Trump’s national emergency declaration an executive overreach

President Trump’s rush to declare a national emergency in order to fast-track border wall funding is inconsistent with the system of checks and balances our republic is predicated on. The American people should always reject executive overreach, regardless of who is president, or what the motives are.

In recent months, Trump has repeatedly threatened to declare a national emergency on the southern border if he is unable to secure, through the legislative process, border security funding to his liking.

On Friday, he followed through on this threat after both chambers of Congress passed legislation authorizing over $1 billion for border barriers. “We’re going to confront the national security crisis on our southern border and we’re going to do it one way or the other,” he said. He continued: “It’s an invasion … We have an invasion of drugs and criminals coming into our country.”

But then he quickly undermined his own argument that an emergency declaration was needed. Noting that he “also got billions and billions for other things” related to border security, he complained that “on the wall, they skimped …I wanted to do it faster. … I could do the wall over a longer period of time. I didn’t need to do this. But I’d rather do it much faster.”

In other words, the president is invoking a national emergency to get what he might’ve been able to get over time through the legislative process, but didn’t want to wait for that, so he chose to declare an emergency in a bid to get what he wants without congressional approval.

Whatever the merits of what Trump wants, his own remarks make clear that he at best prematurely declared a national emergency and at worst wrongly abused his executive authority to try and accomplish what he couldn’t legitimately achieve.

This shouldn’t be a partisan issue, and fortunately it isn’t, with Republicans and Democrats alike rightly panning the move.

“A national emergency declaration for a non-emergency is void,” argues Rep. Justin Amash, R-Michigan. “A prerequisite for declaring an emergency is that the situation requires immediate action and Congress does not have an opportunity to act.”

Likewise, Sen. Rand Paul, RKentucky, said that while he supports stronger border security, “extraconstitutional executive actions are wrong, no matter which party does them.”

Naturally, the president’s announcement has already spurred promises of legal action to block the action. The American Civil Liberties Union has already announced plans to do so early next week, so we can expect this to be stuck in the courts for a while, leaving the president for the time being with a hollow declaration.

Moving forward, we continue to urge Congress to work toward comprehensive immigration reform, including permanent solutions for undocumented immigrants, and sensible border security measures.

There is a lot at stake here, as there has been for the many years both parties have made a political football of the issues at hand, and a lot of hard work to be done. Distractions such as non-emergency emergency declarations do nothing to help move us forward.