Emergency call challenged
US President Donald Trump has declared the situation on America’s southern border to be a national emergency, catapulting the country into uncertain legal and political battles as he seeks to fulfil a campaign promise that has eluded him for two years.
Trump made the designation yesterday in an attempt to redirect taxpayer money from other accounts and use it to erect more than 370 kilometres of barriers along the US-Mexico border. But he anticipates a flurry of legal challenges that will eventually be decided by the Supreme Court.
Trump’s announcement capped a frenetic two-month period that included the longest government shutdown in US history, at 35 days. It also begins a new phase of his presidency that will test the separation of powers, as he sidesteps Congress despite Republicans urging restraint.
During a 50-minute, meandering Rose Garden news conference, Trump offered little empirical evidence to back up his assertion that there was a crisis on the border requiring an extraordinary response.
‘‘We’re talking about an invasion of our country with drugs, with human traffickers, with all types of criminals and gangs,’’ he said. He used the word ‘‘invasion’’ seven times.
He later said the emergency declaration wasn’t urgent but rather expedient, as it would help him build a wall more quickly than Congress would allow.
Democrats and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) mapped out the ways they would try to block Trump’s wall.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, said he planned to work with other states to take legal action against the White House. The ACLU said it was preparing a lawsuit of its own, arguing that Trump could not legally redirect taxpayer money during an "emergency" unless it was for military construction projects supporting the armed forces.
Advocacy group Public Citizen filed a lawsuit in US District Court in Washington yesterday, seeking to block Trump’s declaration on behalf of Texas landowners and an environmental group.
Democrats and several Republicans predicted a twopronged response to the declaration: firstly, having Congress vote to reject it in the coming weeks, and secondly, suing Trump, or at least aiding other parties that attempt to intervene.
‘‘The president’s actions clearly violate the Congress’s exclusive power of the purse, which our founders enshrined in the Constitution,’’ House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement. ‘‘The Congress will defend our constitutional authorities in the Congress, in the courts, and in the public, using every remedy available.’’
Most notably, Pelosi and Schumer said, ‘‘we call upon our Republican colleagues to join us to defend the Constitution’’.
Republicans are divided over Trump’s declaration, with many unnerved by what they see as an executive power grab, while others are unwilling to challenge the president ahead of 2020 presidential and congressional elections.
North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis suggested that it would be hypocritical for Republicans to support the emergency declaration after criticising President Barack Obama for ‘‘executive overreach’’. He also suggested that future Democratic presidents might follow Trump’s precedent.
Congressman Mac Thornberry of Texas, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, warned against tapping Defence Department and military construction accounts to build the wall. ‘‘Doing so would have detrimental consequences for our troops . . . I hope that the president will pursue other options.’’
White House officials plan to use US$8 billion to build new fencing that they believe will block or discourage a wide range of immigrants. Of that, US$1.375b was approved by Congress on Friday. The White House plans to use US$600m from the Treasury Department’s forfeiture funds account, which contains money seized by the federal government from a range of illicit activities. An additional US$2.5b would be redirected from a Pentagon programme for countering drug activities, and a final US$3.6b would be moved from military construction accounts. It’s that final pot of money that White House officials said required the national emergency declaration, as the White House is generally barred from moving money from one account to another without congressional approval.
– Washington Post