When everything’s a national emergency, nothing is. While presidents have long invoked national emergencies for situations that no serious people believed were national emergencies, they’ve packaged them in rhetoric and rationale to imply genuine intent. President Trump’s admission that he “didn’t need to do this,” but would “rather do this much faster,” gives the lie to truth of most national emergencies, immolating the political and legal precedent that presidents have positioned national emergencies as actual emergencies.
Now that the veneer’s been wiped off completely, Democrats haven’t responded with the obvious solution of updating the National Emergency Act to constrain the definition of what constitutes a national emergency. Instead, they’ve given us a glimpse inside Pandora’s box and the executive overreach to come.
Let’s just say, what Democrats plan to tackle with unilateral executive overreach isn’t pretty.
Presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., started the left-wing laundry list of “real” emergencies on Twitter when the reports first broke that Trump would declare the state of emergency:
Gun violence is an emergency.
Climate change is an emergency.
Our country’s opioid epidemic is an emergency.Donald Trump’s ridiculous wall is not an emergency.
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) February 14, 2019
Democrats didn’t really show their hands until Trump left the Rose Garden, but not a moment later.
100 people die from guns every day. That’s a national emergency.
If Trump gets away w this border emergency declaration, then a Dem President can declare a gun violence emergency and institute universal background checks and an assault weapons ban by executive action.
So…
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) February 15, 2019
The anti-Semite in the House, Rep. Ilham Omar, D-Minn., bypassed the hypotheticals completely, coming straight out of the gate to embrace Trump’s executive overreach.
Our next President should declare a #NationalEmergency on day 1 to address the existential threat to all life on the planet posed by Climate Change.
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) February 15, 2019
Democrats have no shortage of “national emergencies” they no longer have to pretend are actual emergencies that they could exploit thanks to Trump’s gambit. From healthcare to abortion, there’s no stone they’d leave unturned once they take over.
If Trump is actually playing 5D underwater backgammon, maybe he’s going nuclear on the national emergency front specifically to goad the Democrats into showing their hands. “I nuked the national emergency, and if you elect a Democrat, now they can bypass Congress to take your guns,” would be quite the stump speech come next summer.
I doubt that was the case when Trump decided to do this, but when Trump actually pulls that line out on the campaign trail, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
