and do it on his own has alarmed many Americans.
I am glad many people are critics of the President and I feel that as long as what they are saying is true and factual, all criticism is good. For instance, if most of the drugs are coming through the legal ports at the wall, why would we need a wall in the first place? I understand that it would decrease the incentive to try and cross the border illegally at non-legal ports, however this does not solve the drug issue at our border.
The points you made about President trump’s untruthfulness regarding this issue are valid ones, and if we lived in a politics of 10 years ago they might matter. But we don’t. Thus, he can go and spew out hateful, and at many times, racist rhetoric to appease his core base of supporters.
This isn’t anything new either from him. He launched his campaign coming down the escalator in Trump Tower saying that all Mexicans are rapists and drug dealers. He’s been peddling a racist immigration narrative since the summer of 2015, and has never lost any support because of it. I think that is, and this may be cynical of me, because most people in his coalition simply don’t care that he lies about this issue. They just want to cut immigration both legal and illegal and they see this as the first stepping stone to doing just that.
I appreciate your use of cartoons as a way to contrast the uneasiness that this issue places many Americans in, especially immigrants who feel they are being denigrated.
The controversy surrounding President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency is interesting because it puts “constitutional” conservatives in a tricky situation. They are, on principle, supposed the follow the constitution word for word how it was written, yet their President isn’t doing that now. He is, in effect, taking the job that was delegated to Congress by the founding fathers, appropriation of government funds, and turned it into an executive power through some maneuvering of status that Congress had passed previously. Now, Republicans are in the position of deciding whether to vote on their principle and block President Trump from doing this, or vote with their President so they don’t get on bad terms with the base of the Republican Party and potentially face a primary challenge in their next election.
That is precisely the problem Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina found himself in this week when they voted on this. He had previously said that approving this declaration would “justify providing the executive with more ways to bypass Congress”. He said that in an op-ed he wrote in the Washington Post just last week. However, when it came down to it he decided to vote the opposite way of which he argued because rumors started to spread that he was going to face a primary challenge in his 2020 election race, and he feared losing that because he didn’t support the President.
That is my biggest annoyance with politics. Politicians don’t vote on their principle or what they actually believe or what the facts are or what this country needs the most. They vote based on what will keep them elected and keep the base of their party happy. It’s what make people so cynical about politics, and its why people think politicians lie all the time. Because they do, Thom Tillis did it in just a week and flipped his long-held position because he was scared of not getting re-elected.
It’s the sad reality of what politics have become in this country, and I hope once a new generation of leaders come into power they will change that dynamic.
Link used: https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/tilliss-reversal-sums-up-state-of-senate-republicans–few-willing-to-cross-trump/2019/03/14/aceb6c4a-45d5-11e9-8aab-95b8d80a1e4f_story.html?utm_term=.18afef20d101
Colin McGee
I certainly agree with you Collin as politicians today will say whatever is necessary to obtain votes whether these statements are true or false. In my opinion this is ruining politics.