This is not a national emergency: Congress must update the National Emergency Act

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has decided to embrace his inner Harry Reid and greenlight President Trump’s emergency declaration.

As John Yoo noted earlier this month, the courts may find that Trump is within his rights to mobilize the military to build the wall when his gambit is inevitably challenged for its legality. Even Youngstown v. Sawyer, which reversed former President Harry Truman’s seizure of private steel mills to supply the military during the Korean War, wouldn’t necessarily imply that Trump would be out-of-bounds building the wall on land not privately owned.