On Monday, February 18th, 2019, sixteen states filed a lawsuit against President Trump’s national-emergency declaration. The lawsuit was lead by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. He told CNN, "We're going to try to halt the President from violating the Constitution, the separation of powers, from stealing money from Americans and states that has been allocated by Congress, lawfully," It’s possible that the case goes all the way to the supreme court and last through the 2020 election. By declaring a national-emergency Congress will fund President Trump’s wall. Within the lawsuit, it states that President Trump has “veered the country toward a constitutional crisis of his own making.” The founders of the lawsuit are say that President Trump is trying to declare a national-emergency to fund a project. It has everyone confused because no president has tried to do this. People don't want the wall because it would be “stealing” money from the people to build it. It scares them.
How will the lawsuit end? Do you think it will get all the way to the Supreme Court? Do you think the lawsuit will carry through the 2020 election? Do you think the government will shut down again, and will President Trump declare a national-emergency?
While the national emergency declaration is considered to be quite controversial, it is false to state that no other president has declared a national emergency in order to fund a project. In response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush declared a national emergency and Executive Order 13235 was passed, which allocated funds and authority to the Department of Defense to build as needed in order to protect our nation. It was not considered controversial then because it was in response to a terrorist attack, but nevertheless an emergency was declared in order to fund building projects.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to the current emergency declaration, I definitely think that states will attempt to sue or file more lawsuits. More than likely that case will be taken to the Supreme Court. However, I think the case will be ruled in favor of President Trump due to the conservative majority in the Supreme Court. Once the case is resolved I do not think it will lead to any more government shutdowns.
There is a lot about the lawsuits filed in retaliation to Trump's "national emergency" that I dissent from. For instance, ACLU staff attorney Dror Ladin claims that "no prior president has ever tried to use emergency powers to fund a chosen project," to which I say: what was the Affordable Care Act? What was Obama's project to stop border agents from enforcing the law when Congress denied DACA? Were those attempts by Obama to skirt Congress ( which they were, according to sources from Logan's blog) not chosen projects? Clearly, there are precedents, and while I'm not saying that the use of the National Emergencies Act is constitutional in all of these cases, I am saying that the idea that this is completely unprecedented appears to me to be either naive or disingenuous. Congressional approval has been circumvented numerous times in the past few decades (and not just by Trump and Obama, to my understanding).
ReplyDeleteI'm tired of seeing people selectively defend something when one person does it and denounce it when someone they don't like does it. Add that to the fact that, according to the Marketwatch source shown here, all of the states suing against this "national emergency" declaration are doing so with Democratic attorneys general (with all but one of the states having a Democratic governor), and this begins to look less like a constitutional inspection and more like another partisan political attack on the president like always.
How do I think the lawsuits will end? I'm not sure. If it gets to the Supreme Court, then I'll be surprised if the Court doesn't rule in Trump's favor. While it's not the SCOTUS's job to be political, five of the justices are conservative, and considering party-biased SCOTUS decisions before, I would think that those justices would be at least more likely to rule for Trump. If it doesn't go to the SCOTUS, then who knows?
But I will say one thing. I wasn't expecting such widespread backlash against Trump's declaration of a national emergency. Again, considering the partisan nature of our politics today, this may divide our country like nothing else before--people of one side tend to believe that a great president is doing his job to protect his people from a real crisis, and people of the other side tend to believe that a racist, sexist, evil president is blatantly betraying both the Constitution and the American people by manufacturing a crisis. In this time of absurd levels of division that seem to be getting worse every month, just how far can our country be divided before people stop being civil?