So this is shamefully happening (via Richard Cowan and David Morgan at Reuters.com):
President Donald Trump was poised on Friday to declare a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, a move that Democrats vowed to challenge as an unconstitutional attempt to fund his proposed border wall without approval from Congress.
Previous Presidents had issued national emergencies before, but usually within the confines of existing laws and regulations set by Congress to prevent overreach. Obama for example issued 12 emergencies, almost all of them involving foreign interventions and not exactly cutting into Congressional "power of the purse".
All because he doesn't want to be seen as a loser:
Trump was also expected to sign a bipartisan government spending bill approved by Congress on Thursday that would prevent another federal shutdown by funding several agencies that otherwise would have closed on Saturday morning.
The bill, lacking any money for his wall, is a defeat for Trump in Congress, where his demand for $5.7 billion in wall funding yielded no result, other than a record-long 35-day December-January partial government shutdown that damaged the U.S. economy and his poll numbers.trump's excuses this afternoon did little to convince anyone that there is a crisis at the border: the flow of drugs won't be stopped by a border wall, there's no evidence of "chain migration" abusing our immigration system, and the needed reforms to the Lottery system aren't going to get answered by this move.
The horrifying truth is that trump has ached to grant himself direct powers that the Constitution doesn't grant Presidents (his dream of being a dictator like those he admires), and is seizing on the nature of the Emergency Powers set up by Congress back in 1976 to achieve that desire. trump does not care of the precedents he's creating with this move, where most critics - even Republicans - are worried if this move succeeds trump is giving license to future DEMOCRATIC Presidents to enact socialist/progressive reforms in spite of conservative obstruction in Congress. trump is likely convinced there will never be a Democratic successor, that he will somehow become Dictator-For-Life in spite of the 22nd Amendment (he can always issue an Emergency Order cancelling all future elections, after all why not) or even his own mortality (Gods help us if trump thinks he can pass on executive powers to his children).
trump is also ignoring the reality of his actions going to the Courts - already California has filed a lawsuit against it - but not the lawsuit part because he already admits he knew those would happen, trump only cares to create the illusion that his actions are giving him a major win. In spite of the polling that should tell him the Wall is a bad sell to the public, that it will give a rallying point for Democratic candidates against him in 2020, and that even his Far Right allies are attacking him for betraying their agenda of a harsher immigration policy (trump signed that budget which actually gave Democrats small victories on that front). All that matters to trump right now are the optics of "victory" and his personal ambition to become America's Biggest Dictator Ever (eat your heart out, Andrew Jackson!).
And while our nation's leader fiddle over fake "emergencies," we're coping this afternoon with a real National Emergency with YET ANOTHER MASS SHOOTING with at least five dead in Aurora IL (which is different from the MASS SHOOTING in Aurora CO back in 2012, CAN WE KEEP TRACK OF THESE MASS SHOOTINGS ANYMORE, AMERICA).
We're in the Darkest Timeline, folks. Every day gets worse until trump and his Republican enablers are driven out of power forever.
3 comments:
OK, game on. Fire up the court challenges and use this not as precedent for more subversion of the constitution, but as ammunition to beat both Fergus and McConnell next year.
The damn fool said that invoking the 25th amendment would be unconstitutional. He should have "moron" stamped on his forehead before being escorted off of the white house grounds and never allowed to return.
-Doug in Oakland
"Both Oligarch and Tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of arms." ~ Aristotle
It is time we have a discussion on who is qualified in order to be able to become a candidate for the President of the United States other than just being born in this nation. To start with the candidate would release his or her taxes for the last seven or more years. Secondly, the candidate would have to pass a written or oral test (no lawyers or coaches involved) on the Constitution (not an interpretation,) the election and campaign laws, given by three Federal judges, each from a different area of our nation and they would certify the candidate was qualified. Hopefully, this would eliminate unqualified and not so serious candidates as they would have to spend some valuable time preparing for this examination. This could be a law of requirement passed by the Federal government (or maybe by a dozen or more states.) destroying the chances of an unqualified candidate from becoming President of the United States. It further should be recognized that being President is an awesome responsibility and that an elected President is not one who will shut down the operation of the government and would have to pledge not to do so under the charge of being a high crime (felony.) We just have to look at the largest corporations in our nation and see if their CEO's close down their large companies. Does the CEO of General Electric, the CEO of Exxon Mobil, the CEO of Ford Motor Company, The CEO of IBM, etc. close down their operations? I think not.
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