Trump within his right to declare national emergency
Can President Trump declare a “national emergency,” bypassing Congress to build his wall on the Mexican border? Yes he can, says Lethbridge historian James Tagg.
And he wouldn’t be the first president to use that executive power, the longtime University of Lethbridge professor explained.
Abraham Lincoln made a similar move, he said Thursday, and so did Franklin Roosevelt.
The Americans’ system of checks and balances can effectively block legislation of all kinds, he told a session of the Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs.
But as “Commander in Chief,” a president readily take decisions into his own hand — “if public and political opinion allows.”
In one of his latest moves, Trump has declared the emergency in order to strip funds from another government priority, to step up work on his wall.
But his impetuous actions, combined with Americans’ volatile exchanges on social media and highly partisan TV channels, are making the nation still more divided and dangerous. More than 40 per cent of Americans believe someone belonging to the other political party is “evil,” Tagg reported. And a vocal minority feels real violence will be justified next year, if the party they favour doesn’t win the election.
What’s alarming, Tagg said, is the more highly informed some Americans are, the more extreme their views!
While the U.S. Constitution has become “a secular sacred text,” he added, most Americans don’t know what it contains.
It’s become a “Rube Goldberg machine,” that simply doesn’t work.
And its “freedom of speech” provision has been interpreted to allow companies — or billionaires like the Koch brothers — to spend as much as they want to buy political favour or control elections.
In an election year, says Tagg, there is “massive spending on campaigns.”
Asked about the possibility of impeaching Trump, Tagg said he understands the desire.
“He operates like a Mafia boss” — but many Americans fear leaving the vicepresident in charge could be even worse. And regardless of what ongoing investigations prove, senators would refuse to act. The best hope for those who want an adult in the White House, said Tagg, is to elect someone else in 2020. Follow @DMabellHerald on Twitter