Last Friday many of us gathered around our televisions, radios, and social media with one question: will our government stay open? We all were grateful that President Trump signed an continuing resolution to keep the government open despite not getting all the funding he wanted for a border wall on the Mexican border.
I’ve written about this before but a border wall is expensive, ineffective, and unpopular.
Unfortunately we knew it was only a matter of time before the other shoe would drop, and it did. President Trump has shown us again and again that he believes his office gives him unlimited power and that we are not citizens but subjects. I’m not sure who, but someone told him about the National Emergencies Act of 1976. It allows the President, during national emergencies, to act now and wait for Congress to support it. You can read his remarks on February 15th here: here. Previous presidents have invoked this during emergencies like 9/11 and hurricanes. These were events were it was clear that fast action was needed and consensus was assumed.
Enter President Trump’s wall. He recognized that he’ll lose much of his base if he doesn’t build the wall and he’ll pay an even higher price if he shuts down parts of the government again knowing the House of Representatives will never agree to the wall.
And so he manufactured an emergency. He’s claiming that we need the wall to stop drugs even though a wall won’t fix it. He also claims this will stop criminals from coming and committing crimes against Americans even though the crime rate among the undocumented is lower than the crime rate among Americans.
Clearly the emergency he speaks of isn’t an emergency for the United States. It’s an emergency for his re-election campaign. He’s recognized that the road to victory in 2020 becomes much more difficult if he doesn’t have a wall to point to.
His base doesn’t care that Hillary isn’t in jail or that coal isn’t coming back. But to his horror, Mr. Trump does know that when he promised to build the wall they were listening.
The rest of us care more about our future than we care about his future. The president’s road now goes through the court system and I pray the Judicial Branch cares more about our future.
Fortunately the next step is the Judicial Branch. As I write this 16 states have filed suit to stop this. I believe they will rule in favor of our nation instead of our president, but even if they don’t, there’s a good chance it will be tied up long enough to land on the desk of the next president.
We can only hope.