Good day all. Last week, President Trump browbeat Nancy “There will be no money for the WALL!!” Pelosi into forking over about $1.5 billion to pay for the wall. However, this isn’t close to what’s actually needed, and President Trump declared that there was an emergency and signed an order to that effect.
This allows President Trump to use funds from other departments already budgeted to pay for the construction of the border wall. This has made a number of people very unhappy. (I’m not one of them) The Democrats CommuNazis because President Trump pulled an end run around them. Some Republicans because they told their paymasters in the Chamber of Commerce that they would make sure the flow of cheap slave labor continued. Then there are those who aren’t happy about the constitutional questions about this process.
Now I’m certainly no expert on the legal and constitutional aspects of the declaration of an emergency, however, President Trump isn’t the first president to declare one. In fact, I’ve been given to understand that there are some 31 such declarations, going back through several presidents, still in effect. I’m also given to understand that almost none of them have any direct effect in the United States. (I understand that Obama used such a declaration, still in effect, to bomb Libya, kill Qaddafi and let the Eurotrash loot his bank accounts)
Of course, there is going to be challenges to this declaration, primarily by the CommuNazis who hate Americans and love criminals coming across the border to rob, rape and kill the Americans they hate. When the idea of President Trump declaring an emergency first popped up on the radar. The Kalifornistan Attorney General announced he would go to court to stop it. Here are some of the details from Fox News:
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra on Tuesday warned that he is prepared to challenge President Trump in court should he declare a national emergency to fund the border wall.
Becerra’s remarks came during a nationally televised address as part of the Democrats’ Spanish-language response to Trump’s State of the Union address. He condemned Trump’s characterization of immigration, the partial government shutdown over the wall and the president’s threat to cut federal funding to the state’s communities devastated by wildfires, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“What we heard tonight was the same tired refrain of building walls,” Becerra said. “The idea of declaring a nonexistent state of emergency on the border, in order to justify robbing funds that belong to the victims of fires, floods, hurricanes, and droughts, to pay for the wall is not only immoral. It is illegal.
“We are ready to reject this foolish proposal in court the moment it touches the ground,” Becerra said.
The thing about Becerra is he hold the Constitution in utter and complete contempt. His actions have always been to suppress the individual rights of American citizens lawful resident aliens. He also doesn’t have any standing.
Some of the best information on what could happen is coming from actual lawyers, such as those on Powerline Blog. Paul Mirengoff writes:
President Trump’s decision to declare a national emergency and move funds around to pay for more wall building is certain to be challenged in court. The case almost surely will arrive at the Supreme Court.
Of that we can be certain. In the early stages, you can expect the CommuNazis to go judge shopping for one of their pet Obama Judges. Without a doubt, those judges will ignore any precedent, law or actual constitutional wording to rule in favor of our enemies, the illegal aliens currently invading the United States. As to the Supreme Court?
When it does, Trump may not have five votes. Chief Justice Roberts, and conceivably others among the five center-right Justices, may be quite skeptical of this use of executive power as, indeed, are a number of conservative commentators.
Perhaps, perhaps not. There is that problem I mentioned of the 31 other Declarations of Emergency currently in effect. If Roberts decides to shaft Trump, all those other declarations become very problematical. Mr. Mirengoff states that he hasn’t studied the matter well enough to give an informed opinion, but he has read the works of others who have studied this issue.
I found Jack Goldsmith’s initial take worth reading (hat tip: Rich Lowry). Goldsmith dismisses liberal hysteria that Trump is sparking a constitutional crisis and/or threatening the rule of law. Quite clearly, Trump is doing neither. As Goldsmith says:
Everything Trump proposes to do purports to be grounded in congressional statutes and much of what he aims to do does not rely on emergency power. Trump is not relying solely on Article II executive power, and he is not invoking executive power to disregard a congressional statute. Moreover, the statutes in question expressly give Trump authority in the areas in which he claims them.
There will be questions—some of them hard, and without obvious answers—about whether Trump’s legal team has interpreted these congressional authorizations, and the conditions on their use, accurately. But. . .[t]he executive branch every day relies on vague or broad or dim delegations of authority, and courts usually uphold these actions. And as Trump himself stated many times, courts will ultimately sort out his claimed statutory authority in the wall context as well.
Many charge that Trump is declaring an emergency when there is no emergency. But this begs all the relevant questions. The relevant statute on which Trump relies does not define the term “emergency.” Presidents have always—really, always—had discretion to decide if there’s an emergency. And presidents have often declared emergencies under circumstances short of necessity, to address a problem that does not rise to an “emergency” as defined in common parlance to mean “a serious, unexpected, and often dangerous situation requiring immediate action.”
And here I think President Trump may have some very large legs to stand on. We have multiple “caravans” totaling thousands of people heading for our borders. We have thousands of others who have crossed over and are committing crimes, aside from the act of illegally entering and being in the United States, that are killing American citizens. There are criminal organizations, such as MS-13 that are virtual terrorist armies. I won’t even bother with the kilotons of drugs coming across the border each year.
Now a wall alone won’t stop this. It isn’t intended to. It is meant to slow things down and make it far more difficult, and probably dangerous to cross the border. There will also be electronic surveillance systems as well as manned patrols. I suspect that President Trump has all his legal ducks in a row regarding this declaration.
How will all this play out? I can’t say. President Trump may lose in court, but in the end, he will win. He is going to use this to show just how little the Democrats care about the safety and security of Americans. Considering all the other things the Democrats have been saying and doing, I’d say there is a good chance that not only will President Trump be re-elected, but the Democrats will be hammered even worse than in 2010.
Thatisall
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