Nevertheless, in 10 steps, Trump irretrievably ruined whatever legal case he would have had. First, he did not address the issue when the Republican Party held majorities in both the House and Senate, when, for example, he had the ability to push through measures on reconciliation. Second, he rejected a deal for $25 billion in border security in exchange for legalization of “dreamers,” which doesn’t sound like the sort of thing you’d do in a real emergency. Third, he signed a continuing resolution that kept the government running until Dec. 8, 2018. Again, you wouldn’t agree to that in the face of a real emergency. Fourth, Congress passed another continuing resolution to keep the government open until Dec. 21, 2018. Fifth, the president provoked a 35-day shutdown that ended with a three-week continuing resolution. Again, this doesn’t give off an emergency “vibe.”
Sixth, as appropriators negotiate, the president repeatedly threatens to us emergency powers until Congress gives him what he wants. The critical precondition for an emergency declaration is lack of congressional compliance. Seventh, appropriators reach agreement — and Trump signs it. Eighth, there is no report or analysis demonstrating why Congress’s response is inadequate. Instead, Trump declares an emergency on the same day as the signing, a transparent effort to eclipse his utter failure to deliver on a campaign promise. Ninth, at a bizarre Rose Garden press conference on Friday, Trump declared, “I didn’t need to do this. . . . I just want to do it faster.” It is difficult to imagine a more damaging confession that the emergency is figment of Trump’s frail ego and thirst to avoid disappointing his base. Tenth, Trump tells a set of ridiculous lies to justify his border wall. For example, he denies replete evidence from his own administration that the vast amount of illegal drugs come through ports of entry and claims that El Paso had an epidemic crime rate before barriers were built. (But now that the city has barriers and is so safe, why the need for the concrete wall?)
When President Donald J. Trump publishes his declaration of a national emergency requiring the construction of a wall on our southern border, that document will bear the formal signs of normal governance. The order will recite findings or at least assertions of fact. It will cite statutes—the act that authorizes its issuance and the statutes the president is triggering by signing his declaration. The same will be true of the complaints and legal briefs inevitably to be filed in its wake. There will be arguments familiar to administrative lawyers about standing, ripeness, reviewability, and statutory interpretation. But hovering over all the familiar legal forms and practices is the depressing reality that Trump, as always, is endeavoring to hollow out the constitutional system of checks and balances. There is no national emergency at the border other than the tragedies of his creation. Gangs, sex traffickers, and drug smugglers are not invading the United States. His “crisis” is that Congress has refused to fund a campaign fantasy he promised that Mexico would pay for, and the smell of political defeat is more than he can bear.
Trump’s fecklessness is most obvious when you realize that if his declaration could produce the lawful construction of his promised wall, the partial government shutdown—and the pain imposed both on the economy in general and on thousands of American families specifically—was utterly pointless. Even odder is the fact that one of the statutory authorities Trump is expected to set in motion is the Defense Department’s authority to provide assistance to counter drug trafficking and organized crime. That authority, however, is within the department’s regular quiver of statutory powers. If legally available to build the wall, it is no more or less available than it was before the government shutdown or before Trump’s declaration. Here’s the way our forthcoming judicial confrontations are likely to unfold. Trump is relying on the 1976 National Emergencies Act, which permits presidents to declare “national emergencies,” a term it does not define. Such declarations, however, do virtually nothing by themselves. Presidents have to cite yet other statutes that allow the president or other administrators to exercise specific powers once a national emergency has been declared.
Congress could—and should—put a stop to this nonsense now. Under the National Security Act, it can nullify a declaration of national emergency. It can also just pass a statute providing that, for purposes of building a border wall, no funds shall be reallocated pursuant to whatever statutes Trump cites. Any self-respecting legislative branch would stand up to Trump’s aggression by a vote so overwhelming as to overcome any veto threat. Such resistance, unfortunately, is altogether unlikely. As a result, we are left with the forms and practices of normal law to try to discipline an abnormal president. He has been and will continue to be enabled by lawyers wishing to push their interpretations of presidential authority to the maximum extent consistent with the dictionary, a practice the new attorney general championed for an earlier president and will no doubt champion again. Trump made clear that his hopes ride on the sympathies of the Supreme Court, which now, with Brett Kavanaugh, has justices who may well be more indulgent of executive prerogative than any bench since World War II. The extent to which there actually remains a meaningful constitutional check on this president’s assertion of extraordinary powers will be tested in the months and years ahead, but the outcome our Constitution would seem to demand is by no means guaranteed.
Lazy Prez Spends Much of His Day Concocting Crazy Spin & Talking Points
It does look like Trump spends much of his presidential “executive time” searching for new talking points to brag on himself. That included pressuring the Japanese Prime Minister to nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize, as seen below in this article pulled from trump-abe-nominated-
President Donald Trump was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who the Japanese press says made the nomination after receiving a request to do so from the United States government, which is led by Donald Trump. During Trump’s national emergency press conference Friday at the White House, the president bragged that Abe handed him “the most beautiful copy” a five-page nomination letter, according to Reuters. Trump also claimed last week that the nomination was the result of his work opening talks between Japan and North Korea. But on Sunday, the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported that the prime minister nominated Trump as a result of a request by the US government: According to the sources, the U.S. government “informally” asked Tokyo to nominate Trump after he met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore in June, the first-ever summit between the two countries. All that’s confusing but, then again, Donald Trump is president of the United States.
Here is something I have been saying all along. Republicans may have won the battle with electing Trump but have, in the end, lost the war. Before Trump appeared on the scene the Rs were already hemorrhaging Non-whites, women, the college educated and, most worrying for the Rs, the young. The New York Times has just put out a wonderful article detailing how the Rs started losing these demographics and how it has accelerated. Here are some excerpts:
Most strikingly, one-third of 2012 Romney voters who were under 40 in 2016 did not vote for Mr. Trump, but rather stayed home, voted for Mrs. Clinton or voted for a third-party candidate. Among the under-40 Romney voters who supported Mr. Trump in 2016, 16 percent appear to have defected from the party to vote for a Democratic House candidate in 2018. Of course, we don’t know how they will vote in 2020, but what this means is that in the past two elections Republicans may have lost more than 40 percent of Romney voters born after 1976. Republican House candidates performed worse among 18- to 39-year-olds than they have in decades. The voters Mr. Trump and his party lost in 2016 and 2018 represent the future of American politics. If the Republican Party becomes the party of the past — that is, of aging white men with less education — it could make winning elections increasingly difficult. (I would say nearly impossible.) and…But it is the graying of the Republican coalition that is arguably the biggest threat to the party’s prospects. It is true that on average, older people are more reliable voters than younger people. But the partisan identities and voting behaviors that people adopt early in the life cycle tend to stick, becoming routines that people carry on for the remainder of their lives. (and when the old white men are gone, no one will be replacing them.)
It’s been said that Trump is some kind of anomaly, I don’t think so. The Republican party has been slowly becoming the party of old white men for a while, out of touch with current America, he just accelerated the process. He exemplifies the mentality of the ‘gosh it was better back when’ and ‘this country is going to hell in a hand basket’ mentality of most of his supporters who are old and gray. That is why they voted for him. He is one of them. And that is why they will support him no matter what. You never turn on one of your own.
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