Democratic officials in Congress and individual states are expected to sue to halt this presidential maneuver.
I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that the president has not woven this circumvention-of-Congress tactic out of nothing; rather, he is invoking a power that has been lawfully granted him by Congress. The National Emergencies Act was enacted in 1976 by a Congress whose Democratic Party majority was at a historic high-water mark in the wake of the Watergate scandals and President Nixon's resignation, and signed into law by GOP President Gerald Ford. According to its Wikipedia page, the law
is a United States federal law passed to end all previous national states of emergency and to formalize the emergencies powers of the President. The Act empowers the President to activate special powers during a crisis but imposes certain procedural formalities when invoking such powers. The perceived need for the law arose from the scope and number of laws granting special powers to the executive in times of national emergency.
I was startled to read that the emergency powers granted the president by this act has been invoked some 59 times since 1976, and no fewer than 31 of those enactments are currently in effect. Apparently we are beset by emergencies in all quarters. Among the national emergencies that have demanded the invocation of these extraordinary powers and continue to threaten us today:
November 3, 1997: The National Emergency With Respect to Blocking Sudanese Government Property and Prohibiting Transactions with Sudan implemented economic and trade sanctions.
June 26, 2001: The National Emergency With Respect to Blocking Property of Persons Who Threaten International Stabilization Efforts in the Western Balkans imposed sanctions on those aiding Albanian insurgents in Macedonia
March 6, 2003: The National Emergency With Respect to Blocking Property of Persons Undermining Democratic Processes or Institutions in Zimbabwe was an effort to punish associates of Robert Mugabe
June 16, 2006: The National Emergency With Respect to Blocking Property of Certain Persons Undermining Democratic Processes or Institutions in Belarus was in response to charges of fraud in the Belarus presidential election.
Oct 27, 2006: The National Emergency With Respect to Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was in response to violence around the Congolese presidential election runoff.In perusing this list, I suppose I am not the only person who feels the stirrings of skepticism: were these truly US national emergencies at the time? Do they continue to constitute national emergencies today?
But my overriding reaction to this list of invocations of extraordinary executive-branch power is that the National Emergencies Act represents a monumental ceding of responsibility on the part of Congress. If intervention is necessary in the affairs of Congo or Belarus or Nicaragua (to name three of the 31 instances still in effect today), the Constitution would seem to contemplate that Congress would appropriate the money for it, and Congress would be well within its rights to ask pointed questions about the proposed policies.
In a comment yesterday that surely was a warning to the president and his supporters, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi noted that invoking emergency powers would not be off-limits for a Democratic president; she raised the possibility of a future Democratic president doing so to impose gun control. Indeed, every president since Gerald Ford, except for ... (wait for it) ... George HW Bush has found a reason at least once to invoke emergency powers. (Some presidents prior to Ford also did so under the authority of previous acts.)
Personally, I would take the position that we should be bipartisan, equal-opportunity resisters to the National Emergency Act. Let's oppose it when Trump invokes it, and let's oppose it when President Buttigieg tries to use it in a few years to combat climate change. Let's hold Congress responsible for doing its job instead.
Would be great if someone could tally up the cost of these "emergencies" and compare it to the Wall. Something tells me Congress didn't have much heartburn with these previous invocations. Legislators should be careful what tools they put in the hands of the executive.
ReplyDeleteWould I be wrong in believing that at least some of these previous Emergencies were a bit of political posturing, having the purpose of appearing to take decisive action while actually not accomplishing anything much?
ReplyDelete"Buttigieg", had to look that one up. More hopefuls than you can shake a stick at.
ReplyDeleteMost national emergencies on the list look to be declarations against those fomenting instability abroad that could threaten (or have already threatened) U.S. national security.
ReplyDeleteDo these emergencies involve diversion of tax revenues earmarked for other purposes? Are they part of some larger policy-making procedure, perhaps leading to sanctions? Do they help justify the creation of new federal bodies (ICE and Dept of Homeland Security, ex)?
Search me. There aren't any details that go with the emergencies on the list, but it would be interesting to know more.
The emergency declarations on the list also seem to have been precipitated by verifiable and specific events. Is Trump's emergency verifiable and specific? He claims criminals and dope are pouring in through a porous border between ports of entry,though actual numbers are guesses and speculation. He further claims that the wall will solve the problem (if there is a problem). El Chapo has proven the drug cartel's ability to tunnel under barricades. How deep is the wall going to go?
It seems likely to me that Trump will be granted his emergency power to build his wall. My hope is that the foolhardiness of the project and diversion from DoD will be points against him with voters in 2020.
Mayor Buttigieg seems like a well-informed, articulate, and pragmatic young man. He is apparently popular in South Bend. Can't imagine he could be less qualified than Trump. But then, most of the people in our local library board are more qualified than Trump.
Always good when the bishops get it right and say it quickly. USCC under the names of Cdl DiNardo and Bishop Vasquez of Austin (Migration committee):
ReplyDelete“We are deeply concerned about the President’s action to fund the construction of a wall along the U.S./Mexico border, which circumvents the clear intent of Congress to limit funding of a wall. We oppose the use of these funds to further the construction of the wall. The wall first and foremost is a symbol of division and animosity between two friendly countries. We remain steadfast and resolute in the vision articulated by Pope Francis that at this time we need to be building bridges and not walls.”
What's different about this one is the clear intent of Congress, which has the power of the purse. Article I, section 7 if you want to look it up.
But see my other thought.
The Rs in the Senate will save the pudgy guy from congressional override. Their idea is to let the Supreme Court take the heat for stopping this grievous bodily insult to the Constitution. But the emergency powers were already one of Congress' ways of ducking its constitutional duties (see also the War Powers Act). So they are taking one sketchy duck-out they created for themselves and hoping to protect the country from the results with a second sketchy duck-out by letting someone take it to the pro-life Supreme Court.
ReplyDeleteMadison wept.
The only -- only -- justification for not stopping this defiance of the Constitution and of Congress would be that the Congress of the United States has decided it can't govern and we need a strong leader. When Germany turned to the Enabling Act that eventually let Hitler govern without a Parliament, all of the perfidy came from the executive branch; in this case, it is the pusillanimity of the legislators.
Congress seems to have the power to override national emergency proclamations. If, as Tom suggests, Congress will sit on its hands and let this play out in the courts, it won't be the first time legislators have decided not to buck the executive doing unconstitutional things. Lincoln and Truman did worse, perhaps.
DeleteIn the case of Trump, whom I see as the exception to any normal president, all of our failsafes have failed us. Voters are supposed to be informed enough to know a nut case when they see one. But they didn't.
The Electoral College was supposed to prevent a nut case from being elected by popular vote. It didn't; in fact it swept in the nut case with fewer votes.
The President's cabinet can remove him for general mismanagement and inability to do the job. It hasn't.
Congress has a fair amount of checks it can place on the executive. It doesn't.
I hate the analogies with Hitler and totalitarianism, but they're getting harder to ignore. Given the likelihood of a second Trump administration with very little push-back from the those with the power to stop him, I would say we're going to be in a very bad place by 2024.
I'm not ready to give up on 2020 yet. There are a few Democratic hopefuls who would be electable. And there is an outside chance of someone successfully primarying Trump. There is also an outside chance of him being impeached. Which would give us Pence in the interim, but I don't see him as being electable against a halfway decent Democratic candidate.
DeleteTrue. Though many say Pence would be worse than Trump, he doesn't have the "magic" that mesmerizes Trump's cult.
DeleteI'll vote for any opposition to Trump, and I pray that that Starbucks guy won't split the vote with his hare-brained third party.
DeleteBut I don't see anyone with wide appeal on the Democratic slate at this point except, maybe, Amy Klobuchar, who could appeal to center-right independents who hate Trump.
I can see Amy Klobuchar as a strong vice pres candidate, with maybe Biden as pres candidate. I know some don't see him as left enough. But like it or not, hard core left is not going to prevail against Trump.
DeleteI needed a laugh this morning. I got one, courtesy of George Conway. He and Kellyanne must have some interesting dinner table conversations. Or maybe not.
ReplyDeleteHilarious. Even better, the side-by-side visual comparison of Trump with the Big Mahoff.
DeleteBen Terris, WaPo, published a story about going to George and Kellyanne's house to interview them. Maybe an object lesson for smart but unattractive who think that having a pretty wife will give them some cachet.
Deletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/she-works-for-trump-he-cant-stand-him-this-is-life-with-kellyanne-and-george-conway/2018/08/15/3b89b82a-9b46-11e8-843b-36e177f3081c_story.html
FWIW, I'm leery of relying on Wikipedia and broadcast news outlets for info. The Conversation, a consortium of academic commentators on news events, has a clear explanation of emergency powers and a bit of context/history here that I found interesting:
ReplyDeletehttp://theconversation.com/can-congress-or-the-courts-reverse-trumps-national-emergency-111939