Why Trump will win the wall fight
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, "If my fellow citizens want to go to hell, I will help them. It is my job." He was expressing the limited role of courts in challenges to federal law. It is not the task of judges to sit as a super legislature to question the agendas of the political branches. They will gladly send Congress to hell. It only needs to point to the destination.
In the matter of the border wall, Congress could not have been more clear where it was heading. It put itself on the path to institutional irrelevancy, and it has finally arrived. I do not agree there is a national emergency on the southern border, but I do believe President Trump will prevail. This crisis is not the making of Donald Trump. This is the making of Congress.
For decades, Congress frittered away control over its authority, including the power of the purse. I have testified before Congress, warning about the expansion of executive power and the failure of Congress to guard its own authority. The two primary objections have been Congress giving presidents largely unchecked authority and undedicated money. The wall funding controversy today is a grotesque result of both of these failures.
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However, Congress later gave presidents sweeping authority under the National Emergencies Act of 1976. While this law allows for a legislative override by Congress, the authority to declare national emergencies is basically unfettered. It is one of many such laws where Congress created the thin veneer of a process for presidential power that, in reality, was a virtual blank slate. At the same time, Congress has continued to give the executive branch billions of dollars with few conditions or limitations.
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Congress has yielded more and more power to the executive branch over decades. In many areas, it has reduced the legislative branch to a mere pedestrian in government, leaving real governing decisions to a kind of "fourth branch" of federal agencies. For their part, presidents have thus become more and more bold in circumventing Congress. When Obama gave a State of the Union proclaiming his intention to bypass Congress after it failed to pass immigration reform, Democrats applauded loudly.
Many of them, like Pelosi, denounce this unilateral action by Trump yet ecstatically supported the unilateral actions by Obama, including his funding of some critical parts of the Affordable Care Act after Congress denied any funds. Democrats insist Trump can be challenged on his use of emergency authority since they do not believe an emergency exists on the southern border. They will fail spectacularly if the case gets to the Supreme Court. While the source of funding can be challenged, there is no compelling basis to challenge the national emergency declaration.
The reason? Congress has never been particularly concerned over past declared emergencies, which have continued with perfunctory annual renewals. Most such emergencies are entirely unknown to the vast majority of Americans. Indeed, the first proclamation of a national emergency occurred under President Wilson in 1917, "arising from the insufficiency of maritime tonnage to carry the products of the farms, forests, mines, and manufacturing industries of the United States."
Remember that national emergency over the "anchorage and movement of vessels" with respect to Cuba? How about the national emergency over uncut diamonds from Sierra Leone? Then there were the declarations over property owned by certain figures in Zimbabwe, the presidential election in Congo, and issues concerning Yemen, Burundi, Myanmar, Lebanon, Somalia, and South Sudan. All of these were "national emergencies."
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While Democrats insist this emergency declaration is simply an effort to use executive power to get what Congress would not give Trump, any litigation would be an effort to use judicial power to do much the same thing. The House of Representatives would try to convince a federal judge of the merits against a wall, after failing to convince enough members of Congress to override the emergency declaration and a presidential veto.
That brings us back to Holmes. Congress has the authority to rescind the national emergency declaration of Trump with a vote of both chambers. The legislative branch should do so. If Congress cannot muster the votes, however, a federal judge is unlikely to do so. Simply put, the courts were not created to protect Congress from itself. Congress has been heading to hell for decades, and it is a bit late to complain about the destination.
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Congress is inept, inefficient, bumbling, halting... etc.
Congress, with a max. 20% approval rating for decades, and the media always reports on Trumps approval ratings as bad ?
And the disapproval ratings are above 80% now.
But yeah, it's all Trump's fault.
Of course decades of Congress Fuck ups is Trumps fault !
It couldn't be anything else.
If courts would just follow the letter of the laws, as set forth by congress, instead of ruling by feeling a lot of times, I guarantee the people of this country would be protesting on the steps of the capital everyday.
"#StoptheMadness"
Good seed.... give me something to think about.
This "national emergency" is different, IMO. It is being used in an effort to undermine the fact that Congress is the branch responsible for allocating funding. And if it were really such an emergency, it would have been an emergency when the GOP was in charge of Congress .. and Trump wouldn't be golfing, and admitting that he didn't have to do this. He just wanted it done faster than going through normal methods.
The past Presidents' increase of executive power was bound to lead to this at some point, though. Neither party ever bothers to think about the precedent they are setting. And Congress seems to feel they work for the President of their party instead of for us.
Just as the GOP might be unpleasantly surprised when the next Democratic president declares a national emergency over climate change and allocates funds for that against Congressional approval, or after the first mass shooting that happens under their administration.
This is now the Important Place for legislating:
Not if congress was doing it's real job rather than political fundraising.......
Exactly.
Seems Congress is just throwing things out there as law anymore, and hoping the Courts won't over turn them later.
But we do have a court problem too. They circumvent the laws enacted at times, because they "Feel".
"Just as the GOP might be unpleasantly surprised when the next Democratic president declares a national emergency over climate change and allocates funds for that against Congressional approval, or after the first mass shooting that happens under their administration."
I suppose the last President didn't find "Climate Change" or a few "Mass Shootings" to be a "National Emergency in 8 years for some reason
, but found "Other" countries needed protecting instead 
:
President Barack Obama
Oct. 23, 2009: Declaration of a National Emergency With Respect to the 2009 H1N1 Influenza Pandemic, was never terminated or continued;
April 12, 2010 (still in effect): Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Conflict in Somalia, continued in 2018;
Feb. 25, 2011 (still in effect): Blocking Property and Prohibiting Certain Transactions Related to Libya, continued in February 2018;
July 24, 2011 (still in effect): Blocking Property of Transnational Criminal Organizations, continued in July 2018;
May 16, 2012 (still in effect): Blocking Property of Persons Threatening the Peace, Security, or Stability of Yemen, continued in May 2012;
June 25, 2012: Blocking Property of the Government of the Russian Federation Relating to the Disposition of Highly Enriched Uranium Extracted from Nuclear Weapons, revoked in 2015;
March 6, 2014 (still in effect): Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Ukraine, continued in March 2018;
April 3, 2014 (still in effect): Blocking Property of Certain Persons With Respect to South Sudan, continued in March 2018;
May 12, 2014 (still in effect): Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Conflict in the Central African Republic, continued in May 2018;
March 8, 2015 (still in effect): Blocking Property and Suspending Entry of Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Venezuela, continued in March 2018;
April 1, 2015 (still in effect): Blocking the Property of Certain Persons Engaging in Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities, continued in March 2018;
Nov. 22, 2015 (still in effect): Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Burundi, continued in November 2018.
Did you know that 2 of Trumps 3 National Emergencies actually were FOR this Country, along with this NEW (1) ONE of his ?
President Donald Trump
Dec. 20, 2017: Blocking the Property of Persons Involved in Serious Human Rights Abuse or Corruption;
Sept. 12, 2018: Imposing Certain Sanctions in the Event of Foreign Interference in a United States Election;
Nov. 27, 2018: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Nicaragua.
THE SCARE TACTIC NOW BEING USED BY THE DEMOCRATS AS TO: "the next Democratic president declares a national emergency over climate change or gun control" ...………….. IS PATHETIC !
She gets credit for inventing "the fuck you clap." I guess we can't say she never accomplished anything.