A TRUMP-MADE EMERGENCY The president decides

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A TRUMP-MADE EMERGENCY

The president decides that fulfilling a campaign promise is more important than respecting the separation of powers.

By The Editorial Board
Feb. 14, 2019

With his intention to declare a national emergency at the southern border, President Trump is planning to take executive overreach to dizzying new heights. The damage to American democracy threatens to linger long after his administration is no more than a dank memory.

Cornered into accepting a budget deal that lacked the $5.7 billion in border-wall funding he demanded, the president could not handle being labeled a loser by conservative commentators like Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity. His solution: Sign the bill while simultaneously declaring a national emergency that, at least in his mind, would allow him to shift funds and order the military to start building his wall.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, announced the move on Thursday afternoon. “President Trump will sign the government funding bill, and as he has stated before, he will also take other executive action — including a national emergency — to ensure we stop the national security and humanitarian crisis at the border,” she said.

To repeat: The influx of migrant families at the southern border does not constitute a national security crisis, much less a bona fide emergency. There is, at this point, a worsening humanitarian crisis, actively fueled by the draconian policies of the administration. But the suffering on display requires thoughtful policy adjustments, not a steel monstrosity.

Not that this is the end of this battle. Mr. Trump’s emergency declaration is destined to wind up in the courts, where it could get bogged down indefinitely.

This fit of presidential pique is about more than a wall. It constitutes a reordering of the power dynamic between the branches of government. Mr. Trump aims to usurp one of Congress’s most basic responsibilities, the power of the purse.

Confronted with this power grab, every lawmaker should be bellowing in alarm. Until recently, the threat of an “imperial presidency” was of grave constitutional concern to Republicans, who spent much of President Barack Obama’s tenure accusing him of misusing executive authority on, among other matters, immigration, health care and the environment.

To their credit, a few Republican lawmakers have been warning against an emergency declaration for weeks. “I believe the president does have the legal authority — if you read the statute. I also think it would be a poor use of that authority,” Representative David Schweikert, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, told Politico in January.

Senator Marco Rubio was more emphatic. “If today the national emergency is border security, tomorrow the national emergency might be climate change.”

The reaction of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to Mr. Trump’s intentions will do nothing to calm Republican jitters. “Just think of what a president with different values can present to the American people,” she observed.

The poison cherry atop this sundae is that Mr. Trump is subverting American democracy for a cause opposed by a majority of the public.

Polls show that most Americans do not want a wall at the southern border. And most definitely do not approve of Mr. Trump’s faking a national emergency to make an end run around Congress. Two recent polls showed that two-thirds of Americans opposed it.

Not that any of this seems of interest to the president. “I have the absolute right to do national emergency if I want,” he insisted to reporters last month, sounding more like a huffy kindergartner than a world leader.

This administration is forever coming up with creative new ways to disturb and dismay the nation. Mr. Trump’s eagerness to undermine the Constitution to serve his short-term political gain remains among the most outrageous.

-newyorktimes.com

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/opinion/tr...-wall.html

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