We have a national emergency: Donald Trump
Eugene Robinson
Updated Feb 16; Posted Feb 17, 2:59 PM
... What the administration really needs to do is expand and improve facilities for processing, caring for and, when necessary, housing these asylum seekers. But Trump doesn’t care about doing the right thing, or even the necessary thing. He cares only about being able to claim he is following through on his vicious anti-immigration rhetoric, which brands Mexican would-be migrants as “rapists” and Central Americans as members of the MS-13 street gang. Trump had two years in which Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate -- and could not convince Congress to give him funding for a wall. He decided to make it an issue only after Democrats won the power to say no. The president’s negotiating strategy -- pitching tantrums, walking away from the table, venting on Twitter, provoking the longest partial government shutdown in history -- was never going to work. You might think he’d have learned something about how Washington works by now, but you would be wrong.
Since there obviously is no legitimate emergency, Trump’s declaration -- and the shifting of resources from duly authorized projects to the wall -- will surely be challenged in court. It is possible, if not likely, that any actual construction will be held up indefinitely.Indeed, legal briefs arguing against Trump’s action practically write themselves. An emergency, by definition, is urgent. The 9/11 terrorist attacks, for example, were clearly qualified as a national emergency. But Trump has been talking about issuing an emergency declaration to build the wall for a couple of months. If such action wasn’t necessary in December, some judge will surely ask, then why now?
Money for the wall will have to be taken from other projects, all of which have constituencies in Congress and among the public. Ranchers and others whose land would have to be taken by eminent domain for the wall will be up in arms ...
Trump cares only that his base is mollified. And that nobody remembers how Mexico was supposed to foot the bill.
https://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2019/02/we-have-a-national-emergency-all-right-its-name-is-donald-trump-eugene-robinson.html
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