If Trump declares his national emergency over border security and it is supported by the Republicans who simply want to give Trump a way out of the hopeless corner he has painted himself into and it is held up by the Courts - what happens down the road when a liberal Democrat is President and decides to pull the same measure regarding an issue like climate change or gun policy or something that Republicans are not eager to accede to? If a Court has already stated that the President indeed has the powers Trump claims, what is to stop future presidents from using them to effectively seriously weaken the powers of Congress in these areas?
And given this argument, how can Republicans in Congress stand by and encourage Trump to do this and not loudly object to it?
Is the momentary benefit to Trump so important that they would risk the very powers of the Congress as established by the Constitution?
I tend to agree with others that the National Emergencies Act of 1976 does not necessarily allow a President to change law, but it does grant fairly broad powers to the President on what to do with funding allocated to various departments within the Executive Branch.
Constitutionally speaking, there is very little to discuss here. The Constitution grants little to no power to the President for "national emergencies," Congress has been responsible for allowing this over the years to the point of the National Emergencies Act trying to reign back in how far prior Presidents abused the authority. If anything the act allows Congress to terminate the National Emergency, they just have to agree and that is not too common these days.
What Trump is doing is the same thing as just about every other President, pushing to new limits their authority to do something. We talk all the time about the Constitution and rule of law being a tool of restriction but very often politicians are looking for means to wiggle their way into greater authority. Congress playing into the Judicial Branch, the Supreme Court playing into the Legislative Branch, and of course the President playing into everything they can get their hands on.
All Trump is doing is using that authoritarian nationalist tone of his pushing a national security to obtain a border wall. Our issue is what doors that opens up for the next President to use the authority for some other questionable means. Very rarely does this effort to expand power find some plateau and stop, the effort is expanded at the expense of Constitutionality. We have zero evidence that the next President (or even Trump himself later in this Presidency) will all of a sudden stop looking to push their limits of authority for some political reason.
We should be concerned, very concerned, about what we are seeing.
