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Opinion
The following is presented as part of The Columbian’s Opinion content, which offers a point of view in order to provoke thought and debate of civic issues. Opinions represent the viewpoint of the author. Unsigned editorials represent the consensus opinion of The Columbian’s editorial board, which operates independently of the news department.
News / Opinion / Columns

Donald Trump goes too far

‘National emergency’ declaration simply way to circumvent Congress

By The Los Angeles Times
Published: February 17, 2019, 6:01am

The following editorial originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times:

Like many critics of President Donald Trump, we expected that he would someday abuse the power of the office to such a degree that it would trigger a confrontation with Congress or the courts. And now he’s doing it, in pursuit of a wall along the southern border that Mexico isn’t financing.

On Friday, Trump declared a national emergency over a nonexistent “national security crisis” at the border, then invoked that emergency to shift billions of dollars from previously approved military construction projects to his wall. The move contravenes weeks of negotiations by lawmakers and an explicit decision, backed by large majorities in both chambers, to reject Trump’s request for $5.7 billion in wall funding and instead provide less than $1.4 billion for steel fencing — the same amount as last year.

Congress gave the president broad authority in the 1976 National Emergencies Act to declare a state of emergency, and lawmakers have passed dozens of other laws laying out the specific powers the president can use when an emergency has been declared. But Trump is stretching that authority to the breaking point by using it not to address something unexpected or an actual national security crisis, but to reverse the will of Congress and erase a political defeat.

That’s unconscionable. Trump’s imperious use of emergency powers will soon be challenged in both Congress and the courts, and rightly so.

Trump won election in part by playing to the fears of some Americans about immigrants. But the notion of a violent horde threatening to invade from the south is xenophobic fiction, as unrealistic as the idea that a wall can magically stop the flow of drugs into the United States. Though there are manifest problems with U.S. immigration laws and policies, they do not translate into a threat to the security of our nation.

Bipartisan compromise

Over weeks of negotiations stretching back into 2018, the Trump administration and its Republican allies in Congress grappled with congressional Democrats over how to address the growth in asylum arrivals and other border concerns. The spending bill that resulted raises spending on border security to $22.54 billion — more than the budgets for disaster relief, the federal courts or the Environmental Protection Agency, to cite just a few examples.

The measure is a compromise that reflects bipartisan support for improved border security, as well as the two parties’ different priorities. In addition to providing money for fencing, it increases the number of detention beds for deportable immigrants, expands immigration courts, adds hundreds of Border Patrol agents, supplies more money for drones and other border-surveillance technology, ramps up drug interdiction efforts at ports of entry, overhauls how Immigration and Customs Enforcement manages the cases under its purview, and addresses a number of complaints from Democrats about the treatment of detainees.

Under the Constitution, it’s up to Congress to decide how federal dollars are spent. It’s telling that Trump couldn’t persuade lawmakers to give him more money for his wall, even by shutting much of the federal government down for a record 35 days. He simply doesn’t have the votes for the project, which isn’t surprising, given that polls show most Americans don’t support it.

Instead of taking his lumps and trying to make a better case for funding the wall next year, however, Trump is trying to circumvent Congress through a spurious emergency declaration.

Trump’s declaration will soon be challenged on two fronts. One or more federal judges will be asked to halt the shift of funds, and the Democrats who control the House will advance a resolution ending the state of emergency — a resolution that, once it passes the House, must come up for a vote in the GOP-controlled Senate.

Trump cares little about the long-term implications of the steps he takes. It’s all about his need to win now, consequences be damned. But lawmakers cannot abide this abuse of executive power, or else they’ll be conceding their control of the federal purse to the president — and praying the courts hand it back.

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